Running Luce

The characters of the ballet were narrating an expression of human nature, and it seeped into my subconscious before I could understand it with my conscious thinking mind. And then, as the Swan Maiden lifted into the air, suspended as if she were really flying, it looked as though she were stopping time. I felt the timelessness of that moment as I watched her. Everything went quiet. The city fell away beside me. The seats in the theater went empty and everything for just that moment felt so right. I thought to myself, that this is what I must do: find a way to stop time. When I was older, I did some research and learned that I had discovered the path of Tantra, and that union in the most spiritual sense can suspend the law of duality and in such a state of ecstasy and rapture, a person can experience the unconditioned state of absolute illumination. Then a person could feel the true illusion of time, and from that place, what the Yogis call the Royal Path, can one know the truest sense of freedom possible. I didn’t really know how I could begin thinking that at such a young age, or what it meant to stop time exactly because no one talked about those things. I just knew that it was something inner that I needed to accomplish. My inner voices talked about timelessness and transcendence and urged me relentlessly to find a way to experience both states. Stopping time meant being timeless, in essence transcendent. I wanted to become that kind of person, present in each moment like a mirror reflecting the world around me, not missing a single hair, capturing it all, becoming its very reflection, its’ very mirage, because then I could do something, I could become something very powerful. It wasn’t a false sense of power I was looking for. It wasn’t the power to control others or to have millions of dollars, but the power of controlling my own mind, like taking the reins of a very willful horse and turning it into a thoroughbred. Then I could sink into the hollows of a pure calm that I imagined existed when all the chatter stopped. These were very deep thoughts to have for a person as young as I, but I was thinking them however unusual as that may be, perhaps because no one seemed to have that calm around me, especially not my mother. I also recognized that I didn’t know how to do any of that. I certainly didn’t even know where to start, but I was willing to find the answers. I never gave up when I truly desired something. My father had introduced me into the world that I was going to be a part of during my entire childhood into my early twenties. He was part of that world too, even if only as a spectator. He was engaged in the beauty and magic of it just as much as I was, yet I would be lucky enough to live it in the flesh.