How Savouring Life’s Eternal Moments Adds Value to Our Lives
Slow down and savour the eternal moments to experience the magic of life.
“Still your heart. Be present. Allow the eternal moments to unfold. Because this is where the magic of life is found.”(John P. Weiss, former police chief, artist, and Medium writer)
There’s no concept of time in the cosmic scheme of things. Life always is as it is. Changes are measured in cyclical rhythms, not as the passage of time. For example, seasons come and go, whether or not we’re aware of them. Planets revolve and rotate in pre-ordained orbits.
Time is a human construct, which we invented as a tool of convenience to parcel life into measurable chunks. In due course, time enslaved us and we started dancing to its tunes, obeying its tyrannical demands and dictates submissively.
We let life rush through, never stopping to appreciate the hidden magic contained in the moments.
The moment is neither a second, nor a minute. It’s not the hour either because Nature has no ‘time’ as we know it.
The moment is a slice of life, not a parcel of time. We live, but are not necessarily alive in the moment. We rush through our lives, hardly taking the time to pause and look around. In his poem, The Scholar Gypsy, the English poet Matthew Arnold described the feverish modern life as,
“this strange disease of modern life,
With its sick hurry, its divided aims,
Its head o’ertaxed, its palsied hearts.”
Life unfolds its magic in the pockets of moments. Many of these are the eternal moments, as John P. Weiss describes them.
An eternal moment can either be pleasant or unpleasant, but my focus is on the delightful moments.
An eternal moment is a defining moment in our lives. We get to see a glimpse of life’s magic in an eternal moment.
The eternal moment can happen anytime, anywhere. It can happen in a natural setting, it also can happen in the midst of a noisy crowd. The key to sensing its arrival is to be present in the moment, to still the mind and to open the heart, the seat of intuition.
In an eternal moment, we cherish life to the fullest, imbibing and embodying its blessings, uncritically, spontaneously, and unconditionally.
We can recognise an eternal moment by watching our minds and listening to our bodies. It’s a total body-mind experience. We’re rooted in the moment, devoid of distractions, The eternal moment is the Universe’s display of life’s synopsis, a flash of stillness and insight, which we only can sense intuitively.
John P. Weiss cites some eternal moments in his life, retrospectively. During a picnic with friends and family, several wild horses and a couple of foals suddenly appeared and started playing on the meadow. The picnickers became silent and watched the enchanting equine show with a sense of awe.
A personal theory about the eternal moment
My theory is, the most significant eternal moments, achieve a synthesis between the flow state and the transcendental state of awe.
The flow state was named by the psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi in 1970. Wikipedia says,
“A flow state, also known colloquially as being in the zone, is the mental state in which a person performing some activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by the complete absorption in what one does, and a resulting transformation in one’s sense of time. Flow is the melting together of action and consciousness; the state of finding a balance between a skill and how challenging that task is.
The flow state is typically associated with creatives. As spectators of an eternal moment, we’re not necessarily creating art, we are co-creating an enchanting slice of life along with the Universe.
During the encounter with the horses, John and his friends were totally absorbed in watching the spectacle of equine playfulness. They lost the sense of the time.
In his book Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How it Can Transform Your Life, Dr. Dacher Keltner said,
“Awe is the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your understanding of the world.”
In his research, Dr. Keltner found that awe activates the vagal nerves, clusters of neurons in the spinal cord that regulate various bodily functions, and slows our heart rate, relieves digestion and deepens breathing.
Awe makes us kinder and feel more connected to others.
We need to consciously slow down the furious pace of our lives to be present when an eternal moment manifests itself.
The eternal moment achieves a synergy between the flow and awe states, blessing us with their combined benefits, for our physical and mental well-being.
The eternal moment is so powerful it imprints itself in our subconscious minds. We can vividly recall the eternal moments later nostalgically. Even recollecting an eternal moment confers the same benefits, which we expereinced when they actually happened.
Savouring the eternal moments, both in real time and in nostalgia. adds meaning to our lives and aligns us with the Universe’s magical rhythms.
Appreciating the eternal moments makes us grateful for life’s blessings. We become more tolerant of others and open to harnessing the power of social connections.
Be alive every moment to seize an eternal moment when it occurs.
Please read John P. Weiss’ story, which inspired me to look deeply into the miracle of the eternal moment:
Thanks for spending your valuable time reading this story.
Come and write with us at Spread the Ripple.
This story was brought to you by Spread the Ripple. We are a publication dedicated to kindness, positivity, and happiness. Read more stories and come and write with us here:
