Question: A couple of times during this retreat it seems as though the anticipation of the next moment receded.
Linda: Receded?
Question: The anticipation stopped, briefly. And there wasn’t reaction to the sensations of pain that were there. And it seemed that that anticipation was the entry point into time. I wanted to understand it better
Linda: I like that expression. What was it? Entry into time?
Question: It was a like a step back into the unknown. The first thing I saw was this desire to anticipate. It became apparent that suffering happens in time.
Linda: Thinking is suffering. And as you saw, as soon as you start to think, you start to enter into time. Anticipation implies there is time. It’s separation.
If you’re in that timeless state, you can’t anticipate anything. And fear is all to do with anticipation. So what you said is very true. Do you want me to explain it a bit more?
Question: Sure. It seems like it came about not by effort of my own – or maybe through accumulated effort.
Linda: Yes. It’s in you. All you need to keep doing is making that effort. And this will happen when you least expect it – when you don’t anticipate it.
In the timeless state there can’t be any separation between anything – there can’t be – because that implies time – the space between objects. So when you realise this, you’ve realised that the mind is just so limited – just incredibly limited. And you realise you’ve been living in this small world based on time, when there’s this infinite world, if you want to call it that – a universe beyond time. And it’s all to do with thinking.
Question: There was a label or a judgement about the sensation that was the first thing, like an instant identification and then anticipation.
Linda: Meditation is using the body to de-identify with the thought.
Question: So that’s what you mean when you say thinking isn’t the problem. Instead it’s the identification?
Linda: It’s the desire to think.
Question: Desire to think or anticipation?
Linda: It’s the same thing.
Question: Are fear and thought intertwined?
Linda: Fear is a thought.
Question: I don’t understand that.
Linda: You can’t understand it because trying to understand anything is thinking
Question:> So it’s prior to that that the realisation happens.
Linda: What you realised/saw was excellent. And it’s worth sitting through five days of a retreat to realise that and to see that that’s possible in you.
So that’s what you need to practice – seeing the beginning of that creation of time as soon as possible – seeing the beginning of a thought as soon as possible.
Question: I feel I can’t consciously do that.
Linda: Well you are doing it by sitting and coming back to your breath, coming back to your body.
As I keep saying, thinking is actually very slow – time is very slow. Now – you can’t put a measure on it. As soon as you start to try to consider it it’s gone. It’s now. It’s spontaneous. Even the speed of light is actually quite slow because it takes a long time to reach here from the sun. Whereas now is now – there’s no time involved.
The energy involved in this is just unimaginable. And containing that speed and timeless state within your body is why we sit. We have to prepare our bodies.
Question: I trust you but I can’t imagine this thing – my body – doing that.
Linda: It is happening. And even though what you described might only have been a moment, there’s an incredible amount of energy involved in that.
From Spain Retreat, Oct 2016.