There’s a reason that weaving was among humankind’s first technologies. Spacetime is constantly weaving The Eternal Now, the only time there really is. The fabric of events we tie together into a coherent narrative are the yarns we spin, and like the Ancient Greek mythology of the Fates, help us to find cause and effect in a universe of incomprehensible complexity. In this way, we are all Madame LaFarge of Dickens’ novel A Tale of Two Cities, furiously knitting our versions of history.
The Incan people recorded their history and commerce using knotted cords called Quipu which they could read like we read a book. Corded codes and such were eventually supplanted by physical markings such as cuneiform, hieroglyphics, ideograms and alphabets, but then again, writing is just another woven pattern, essentially codes about becoming.
The patterns and forms we find in the universe, from the smallest to the largest, are akin to knotted figures of flowers and animals adorning a Persian carpet. All and everything is in the universal process of transformational becoming; what we observe as stability is simply a by-product of the limits of our human perception of the duration of change. From what we’ve determined, even so-called empty space – what we once thought of as the void or nothingness – is bubbling with energy and potential, virtual particles constantly popping in and out of existence in a cosmic dance of warp and woof. The bobbin of the loom of spacetime has a chronic case of what physicists call The Quantum Jitters; using more conventional parlance, the universe is “fututzed.”
In the Yiddish language, a mishmash of Hebrew, German and Slavic tongues, fututzed means “worked up,” in other words, restless or agitated, and this is the basic condition of spacetime; it never settles down. To make matters even more restless, it now appears that the loom of spacetime may be weaving infinite realities in additional hidden dimensions. True reality is inconcievable; no wonder we’re fututzed and fixated on finding the thread of meaning in it all.
While the meaning may be up for debate and opinion, the thread can be found: The Eternal Now. As and when our distractions, fears, obsessions, hopes, and desires recede, perception of the profound, The Eternal Now, is readily available.
Are you feeling fututzed? Try this. Sit quietly in a comfortable position, relax and visually imagine a golden thread stretched taught before you, crossing from right to left just above your lap. Visualize touching it ever so lightly with the tip of your index finger; imagine you can feel it. Just breathe comfortably and continue to mentally press your fingertip to the golden thread. Pay attention, don’t let go for a while, a minute, ten minutes, even longer if you like. This is mindfulness of the moment; awareness of the becoming of The Eternal Now in which you are simultaneously both the spinner and the spun. Such is the nature of all and everything, constantly and eternally becoming. Relax as best you can and enjoy the show. As Baba Ram Dass wisely reminded us, “Be Here Now,” (as if there’s any other choice!).
“The world was moving and she was right there with it, and she was,” sang the insightful David Byrne of the Talking Heads. “Moving into the universe, and she’s drifting this way and that.” Ah yes, Quantum Jitters. So teach the sages: Thus It Is.
