I’ve had several “Aha!” moments in my life – seconds when all of a sudden I see something in a totally different way. My awareness shifts, and I feel it reflected in tingling and openness through my whole body. Afterwards, I’m not quite the same person I was before.
Today I write about three of these. In chronological order.
- Yesterday I heard a presentation by Eric Brown, founder of Impact Games. I consider myself pretty technically savvy and aware of the incredibly fast rate of new things, concepts, and methods erupting via the Internet. But something had gotten past me (what else has?) I had a stereotype in my head of “video games” based on Nintendo, the WII, and video parlors. x$W%*zk@#/&?…. Throw that viewpoint out the window, Pat, video games are fast becoming a new media for news, social change and education, as well as mindless (entertaining?) violence. A whole new way of informing ourselves. After doing a bit of research, I am dumfounded by what’s happening, my mind is boggled. Please, go and PlaytheNews or Darfur is Dying to get a feel for what’s out there.
- I love lying in bed in the dark. I lie on my side and kind of meditate. I feel my heart beating. If I’m relaxed and unstressed (how lucky I am to experience that fairly often) I see in my mind’s eye pictures of suffering around the globe. About 3-4 four years ago, at one of those moments, all of a sudden I experienced a rush of warm energy emanating from my heart towards those pictures. x$W%*zk@#/&?……. This is what love is I thought. It’s being, noticing, awareness… Not doing.
- Back in 1979 I gave myself a new TRS80 computer for Christmas. I installed the suite of software that came with it: Scripsit (word processor), VisiCalc (spreadsheet) and Profile (database.) I’d prepared by learning how to program a 128 step Texas Instrument calculator, and was keen to find out how a computer worked. Disc drives weren’t yet available, so I had a tape recorder ready to use for storage. After the setup, I was completely hooked. I installed the software, poured over the instructions, and began to try them out. I started VisiCalc, made two columns of numbers, and then typed in the formula for column total at the bottom. The math was correct. Wow – it shows the total. Then….. I changed a number in one of the columns, hit the Enter key, and x$W%*zk@#/&?…… The total at the bottom magically changed. This happened automatically! Things have never been the same since – and now we take that profound change for granted.
The Juneau Journal 