Time

These are the covers I designed for a book of poems I wrote called “Time Out.” All of the poems from that book can be found in the full-length blog post, once I publish it. But here, I want to explore what you see in the cover.

The Front Cover

At top-left is the image of a mask. Ages ago, Greek actors held up different masks to represent the characters they were playing. On this picture, this image of a mask symbolizes the “ego,” a changing mask for changing circumstances, not a fixed reality in one’s skull.

The time components, breaking out of the time-piece, no longer clicking, symbolizes a reality without the movements of time measuring the past; thus validating the fact that what is real, is the NOW.

At the bottom of the picture are ruler and compass, measuring devices, as if space were a measurable object.

Time, Space, and Ego are necessary concepts, tools by which we, as perceived individuals, relate to the world of our daily lives. Meditation is freedom from the movement of time. With time out, ego and space disappear as “objects.”

The Back Cover

MYSTICISM AND MEDITATION

In the above picture, the Yin/Yang symbol hovering over the mine, symbolizes the accessibility of a precious spiritual dimension to ordinary people, whose lives are caught up with the daily activities of living.

Although the production of ore from the mine may sustain a village, feed a steel mill, make a profit for shareholders and owners, meditation has nothing to do with all that. Nor is meditation an escape venue, a safe-haven, a life in seclusion, a place of security in a world of dynamic trials. Meditation is the continual attention in one’s life activities, at seeing the true, the true in the false, the false in the false, in a non-judgmental manner.

Meditation is not a useful system. Meditation is ultimate simplicity, and only most difficult for those whose lives are continued attachments, stereo-typed personas. Simple people know this, without a complex vocabulary to describe it. Integrity, wholeness, is their lot.