11 Jun Like a tightrope walker

My eyes scan the sky. I search for cables in the air and for someone walking on them, but there’s nothing to be seen. Could the rain have brought the spectacle to a premature end? Suddenly, my eyes shoot upward. At a tremendous height, I see a tiny figure in the air. It seems to be dancing completely freely in the clouds. Only then do I see the rope. From where I’m standing, a delicate thread seems to be stretched loosely across the sky; I see neither beginning nor end.

Swing
Back home, I take my bike to get closer. From ‘De Steltloper’, a residential tower on slender, high legs, I have a better view. Now I can clearly see the tightrope walker. He’s wearing an orange suit and holds his hands high in the air. A moment later, he bends down and sits down on the tightrope with composure. The line swings slowly back and forth as if the little figure doesn’t bother him. The tightrope walker lowers himself onto the line and makes a bird’s nest. Now he wraps his legs around the tightrope and lets go of his hands. Cries of admiration shoot out from the audience like rockets.

Returning to an upright position on the swinging tightrope proves challenging. The dancer sits on the tightrope with one leg down and places the other on the rope. In a single movement, he attempts to place the hanging leg on the rope and stand up simultaneously. He repeatedly breaks off the attempt to start over. On the next attempt, he straightens up but also gives the rope a little extra swing. He swings over the rope and tumbles down. He comes to a stop two meters below, hanging from the safety device 60 meters above.

A little later he manages to work his way smoothly onto the tightrope and walks through the air with cheering arms.

Look at the horizon
When I was an actor, I worked with circus artists, and during breaks I enjoyed practicing tightrope walking. That was 1.5 meters high, and the rope was maybe 10 meters long. In tightrope walking, you distinguish between a slack rope and a taut rope. I practiced on a taut cable, which is different and also easier than what happened above the IJ. The acrobat moved on a slackline, a 2.5 cm wide strip of rope, and is constantly balancing. But in both disciplines, a rule applies that’s the same: don’t look at the rope, but at the horizon! Your eyes would like to focus on the rope for orientation, but that’s counterproductive for balance. You need to stand completely upright with your body, including your head, so that your body can find its balance with every step. This means you need to let go of the rope with your eyes. That requires trust!

When you learn to manage your time with your intuition, you’ll experience a similar feeling. As long as your eyes are glued to your to-do list, your intuition can’t unfold. The Time Surfing method describes how to make dancing with time possible.

Joshua Rothman in The New Yorker
This week, The New Yorker published a second article by Joshua Rothman, in which he extensively describes his experience with Time Surfing. The beauty of it is that this journalist has actually used the method himself, and with success. This time, he describes a difficult task he’d been putting off. He visualizes the task clearly, as the method recommends. Then he lets it simmer. “Suddenly, I decide that now is the right time to tackle the problem. No list was needed,” writes Rothman. “Loomans promises that a sense of peace arises when you completely surrender control to your intuition and trust that it won’t forget anything. During the periods when I successfully time surfed, I’ve found this to be true. As a bonus, I’ve started and ended each day with greater self-awareness.”

*This post has been automatically translated from Dutch