a matter of time
do you know what today is?
today is tomorrow. it happened
~ Phil, “groundhog day”
so here we are again, while i’m unloading some thoughts and we both are following along these words, we could say you’re right now spending time reading and peeking at someone else’s mind,
but is that so?
what if these very words written sometime in the past are more akin to a remembering? a deja-vú that’s being co-created by every single reader of them in the future?
even if that thought is as woo-woo and far-fetched as it gets,
this is where the current models in quantum mechanics are arriving at: one where “A causes B” and “B causes A” are both simultaneously true ~ an indefinite causal order 1
so applied in this case, the causality of:
“i write → you read” is just as valid as “you read → i write”
because they’re both happening simultaneously
confused? 🤔
enter →
the paradigm of linear time
nothing ever happens twice, everything happens in the continual now. as every single atom travels across space, every moment that we measure its position is going to be an unique now.
when the latent tomorrow arrives it will become a now.
and whatever already happened yesterday, it was now at the time it occurred
these 3.8 billion years of the evolution of life on earth?
~ all now:
time is often thought of as this fundamental aspect of the universe, a radial fourth dimension of 3D reality that keeps expanding since the big bang. perceived by us as an unchanging time-line in which we slide in our short lives and history
more recent scientific perspectives are suggesting that time may not be as objective and universal as we thought, so while some (nobel prize-winning) physicist already proved that the universe is not locally real, others suggest that all time already exist, in some higher dimensional perspective. these new scientific views about the fabric of space-time echo indigenous cosmologies in regards to how past and future were perceived
time is still one of the great mysteries in physics, one that calls into question the very definition of what physics is
~ Jorge Cham and Daniel Whiteson,
”we have no idea: a guide to the unknown universe”
the nature of time
the fabric of time is holographic, fractal, resonating, rich, organic, self-coherent process
~ Terence McKenna
when i thought for a second about spitting out here new-age woke-ass shit such as: “time is an illusion!, it’s a construct”…
i said nah, i’m gonna leave that to other dudes with some harvard credentials, because time feels very real, we can observe how and when things change. it’s not a man-made construct either, a clock that gives time a metric measurement is. though i will say that our notion of the concept of time has been ill-shaped by our illusory perceptions and limited understandings of what reality, minds, cognition and language really are and how they work
the inadequacy of the senses to record the backward flow of forward moving things causes the illusions of sequence and time
~ Walter Russel
so rather than looking at physics for answers, i look back to see what these other old thinkers thought
time flows like a river
~ Marcus Aureliustime is the moving image of eternity
~ Plato
if we put these two analogies together:
a river has riverbanks on the sides that allow us to perceive the pace of the river flow in relation to them, that’s how we measure its flow. but what if we would move as fast as the river?
as we leave these river banks behind, it would seem as if the river is not moving at all
at the heart of this idea lies the notion that time doesn't actually pass, we pass. that time and reality are not bound by any linear constraints and that all reality exists in a state of simultaneity of all points and directions ~ that’s eternity, and it lies outside of time. this is what Plato was referring to, and it’s the true nature of time
if we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration,
but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
from time immemorial
time is one of the most abstract and subjective things there is, and because of that reason i recognize the wisdom of ancient cultures in leaving “time” and other subjective, abstract and ungraspable concepts for which there’s no actual relation or ultimate purpose out their language constructs
future? past?
time? space? space-time?
nahh… ”place”wasis just fine
as indigenous cultures with languages grounded in nature never took take the future for granted, of course there was is no actual word for future either. not only the so-called future is not graspable as it never actually arrives; but moreover, to know that the sun’s going to rise up the next day is more akin to an act of faith left at the will of higher forces, just like the planted seeds that are to sprout next season.
why should there be a concept for future, if it’s never given…
unless we do the work to create it ourselves?
~ j
when i wonder what philosophers and storytellers mean when they say that time moves in a mythic manner, i relate it to its ever-changing qualities such as abundant times, precarious times, war times, troubled times or peace times. all these narratives and pendulum swings that we seem to be individually and collectively subject to and invites us to adapt to the rhythm of the seasons. just like the people from the land, the mapu-che and others have always done; aligning beingness with nature processes
pukem / winter ~ time to gestate
pewv / spring ~ time to flourish
walvng / summer ~ time of abundance and harvest
rimv / autum ~ time of ripening & maturing
when did the mountains
stop resounding
the omnipresent echo of wisdom?
when did man
became unable to feel
the embracing of the wind
over the skin of his back?
when was the last time
you stood before the world
and with your face of stone
sang to the spirits
and let water ran through
flowing through the cracks
and with dripping fingers
teared the soils
that now weep
sunken underneath the fears?
ay those times
in which we would still be brothers
we would open our eyes
to salute to the morrow
[mari mari kom pu che]
ten ten to all peoples, we would say
and we would still be earth and sky
before the glance of nature
~ Matias KAXVBEWFV yem,
”el abrazo del viento”
timelines of the long self
the long self is an aspect of us that transcends linear time, it’s a concept coined by author Eric Wargo in his book “timeloops”
i saw the past, the present and the future at the same time
~ Nikola Tesla
the movie arrival(2016) shows the clearest example of how the long self works: as Amy Adams’ character Louise begins to learn an alien language, she also obtains access to know everything that she has always known; because her language, mind and memories are wrapped around themselves —just like time— with no real beginning, middle or end
despite knowing the journey…and where it leads…
i embrace it…and i welcome every moment of it
~ Louise, “arrival”
similarly, in his book, Wargo lays out many real-life examples of people anticipating future emotion-feeling states of their future selves, but in the present
Wargo claims that by developing what he calls the citizen science of precognitive dreamwork we could learn to train our own time awareness, to connect deeper to this timeless aspect; unbounding the linearity, as our brain is a tesseract with which our minds have the capacity to connect with the ever-when
what is a tesseract? it’s a concept for an object that transcends or has access to all temporal space (4D). as it transcends the 4th dimension, then it’s considered a 5th dimensional object
we will be rewarded in this four-dimensional future by thinking four-dimensionally about our own bodies, our own minds/brains, and our own biographies.
in dreams, we come face to face with our older, wiser, more knowledgeable selves. and while we never knew it, our younger selves were always coming face to face with us now, while we slept.
~ Eric Wargo
this rings true for me as, as i’ve witnessed how some children (now adults), embodied a wise old sage in their youth. not coincidentally children aged between 2 and 6 years of age predominantly experience theta brainwave frequencies in the waking state. in adults, theta brainwaves are associated with sleep, deep meditation, and deep creative dreams2
your future self is watching you right now through your memories
~ Aubrey de Grey
are we time?
time is an invention, or it is nothing at all
~ Henri Bergson
”time is the most precious resource we have” said Steve Jobs, but in my journey as an animist philosopher, i’ve gone beyond of simply asking myself “what is time?” and assuming it’s a resource like old Steve said. i actually don’t think it’s a resource at all, our attention is, and indeed a precious one
(so thank you for your attention, btw ☺️)
we might not be able to physically travel in time, but as i wrote this piece, i did receive some notes from my younger selves, which is an example of how writing or journaling is itself a process that’s weaved across the linearity of our lives
and there he was. my inner child.
peeking through the blue
~ d
so in these increasingly changing times, how do we actualize our relationship with being in time and our own psyche with the temporal space itself?
know yourself a new, at every dawn
you’re under no pressure of being who you were five minutes ago.
the moment you are is the single only moment that you may ever [k]now. you may only know yourself and anything else in the present moment, anything else is history and expectation
it’s not a matter of what time it is
you’re not late ~ you’re not early
you’re right on time
as we make things come about, we build up and create the things that we collectively anticipate and expect. we co-create the present moment, which itself is more akin to a hand-shake between what was and what will be. so *that* which we call the future is far more than just potential scenarios, but ever-present realities that are constantly glistening back to a past that’s not as written in stone as it seems
from the pool of time, the future comes back
to help the past become the present~ Martín Prechtel
and to transform anything, even oneself is to have a mind that travels in time and puts its focus and attention —not on what's been shed —but on the state that is being pulled
the sense 'i am a person in time and space' is the poison.
in a way, time itself is the poison. in time all things come to an end, and new are born, to be devoured in their turn.
do not identify yourself with time, do not ask anxiously:
'what next, what next?' step out of time and see it devour the world~ Nisargadatta Maharej, “i am that”
no wonder there was no word for “time” in those times as it seems that words won’t even properly point at this concept.
i’ve learned (in time) not to make myself an enemy of time. and knowing that i will never be able to wrap my head around it, i still pondered the question: does it have a form perhaps?
what is the shape of time?
a sand dune, maybe? uhh well no. that’s the shape of wind.
so instead, i looked at sentient beings like minerals and biological beings as possible candidates for the shape of time
life (including minerals!!!) as minds with bodies, not just as byproducts of earth processes; these are the flux-capacitors3 for a mysterious kind of temporal metabolism, our bodies & brains are time-binding artifacts that hold the riverbanks of time-flow
time does not move on its own —it has to be carried.
all natural beings carry time
just by living according to their nature~ Martín Prechtel
we, as embodiments of temporal awareness, are able to deepen our relationship in this universe of passing events. and by deepening our attention and awareness to them, in our day to day, in dreaming, in meditation and even in psychedelics, we learn to uncover the patterns of our timeless self and unwind the form of our unique beings in the uniqueness of the now
…so no,
we’re not time…
we’re the moment
an sprouting event
we’re the becoming
we are, now
https://www.quantamagazine.org/quantum-mischief-rewrites-the-laws-of-cause-and-effect-20210311/
https://www.elitelearning.com/resource-center/rehabilitation-therapy/occupational-therapy/the-brainwave-frequencies-which-underlie-language-development/
of course that was a back to the future reference!
but there are other movies about time that have blown away my timebound brain such as groundhog day(1993), arrival(2016), interstellar(2014), the fountain(2006) and tenet(2020)… there maybe others i’ve now forgotten about