Very cool thread, thanks for starting it, PolymathGuru.
Thomas the Rhymer, I identify with your explanation for your experience of the relationship between time and action. I believe there also may be a connection to stimulating more and different neural connections by engaging in activities that are new, challenging, unfamiliar. When we 'go on autopilot' (like can happen with playing a video game) we lose track of the mind/body (let alone soul) connection and our reality becomes hyper-compressed. This isn't always a bad thing, but often as we age we realize that we may have less 'time to spend' in a purely quantitative sense, so we'd best make it the highest Quality time we can. We imbue Quality into anything by putting our heart, attention, passion, intelligence,
genius, unique imprimatur onto it. At the very least I greatly enjoy the activity at a level of selfishness but also when I am doing something that can bring joy and happiness to another then the impact of my actions is compounded as Thomas eloquently said:
Quote:When I consider how my actions are impacting the future, and that the more actions I take the more the future is expanded, then my concept of time just expands as my actions echo down the corridors of eternity.
When I am crafting something physical for my business, I often go into a trance-like (let me say meditative) state that is 100% focused on what I am doing. A wrong move and something will break or be out of spec by 0.001 inch. A lapse in attention or letting my mind wander is expensive in both wasted money and wasted time to duplicate the effort. So whether or not time actually moves more slowly, by making Quality actions I do my best to ensure my time was well-spent, and I can feel that satisfaction naturally arise in my body.
"Mmmhmmm!"
===
Some examples:
-Usually sitting at a laptop engaged in writing or search gives an impression of time speeding by - the next occasion I note the clock time seem like 'whoah, how'd it get to be XX o'clock?' say double the passage I would have expected. Depending upon what I was doing, it can be uncomfortable feeling of having 'wasted time.'
-When out in Nature, there is a much more (ahem) natural sense of the movement of time and actions, both mine and those all around. Walking along a beach, watching waves, observing children and animals playing, seeing the movement of a distant boat, feeling the waves tickling my feet and occasionally soaking my pants! That always feel restorative and worthwhile even if 2+ hours have gone by.
-One time, I was making love to a lovely and feisty woman and felt my climax arising rather quickly. I worked with my breath and moved the sensations around to extend our experience much longer than I had expected to last.
===
So I have experienced that tuning into one's breath and making it rhythmic is a key aspect of this overall shift in the experiencing of time.
See the TEDx talk 'Being Brilliant Every Single Day' for scientific explanations of the varying levels of connection between breath and emotional state and intelligence and your life span. Working with our breath is the most intimate and accessible 'time-keeper' we have (in most cases the 10x faster heart beat is not readily perceptible, especially if you're moving around). An expression 'hey man, you're pretty uptight - calm down, take a breath!' is familiar. We can feel a sense of being out-of-control which is nearly 100% of the time tied to LOSING connection to our natural time-keeper.
For the sense of historical time, it does run in cycles as The Fourth Turning beautifully lays out. The ancients were very aware of the cycle of precession, and also the movement of the Earth above and below the galactic plane which may cause different cyclical long-scale phenomenon. Lots of work around this, I suggest checking out speakers / authors from CPAK (Conference on Precession and Ancient Knowledge),
Graham Hancock,
John Anthony West,
Professor Robert Schoch, and
Walter Cruttenden.
I have experienced intuitive insights throughout my life (I believe we all have, whether we call it by different names). I would describe intuition as a future-self passing information backward through time. Since there is no limit to the speed or direction at which the non-physical can move, experience such as deja vu, past life recollection, intuition, remote viewing, distant communication, etc. as absolutely possible and demonstrable. I suggest reading the works of
Dean Radin's 'The Conscious Universe' and
Claude Swanson's 'The Synchronistic Universe' for many examples. When I hear / feel a quite small voice, usually as a momentary 'thought-packet' I have learned to take notice. To distinguish this inner sense from something mind-made is very subtle and I won't pretend I can do this 100% accurately. But especially in situations where my survival is at risk (such as driving, where I push to the limit as relates to my business and primary hobby), the times I have ignored that small voice (
'slow down') have nearly always resulted in crashes shortly after. You can say it's just common sense and that may be true - so perhaps what we call common sense is actually a future-to-present transmission of insight from that aspect of ourselves that is outside of and not defined by time (what I and others call the soul). Either way, by making ourselves available to the future-self's insights (through slowing down our perception of present-time), we can stretch out the perception of present-time. This stretching-out is true even if we are taking no direct
physical action but are expanding our senses, taking in everything going on around us, letting it all into our consciousness like the music of a symphony. You don't need to 'understand' what notes are being played, the experience of the music is more important. The less the mind is 'in charge' from moment to moment, the more natural our actions become. The mind has its place, yes, but usually in the role of analysis or providing options, not as a guidance system.
I used to experience time as being something out of my control; something I ignored as a young child then dreaded as a young adult. Through one particular experience that seemed connected to the conclusion of a 5 day silent retreat with Adyashanti (which I'll describe in another post (titled 'The Meaning of Life, fundamental question #1: Who am I'), I had a powerful experience of timelessness. For what would turn out to be nearly a week, I was thrown out of identification with thoughts and thinking, into an ever-present unchanging awareness of Now. I believe the word satori in Japanese Zen and samadhi in Advaita Vedanta are descriptions of this state of being. The utter clarity of time being a construct of the mind became perfectly clear and true. And this state, which isn't a temporary state, or a 'special state', but the underlying bedrock upon which everything else is perceived. It's called the awaken state of consciousness described in spiritual traditions. There are different levels you can ascribe to varying layers of awareness which aren't important and I don't know them all by heart. But stepping out of a sense of purely linear / directional time, blown open and into a sense of timelessness, is a tremendous shift! I didn't know what to do, so I didn't do much of anything for a while unless something naturally arose. If I was tired, I would sleep. If I was hungry, I got some food. From waking moment to waking moment, there was a beautiful, joyful, peaceful sense of being at one with all things. Just watching the leaves sway in the trees was poetry... spending time with my sweet girlfriend was particularly delightful. And for much of the several days the strongest sense of this shift lasted, it felt natural to be quiet most of the time. Like speaking at a sunset or describing a kiss, no words could add more to the sense of timeless joy, of this cresting wave of quiet bliss that simply kept building and building, tantalizingly out of reach and yet totally surfable! It was like surfing a wave that never broke but you're on the ride and totally there and there's no need for anything to have to be different than it was. All was well. Life went on but with more vibrance even though nothing external was really different. But I felt more connected to everything and also less attached to any particular thing. It was so unusual, yet... so comfortable. It felt like heaven on earth (which is really what nirvana means). Although when more self-identified thoughts ('I am doing this', 'wow, look at me being so spiritual!') arose, that one-ness and timelessness faded which felt like tripping and stumbling into a dark hole. My body would sense the clenching and closing of my mind and usually a few deep breaths would help move out of the confused state.
The experience of timelessness did fade into a sense of more background body understanding that something had shifted.
A few years later I came across a fascinating website called olduniverse.com which I highly encourage anyone scientifically-oriented to explore. Some of the conclusions of this Dr. Yilmaz's reformulation of Einstein field equations of general relativity pointed to the universe being infinitely old, essentially constantly creating itself. From the studying I've done on electrogravitics and extracting energy from the vacuum, the fact of an abundance of available energy plus the sense of the universe being inifinitely old also points to time being only a construct. It may certainly be the case that with electrogravitic or other 'motors' that manipulate gravity wells, time travel is indeed possible. At the very least faster-than-light propulsion seems a certainty once you've done the studying (I recommend the works of Paul LaViolette and Thomas Valone to start).
You'd be amazed at how your perception of time shifts when you loosen and release identification with thought. I really like your equation Time^Action (equaling Perceiving or Useful time). I find more getting done with less effort, and with more joy. I also find activities that keep my body locked in one position too long very unnatural. I still enjoy video games, but my body helps remind me when to stop, so it's 1, 2, or 3 hours instead of 6!
This would make a wonderful signature (at the least a daily affirmation)!
Thomas the Rhymer Wrote:Now that I try to be useful every day, in my own little way changing the world for the better, I can feel how every action is having knock-on effects on the future. The more I do the more I influence the future. I own a piece of that future, although I may not be around to experience it; nevertheless, my perception of time is that time just seems to be getting bigger and bigger.
===
Home
RooshV.com
Search (Via Forum)
Member List
![[-]](images/collapse.gif)
The following 4 users Like Thomas the Rhymer's post:
