I find that when I turn attention ‘Time-wards’ – such as when moving from room to room – it is as though ‘I am time’ – as though time and what ‘I am’ are not separate.
In the last 24 hours a series of obstacles which have seemed un-blockable have suddenly released and I have been able to clear/accomplish several things which were stuck over the last few weeks. I ask: is this inherent in time or is it something to do with ‘how I am in time’ (thinking of phrases ‘being in time/on time’ being ‘out of time’ (eg as a dancer or a musician).
Also contemplating phases of the Moon: with a new Moon on Tuesday, things from the end of this cycle seem to be being resolved within the ‘dark of the Moon’ leading up to the beginning of the next cycle. What is the real significance of the Moon in human affairs? I am interested to sense/know beyond age old theories about time, tides and cycles, whether taught by scientific or esoteric traditions.
These are all more questions than statements. I often have the feeling that I haven’t a clue as to how to approach Time and am completely at a loss about making any sort of coherent, intelligent or informed comments about it.
I love the idea of building a ‘Community of Inquiry’ and will recommend that the little UK Study Group lends its energy to this endeavour.
I found this explanation of Jack’s very helpful:
One moment I’m eating a forkful of omelet, and the next moment I’m thinking about the upcoming election. The ppf structure of the ‘forkful’ moment has nothing to do with the ppf structure of the ‘election’ moment. If you look from outside (or reflect back on the temporal sequence later); in other words, if you measure time on a clock, you might say that the ‘forkful’ moment happened at 0:00:52 and the ‘election’ moment happened at 0:00:53. But that has nothing to do with the ppf structure of each moment. In terms of experience, the moments are radically separate.
Such an example helps to provide an area to focus on. Often I find my attention spinning off in all directions when I try to focus on time. It strikes me that this directly refers to Space and Knowledge as well as talking about time!
I also found Jack’s line, It’s like driving a car without knowing how the engine works, or relying on awareness without in any way understanding what awareness is a useful comparison to get a sense of how linear (‘objective’) time differs from the fullness of experiential time. How does this relate to the 3 levels of time?
Last summer on the retreat in Germany we experimented with diving into the past, present or future of each moment as it arose. I found this a totally remarkable and wonderful exercise which revealed qualities of awareness and being which seemed to be more to do with what I would describe as ‘inner spaces’ rather than anything I would usually associate with Time. I certainly find it helpful to approach the exploration of time via exercises, otherwise it just feels too vast, confusing and elusive to connect with.
Thanks for alerting me to Cloud Atlas. The film isn’t released in the UK until next February, but I’ve ordered the book from the library. It strikes me that even in writing these two sentences, the three threads of ppf and something greater are all at play. How interesting!
I’m finding lines from Burnt Norton, one of T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets coming to mind: ‘If all time is eternally present, all time is unredeemable’. Not sure how relevant this is to our inquiry.
I often have the feeling of being on the verge of splitting apart at the edges when I place attention on time – being exploded into a reality which cannot be encompassed by language and which will continue to expand and dissolve any concrete idea I might try to come up with about how things actually are…! Is there actually anything that we can accurately say about this that is definitive, or is it simply an experiential matter which can’t be adequately languaged?
I also have a niggling sense that if I could get beyond perceiving the way I do by habit, then a whole different realisation about time would open up instantly before/within/around ‘me’. What does this say about ‘me’ and what does it say about ‘time’?
‘different lineages evolving side by side’; like ‘looking at a complex family tree’ seems to be an important comment and a key to entering a whole new realisation about how ‘reality’ actually ‘works’.
Good Morning, Csherwood across the Sea,
How invigorating it is to have all these voices arising and interacting. I feel the Muse of Time is speaking in the multiplicity of our voices. Your querry about our Moon took me back to an author I studied three decades ago and who indirectly led me to Buddhism: George Gurdjieff. His central premise was that humanity has fallen into such deep unconsciousness that the one remaining avenue by which we can be pulled out is through a “pang of conscience”. His writings then set out to destroy our illusion that we are already awake and promiced that he would supply the true path to awakening in a third series of writing. I don’t think he every did supply it, but it made me look around for the wisdom traditions that already exist on our planet, which do supply guidance throupgh this strange circumstance of finding ourselves embodied in a world. Speaking of our planet, our world, and our moon: Gurdjieff said that all processes take place within a Law of Seven, where the next group of seven (octaves, waves, etc) start over on a higher level in another group of seven. And as with an octave in music, there are two places within the seven that correspond to semitones, where energy must come from outside in order to push the evolution forward. In the solar octave, which includes Earth, Sun, and Moon, the envelop of life around our planet is the semitone between our Earth and our Moon. Much of what Gurdjieff wrote remains in my head, not as a guide or even an inspiring invocation to awakening, but I still look at the Moon as a presence that anchors ife around me and within me, urging a movement in Time to join hands with others within a greater environment. -Michael
PS–following up on your wish that there could be a forum for TSK Inquiry available to a community in England, one of the members in our current on-line class, David, has made available just such a website:
http://timespaceknowledge.socialgo.com/home.html
It’s worth checking out, not as a replacement to this one, but as a TSK discussion area that is available to anyone with internet access, and through all the phases of the Mo0n.