Giving space to my perceptions, thoughts, images, feelings I often felt balanced after meditation. But because of this assignment I thought about this ‘time thing’..Now I have to admit that there still is indeed a sneaky space-hunting (and time-lined) aspect in my meditation which causes a subtle tense underneath this feeling relaxed and all. So I started to practice to open more for I think what is called Great Space, as a spacious field that accommodates everything there is, not is or could be…including this hunting-feeling.
Then I felt more strongly a kind of space between everything I experience, including the experience of having thoughts and the experience of thoughts about an I/identity, and the experiencing of these experiences. This space gave room to a more aliveness of what I think is called Time, or the time-aspect of Space (or the space-aspect of Time…) Instead of going just linear without any influence on my behalf, it vividly appears to me that past present and future kind of ‘particles’ almost at random ‘popped up’ into being and disappears just the same back into space. It occurred to me that Time relates to Experiencing. And that we can in the present fully Experience not only the present, but also the future, or the past AS the present…and I could also feel that the past could be a future and vice versa. I had the feeling that every-time my thoughts about my past, present and future adapt or are adaptable to new experiences. This opened a new dimension to Time for me, seeing the past, present and future as changeable any-time, being more open than the linear timeline I ordinarily walk through.  This makes my experiences more alive indeed and very rich!
But… why doesn’t this help me feeling less trapped in ‘lower time’, having to do all kinds of tasks within a few hours? It leaves me questioning about this pressure of linear time I (we) experience in life and how to open this up to more relaxation within the same demandings.
So I guess I have to study on this more, to open up new spaces and connect to new knowledge about this :)
Hi Marieke,
I’ve been thinking a little more about the question in your post and it reminded me of a perspective I took on time and a post I wrote about ‘The Power of an Insight’.
You said: “I had the feeling that every-time my thoughts about my past, present and future adapt or are adaptable to new experiences. This opened a new dimension to Time for me, seeing the past, present and future as changeable any-time, being more open than the linear timeline I ordinarily walk through.” Then you asked: “…why doesn’t this help me feel less trapped in ‘lower time’, having to do all kinds of tasks within a few hours?”
My post is at the link below:
https://cciforum.dreamhosters.com/?p=4208
The notion that “the future flows from upstream” provides for me an entrée into Great Time, but then I see the self attempting to control time by fixing it, freezing what arises into discrete objects that can be put together, structuring my experience in a way I am more used to. But as I freeze my moments, I compress the open possibilities that are available. I become agitated and frustrated.
So I think the answer to your question might be that we simply forget the open future, and revert to our usual way of dealing with time, fixing ourselves to this moment, that object or idea, taking our time habit for granted by projecting our imagined future, and that locks us out of that Great Time perspective.
David
Hi Marieke,
I really appreciated what Karin has said, and the passages she has pointed out, also that the readings can be their own reward even though they can be confusing at times.
Something in your post caught my eye because it is an aspect of time that intrigues me. Normally, when I think of the linearity of time, the past present future string of beads if you will, when it comes to the future it’s usually me projecting some ideas from my past into or onto the space of my imagination of some construction of a future, a future I’ve made up out of the stuff of memories. But somewhere Rinpoche asks how can that be the future? He goes on about the future being a great openness, perhaps a way of considering Great Time as a future infinity that never arrives that is pure potential, out of which what does arrive as Now.
I am not an authority or a teacher, but it’s the way I’ve been thinking about the future, as an alternative to the future arriving out of the past, or perhaps it’s an additional way to look at the future than the usual cause and effect way.
Anyway, it’s good to see your posts among us. We’re all travelers here, pointing out the sights and marveling at what we see. Talk to you soon. :-)
David
Hi Marieke,
thank you for describing your experience with the time-practise. Myself I need some more practise to do it. But the question you ask is fundamental to me too and to all of us, I think. Why are we trapped? How can it change?
When I was going on with the reading in “Time, Space, Knowledge”, page 182ff, I found some more help and confidence.
First I was surprised noticing, that I was enjoying the reading, that I could not stop: a new experience, because I am used to see it as hard work.
Then I was surprised again to read my (and maybe your) questions and some answers to it:
“Usually we reel along in ordinary time, the pattern of time which we are does not include any ´opening´. I simply does not go that way. We have become so accustomed to this pattern, to being off balance….that even our attemps at ´stopping´ involve a continued ´going´….
What permits ordinary, serial passage is ´ignoring´, that is a limitation on Great Knowledge……What prevents this maze of infinite ´going´ – in the case of counteracting ignoring by opening to (quantitatively) ever more of the possibilities offered by Great Space and Time – is that gradually the quality of our appreciation and understanding changes.”
So enjoying the reading is perhaps a kind of appreciation – perhaps a first little step.
Love
Karin