Time Out... Way Out
I find myself contemplating time. Not just the word but it's essence. Does time even have an essence? No time to explore that yet. Next time.
We do everything within time. Even a time out allows us the same time to do something else while the time out expires, Time out is a limited amount of time.
How much time do I spend doing things, sleeping, washing, cooking, creating, reading, watching television, meditating, organizing, gardening... damn! where does all this time come from? Spending time like it was easily replaceable. Does time pay ever pay me back? Does time give loans so we can repay it plus interest?
Time is forever current but is it currency? I don't have time for questions like that! Time does not allow it. Time wants me to do so much more... all this time demanding attention! Who does tiem think it is?
Time is conceptual... to a degree. If our measurement of time is based on the rising morning sun and the setting sun, we do what we can and must within the amount of light this time allows. That is not so conceptual as it is factual. That time is very closely 'now based' and now is 'limited timelessness.' When NOW is experienced we now have no measurement of time during NOW. When we become aware of being in the NOW then our time begins then NOW conceptually ends. Again.
Even though our time begins again, like awakening in the morning after an good night's sleep, time seemingly again begins. But time is always... it's perpetual. But we are not perpetual. Our mind's are not perpetual. Our mind's are limited by a given amount of time to be what we, i.e. our egos, do. Time to move on...
Time is measurement. We measure our doings. We measure our happenings. We measure our gains and we measure our loses. We measure our pleasure. We measure our pain and discomfort. "How long will this go on..?"
How many times (!) have we circled the sun? We call that time 'years' and that is really important! We measure the amount of wealth we attain within a given amount of time. But we become transfixed upon the amount and not the time. We don't have time to dwell on time. Time, as we all know is limited. Why waste our precious time worrying about something that always is and will always be? Do you really have time for that??
Our human conception of time is actually very tiny. Sure we use our telescopes to gaze out into the wonders of space. But how many times we go around the sun is absolutely meaningless to the universe. Comparing the life of a fly with the life of the Sun may suggest the discrepancy between what we view time to be (how we calculate time), in comparison to the amount of time based on something non-heliocentric. Not even our own Milky Way galaxy's spinning is of any great importance in the entire known and unknown universal scheme of things.
Our neighboring galaxy, the Andromeda spins. How long do these two galaxies, out of the millions, take to spin a 360 degree circle? It never returns to a known spot. The Universe spins and spirals never returning to where it once was, each spin but yet another journey into infinite space.
Our measurement of time is good for nothing other that our mind's workings. The life of our planet is but a flashing moment when we conceive of the entire universe spinning around some conceptualized center, expanding outwards on what our mind conceives as an eternal voyage of movement, change, creation and destruction.
Over there, on the lower, right edge of the universe... see that faint little glow...? Yeah! That us. Well not really us but that's our galaxy, the Milky Way. Somewhere within that insignificant glow is our own Sun. We can only imagine it from here, but our planet Earth is spinning around that Sun, each complete revolution we earthlings call a year. Measurement? Our minds can pop off incredibly large numbers using hundreds, thousands and more zeros to attempt an explanation of time 'out there'... but it's a mind's game. We are captured by mind. Mind usually gets it's way in the final analysis. But mind is limiting. Mind is not timeless. We cannot comprehend a different concept of time until we go beyond mind time. Mind can add those zeros but mind cannot convincingly go beyond time. To go beyond time requires going beyond mind.
Time. Mind. Two as One. Without time no mind. Without mind no time. Mind created the concept of time beyond the sunrise and sunset, the moon phases, the revolution around our Sun. Mind created the numerical breakdown between these earthy phenomenon The seconds. Why is a second a second long? Could we change the distance between each second to, say a second and a quarter? Would that give us more time... or shorter time? Our physical being would not be affected by a change in our conception of time. A minute is sixty of those seconds. A minute is totally reliant upon a second. It cannot exist with an accumulation of seconds. But how are seconds accumulated without measurement? They're not. That's mind game.
Sixty minutes make our hour. No hours without seconds. Thirty-six hundred seconds. Mind made those seconds. Don't think for a second that seconds were always here. Moments have always been. But seconds are a way to measure moments. So is time. Time is the measurement of moments.. moment by moment could equal second by second, minute by minute, year by year, depending on the perspective mind is using to measure. But measurement of time has it's beginnings in second(s). A blink of the eye... less than a second. Heartbeat? Less than a second. Snap of the finger... possibly. Depending on the urgency to snap the finger. No time for that. Time is limited. Streams are limited. I just can't flow and flow and flow and flow... there isn't time set aside (can we really set time aside?) for using later. Time is linear. Time does not go backwards. Our minds can re-create happenings based upon memory, but mind cannot physically bring back time... only memories. Time goes in one direction : in a three-dimensional, 360 degree outward direction. Time is not our time, only our measurement of moments. All time. We cannot isolate our time and say it does not go in that direction. Our time is part and parcel of the universal moment occurring in space NOW, eternally NOW. Galactic time is happening as Earth time is happening, but to view that in earthly measurement of seconds, years, decades (10 spins around the Sun)... is not relevant in Galactic Time. Nor is Galactic Time relevant to Universal Time. There is no time Universally. The Universe is in perpetual motion that is eternally NOW... never was, never shall be, but continuous NOW.. The universe does not have time. NOW is timeless.
Time and Space? If we are cognizant of time we are not fully in the Now. Being in the NOW is timeless. Being in the NOW plugs being into the Space beyond mind. NOW is without limits or limitation. NOW is infinite. NOW is Pure Consciousness where mind steps off the wheel of life transcended into the Eternal Bliss. Time & Space...? Necessary stepping stones to NOW... the journey we must eventually take in our live's time.
Time for me to bring this to a close. I've run out of time... time for this. I've reserved some time for other things today. Time will tell how the time will turn out, but I trust in time to be kind and gentle, as if time had any emotions like that! Time has no time for itself. Time gives expecting nothing in return. NOW that is timeless advice! I should follow that!!
cecil
15 june 2008
Self-Portrait of an Empty Mind
cecil 5.31.08
cecil 5.31.08
