Relative Time, Part 3

Relative Time, Part 3

“…you are not looking at the actual past at all. You are looking at a present trace of the past.”[1] Alan Watts¹

Over the past couple of weeks I have illustrated the relative nature of time. While the aging of our physical bodies and the on-going evolution of created matter appear to follow sequential patterns in what I’ve been calling earth-time, our conscious awareness and growth as spiritual entities – the real and eternal aspects of our being – do not. Our spiritual maturation occurs in what appear to be fits-and-starts from an earth-time perspective. Critical events emerge across the sequential time periods of our lives, appearing here and disappearing there, where experiences from decades ago that seemed insignificant or unrelated at the time suddenly fit together with current experiences like interlocking pieces of a dynamic puzzle. When that sort of epiphany occurs, we feel as if our eyes have been opened. Events of the past take on new significance and the interrelated weavings of those events come to life. Various pieces of our lives mold themselves into a single, wholistic experience that may span many decades of earth-time.

Our conscious awareness controls our experience of earth-time, but awareness can only be aware in the present moment. This is confusing because we are aware of memories of past events and mental projections of possible futures that seem also to be important components of our consciousness. Even our awareness of thoughts about past and future events, however, only occur in the present moment. Our memories and projections only exist in the here and now, and that realization is a key to a better understanding eternity and eternal life. Everything that has happened in what we call the past, and everything that may happen in what we project as the future, is happening now because there is no other place for us to be aware of their happening. We find the present moment fleeting, elusive, and nearly impossible to conceive of because our minds are stuck in the illusory concepts of past, future, and sequential time as if they existed outside of this moment. Everything in our awareness is present now, and our experience of time is always relative to it. What we observe is the manifestation of a single life-experience as it has evolved from what we call the past and as it evolves toward what we call the future.

We do not consider our experiences, which occur in our moments, real until we can describe and label them in another moment (when they are a part of our past). Instead of thoughtlessly experiencing what occurs in a moment, we “live” our moments vicariously through our memories of that moment in another moment, like driving by only looking in the rear-view mirror. We bypass real-time experiences to wait for limited and often inaccurate descriptions of them some seconds, hours, or years later (in earth-time). To live in and actually experience a moment requires that we not think about it, but enter into it. The difference is as great as that between reading a love story and being in love. The first is a description; the second is a concurrent experience. Until we learn to enter our moments, we have no comprehensible concept of eternity or eternal life. We simply continue to perceive our finite lives by description.

As we drop our awareness deeper into the infinite depths of our moments, earth-time seems to unravel. Our experience of earth-time becomes exceedingly variable. Often when we are immersed in an enjoyable task or activity, time flies by and hours pass in what seem like minutes. Alternately, when something we perceive as unknown, unpleasant, or frightening is on the horizon, such as our physical death, time seems to push us increasingly faster toward that dreaded horizon. As we grow older our hours often pass at a crawl while our years accumulate like a snowball barreling down a mountainside. When our conscious awareness is consumed with guilt or regret over past events or is overly focused on future possibilities, time slows down. A friend of mine noted that time moves so slowly for children in the days before Christmas. When our present moment is focused on an exciting occurrence that has yet to manifest, such as the child waiting for Christmas, our focus on the future takes us out of the moment and time drags.

Earth-time is relative to the focus of our attention. It is deceptive and limits us to surface-level, disconnected perceptions of our lives. To attain a deeper understanding of our life-experience, particularly to gain glimpses of its eternal nature, requires a model other than earth-time. That can only occur by crossing the threshold into the present moment.

This is the 8^th in a series of Life Notes on Space, Time, and Eternity. The opinions expressed here are mine and not necessarily those of others. To engage with me or to explore contemplative spiritual direction, contact me at ghildenbrand@sunflower.com.

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[1] Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity, Vintage Books, 1951, p. 82.