The subject of time keeps popping up in my life lately. A friend is trying to deprogram his assumptions about it. A reader of my book asked for clarification concerning something i said about it. Another friend made a crazy joke about it. And I’ve been thinking about how we in the western world assume that everyone perceives time the way we do, yet sometimes I simply don’t – and I’m sure that there are cultures that perceive time differently than we do.
We’ve been conditioned to perceive time as a stream, moving in one direction, and assume it’s measurable in increments because we do that.
When I’m “outside time,” I have never perceived time as a flow nor as consisting of measurable increments. I think the best description that I can find for my perception is that time is a field.
As a field, all that enters or participates in the field can be perceived any way one chooses. Everything can be perceived at once, instantaneously, or one can focus in different ways in order to perceive whatever is participating in the field in some other fashion … For instance, in a linear sequence (with an organization of one’s choosing). One can also skip around at will, picking one bit here, one bit there. One can also step out of it.
WhenI shift my focus within the field, it shifts everything in the field to some degree. There is resonance. Observing is participation, as much as is deliberate action.
(I’m using the word “field” in the way physics would, I think: gravity is a field, for instance.)
Thinking of time in this way may be another useful exercise in shifting perception, expanding the potential of what and how we perceive reality.
when in certain state of mind …present …past ..and future…all intersect..I mean all have aspects of the NOW in reference to where you are…does that make any sense..? i have had dreams where it is perfectly clear…is that possible..??
Sure, it makes sense. We try to describe what we perceive, to communicate with words, and all we can do is get close. As soon as our analyzer steps in … our right brain … the clarity of it goes out the window ha.
(even that’s not right – the clarity isn’t lost, just makes the simple seem complicated. Verbal analyzer left brain tries to turn conceptual understanding, instantaneous, “intuitive,” into something rational … If we don’t try to THINK it, if we just BE it, it makes perfect sense.)
Absolutely, Natalie! In my ebook, You – A Field Guide, I talk about stepping “outside” (?!) the concept of time to become aware of You.
Or all the way inside maybe? 🙂
Interesting.
If there is no time in another dimension, then would you still use words like “before” and “after” to describe things? If something happened “before”, then wouldn’t that mean time existed?
Language is always weird to apply. Sometimes I’ve felt like everything happens at once, but describing it that way is useless – maybe one has to experience that for it to make any sense.
I’m also not really sure there’s NO time in other dimensions. Some seem to have some much broader version of time. If I experience some dimension with no time, I guess I don’t think that can be truly described – at least I can’t describe it. That requires a kind of thinking that doesn’t involve words.
Here are some practical ways to begin to deconstruct the experience of time:
Try re-setting your clocks to all sorts of different times, and imagine that it is that time in that room. (Let family members know what is going on!)
Sit and relax in a favorite chair and imagine that it is a whole ‘nother year … notice that each year has a separate flavor to it … this is jarring at first, if you are successful enough with your imagining such that you actually perceptualize the idea.
Imagine what it would be like to live on Jupiter, where the days are 9 earth hours long but the seasons are three earth years long…
Instead of agreeing with the culture’s idea of hours and day-names, segment out pieces of time by your own categories and give them your own names … there is a piece of time in the morning when the sun’s light, is a certain color, say. Or certain bllue days that have a crispness to them. I call this time of year “Chromatia” because it is very colorful with the autumn foliage.. and the season that follows it “anachromatia” because it is nearly devoid of color… just browns and grays.
The essential idea is to select your own categories, and then name them.
Skip K
Oh yeah, I like this – it would be fun since I already stop myself from doing some of this, worried I’ll miss appointments and otherwise mess things up … I’ll give myself permission to try it for awhile and see what happens.