People always say “Don’t worry, your time is going to come.”
Well I have news for you. Your time is already here. All of it!
First some back story. This is an idea that was shared with me recently. It shifted my paradigm and allowed me to look at life, the universe and, well, everything, a little bit sideways. It may not be true, but then again it may.
The basic concept is this. All time exists always. The past, the future, the present all exist always. You are only observing the present moment.
According to the standard physical model we move in 3 physical dimensions. Each dimension has 2 directions it can go 1) forward and back, 2) side to side, and 3) up and down. We have a physical body as a tool. This tool can accomplish many things, but one of them it accomplishes is maintaining a physical location within 3 dimensional space. AKA You Are Here.
However ‘there’ always exists, even if you are not ‘there’. For example: Ohio is always there even though I am in California. My body is the tool that locates my presence at a 3 dimensional location, which happens to be in California. Therefore I am not in Ohio.
When I took physics classes in school the idea that time was the 4th dimension was introduced to me. It’s not controversial, it’s considered a common understanding that time is the 4th dimension. However it’s described as a more restrictive dimension in that I cannot choose to move backward, I can only move forward. Likewise I cannot speed up or slow down time, I can only move forward at the fixed rate which cannot be changed. (I know there are plenty of alternative theories to the movement of time and what is possible, but as they aren’t relevant to this discussion let’s table that for the moment) So here we are with time as a forth dimension. We’ve already established that it behaves like the other 3 dimensions, it has two directions, past and future.
Now consider my earlier idea, “Ohio exists, even when I’m not there”. So with that in mind, it’s easy to extrapolate that time being a dimension, the past and the future already exist too and they don’t cease to exist simply because I am not there.
And, in this model we are discussing consciousness is our time tool. Just as the body allows me to occupy a position in 3D space, my consciousness allows me to occupy a moment in time. Consciousness is a tool to fix my presence at a
specific locale in time.
Let’s work through an analogy.
Picture a vinyl record with a spiral groove in it starting at the center of the disk and working it’s way out all they way to the edge.
The needle plays a specific sequence of the music off the record. But while the record is playing, the whole record exists, not just the part of the record that is being played.
The universe is the vinyl record. Our consciousness is the needle. The present moment we are aware of, is the position of the needle on the record.
It’s all there, all the time, but I am only experiencing a single moment of the record.
I am the needle playing on the record, and experiencing the audio signal coming out at that moment. Put in other terms, my consciousness is a tool as the needle is a tool and
the point of that tool is to allow us to focus on and experience this single moment so we can be, observe and experience the illusion of doing…
For those of you still with me, next week I’ll jump off the wagon and describe how this model still works with free will and I’ll even throw in a little reincarnation to stir up the pot.
Until next week…
Namaste
Kevin
