Beyond Time… Consciousness
Instead of thinking about time as a linear process. Think of time as focus and attention as tuning into experience. Like that of being a hypnotic or attentional state. Where or what you focus, is your experience. For example: you are driving to work. The same route that you do five days a week. As you are driving, you are imagining/daydreaming about being on the beach reading and relaxing. Well, you arrive at work; you don’t remember the stops and the turns to get to work. But you know or deduce that you had a parallel experience of both driving and hanging out on the beach.
Another example is doing a “quantum healing hypnosis technique” (QHHT) session. You go backwards and forwards to different lifetimes. But you are also in this lifetime. Thus, having multiple experiences at the same time/space dimension. A similar thing happens with folks who have had a severe trauma experience. A smell, sight or sound triggers a horrific experience. And it’s not a reliving of the experience. But again being in the experience. An activation of a flashback. It’s called a fugue or dissociated state because the person is not aware of the parallel consensual present moment from the clinical perspective. Thus, relative to time, they are having two parallel experiences at the same time. But are seemingly unable or having difficulty also being aware or grounded in the consensual present moment/reality.
We usually view time as linear. As going from left to right or beginning to end. For example, you take an empty paper towel tube and on the outside, mark an arrow going from left to right, down the side of the entire tube. This is the linear perspective of time. Now turn or rotate the tube 90 degrees and look through the tube like looking through a telescope. From that perspective, time collapses or extends; there is no depth perception or perception of linear time. The entire experience happens all at once. It collapses in relation to the perspective of linear time. It’s similar to a dream. A dream that seems to last two days, but you have merely only been napping for 15 minutes. Or the opposite is that of a flow state. Stepping into each single endless moment. Flow states are a lot of fun. Like skiing down a two-mile run that is seemingly a single endless moment but has been 5 minutes. But it feels like just a flash of time.
Other similar states are lucid dreaming, where one knows they are dreaming and yet being able to have some willful ability to navigate in the dream. Another is being conscious and yet being able to daydream intuitively with imagination. Perhaps similar to what some are calling a download or intuitive insight where you can play and work it. These states are seemingly fleeting, yet last for an hour or more. Common examples are reading or being engrossed in a good book, movie, music, running or some thing in which you get into a flow state.
Yet it is possible to learn to access them for further development. We find common examples in the endeavors of fine and performing arts. An artist can translate, transform and transcend the boundary of the ineffable and present an experience. Artists enter a flow or trance state where their ego steps aside and the music plays the band. Or the image flows through the painter onto the canvas.
Notice the key to accessing unique experiences or “timelines” is to cognitively and volitionally tune-in. Connecting via the emotional or affective power/energy. One learns this by having the ego or monkey mind quiet and step aside by focusing, meditating or becoming absorbed. That is directing your focus/ attentional state to one-pointedness. Becoming absorbed and then releasing into the flow; flow and be. “Be” with no attachment, expectations or awareness. Which are interruptions from the ego mind. It is a similar process as mindfulness or vipassana meditation.
Similar to a hypnotic induction, either a hypnotist or you are directing and creating your attentional experience (auto or self-hypnosis). There are several ways to direct the experience. One is by having someone else direct the experience, as with a hypnotist, or with guided meditation. Or by your conscious direction. And there is a hybrid technique of writing out your own guided script. Recording it in your own calm-relaxing voice. Then later in a calm comfortable environment, put on some headphones and play the recording to help you enter your absorbed state. The trick is writing the script in a positive or affirming manner.
The thing is, instead of the paper tube concept of linear and collapsed time. Consider time as experience in the dimension of a sphere. As a sphere, there is radiation out or expansion in all directions. Or collapsing into a single point. Then with attentional focus you can expand, collapse and move or be/experience in any time, space or dimension(s). Or in other words, time/space becomes malleable and loses its significance because it is no longer anchored. This is similar to the concept of singularity. Yet another perspective is how consciousness creates reality. And another way to think of this, is that your consciousness is a transformer of energy, time, frequency, space or, i.e., experience. Yet another view is that consciousness enables us to be entangled (or connected) in another experience multi-dimensionally beyond the common concepts of space and time.
Once a person becomes familiar with this experience/process, they can move on to being aware of different dimensions or experiences at the same moment. This parallel awareness can be difficult to attend to simultaneously. Most of us just do serial processing by attending to one experience and then another and so forth. Thus, the experience of linear time.
Viewing multi-dimensionality from a lower non-integrated or disorganized perspective is often considered a state of psychosis or schizophrenia. Otoh, at the trans-rational or integrative level, it is viewed as experiences of psychic abilities, unity consciousness and subtle causality, e.g., synchronicity.
At an elementary level, this is seen every day when toddlers are at play. A three or four year old child is absorbed into playing house, being a mom with dolls, driving toy trucks or being a superhero. New research points out that they are in a theta brain wave state, where there is no distinction between imagination and reality. Thus, their subjective experience is real, but in an undeveloped or not-fully conscious state. This is important developmentally. Because this is where the child lays down their basic operational system. I.e., the view of the self, world and future (link to parenting.) And this basic operation system becomes the subconscious processing for the subjective interpretation of their experiences later in life.
The issue for adults is (we think/believe) we have all this other crap to pay attention to. Which is a hindrance to entering the imaginary/theta state. It is our everyday consciousness that impedes readily entering into “the fun.” The task is to quiet the monkey/ego mind, focus on the “target activity or experience.” To absorb into the experience and release the monkey mind and step into the flow and “be.” Thus, as adults, the trick is to become absorbed or transcend into a state where we can “consciously and intuitively play and work.” I wonder if this is becoming childlike in order to enter the kingdom of heaven? We create our heavens and hells… i.e., reality or at least our experience of reality. And in the experience of our reality, what is more salient? The processing of the experience or the experience? Which is essentially the thinking process or feeling the experience. Of course, it takes both. The processing (thinking) is the technique or skill. The feeling is stepping into the experience. And the experience remains ineffable.
Yesterday, I stumbled across this video/podcast and found it fascinating and speaks to the idea that we live in interesting times. “Oxford Physicist PROVES The Universe Isn’t REAL; We LIVE in a Cosmic Hologram | Jude Currivan PH.D” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAPbrHQqofs
So, what does time have to do with it? The better question “What’s love got to do with it?” in homage to Tina Turner.
Blessings!
Tim