1) At nearly exactly the same time as you (apparently), I was laid up following ACL replacement surgery and unable to do anything beyond sit pensively between doses of painkiller-induced sleep. In my waking hours, unable to focus on anything else, I mostly meditated. Odinn and I conversed on some very similar topics, it seems.
2) Americans living in America are not at all "distant" from the follow-on of Ukraine. Our government is spending tens and soon to be hundreds of BILLIONS of OUR MONEY while our economy is already on its knees to endlessly prop up what is ostensibly a proxy war but is becoming increasingly clear to more Americans is a money-laundering scheme dressed as a proxy war. We have runaway retail prices and empty shelves already. I recently gave a neighbor a carton of eggs because she couldn't find any under $6 a carton and the sort she normally buys were now in the double digits. EGGS.
Oh gods, so sorry. I had ACL replacement about 13 years ago now after not being able to walk for a year. The recovery is not super easy because it's hard to trust your knee again. Do yourself a massive favor and follow all the recovery exercises they prescribe no matter how awful or ridiculous it feels.
And yeah, they're not distant at all, but the problem is its super hard in the US to understand these connections.
Eggs are super expensive here too. Not 6 a carton yet, but getting there...
I'm hitting my rehab super hard and I know exactly what you mean about trust. The only reason I went through with the surgery was I was PROMISED that if I didn't fuck it up, I'd be able to resume sports and strenuous work (and that if I didn't care about those things, I didn't have to bother). Any time there is a pop or a sharp pain I immediately begin worrying, "I fucked it up from some weird movement, I tore it again, I wasted this dead person's ligament, I'm fucked, I'm fucked."
I am being extremely diligent about rehab. I really, REALLY need to be able to fight and do farm work to feel whole.
Oh you got someone else's ligament? That's kind of cool and necromantic of you! They used my own hamstring for mine.
But also, ugh--that pop. As soon as I read that a wave of terror swept through me remembering that sound...
One more unsolicited tip: I know the elliptical machine can feel a little ridiculous and silly sometimes, especially if you're using the hand levers. Still, it was that thing which did more than anything else to help me trust my knee again and also to correct posture and stride problems I'd developed before the surgery.
Fortunately I did this IMMEDIATELY after diagnosis. The knee blew out during axe fighting, I went down with the worst pain in my life, MRI two weeks later, so I haven't had the opportunity to pick up bad compensating habits.
I'm just scared shitless of ruining it and not knowing it and ending up crippled. That POP.
But yeah, it's "allopathic donor tissue." Not an ACL, but a tendon from a dead guy or girl, that is anchored in my knees using "nails" made of the wedge of bone they dig out to make the anchor. It's extremely cool to me. :) They said my age made it a better choice and I wouldn't have to weaken another part for donor tissue.
I appreciate the tip. I'm aware this is something that takes work, and I'm grateful that eventually full wellness is even an option for me at all, so I don't want to waste it.
Good luck working through that fear. I had many times where I was certain I just fucked up my ACL again during the recovery, and that fear made my recovery take much longer than it needed to.
I second this. I see $$$$ for the politicians and the death manufacturing profiteers. Besides Covid, we no sooner got out of Afghanistan and exit stage left to Ukraine. Blood on our hands.
Blessings on you for this deep and insightful piece (peace) on living in the midst of it all. Just the other night before bed I had a dream like experience. I was looking at a wall hanging I am quilting and in the light brightening my stitches I saw myself embodied in brightness and aliveness in prior living iterations and places flowing before me. I saw I was beautifully alive and expressed my aliveness and beauty in perfection and simplicity as I was in each of those moments. I am a woman of no great accomplishments, however I have made choices that expressed truth as I felt it. I saw that it was good and enough, more than enough and the light of life was the meaning and the beauty.
I have to say that finding substack and writers like Rhyd has been an ever deepening well of support and confirmation of dreams I dream.
"Inciting fear and hysteria in people is a deeply violent act, whether done by murderers, the media, politicians, or activists." Agreed and well stated.
Also, I think you mean to say the Jetztzeit with two t :)
Jesus calls it “The Kingdom of God.” The eschaton is not a point in time, a culmination of history, but a place of timelessness that can be accessed by going within. That’s what the church got wrong.
It seems to me that the story of crisis that must be averted if we are to avoid catastrophe is the inverse of the story of The Fall, the idea that there is some perfect past that we lost because something bad happen, if only we could go back...
So much horror and bloodshed could have been averted then and now if that kingdom were read as an imaginal state rather than a promised physical kingdom on earth. :(
Also, sorry I haven't replied to your email! The illness and then the trip to Belgian have put me behind on correspondence. Will respond soon. :)
The only place in the New Testament where the term “kingdom of God” is explicitly defined is in Romans 14 where it says the Kingdom of God is “righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit” I like an older form of the word “righteousness” - rightwiseness. I think this way of viewing the kingdom of God better fits the rather mysterious use of the phrase in the parables and teachings of Jesus. He said the kingdom was immediately among us.
Thank you for sharing this great piece of work. Your elucidation of jetztzeit is fascinating. This especially: "and most importantly of all we are neither the products nor the protagonists of history." I suggest that this idea would encompass a similar one, that who we see ourselves to be, our identity, is usually based on conditioning from the past. Society, parenting, culture, and our own personal history. And the past is simply an idea; not reality. So, when we tell ourselves "I am this, or that", or "I am like this, or like that" we are reinforcing a limited idea of who and what we are. The challenge/opportunity to step outside of time would therefore require that we step outside the confines of our identification with our collective history, and our identification with our personalities. Anyway, perhaps we cannot do one without also doing the other.
Dec 5, 2022·edited Dec 5, 2022Liked by Rhyd Wildermuth
Thanks for the kind mention Rhyd, I've been reading your great work here since Paul first mentioned you. I just sat down to read this after finishing a T'ai Chi Long Form which was decidedly not entirely uncontrived immersion... In relation to Jetztzeit / now-time, a useful term I did not know, I would like to follow on from what Davis Stevenson said in the comments here:
'So, when we tell ourselves "I am this, or that", or "I am like this, or like that" we are reinforcing a limited idea of who and what we are. The challenge/opportunity to step outside of time would therefore require that we step outside the confines of our identification with our collective history, and our identification with our personalities.'
This intuition is correct, and habitual identification with thought forms and labels has a profoundly parasitic effect upon both one's natural energy and the ability to join with others, the earth, and life itself. The moment we tell ourselves, using the voice in the head, what it is that we are, we effectively cut off a vast field of possibility and create a reassuringly simple, machine-like, flow-chart of responses and acceptable personality traits. Briefly, the opposite to this temporal and energetic confinement is something my Grandmaster John Kells called 'yielding to our conditioning'. This is the work of years and certainly includes a psychological component, but it is at heart a spiritual task, counter-intuitively best approached with the body.
The uncontrived immersion / Blake's 'infinity in the palm of your hand' is neither unreachable for the regular person, nor far off, in an afterlife. It is the fundamental ground of being. The hard work is not in grasping it, it is tediously, repeatedly putting down over and over all the shiny definitions we constantly pick up. That's why apophatic meditation, koans, pilgrimage, and in my case, getting pushed over for about 20 years by my teacher and classmates, are such good methods. My rule of thumb: If your current thoughts about yourself can survive it, the practice is not fit for purpose.
I realise that is possibly heresy to say this, when everything seems to be about identity. But there we are, I am more interested in vitality, energy and spirit, and a very large part of me had to die, in order for there to be enough spaciousness for them.
Thanks again for this piece. I think I need to respond properly to it next week in my post.
Your point on identity isn't heresy at all, though those who cling very tightly to it would probably label it as such. I like your point on it, as it's similar to the same conclusion come at from other directions, too.
I've tended to think of identity as both an attempt to position oneself within the current order and also a false attempt to recover a sense of historicism and connection to the past. We see the problems with this immediately when we notice how modern identities end up "rewriting" or becoming extended into the past. For instance, racial identity (both its social justice versions and also nationalist ones) tries to extend "white" and "black" into the ancient past, so that you hear white nationalists talking about vikings as "white," even though whiteness as a category and identity is only about 400 years old.
I like your rule of thumb, as well. Writing this essay and the previous resulted in a bit of internal resistance: I had the feeling that, to let myself explore these truths I would be changing something I thought I was. Fortunately, that eventually felt like great excitement but at the beginning i was quite resistance.
Really interesting piece, as usual! And as usual, I have an Eastern Christian perspective to offer on time. I actually wrote my master's thesis on this, so I have a fair bit of reading on the subject. Basically, the East never really got into linear time in the same way that the West did, and even today, I would argue, doesn't operate on linear time. (For what it is worth, the Eastern Church also holds Augustine lightly for a number of reasons. He is considered a saint, but a lesser one, and is called Blessed Augustine, rather than Saint, as in the Western Church).
The East understands time like this: all of time is contained within a sphere, past, present, and future, and God is outside that sphere in the Eternal NOW. When we participate in the rites of the Church, we are reaching into that Eternal NOW, where everything is occurring mystically at once as for God. So when we celebrate Holy Week, we are not merely recalling the events, but in some mysterious way, participating in them happening at that moment. The events of the past are always present for us (I like your idea of time as place; it describes this rather abstract concept very well!)
As to inflation/shortages, they are here in the U.S. and they are hard. My city had major supply chain issues even before Covid, and it just got worse after the lockdowns. There was a six month period there were you literally could not buy bread (and flour to bake your own was hard to come by). Talk about existential crisis! Food prices are through the roof ($6/carton for eggs, as another commentator mentioned), $7 for a box of cereal, and meat, just forget it--close to $10 a pound usually. I never know what I'm going to be able to find when I do the shopping, and we have a large family, so that's hard too. And the shelves are empty in a Soviet revolving door sort of way. I've been saying for a couple of years now that the U.S. is basically the USSR circa 1976 in a lot of ways right now.
Yes, my metaphor instead of the USSR, is that the U.S. is a zombie country, jerkily moving like it’s alive, but really dead, powered by fading cultural fumes from the past.
I'm really have trouble wrapping my head around those prices. I live in one of the richest countries in Europe with one of the highest costs of living here and those prices sound impossible.
I'd ask "why are Americans revolting?" but I know this answer. When I lived there, I was too tired and struggling too much to afford living to ever really affect change.
Whew, what part of the states are you in? Just went shopping and the shelves were completely stocked, meat can be found for well under $10, eggs $4.64 a dozen. I’m in California south of Fresno in the Central Valley
East coast, mid Atlantic. I said this in the original thread but our city has long had major supply chain issues, many years before the pandemic so at least some of the problem is long standing but yeah, the food prices are unreal. My midwestern parents were appalled at our grocery receipts when they visited this fall, so I think it is better where they are. Still. USSR circa 1976…
Yes, the US is in Zombie mode, but I think that is true of the west in general, and maybe much if not most of the rest of the world, as Yeats said- “things fall apart, the center can not hold”
I love this essay. AND, I have this one question: Isn't a sense of linear time built into our existence by the immutable order of birth, growth, aging, death?
My answer to your question would be yes, if we focus purely and very narrowly on our individual material existence on the planet. Nature, however, is all about cycles, and to Nature we belong. As I think Rhyd is pointing out, it's a new phenomenon that we see our lives in the way you describe. And once we have shut off other possibilities, we simply can't see them anymore.
In the list you give of birth, growth, aging, and death, it can also be written death, birth, growth, aging. In other words, the death and birth are connected.
It might be helpful to think of what an animist person would observe in the world around them, that in the autumn things start to die and in winter nothing lives. After winter came spring, in which things that appeared to die or really died seem to be born. While it might not be precisely the same thing that died, something remarkably similar to the previous thing arrived.
So, re-incarnation or re-birth, which is a feature in almost all animisms, wasn't just a hoped-for afterlife but rather an observation from the natural world. Trees did it, flowers did it, humans seemed to do it to.
One caveat here is that, in re-incarnation, it was never assumed it was the exact same person coming back each time. Rather, there were parts of a previous person coming back in a child, while other parts came back in other children or other beings altogether. This, again, would be something they observed from life around them: a child would have some traits that immediately reminded everyone of a dead ancestor (the way I have similar facial features to my grandfather, for example). We now see this just as genetic inheritance (because of linear time), but they saw this as continuation after death into birth: a cycle, or more like a slowly expanding outward spiral.
I understand the spirallic nature of existence, yet it still seems to me that humans today live in a part of time that is linear. The best way I can understand the difference between how we perceive time, and how our ancient ancestors probably did, is imagine that they were so much less ego-centered than we are, and so much less attached to notions of "progress" and "success", that their own aging and death didn't trouble them as horribly as it does us. Those natural markers didn't scream "failure" and "oblivion" because they saw the larger continuity so clearly.
Yes! That's precisely it. In societies where everything happens only once and then never again (where the past is a lost and dead moment), the individual has only a brief existence and that is all they get. In societies with more cyclical views, individuals are continuations of a larger being-ness, in the same way a tree in a forest now is a continuation of the trees in that same forest a thousand years ago, even if it itself was not living at that time.
I maybe should write an essay on this at some point, since it is a really profound difference. "Individualism" and specifically the idea of the self is a product of linear time, something which Agamben expounds upon in Infancy and History.
Wow. That’s a lot to think about. One more minor note though:
“ Inciting fear and hysteria in people is a deeply violent act, whether done by murderers, the media, politicians, or activists.”
It seems to me that there have been far too many people over the years claiming that ill -intentioned others have incited people against them through fear and hysteria, and that because of this, it is justified to use physical violence in response to words or agitation. So some trans activists think it acceptable to threat or use violence against “TERFs” because “TERFs” supposedly incite hate for trans people. There are many other examples of this phenomenon- returning violence to those who are believed to incite fear or hate. In fact, in many ways, it is the basis for witch-hunts of all types- the belief that someone can influence another’s actions or force them to commit crimes simply by speech. Communists were fair targets of Joe McCarthy whether or not they had committed a crime because they influenced others to crime (supposedly). Rob Halford had to “prove” that he didn’t force two young men to attempt suicide through subliminal messaging. The idea that some people or groups of people can influence others and are responsible for other’s actions is a sort of belief in witchcraft. Of course, what I think you are getting at is that there is a very real sort of influence and a real sort of witchcraft at work in the working of Meta algorithms and corporate- government propaganda collusion. And there’s an interesting conversation to be had there on the extent to which modern humans living in such a controlled world have true free will.
I think saying dreaming is “the only realm where truth and knowledge can meet each other” is an overstatement. The transverbal reality of truth - what Jesus called “the Spirit of Truth” I regard as being more accessible and present than that. Yes, when it is verbalized it is not complete, though it may be accurate as far as it goes in the telling needed at that time.
Brilliant piece that gave me a lot to think about, thank you! I am becoming increasingly worried that the climate crisis (and I say this as an environmentalist) will be used in the future as justification for global surveillance.
I am very fond of the writings of Tibetan buddhist teacher named Dilgo Khyentse. In one of his essays he points out that many people with a desire “to help” the rest of humanity cannot realistically do so in the idealistic way that they wish for, but one very basic thing we can do for each other is reduce one another’s fear. I think about that a lot and what that might look like on a small scale.
One thing I want to challenge is the idea that the average American is unaffected by and always benefits from American global imperialism. My generation (millennial) have had peers dying or coming back with severe mental illness in overseas wars that are largely unpopular. American media tends to export a story about what America is and what we care about in a way that is heavily dramatic, sensationalized, and fictional, that can often cover up a lot of the suffering and poverty that is actually going on here. I know there have always been tensions between Americans and the UK/Europeans because of the role our government plays in the world over the last few decades, but as an American woman with a Norwegian husband, I am hoping to see more dialogue between Americans and Europeans that can lead to an increased understanding of what is *actually* happening and how it is affecting us in different ways.
I wonder if the idea that Christianity created the concept of linear time is actually true? I can think of many ways in which the Bible and church teachings contradict linear time. E.g
- the idea that as Christians we are surrounded by 'a cloud of witnesses' of people of faith who have lived before us - this sounds much more like 'ancestors in the room next door' than people who lived once and are dead and gone.
- God being the God of the living, not the dead. i.e., those who have gone before us are still alive
- actually the Bible does not end with the destruction of the earth, but with the joining of heaven and earth, i.e., the end is just the beginning of another dimension of life
- Jesus talking to Moses and Elijah on the mountain top - again, the ancestors are just next door.
- prophecies which have multiple fulfillments.
- the cyclical nature of festivals and rituals - every year Jesus is born among us again. Sure, most people will see that as symbolic, but maybe that's just our culture talking. Also, some Christians believe that every time we sin we are nailing Jesus to the cross, again and again.
I could go on, but you get the point. My hunch is that our current western culture is very linear time focused (case in point the theory of evolution) and that this has coloured our reading of the Bible rather than the other way around.
Interesting read. I have long thought about the 'shape of time'. You framed the differences in shape as pagan and Christian, which I both agree with, and believe cut deeper. If you will indulge me, here is a short excerpt on my thoughts on the 'shape of time':
How do you get conceptual, abstract time from perceptual time? By changing the geometric shape of perceptual time. Time is the shape of our experience, the shape of our existence. The shape time takes dictates the structure of our shared, perceptual reality. And our perceptual reality, when bound to our living universe through sensation/awareness, is round, given the fact that the earth, moon and sun are round and endlessly encircle each other with extraordinary consistency. So this ‘round’ time was the framework for indigenous existence in their ancestral environment, which further framed the daily perceptual reality of time. Time as 'eight sleeps', time as 'when the grasshoppers chirp the yams are ready to harvest'.
All of existence is bound within the ‘round’ confines of perceptual time in a perceptual universe. Conceptual time, therefore, alters the shape of perceptual time, all the while existing in the same ancestral, perceptual reality. Earth, moon, sun, universe. And the ‘shape’ of perceptual time changes to conceptual time simply by choosing a random point in perceptual, round time as a beginning point, which instantly turns cyclical time into linear time.
This change in the ‘shape’ of time would have a corresponding change in the structure and function of memory i.e. structure of perceptual reality and eventually the structure and function of language. The linearity of time would alter animism as well, turning it into religion. Moving from animism, perceptual worldview, to religion, conceptual worldview, has to do with the shift in perceptual time and conceptual time. Animism perceives all things: animals, plants, rocks, rivers, weather, human handiwork, even words, as animated and alive. Perceptual time is embodied time, conceptual time is disembodied time, disembodied space.
The ‘roundness’ of time is inclusive, all things, all of life, all relations are held within the eternal cycle of round ancestral time. The linearity of time becomes exclusive in a peculiar way. Linearity lends itself to division, fragmentation, and individuality, all of which accrete to such an extent as to create a ‘separate consciousness’, which is a simultaneous arising, meaning, consciousness itself emerges, and it emerges as an isolated, separate, personal phenomenon.
Hope this adds something to your own thoughts. Again, really enjoyed your writing.
Very beautiful work, thank you. I will savor it for some time.
Isn't our first experience of the world one of Jetztzeit/now-time? I have observed that my children have no real sense of linear time until maybe about the age of about 7- they live entirely moment to moment. Often their imagined worlds and the material world are one, there is no differentiation between the two. It has been difficult for me to reprogram myself back into that state, probably because my early environment and conditioning robbed me from having experienced this fully. Probably few children do experience life outside of linear time for very long in our modern world... keep dreaming...
It is interesting to interweave these concepts of time with the experience of those of us who have suffered abuse/trauma. The past is for some of us IS a timeless place that we revisit again and again, even if it is only unconsciously. It is never behind us, we carry it with us in our bodies/minds. I am told that it is the present moment that offers us the healing we need to free ourselves from our pain or our painful past. Our world then, will heal, as we move towards path of the jetztzeit...
Ah thanks mate! I find so much good stuff in your link posts. Honored to be included!
1) At nearly exactly the same time as you (apparently), I was laid up following ACL replacement surgery and unable to do anything beyond sit pensively between doses of painkiller-induced sleep. In my waking hours, unable to focus on anything else, I mostly meditated. Odinn and I conversed on some very similar topics, it seems.
2) Americans living in America are not at all "distant" from the follow-on of Ukraine. Our government is spending tens and soon to be hundreds of BILLIONS of OUR MONEY while our economy is already on its knees to endlessly prop up what is ostensibly a proxy war but is becoming increasingly clear to more Americans is a money-laundering scheme dressed as a proxy war. We have runaway retail prices and empty shelves already. I recently gave a neighbor a carton of eggs because she couldn't find any under $6 a carton and the sort she normally buys were now in the double digits. EGGS.
They are strangling and killing us.
Oh gods, so sorry. I had ACL replacement about 13 years ago now after not being able to walk for a year. The recovery is not super easy because it's hard to trust your knee again. Do yourself a massive favor and follow all the recovery exercises they prescribe no matter how awful or ridiculous it feels.
And yeah, they're not distant at all, but the problem is its super hard in the US to understand these connections.
Eggs are super expensive here too. Not 6 a carton yet, but getting there...
I'm hitting my rehab super hard and I know exactly what you mean about trust. The only reason I went through with the surgery was I was PROMISED that if I didn't fuck it up, I'd be able to resume sports and strenuous work (and that if I didn't care about those things, I didn't have to bother). Any time there is a pop or a sharp pain I immediately begin worrying, "I fucked it up from some weird movement, I tore it again, I wasted this dead person's ligament, I'm fucked, I'm fucked."
I am being extremely diligent about rehab. I really, REALLY need to be able to fight and do farm work to feel whole.
Oh you got someone else's ligament? That's kind of cool and necromantic of you! They used my own hamstring for mine.
But also, ugh--that pop. As soon as I read that a wave of terror swept through me remembering that sound...
One more unsolicited tip: I know the elliptical machine can feel a little ridiculous and silly sometimes, especially if you're using the hand levers. Still, it was that thing which did more than anything else to help me trust my knee again and also to correct posture and stride problems I'd developed before the surgery.
Fortunately I did this IMMEDIATELY after diagnosis. The knee blew out during axe fighting, I went down with the worst pain in my life, MRI two weeks later, so I haven't had the opportunity to pick up bad compensating habits.
I'm just scared shitless of ruining it and not knowing it and ending up crippled. That POP.
But yeah, it's "allopathic donor tissue." Not an ACL, but a tendon from a dead guy or girl, that is anchored in my knees using "nails" made of the wedge of bone they dig out to make the anchor. It's extremely cool to me. :) They said my age made it a better choice and I wouldn't have to weaken another part for donor tissue.
I appreciate the tip. I'm aware this is something that takes work, and I'm grateful that eventually full wellness is even an option for me at all, so I don't want to waste it.
Good luck working through that fear. I had many times where I was certain I just fucked up my ACL again during the recovery, and that fear made my recovery take much longer than it needed to.
I second this. I see $$$$ for the politicians and the death manufacturing profiteers. Besides Covid, we no sooner got out of Afghanistan and exit stage left to Ukraine. Blood on our hands.
Blessings on you for this deep and insightful piece (peace) on living in the midst of it all. Just the other night before bed I had a dream like experience. I was looking at a wall hanging I am quilting and in the light brightening my stitches I saw myself embodied in brightness and aliveness in prior living iterations and places flowing before me. I saw I was beautifully alive and expressed my aliveness and beauty in perfection and simplicity as I was in each of those moments. I am a woman of no great accomplishments, however I have made choices that expressed truth as I felt it. I saw that it was good and enough, more than enough and the light of life was the meaning and the beauty.
I have to say that finding substack and writers like Rhyd has been an ever deepening well of support and confirmation of dreams I dream.
"Inciting fear and hysteria in people is a deeply violent act, whether done by murderers, the media, politicians, or activists." Agreed and well stated.
Also, I think you mean to say the Jetztzeit with two t :)
omg thanks. There are two german words I can NEVER spell, and jetzt is one of them. Don't get me started on Weimar....
Jesus calls it “The Kingdom of God.” The eschaton is not a point in time, a culmination of history, but a place of timelessness that can be accessed by going within. That’s what the church got wrong.
It seems to me that the story of crisis that must be averted if we are to avoid catastrophe is the inverse of the story of The Fall, the idea that there is some perfect past that we lost because something bad happen, if only we could go back...
So much horror and bloodshed could have been averted then and now if that kingdom were read as an imaginal state rather than a promised physical kingdom on earth. :(
Also, sorry I haven't replied to your email! The illness and then the trip to Belgian have put me behind on correspondence. Will respond soon. :)
The only place in the New Testament where the term “kingdom of God” is explicitly defined is in Romans 14 where it says the Kingdom of God is “righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit” I like an older form of the word “righteousness” - rightwiseness. I think this way of viewing the kingdom of God better fits the rather mysterious use of the phrase in the parables and teachings of Jesus. He said the kingdom was immediately among us.
🙏🏼🧡🙏🏼
Thank you for sharing this great piece of work. Your elucidation of jetztzeit is fascinating. This especially: "and most importantly of all we are neither the products nor the protagonists of history." I suggest that this idea would encompass a similar one, that who we see ourselves to be, our identity, is usually based on conditioning from the past. Society, parenting, culture, and our own personal history. And the past is simply an idea; not reality. So, when we tell ourselves "I am this, or that", or "I am like this, or like that" we are reinforcing a limited idea of who and what we are. The challenge/opportunity to step outside of time would therefore require that we step outside the confines of our identification with our collective history, and our identification with our personalities. Anyway, perhaps we cannot do one without also doing the other.
Thanks for the kind mention Rhyd, I've been reading your great work here since Paul first mentioned you. I just sat down to read this after finishing a T'ai Chi Long Form which was decidedly not entirely uncontrived immersion... In relation to Jetztzeit / now-time, a useful term I did not know, I would like to follow on from what Davis Stevenson said in the comments here:
'So, when we tell ourselves "I am this, or that", or "I am like this, or like that" we are reinforcing a limited idea of who and what we are. The challenge/opportunity to step outside of time would therefore require that we step outside the confines of our identification with our collective history, and our identification with our personalities.'
This intuition is correct, and habitual identification with thought forms and labels has a profoundly parasitic effect upon both one's natural energy and the ability to join with others, the earth, and life itself. The moment we tell ourselves, using the voice in the head, what it is that we are, we effectively cut off a vast field of possibility and create a reassuringly simple, machine-like, flow-chart of responses and acceptable personality traits. Briefly, the opposite to this temporal and energetic confinement is something my Grandmaster John Kells called 'yielding to our conditioning'. This is the work of years and certainly includes a psychological component, but it is at heart a spiritual task, counter-intuitively best approached with the body.
The uncontrived immersion / Blake's 'infinity in the palm of your hand' is neither unreachable for the regular person, nor far off, in an afterlife. It is the fundamental ground of being. The hard work is not in grasping it, it is tediously, repeatedly putting down over and over all the shiny definitions we constantly pick up. That's why apophatic meditation, koans, pilgrimage, and in my case, getting pushed over for about 20 years by my teacher and classmates, are such good methods. My rule of thumb: If your current thoughts about yourself can survive it, the practice is not fit for purpose.
I realise that is possibly heresy to say this, when everything seems to be about identity. But there we are, I am more interested in vitality, energy and spirit, and a very large part of me had to die, in order for there to be enough spaciousness for them.
Thanks again for this piece. I think I need to respond properly to it next week in my post.
Your point on identity isn't heresy at all, though those who cling very tightly to it would probably label it as such. I like your point on it, as it's similar to the same conclusion come at from other directions, too.
I've tended to think of identity as both an attempt to position oneself within the current order and also a false attempt to recover a sense of historicism and connection to the past. We see the problems with this immediately when we notice how modern identities end up "rewriting" or becoming extended into the past. For instance, racial identity (both its social justice versions and also nationalist ones) tries to extend "white" and "black" into the ancient past, so that you hear white nationalists talking about vikings as "white," even though whiteness as a category and identity is only about 400 years old.
I like your rule of thumb, as well. Writing this essay and the previous resulted in a bit of internal resistance: I had the feeling that, to let myself explore these truths I would be changing something I thought I was. Fortunately, that eventually felt like great excitement but at the beginning i was quite resistance.
Really interesting piece, as usual! And as usual, I have an Eastern Christian perspective to offer on time. I actually wrote my master's thesis on this, so I have a fair bit of reading on the subject. Basically, the East never really got into linear time in the same way that the West did, and even today, I would argue, doesn't operate on linear time. (For what it is worth, the Eastern Church also holds Augustine lightly for a number of reasons. He is considered a saint, but a lesser one, and is called Blessed Augustine, rather than Saint, as in the Western Church).
The East understands time like this: all of time is contained within a sphere, past, present, and future, and God is outside that sphere in the Eternal NOW. When we participate in the rites of the Church, we are reaching into that Eternal NOW, where everything is occurring mystically at once as for God. So when we celebrate Holy Week, we are not merely recalling the events, but in some mysterious way, participating in them happening at that moment. The events of the past are always present for us (I like your idea of time as place; it describes this rather abstract concept very well!)
As to inflation/shortages, they are here in the U.S. and they are hard. My city had major supply chain issues even before Covid, and it just got worse after the lockdowns. There was a six month period there were you literally could not buy bread (and flour to bake your own was hard to come by). Talk about existential crisis! Food prices are through the roof ($6/carton for eggs, as another commentator mentioned), $7 for a box of cereal, and meat, just forget it--close to $10 a pound usually. I never know what I'm going to be able to find when I do the shopping, and we have a large family, so that's hard too. And the shelves are empty in a Soviet revolving door sort of way. I've been saying for a couple of years now that the U.S. is basically the USSR circa 1976 in a lot of ways right now.
Yes, my metaphor instead of the USSR, is that the U.S. is a zombie country, jerkily moving like it’s alive, but really dead, powered by fading cultural fumes from the past.
I'm really have trouble wrapping my head around those prices. I live in one of the richest countries in Europe with one of the highest costs of living here and those prices sound impossible.
I'd ask "why are Americans revolting?" but I know this answer. When I lived there, I was too tired and struggling too much to afford living to ever really affect change.
Whew, what part of the states are you in? Just went shopping and the shelves were completely stocked, meat can be found for well under $10, eggs $4.64 a dozen. I’m in California south of Fresno in the Central Valley
East coast, mid Atlantic. I said this in the original thread but our city has long had major supply chain issues, many years before the pandemic so at least some of the problem is long standing but yeah, the food prices are unreal. My midwestern parents were appalled at our grocery receipts when they visited this fall, so I think it is better where they are. Still. USSR circa 1976…
Yes, the US is in Zombie mode, but I think that is true of the west in general, and maybe much if not most of the rest of the world, as Yeats said- “things fall apart, the center can not hold”
I love this essay. AND, I have this one question: Isn't a sense of linear time built into our existence by the immutable order of birth, growth, aging, death?
My answer to your question would be yes, if we focus purely and very narrowly on our individual material existence on the planet. Nature, however, is all about cycles, and to Nature we belong. As I think Rhyd is pointing out, it's a new phenomenon that we see our lives in the way you describe. And once we have shut off other possibilities, we simply can't see them anymore.
Helen's answer below is correct.
In the list you give of birth, growth, aging, and death, it can also be written death, birth, growth, aging. In other words, the death and birth are connected.
It might be helpful to think of what an animist person would observe in the world around them, that in the autumn things start to die and in winter nothing lives. After winter came spring, in which things that appeared to die or really died seem to be born. While it might not be precisely the same thing that died, something remarkably similar to the previous thing arrived.
So, re-incarnation or re-birth, which is a feature in almost all animisms, wasn't just a hoped-for afterlife but rather an observation from the natural world. Trees did it, flowers did it, humans seemed to do it to.
One caveat here is that, in re-incarnation, it was never assumed it was the exact same person coming back each time. Rather, there were parts of a previous person coming back in a child, while other parts came back in other children or other beings altogether. This, again, would be something they observed from life around them: a child would have some traits that immediately reminded everyone of a dead ancestor (the way I have similar facial features to my grandfather, for example). We now see this just as genetic inheritance (because of linear time), but they saw this as continuation after death into birth: a cycle, or more like a slowly expanding outward spiral.
I really like that explanation of reincarnation!
I understand the spirallic nature of existence, yet it still seems to me that humans today live in a part of time that is linear. The best way I can understand the difference between how we perceive time, and how our ancient ancestors probably did, is imagine that they were so much less ego-centered than we are, and so much less attached to notions of "progress" and "success", that their own aging and death didn't trouble them as horribly as it does us. Those natural markers didn't scream "failure" and "oblivion" because they saw the larger continuity so clearly.
Yes! That's precisely it. In societies where everything happens only once and then never again (where the past is a lost and dead moment), the individual has only a brief existence and that is all they get. In societies with more cyclical views, individuals are continuations of a larger being-ness, in the same way a tree in a forest now is a continuation of the trees in that same forest a thousand years ago, even if it itself was not living at that time.
I maybe should write an essay on this at some point, since it is a really profound difference. "Individualism" and specifically the idea of the self is a product of linear time, something which Agamben expounds upon in Infancy and History.
You guys are all welcome to become compost but me, myself and I are going to God and see Him face to face like Jesus is doing now
Wow. That’s a lot to think about. One more minor note though:
“ Inciting fear and hysteria in people is a deeply violent act, whether done by murderers, the media, politicians, or activists.”
It seems to me that there have been far too many people over the years claiming that ill -intentioned others have incited people against them through fear and hysteria, and that because of this, it is justified to use physical violence in response to words or agitation. So some trans activists think it acceptable to threat or use violence against “TERFs” because “TERFs” supposedly incite hate for trans people. There are many other examples of this phenomenon- returning violence to those who are believed to incite fear or hate. In fact, in many ways, it is the basis for witch-hunts of all types- the belief that someone can influence another’s actions or force them to commit crimes simply by speech. Communists were fair targets of Joe McCarthy whether or not they had committed a crime because they influenced others to crime (supposedly). Rob Halford had to “prove” that he didn’t force two young men to attempt suicide through subliminal messaging. The idea that some people or groups of people can influence others and are responsible for other’s actions is a sort of belief in witchcraft. Of course, what I think you are getting at is that there is a very real sort of influence and a real sort of witchcraft at work in the working of Meta algorithms and corporate- government propaganda collusion. And there’s an interesting conversation to be had there on the extent to which modern humans living in such a controlled world have true free will.
I think saying dreaming is “the only realm where truth and knowledge can meet each other” is an overstatement. The transverbal reality of truth - what Jesus called “the Spirit of Truth” I regard as being more accessible and present than that. Yes, when it is verbalized it is not complete, though it may be accurate as far as it goes in the telling needed at that time.
Brilliant piece that gave me a lot to think about, thank you! I am becoming increasingly worried that the climate crisis (and I say this as an environmentalist) will be used in the future as justification for global surveillance.
I am very fond of the writings of Tibetan buddhist teacher named Dilgo Khyentse. In one of his essays he points out that many people with a desire “to help” the rest of humanity cannot realistically do so in the idealistic way that they wish for, but one very basic thing we can do for each other is reduce one another’s fear. I think about that a lot and what that might look like on a small scale.
One thing I want to challenge is the idea that the average American is unaffected by and always benefits from American global imperialism. My generation (millennial) have had peers dying or coming back with severe mental illness in overseas wars that are largely unpopular. American media tends to export a story about what America is and what we care about in a way that is heavily dramatic, sensationalized, and fictional, that can often cover up a lot of the suffering and poverty that is actually going on here. I know there have always been tensions between Americans and the UK/Europeans because of the role our government plays in the world over the last few decades, but as an American woman with a Norwegian husband, I am hoping to see more dialogue between Americans and Europeans that can lead to an increased understanding of what is *actually* happening and how it is affecting us in different ways.
Great stuff, keep up the wonderful writing!
"My generation (millennial) have had peers dying or coming back with severe mental illness in overseas wars that are largely unpopular."
You must admit though, as wars go, that is a low level of being affected as a society.
It’s my opinion that an imperial country being at war tends to affect a lot of people worldwide including its own citizens.
I wonder if the idea that Christianity created the concept of linear time is actually true? I can think of many ways in which the Bible and church teachings contradict linear time. E.g
- the idea that as Christians we are surrounded by 'a cloud of witnesses' of people of faith who have lived before us - this sounds much more like 'ancestors in the room next door' than people who lived once and are dead and gone.
- God being the God of the living, not the dead. i.e., those who have gone before us are still alive
- actually the Bible does not end with the destruction of the earth, but with the joining of heaven and earth, i.e., the end is just the beginning of another dimension of life
- Jesus talking to Moses and Elijah on the mountain top - again, the ancestors are just next door.
- prophecies which have multiple fulfillments.
- the cyclical nature of festivals and rituals - every year Jesus is born among us again. Sure, most people will see that as symbolic, but maybe that's just our culture talking. Also, some Christians believe that every time we sin we are nailing Jesus to the cross, again and again.
I could go on, but you get the point. My hunch is that our current western culture is very linear time focused (case in point the theory of evolution) and that this has coloured our reading of the Bible rather than the other way around.
Interesting read. I have long thought about the 'shape of time'. You framed the differences in shape as pagan and Christian, which I both agree with, and believe cut deeper. If you will indulge me, here is a short excerpt on my thoughts on the 'shape of time':
How do you get conceptual, abstract time from perceptual time? By changing the geometric shape of perceptual time. Time is the shape of our experience, the shape of our existence. The shape time takes dictates the structure of our shared, perceptual reality. And our perceptual reality, when bound to our living universe through sensation/awareness, is round, given the fact that the earth, moon and sun are round and endlessly encircle each other with extraordinary consistency. So this ‘round’ time was the framework for indigenous existence in their ancestral environment, which further framed the daily perceptual reality of time. Time as 'eight sleeps', time as 'when the grasshoppers chirp the yams are ready to harvest'.
All of existence is bound within the ‘round’ confines of perceptual time in a perceptual universe. Conceptual time, therefore, alters the shape of perceptual time, all the while existing in the same ancestral, perceptual reality. Earth, moon, sun, universe. And the ‘shape’ of perceptual time changes to conceptual time simply by choosing a random point in perceptual, round time as a beginning point, which instantly turns cyclical time into linear time.
This change in the ‘shape’ of time would have a corresponding change in the structure and function of memory i.e. structure of perceptual reality and eventually the structure and function of language. The linearity of time would alter animism as well, turning it into religion. Moving from animism, perceptual worldview, to religion, conceptual worldview, has to do with the shift in perceptual time and conceptual time. Animism perceives all things: animals, plants, rocks, rivers, weather, human handiwork, even words, as animated and alive. Perceptual time is embodied time, conceptual time is disembodied time, disembodied space.
The ‘roundness’ of time is inclusive, all things, all of life, all relations are held within the eternal cycle of round ancestral time. The linearity of time becomes exclusive in a peculiar way. Linearity lends itself to division, fragmentation, and individuality, all of which accrete to such an extent as to create a ‘separate consciousness’, which is a simultaneous arising, meaning, consciousness itself emerges, and it emerges as an isolated, separate, personal phenomenon.
Hope this adds something to your own thoughts. Again, really enjoyed your writing.
Very beautiful work, thank you. I will savor it for some time.
Isn't our first experience of the world one of Jetztzeit/now-time? I have observed that my children have no real sense of linear time until maybe about the age of about 7- they live entirely moment to moment. Often their imagined worlds and the material world are one, there is no differentiation between the two. It has been difficult for me to reprogram myself back into that state, probably because my early environment and conditioning robbed me from having experienced this fully. Probably few children do experience life outside of linear time for very long in our modern world... keep dreaming...
It is interesting to interweave these concepts of time with the experience of those of us who have suffered abuse/trauma. The past is for some of us IS a timeless place that we revisit again and again, even if it is only unconsciously. It is never behind us, we carry it with us in our bodies/minds. I am told that it is the present moment that offers us the healing we need to free ourselves from our pain or our painful past. Our world then, will heal, as we move towards path of the jetztzeit...