Week 1: Reflections on class: The Meaning of Time

My understanding of time has been that it is a way to measure movement through space. In our case, it is the movement of our lovely little planet on its own axis and around our Sun. I enjoy celebrating the number of journeys around the sun I've made at birthdays rather than "how old I am". I think this is an interesting choice of words, how old I am. In other languages, one says how many years they 'have' not 'are'. One isn't better than the other. They simply may indicate slightly different awareness of time.

I think that our awareness of time is made of several components:
- our perception of the immediate world around us (sensory input and processing)
- our emotional experience of that data
- our view of ourselves experiencing it all (i.e. self-awareness or self-consciousness)
- previous experiences and emotional memories

We can attempt to view time from outside of our personal experience. The tree has this many rings and therefore is this old. Events have occurred before us, wars fought, tyrants overthrown, crops harvested, pilgrimages taken. And presumably, events will occur after we are gone. But in terms of the actual human consciousness, there are only 2 states of time, rather than a one way continuum. There is Now and Not-Now. What I mean is: Now is now, this moment. This moment is always changing yet remains the same because we are always in it! Even when we are dreaming of the future or past, where ever our awareness may be, there it is! Even if we were to travel on the continuum we imagine time to be we are still in our own personal Now. Everything else, everything we are not experiencing in this very moment is Not-Now.

What about the idea that our consciousness can be somewhere that our body is not? Then what is Now? Is Now where our consciousness is or where our body is?

One day, when I was remembering a time of very low self-esteem, I decided to send a message to my past self telling her she was doing just fine. I thought, “Why not try to heal the past? I closed my eyes and revived the awareness I’d had all those years ago. From my heart I sent her (my past self) a message of forgiveness, hope and love. This became an occasional ritual for me.
Then one day, when I was having trouble making a decision and feeling a little lost it occurred to me that if I could access my past self, why not my future self. I’d always had a very clear image of who I will be as an old woman so why not look to her wisdom, the wisdom I would someday have? So, closing my eyes, drawing into my heart and belly, I sought a connection with that wise old woman, and asked for guidance and clarity. These practices usually bring really positive results for me. Now, I may not be traveling through, or altering time, but then again…..I may be.