“I know what time is but when you ask me, I don't.”~ a respose from a philosopher when asked about time. We seem to know what time is but when you ask us we really don't know, just like we assume we know ourselves and yet what we really are is the unknown, a sort of blind-spot in the midst of everything.
We only know a day by a single rotation of the planet on it's axis, a month by the rotation of the moon around the planet and a year by the planet's revolution around the sun. All this knowledge of passing of time depends on endless cycles made by these heavenly bodies giving the illusive impression of passage of time, which begs the question what would time be if they were all still and not moving?How would we know the passing of time or would we be in a perpetual now?
When is now? The clock-time helps us know the passing of the day through the ticking of the arms of the clock, from seconds to minutes to hours, but can we really pin down the moment “now”? When can we say is “now” bearing in mind that the “now” is always moving endlessly like the flow of a river, even before we can isolate a “now” we're already in another “now” hence living in an “eternal now”.
Our psychological sense of time is illusory in nature, we tend to think of time moving from the past through the present and into the future but there's no trace of the past or the future in reality. The past is a collection of memories of our life events through time and the future is our mind’s creation and projection of a reality to come, they are both a psychological creation and not reality.
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We don’t realise this illusiveness and we tend to live in our heads rather than in the present moment of our being, we live in the past memories of our life events and in a future which is just a projection of a reality to come in the mind and not actual reality here and now. Our life is wasted as we're always living in an illusion rather than in the present moment, we are unable to just be as we're constantly living in an endless cycle of thoughts about the past or the future.
Nature seems to be cyclical and very illusive, it's in an endless loop of recreating itself, everything is in a perpetual cycle yet giving the false impression of change. The seed grows into a tree and then into a seed and then into a tree again. Man gives birth to a child and then the child grows and gives birth into another child. The leafs fall, wither, rot and becomes humus for the plant. The animals eat the plants and the animals die, rot and become the plants again. The rat becomes the snake and the snake becomes the eagle through the painful transformation of life form through eating each other.
The cycle continues giving a false impression of change, but nothing really changes it’s always that same thing changing it's form in an endless energy dance. Everything seems different as different could be in the outside but in the inside it's all connected, it's all one Being changing it's form in an endless cycle but we don't see this unless we bring back our Being to it’s present moment.
We're the unknown, a sort of blind-spot in the midst of the endless dance of energy and changing life forms. Knowing ourselves is knowing the universe and yet we're the hardest thing to get hold off, knowing ourselves is like trying to look directly into our own eyes without using a mirror which is impossible.
When we let go of the endless quest of seeking answers and just observe the external environment without trying to endlessly make sense out of what we see, suddenly we start gaining an insight that is beyond the logical mind, an insight that brings our being in the present moment with a feeling of our basic inseparability with everything and we start developing an intuitive feeling of "a knowing" from within. We realise we are always the eternal energy here and now always coming and going in different forms.
We feel a sense of peculiar calmness, peace and bliss in accepting we can not really know because we are the knower and the unknown, the observer and the observed. “Wisdom lies not in seeing things but rather in seeing through things.” To see the unseen we have to be in the present moment, here and now, to just observe without endless analysis and questioning, to live in "the cloud of the unknown”. To realise the miracle we are is unfathomable, and can only be live here and now, not known.
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Well said, and I know you would not be able to write these things if you were not experiencing them. Good for you, it's a great feeling to begin to see through the veil of "me."
This was amazing! & very eloquently put. Thank you!!