Dear David,
I have a reflection and question on one of your blogs. I was reading your most recent Blog and was linked back to one from August 9, 2014 called, “Awareness Becomes Self Aware”. You had a diagram of awareness becoming self-aware. Here is the quote that caught my attention:
What we call mind or the unified field is that lively inner surface of self-aware consciousness. In other words, mind is the boundary condition of space.
That process of experience (c) determines how we experience time. Time is not a dimension of space but rather of how we’re experiencing. Notice also how c looks just like the left, flowing attention. Another way this is nested.
Alright, so here goes: I am having difficulty right now with time and space. Yipes! I seem to have lost the capability to grasp either/both. It feels like the part of my mind that kept track of these has gone offline.
Where before, I was very good at time management and kept track of my “things” and events. I am now incapable of this.
Well, heck, where has that gone? Not only am I totally unaware of time – allowing large segments of time to go and have no awareness of it moving, in addition, I seem to have also lost many items spatially. Maybe that isn’t space, but something else? Not sure.
The loss of time and space in a quiet, non-essential environment would be amazing. When there is no pressure on my time or need to keep track of anything, the quietude is deep and nourishing.
But, “life” gets in the way – when schedules need to be kept, and people are counting on you to “have it together” ……. “auy, there is the rub!”
It feels like floating in the powerful swells of the ocean, and then suddenly, a wave crashes over you – for example, in your revelry, you’ve totally missed an appointment, or you realize that you have lost your wallet with all your credit cards or some such. Certainly not life threatening but concerning.
Thus, I am wondering how much simpler it might be for a monk to have his awareness change then a householder. The strains of day-to-day needs seem to push up against the desire/need for the “sitting on a park bench” existence.
Nothing is happening to the physical me – it’s happening to Being, which is who I am.
But, the little me still has to integrate this, right?
I have some time next week where I will be alone, which will allow me to have a full on, no-holds-barred “sitting alone on a park bench” of total silence. I so look forward to this.
Am I making a mountain out of a mole hill? Does time and space make a shift? I am sure this will even out.
Thoughts?
Sending you the joyful sound of birds singing outside my window….
Jai, Jai,
Fleming Conley
Response from David Buckland
When we change our relationship with the process of experience, we change our experience of time. This is quite normal and you’ll find it will change again. I talk about some of them here:
https://davidya.ca/2018/08/24/time-is-a-perspective/This also relates to memory. Our mind remembers things that are important to us emotionally. That’s well-recognized by science. When the emotional charges in our life fade, we stop remembering things like that. We develop new ways of remembering, like “bookmarking” when we pause and make a consciousness mental note. Like when putting down our keys.
Another influence can be habits falling away that were driven by samskaras. As the grooves wash away, the pattern is lost. We can lose interest in things that were once very important to us. And we can find old habits vanish. We find they were driven by what I call “shoulds” and “musts” rather than our nature.
In this case, we have to create new habits, like always putting our keys in the same place so we don’t have to remember.
Being present when were paying for stuff so we do it properly and put everything back.
Another layer to this is learning to trust life. Life will remind you if its important. But most of us don’t trust life so we try to do it all ourselves. Another control meme. As that falls away we can shift deeper and notice how life is prompting us.
Further, there’s the matter of timing. Some things want to be done at a certain time. A controlling me will want to do it when it thinks it should be done. But when that gradually falls away, we can find some things don’t happen for awhile. And then suddenly they do, and it happens quickly and smoothly and completely. Of course things like appointments are a different fish.
This is just one of the many things we adapt to as we shift from being a me to being cosmic. As we shift into the flow of life and intuition rather than mind.
It does get smoother as you integrate and transition.
The problem for the monk is its harder to integrate and they won’t be exposed to life circumstances that will help make things conscious. Householder is better for actually living it fully (speaking as one 🙂
Jai Jai
DPS. David Buckland has a website: Explorations of Life and Enlightenment, where you can purchase his book: Our Natural Potential: Beyond Personal Development, the 7 Stages of Enlightenment. https://davidya.ca/books/our-natural-potential/
Letters to the Universe 