Being with Being
Philosophy, contemplative practice, and the physics of nature's flow — for finding your own way. For those who don't need the added pressure of another's way, but are curious about ways of understanding, perceiving, and living that mesh with each other — and that only you can make your own.
Each episode is a complete live recording — typically around two hours — opening with a 15-30 minute inquiry into the session's theme, moving into an hour-long guided practice, and closing with comments and discussion. These explorations grew from years of my own searching — trying to fit into practices that promised relief, never quite finding home in any tradition, and stumbling upon a rational basis for getting traction on ways I don't have to try.
As your fellow explorer, I'm Mackenzie Hawkins — researcher in philosophy of physics, contemplative practitioner, and co-author of several books with physicist and Tai Chi Master Dr. Wonchull Park. Drawing from his nowflow philosophy, these series-based explorations use philosophy and physics as ways of understanding and perceiving what's here already.
Not ways to follow, but ways that might help you find your own — for anyone looking to explore beyond the pressures we put on ourselves.
Being with Being
Setting Time Aside: Changing Spatial Relations - No Time, No Problem?
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Today we’re actually going to start really slow. You might feel like this is the preliminary warm-up, and you can skip ahead if you’re super eager to get to the juiciness of time—because we’re actually not going to meditate or talk about time today. And the reason for that is that going into this exploration, I do think it is helpful to have some tools. And one of them is that as the perception of time more recedes, alongside that, our perception of space—changing spatial relations—is going to come out more. And the more we have a sense of changing spatial relations—well, I don’t want to give away the punchline. That might cover more than we actually expect.
So today we’re going to be in the realm of some very mundane aspects of experience. Sorry, sorry about that. Space. And the physics we’ll bring in is nothing more and nothing less than Galilean relativity. Really wonder what that’s going to get us. But maybe further down the line in this series, you can circle back and come back to this session here, and see how we really are laying the groundwork. For perception, for understanding. Maybe a little less time-dependent, that we could feel into it, know it for ourselves.
No Time, No Problem?
An Honest Look at “Timelessness” in Physics and Living
What if there’s no time—and that’s not a problem for physics? What if there’s no time—could that be a solution for our suffering?
Rather than offering answers of what to think, this series offers ways of thinking that can move us past the pressures we put on ourselves: from the “should” of trying to “be present” to the “should” of being 4D spacetime worms to be compatible with relativity! Somewhere between those “shoulds,” I got stuck until physicist and Tai Chi Master Wonchull Park showed me how to think about nature simply, livably. Each session includes an hour-long meditation practice, where we get to try on different conceptions and perceptions of time to discover how equivalently valid options that physics provides can impact our levels of illusion and freedom. We’ll be reading together from a few sources—such as Wonchull Park’s Essential Reality & Time, Carlo Rovelli’s The Order of Time, Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now, Dogen’s Shobogenzo Uji—to deeply question the role(s) of time in our lives. Looking forward to our discoveries.
Thank you for Being with Being.
beingwithbeing.org
mackenziehawkins.substack.com
So, welcome, welcome to this adventure into question of time. No time, no problem. And we'll be exploring this from the perspective of what physics can help us see and understand as the options. Is it no problem for physics if there is no time?
SPEAKER_02That will be one current of our explorations here.
SPEAKER_00And alongside that, will also be the very human question of people through through the ages have seen some connection between when we have less of a sense of time, some of the illusion of separation that time can bring, that we tend to have less suffering, maybe even no problem whatever. And we will be drawing upon several sources in this series, and though there'll be others that will be mentioned, these will be some of the core ones that we actually probably will be reading together, discussing together. And so if you would like to uh have a copy of these yourself in whatever way or form works for you, uh they are Essential Reality and Time by Physicist and Tai Chi Master Wanshel Park, also Carlo Ravelli's, very well-known theoretical physicist and uh very beautiful writer on physics, with his popular book, The Order of Time. And then also think in this current day and age, can't talk about time without the very real impact and example that Ecotole has given with his work, The Power of Now. And then we'll zip back a couple of centuries to the renowned Zen master Dogen Zenji. And yeah, we'll have some some ways that we can interpret his Sobogenzo Uji, sometimes translated as being time, which I hope will hope will be fun. Unlike say the enlightened Zen Masters or Eckhart Tole giving his wisdom as a guide to spiritual enlightenment. The uh aims here, well, you take it as as far as you would like, the aims here are uh gonna be more modest, and yet really see if there's something here that could make living a little easier. I'm myself just a bit in awe of what grief can feel like. I lost a friend about a week ago, and when we say here, no problem, it can be translated into maybe there's a little more feeling of holding wholeness, a little more feeling of freedom, less stuckness, a little more ease, even in the midst of whatever we may be right in the midst of and I've personally found the perspective of everything is now to be just really helpful in my own life, where it hasn't made it all uh rose petals and unicorns, and yet it has made some things for me more feasible, where without some of this it would have it would have been so much even harder, and I was even just struck as well um earlier reading some of Eckhart Tolle and refreshing my mind of his work because I I first tried reading that book um twenty-five years ago when I was just graduated from high school. I tried reading that book. My big sister was reading it, and I couldn't get past the first chapter. Yeah, I was more in the category of whatever that New York Times critic of calling it, uh, you know, mumbo jumbo. I just there was no way to connect what he was saying and how he was saying it to the ways that I was thinking and navigating my life. And uh he's pretty uh zesty in that book, a little confrontational, I'd say, and I even remember many years later hearing him give a talk where, and this may not be an exact quote, but in so many words, he basically said, uh, yeah, you need to suffer more before you're ready to hear what I have to say.
SPEAKER_02And in a way, he was exactly right.
SPEAKER_00I had to suffer and be dragged, kind of kicking and screaming backwards into uh meditation, Buddhist philosophy that eventually brought me to Tai Chi, to Master Park's teachings on Now Flow. And I would also say, this is a lot of what I am aspiring to offer here, and I would also say there are some ways, there are some ways that we can share an understanding and a perception around time that doesn't have to be well, let me just put in the positive that can be more accessible to more people and especially to you know scientifically or rationally minded folks. And I think that as we get into this kind of double current and even really see what it's like to interweave them of what's viable in the physics, you know, it's actually really viable in the physics, and um what you know, what spiritual teachers have been pointing towards is that you know a lot of um traditions, including Zen, tend to uh at least put a real big question mark over the conceptual rational mind and its ability to um grasp what it is that they're that they're getting at. And as people often say, you can understand how to ride a ride a bicycle without being able to ride a bicycle. And even as we were exploring and having so much fun in the in the last series, there's a directness and an immediacy in our experience that no conceptual label, no map is going to be able to entirely encapsulate. And as we also were playing with uh the last series, all of our perception, all of our perception is a map, and so this gives this possibility of the ways of understanding, and the ways of perceiving are not these you know separate realms, but that ways and options for our understanding can uh be actually a kind of a general form of perception, a general kind of map that then can overlay and inform our perceptual maps, and that it also goes the other way around, so that our perceptual maps also fill out our more understanding say level maps, where the understanding level would be a hollow shell without more of our perceptual experience, and so that's that's what we're gonna be playing in. That's why this series will include a bit of of talking and reading and you know digging in, really digging into the ideas around time and change at the level of physics and at the very human level of our lives. And they also are gonna include an hour-long meditation, which will be yes, a meditation in the in what we might typically consider meditation to be, but also this way of trying on ways of understanding, trying on ways of perceiving, honing the possibilities of ways of perceiving our experience that can make this well more of a exploration and also more of a a whole where we're we're not categorizing and separating, but seeing how they all intermix in in our own experience and in the immediacy of our own experience, and through that, you know, if there's anything to to come out on the other side of this series where you feel like there's not just like one way, or someone says this or that way, or science says this or that way, but that you actually feel some of that flexibility of viable options and get to know, become familiar with the effects of the different options on you a very personal level, and maybe above all come to feel that sense of that you get to be your own translator of this. You get to find what resonates and connects for you, so that you leave with this way where you can you can read so many uh other sources on the question of time and the question of suffering or identity or any number of things, and also have this toolkit for translating that into ways of thinking, ways of perceiving that you have you have in your own pocket. Because well, sometimes someone just says something and you're like, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. You're just saying exactly what connects for me. I guess it could happen, and sometimes you know, we're like, yeah, that really connects for me, but that not so much, and we get to find our own way. Actually take that ability to translate, maybe see through some things of what they might be saying to to find what genuinely works for us and connects for us.
SPEAKER_02So that's the that's the hope here.
SPEAKER_00It's for me always so much about lessening some of the pressure we put on ourselves, even the pressure of oh, if I could only get this time thing right, I I wouldn't suffer at all. Or this person seems so you know enlightened. I I I should follow exactly what they say, and then uh all these kinds of or or I can go the scientific-minded way, you know. Well, you know, physics says, Physics says, you know, that to be compatible with relativity, we are actually 40 space-time worms, static, everything past, present, and future equally existing. Doesn't that sound so lovely livable? And and feeling the pressure that way to be like, oh, okay, and everything else is you know off limits. So that is that is the hope, and today we're actually gonna start really slow. So you might even be feeling like yeah, maybe just feel like this is the preliminary warm-up, and uh can skip ahead if you're just super eager to get to the juiciness of time because we're actually not gonna we're not gonna meditate or talk about time today. Uh and the reason for that is that going into this exploration, I do think it is helpful to have some tools. And one of them is that as the perception of time more recedes, actually, alongside that, our perception of space changing spatial relations is gonna come out more.
SPEAKER_02And actually, the more we have a sense of changing spatial relations, well, I don't wanna give away the the the punchline.
SPEAKER_00But yeah, that might cover more than we we actually expect. And so today we're going to be um in the in the realm of some very mundane aspects of experience.
SPEAKER_02Sorry, sorry about that.
SPEAKER_00Space and the physics will bring in is nothing more and nothing less than Galilean relativity.
SPEAKER_02And I might really wonder what that's gonna get us.
SPEAKER_00But maybe further down the line in this series, you can actually circle back and come back to the session here and see how we really are laying the groundwork.
SPEAKER_02For perception, for understanding that may be a little less time dependent that we can feel into it, know it for ourselves.
SPEAKER_00And so let's settle in, and probably in the midst of it, we'll get a little bit into Galilean relativity rather than me talking like a teacher in front class with a blackboard on what Galilean relativity is, we'll we'll feel into it in our exploration. And so as always, and I'm a case in point today, bringing the fullness of whatever is present here into your practice. And close the eyes for now so that we can more feel into some of the sense of space.
SPEAKER_02But it's also distance. Actually, just feeling the distance between things in your experience. Feeling the space between those two places. Spatial relation in between your ears on either side of your head. And the space in between them.
SPEAKER_00So we can feel the space, the volume inside our two nostrils as we breathe in and out.
SPEAKER_02What it'd be like to imagine the space inside my nose.
SPEAKER_00And that language of imagine just help bridge some of the effort or uncertainty we might have about what it is that we're supposed to feel or need to feel. We're just feeling spatial relations that are already in our experience that we can effortlessly just open to.
SPEAKER_02It doesn't take a kind of a paying attention.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, the body, the being of the body. Maybe it's more than just stuff we typically think of that this being of the body. So beginning to feel into that being of your thumb on both hands all the way to the tip of the thumb. All the way to the fingertip. It's present here. It's not present there. The thumbs on both hands. In between the thumb and the pointer finger on both hands, the distance, the spatial relation of those two tips. Noticing that as we feel into the space between some of the sensitivity and vibrancy of our fingers actually increases rather than diminishes.
SPEAKER_02Three fingers. The relation in between the middle finger and the pointer finger. You notice what you feel. And we can make the spaces between these three fingers on both hands a little wider. Smaller. And feel into the changing spaces. I like you can just bask in it. Bathe in it. It's already there. Doesn't require any special attention from you.
SPEAKER_00And then begin to feel this for all the fingers, slightly spreading all the fingers. Spaces in between all the fingers.
SPEAKER_02Gently pulse the hands and the spaces in between all the fingers on both hands. All filled with this sense of this is present. This is here now. Of your hands and fingers. The volume of your limbs from the elbows and knees down, just signaling the space they take up build with this immediacy of here and now. This is present. Let it let it spread. Your upper arms, your shoulders, your upper legs, your hips. So there's a sensing immediate sensing of the volume of your limbs in space, filling space. Opposite it. Feeling that spatial relation. The left side, the left wall, the space in between. What would it be like to feel? The space, the wall in front of you, to the walls on either side of you and above you all at once. Maybe also below you, too. And the space between your back and the wall behind you. So that you feel the surrounding of spatial relations three D room you're in. The breath all at once. The wholeness of these spatial relations then include their changing relative to each other. Yes, even your body changing relative to the walls and the ceiling and the floor as you breathe. All together. Surround you on all sides, enveloped perhaps in the farthest reaches you can imagine of what you might be in spatial relationship with the edges of the universe. And let's begin to break down our one-sidedness, our sense of clarity about moving or not moving. Perhaps by first imagining that we're on a ship, and this ship is sailing so steadily on such calm waters that in the cabin of your ship, you would have no sensation of being on a ship at all of the ship moving.
SPEAKER_00So even if we weren't breathing, or even if our blood was not coursing through our veins and our nerves were not signaling, and all the chemical, yeah, you get the point. Even if all of that was not going on as this well.
SPEAKER_02We're still in changing spatial relations relative to something else. Moving or not moving is actually the same thing. Rotating and revolving and in spatial relations with all manner of things. All together at once. The emotions. The indescribable inner colors and shades and textures of being a human being. Suffering or problem, or just the fullness of the spectrum of human experience. Includes love and includes grief. Exploration in a way of space and relations and change.
SPEAKER_00And then recognize that this first session may be like well, where is the time? You said this is gonna be about time. Oh, and know that this in a way is a preliminary peak. More experientially. And along the way, we are we are going to dive into physics and into various readings of the way that time influences our experience, including our experience of suffering. And that all the while it is ultimately about your own direct experience, and not about our readings.
SPEAKER_02And ways that we can think about this, and that will be most tested and felt in meditations where we might not feel time at all.
SPEAKER_00Well let's see what what you all are discovering and what is what is present here for you.
SPEAKER_02See you all here.
SPEAKER_00Me to see you. David should Yeah. That is yeah, what we should feel. Emily says hi, David Moore's back at Emily. Gee, grounding, thank you. Even though there was all the interesting, right? All that space, all that space was grounding. It is a spatial spatial relation. It brings us into the present in a non-conceptual way. This offers that. David says, I'm feeling a lot lighter now than when I was at the start. Where did it all go? Is time really that heavy?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, interesting. Right? Is time really that heavy? Some of the fun that we'll get into.
SPEAKER_00It's like Newton has this uh sense of absolute mathematical time flowing, and that's some of what tended to move physics uh away from the sense of the relationality of change, and one thing could change relative to absolute time. This is some of what we'll be able to get into, and there's actually nothing well unless you get into relativity. You're gonna need to update that a little bit. But that sense of there being a dimension of time as we'll talk about that's not incorrect. But there's a way that when we have that sense of time as this actual dimension that we're living in, maybe it's flowing by us. Flowing uniformly on. That somehow our own sense of ourselves and sense of our experience can end up feeling so different.
SPEAKER_02Heavy.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And then by feeling just you know what we were doing today, like this that space, spatial relation, the immediacy of that. We weren't even trying to let go of time. Sometimes when we let the immediacy of our own experience come to the fore some of our concepts that tend more towards the illusion of separation naturally more fall away. Emily, sometimes in practice my edges blur and I feel blended with the space around me. And sometimes I feel my edges defining the border between myself and the space around me. I feel like I lose time when I'm exploring this Yeah it's just space has this uh more intuitive feel of wholeness right and so whenever we're feeling the space the space of our body the space of the room even the space as far as you imagine we we naturally attribute to space this this wholeness this completeness this entirety it's all there I mean that's the that's the great thing about space it's just we have that sense is all there all together and sometimes it feels hopeful to feel like almost like nested dolls those sense of the wholeness of various spaces and at the same time you know any larger space completely envelops and holds all the space within so you get to can play with that sense of feeling just permeated by all this one whole space the larger hole or the you know cosier holes you can sometimes you can make your holes very cozy and then you have the the bigger holes around it. Irvane I felt much the same sense of time slipped away I do want to give um credit here to um the teaching of uh Dr. Les Femi open focus and he's someone that I did his meditations for years and years very space focused and he had a different explanation for it he was one of the pioneers of uh neurofeedback he's a neuroscientist so he has a somewhat different explanation but wow you know that was some of what really opened my experience where well first of all it just began to feel like meditation could go a lot faster I remember starting out like with a body scan and being like my goodness 20 minutes have never taken that long like that was just an eternity and then when I began to do more of Dr. Femi's uh space focused meditations I'd be like what 30 minutes is over an hour's past so that's that's kind of the relative experience of time but I think that's also can be an indication of how if we're trying to find the present you know wedged in between the past and the future you know there's going to be like a lot of effort and then it's like we'll we'll explore this hopefully not too painfully but we'll explore this and then there's a like there's a kind of efforting to be present and a sense of almost having to block out something in order for there to be this wholeness and then with the sense of not trying to you know fight the time you know no past no future and just be present just live in the moment um instead of that kind of fighting to actually just feel into what is here the spatial relations changing of what is here and then there can just be a uh an effortless kind of slipping away of what we kind of thought we needed right so time can time the tyrant can slip away and still I have my my good old clock here so you know it's still another changing spatial relation here letting me know that this you know a certain amount has passed and coordinate with you all and we can come on and we can use time as we need to use time as time values and also let the kinds of meanings of time that maybe are not so helpful slip away David says that's how I feel too my edges are still blurred I love how you guys are sharing and connecting here Emily I wonder which space is the negative space maybe it's awful yeah awful awful so when I say the negative space that's um that's a term I use actually that artists use um so it's not like uh um you know trying to say oh this is the negative one um but they they talk about like if you're drawing a hand or drawing a chair you know like the the spaces in between the object is the so-called the negative space or if you're drawing the space between the legs of a chair rather than drawing the legs of the chair that's what they call the negative space so I brought that in uh before and when I've talked about that way that when you let yourself focus a little more on the negative space the spaces in between you get less caught up in the um ah that's a chair drawing upon my memory of the chair oh that's my hand drawing upon my memory of what my kind of cartoon image is of the you know the what a hand should be instead of actually feeling into that. So that's part of how we get past our conceptual labels um with a feeling of the more immediacy of of space it's almost like we're more immediately redrawing what we think our body is or what we think the room is letting ourselves have that sense of the edge but also it's just experiential and all enveloped David says when I first started meditation five minutes felt like an eternity but now an hour an hour slips by in a breath yeah and I've heard from several of you who keep coming back to these hour long sessions like they I know it's a lot to to take time out for an hour and you know there's just a way that it begins to feel like a you know it goes by so fast for some point and then it enables like a kind of a deeper penetration of some of what we get to experience here just always offering here what what is uh I find most most helpful in in my own experience. Emily says I love to draw the negative space there's less pressure with the negative space it's like it's harder to be like oh I hope I don't mess up this but if it's like oh if I'm drawing the you know drawing the finger what if I mess up the finger is the embodiment and the feeling of blurred closer to the actual terrain and time slips away because it's a feature of our human maps yeah the blurred edges I see a Vervain deep question is the embodiment and the feeling of the blurred edges closer to the actual terrain and time slips away because it's a feature of our human maps yeah so let's just take those one at a time so the feeling of the blurred edges closer to the actual terrain yeah I mean what's nice is that we do get to keep our forms I mean it's it's it's handy it's nice right we have we have spatial relations that you know my hand is this form and for me to do something practical the awareness of that form is going to be helpful. But what's also helpful I think that this is part of what we feel into when we feel into like well this hand is not separate it's yeah it's a form as a useful whole that we can approximate with you know parts whole but it's it's actually seamlessly in relationship to the air all around it from the perspective of all these changing spatial relations there's no sharp edge of you know this interaction or that interaction all the interactions are this this mutual flow and so there's like a there's a seamlessness that our concepts where it's not just like oh my hand has a form that's useful but our concepts kind of reify it and then separate it where my hand is an object and this clock is an object and they're separate when the moment they touch they're actually even connected by the air in between so even just looking around the space that you're in all the objects in the room the entirety of the room all the air that we don't see in the room like it's just this it's this ocean where we're living in an ocean of of all this flow together yeah so you're saying yes reification right so we get past that right yeah and so you know the the the kind of parts whole relations that we're we're talking about they can be useful but then we don't you know have to reify them into that sense of separation and then the second part of your question in time slips away because it's a feature of our human perhaps I think that that's even you know that's something that we'll be exploring more because you know a lot of it depends again you know on what we mean by time so is time something over and above all these changing spatial relations I think a lot of the time a lot of the time we tend to feel that way we tend to consider our lives more in time more like there's a a dimension of of time that we're living in and that we can even give the flow to time instead of the flow to well we'll get into that when we get into being time. There's a ndogenzenji is sobogenzouji so I I never want to say something just hard and fast because so much is you know of course a matter of how we're interpreting these words but I would say yeah time that we often think of as that dimensional time that change happens inside of like a container maybe that's more of a feature of our maps both our human maps are maps of much of science much of physics and how it was developed we'll look at both Park's and Rovelli's way of reconnecting time as an emergent feature of all this relational spatial relations changing but that will be for another day we see what else is here please these are wonderful comments okay yeah always let me know if I uh if you have a follow-up question because it's always wonderful to to dig into this and never want to assume that I know what you're asking about because I might not I might not alright well thank you for this um kick off and this chance to practice together and uh hold in the flow of relational change with whatever it is that we might be holding finding that it's it too is all part of this and that we get to find our own way through this rather than having to go by anyone say so any other authority or just uh as I did for many many years suffer uh without a sense of how I could navigate some of this help that's that is available and can make things easier David says I'm going to see if I can find my edges now and to see if time has stood still just now yeah go check your clocks see if they see if you've uh done something amazing of actually slowing down a clock and yeah we don't have to be you know anti-edges or anti-time or just a little bit more the wholeness of uh he's checking the sundial see spatial relations that even involve our good old son all right take care all