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
Do I Have to Be a Spacetime Worm? - No Time, No Problem?
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At some level there’s the mathematics that everyone agrees on and everyone can use. But what does this mean in terms of time and spacetime?
Something I’d like to reflect on before we dive in is that there is this very human tendency—very, very human tendency—of wanting the universe, wanting reality to make sense to us, to be what we want it to be. We can want reality to be invariant. We can want what’s real for me to be what’s real for you, or else fear that we’re no longer sharing in reality. We can bring assumptions to the table without even realizing we’re bringing them.
This is another wonderful popular book, one that I highly recommend, by Sean Carroll—The Biggest Ideas in the Universe. And if you pick up this book—and I would say most, the majority of writing including popular writing, but also philosophical writing, even physics interpretations of relativity—they will tend towards this interpretation of relativity: Sean Carroll writes: “In relativity, it’s no longer true that space and time have separate objective meanings. What really exists is spacetime.” That was the impression I got reading popular science books, even as a kid. Since only spacetime is invariant between two events, the reasoning goes, you can’t even really disentangle space from time anymore. So there’s this reification of this thing—spacetime.
And that can lead to the conclusion that became dominant after relativity came to the fore: the past, the present, and the future are equally real. Let’s take this a little further—not to torture ourselves, but to really see the impact that a view of reality can have on us. Relativity “means”—I’ll put that in quotation marks—the 4D spacetime block is real. And that “means” that you and me and our dog and our cat and any objects are actually 4D spacetime objects. Sometimes called “worms.” Only the tiniest, tiniest slice of this spacetime worm is ever at the present—that view is called perdurantism—somewhat confusingly contrasted with endurantism, which is the view that you can be wholly present at each moment of existence.
Part of this exploration can be how much we may, in our sense of our identity, our sense of suffering—even in how much we’re trying to be present—have a sense of being spread out in time. Maybe not a 4D spacetime worm, but a sense of being kind of smeared out in time. Instead, what if I don’t leave any trace of existence behind me? Nor is there one ahead. I get to be wholly in the flow of this moment.
When we get to feel that there’s actually nothing—no dimension of any kind—that has to hold those past or future events, we can feel the wholeness that all of us is entirely held in this 3D space now. Maybe it doesn’t have to feel like a limitation. It can feel like liberation. Or just maybe a little bit more workable. A little bit more bearable, livable.
Especially next time, we’ll get into more about how both of those views are equally valid in terms of empirical physics—both are options. And maybe you’ve already come to your own conclusions. I’ve certainly been completely unbiased in my presentation of this, as you can tell—Not! So let’s begin to explore this experientially 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
Welcome. Welcome to this continuation of No Time, No Problem. And we have our work cut out for ourselves today. Last time we brought in Einstein's relativity. And we did it through Carlo Rovelli and his wonderful popular book, Order of Time, and also through how he, as a physicist, interprets especially Einstein's general relativity in this general covariance emphasis, so that we end it with that sense of there is all these changing things. You're left with the reality of changing, and how anything can be considered a clock, changing relative to other changing things. And that a clock is always also going to be influenced by its position relative to other things and how fast it's going relative to other things. And so there's this leveling out. It's all these clocks clocking to each other. It's all these things changing to each other. And uh actually, let me pick up this book on the side. Um this is another wonderful uh popular book, one that I highly recommend. It's by Sean Carroll, the biggest ideas in the universe. And if you pick up this book, and I would say if you pick up uh most uh probably the majority of writing, popular writing, but also uh philosophical writing, also even physics uh interpretations of relativity, they will tend towards uh a different interpretation of relativity at some level. There's the mathematics that everyone agrees on and everyone can use. But what does this mean in terms of time and space-time and us and something that I just would like to take a moment to reflect on before we dive in is that well there is the very human tendency a very, very human tendency of wanting the universe wanting reality to uh uh make sense to us to be what we want it to be. And maybe that's such a deep human tendency that it's not only something that we encounter in self-help or new age, I'll just use that term, new age spirituality, or ah, this kind of makes me feel good, so I'll believe it, or I'll use it in a certain way.
SPEAKER_02Faiths of all kinds, beliefs of all kinds.
SPEAKER_00And uh, I mentioned this last time, but I think it bears repeating that as we go on our meditative explorations, you know, we're not uh in the lab, so to speak, investigating uh the relativistic effects that we can perceive. Uh, since there are none, so far as would be realistic to assume that we are perceiving here, we're moving much slower than the speed of light, relatively. And so these these kinds of effects, even of special relativity, are not something that we're like tapping into or perceiving. But what we do get to bring into our lab and explore and test out, is among reality views, among interpretations, like Sean Carroll's sense of space-time that we'll dip into, like Carlo Rovelli's interpretation of relativity in space-time that we talked about last time, that among these views that are you know, they they fit the they are they they they fit the equations, they fit the facts, they fit the empirical uh facts of physics, they are both equally valid in that way. So when we're then offered something that we can, yeah, we I mean we have options. So this is this is not aiming to be a uh exercise in oh, I'm gonna pick, I'm gonna pick the uh the view of reality that um I personally like and that I'm gonna just believe in just because that's always that's always an option, but among the options that we're exploring here is a little bit different. We're we're actually wanting to see what is not a problem in terms of physics. So, what are interpretations that we can have that are compatible with the best scientific theories we we currently have, and even some that we might anticipate having in the future, and then among those, because then in a way science has had its say, these are empirically equivalent options, and among those, uh what is you know more effective, more parsimonious, more um minimal, more livable, more reduces our own suffering, or more more aligns with how we perceive the world or how we find it uh a fuller way to perceive our own experience. So that's the kind of explorations that we're we're embarking on here, and we will get probably at towards the end, um, because that sense of reality views being empirically equivalent, um, and how we can then play amongst them, choose amongst them based on criteria other than empirical equivalence. That's coming directly from uh the work of Dr. Park. I'll call him Dr. Park in this context. He's also Master Wanchel Park, but uh Tai Chi Master and Physicist and his book Essential Reality and Time. But perhaps for the greatest contrast, let's turn to how relativity is perhaps most pervasively interpreted. I'll read a passage here from again, this is Sean Carroll's The Biggest Ideas in the Universe. Really enjoy this book. He's just uh an amazing writer in terms of making scientific ideas very accessible. This is actually the beginning of chapter six, space-time. In Newtonian physics, you would have been welcome to consider space and time together as a single four-dimensional space-time in which events are located. So we've we've talked about this.
SPEAKER_01We have the GPS coordinates. We can say, meet me at the local coffee shop, and here's the three coordinates that will help you. Well, usually we just use two because we're on a on a surface of the earth, and then we need a uh fourth one.
SPEAKER_00Meet me at 4 p.m. And then we can show up at that same place. I show up there, you show up there also at the same time, so we get to share the event of having a coffee together. But Carol continues, nothing would have forced you to do that. So we can talk about that. Oh, it's a 40 space-time, but nothing would have forced you to do that because, oh, yeah, we have three dimensions of space, and we have one dimension of time, and they seem quite different. Space and time had their independent identities, and nobody ever got them mixed up. It was with the theory of relativity put together in the early 20th century that talking about space-time became almost unavoidable. In relativity, it's no longer true that space and time have separate objective meanings. What really exists is space-time. What really exists is space-time. That was the impression that I got when I was reading popular books, uh, even as a as a kid, about relativity and modern physics, what really exists is space-time, and our slicing it up into space and time is merely a useful human convention. So if we're here kind of questioning the reality of time, and then suddenly the Newtonian dimension of time is called into question. But instead of it dissolving into all these changing things of clocks, as it did in uh Rovelli's interpretation, all these dynamical entities where nothing is a separate space-time entity, all on a level. Instead, what we're seeing here is this other trend, and this was the dominant trend. Of turning space-time into yeah. I mean, as real as space is, time must also be just that real. And actually, you can't even disentangle space from time anymore. So there's actually not like space and time, there's just this like a reification of this thing. Space-time. One of the major reasons why relativity has a reputation for being difficult to understand is that all of our intuitions train us to think of space and time as separate things. We experience objects as having extent in space, and that seems a pretty objective fact. Ultimately, it suffices for us because we generally travel through space at velocities far less than the speed of light. So pre-relativistic physics works pretty well.
SPEAKER_02So we could meditate, for example, and it would work pretty well to think about BD space and time as something separate.
SPEAKER_00What's interesting about that is if we're looking to base our perceptions in what is real, then there is this there is this way and on this interpretation that we're we're not really aligning ourselves with a mental picture of the world and how it actually works. We're just picking out something that works well enough.
SPEAKER_02Which is fine. But unfortunately it gets a little more even complicated than that.
SPEAKER_00Because once you go down that road of thinking that there is this thing called space-time. Why might we think that? Because two events Yeah, we can no longer say ah there's that much distance or there's that much time in between them in relativity. We can only say there's this much space-time interval between them. And that will be agreed on by all observers. So all those frames of references, whether you're moving not moving relative. So that that sense of what everyone what would be like the word is invariant, what is invariant for any observer. That can seem more real. It's okay, so space-time is real. And then you may have heard of that sense of eternalism. Which is or maybe it's like the I've heard of it as the block universe. So 40 space-time is what's real in this view. And one of the things is you can't say what is there's not one universal present that's like clocking along for everybody. This is all simultaneous because what is present depends again on your frame of reference. There's that classic example of there's uh two emissions on a moving train and you're at a platform, and what is simultaneous for an observer in the middle of the train and what's simultaneous for you at the platform is going to be different. So we're not agreeing on what's simultaneous, we're not agreeing on what's the present. So a very natural way of handling that, especially if we want to uh say that what is present is real, and it's real for everybody.
SPEAKER_01If it's present, it's you don't want existence to depend on someone's perspective.
SPEAKER_00Then you're like, oh well, I've got to add that other observer's events to my reality. Whatever is present for that other observer, that that also has to be real too. And because of the way that we can all perceive these different frames of references, you can pretty much find for any far distant future event, far distant past event, there would be some perspective in which that is present. Some philosophers take the question about whether the future is is their or not, but the the gist is from someone's perspective, it's present. And if from someone's perspective, and by the way, this doesn't have to be like a literal E.T.
SPEAKER_01the alien, someone conscious or something, it's just from some system, some frame of reference that would be present, and if it's present, it's real.
SPEAKER_00And if it's real, yeah, it's just real for everybody.
SPEAKER_02So that leads to the conclusion that actually became the dominant conclusion after relativity came to the fore of the past, the present, and the future are equally real. They exist in some way equally.
SPEAKER_00Why we might reason ourselves into that. And it's is quite an unintuitive uh way given our own experience. I mean, just even feel into some of the immediacy of what you take to be real in this moment.
SPEAKER_02How very different the present is in your experience. From what's happened to you in the past, what will happen to you in the future.
SPEAKER_00But then it's like, well, science often asks of us to accept and adopt things that are very, very non-intuitive, right?
SPEAKER_01That's what I was even beginning to say in the in in the beginning of discussing this.
SPEAKER_00Well, if that's just the way it is, that's the way it is. You know, it's not what we want it to be. Maybe it's not as intuitive, it doesn't match our experience as much. But maybe that's just the way it is. And a little reminder that wait a second, there was actually some assumptions that brought us to that. And we'll we'll talk more about those assumptions, probably, especially next time. But let's take this a little further, not to torture ourselves, but to really see the impact that a view of reality can have on us. So, along with this sense of okay, relativity means I'll put that in quotation work. Relativity means the 40 uh space-time block is real.
SPEAKER_01And then that means, that means again, I'll put a little scarecrow quotes about it because there's a lot of interpretation going on around here. Um, sometimes it's masked by physics says this is so, but it's still got layers.
SPEAKER_02Uh that so that means that that you and me and our dog and our cat and you know any object is actually a four D space-time object.
SPEAKER_00What does it mean to be a four D space-time object? Sometimes they talk about this as like being worms because you have your spatial volume, and I'm not going to be able to point to the fourth dimension, it's not available. But if you could almost imagine a time lapse of a 3D object in a fourth dimension of time, but even of course, that doesn't work because space and time is space-time, you can't separate them out, but something along those lines is actually the reality of me and of you, our dog and our cat, and a pizza, just to give an example. So, what that would mean is that only the teeniest, tiniest slice of this space-time worm is ever at the present. So the very, very thin slice of the fullness of our being, our existence is ever here now. And that view is called perdurantism, somewhat confusingly contrast with contrasted with endurantism, which is the view that you can be wholly present at the present.
SPEAKER_02So, what would it mean to take that on as a reality view and try and live through it.
SPEAKER_00That is the present that it maybe doesn't make that much of an effect on us. Maybe there's no actual experiment we could ever run and discern a differing effect between uh sense of being a space-time worm and a sense of being a uh flowing 3D being in spatial relations at each moment. So we'll get into more about how both of those are equally valid in terms of empirical physics and uh both be options, and then it's this matter of maybe you've already come to your own conclusions. Certainly been completely unbiased in my presentation of this, as you can tell. Um yet part of this exploration can be how much we may in our sense of our identity, our sense of our suffering, how much we may, or even how much we're trying to be present, how much we may have in some way a sense of being spread out in time, maybe not a 40 space-time worm, but we might have a sense of being kind of this smeared out in time, and almost by exaggerating that, and then feeling the contrast, maybe it's something that illuminates a little more for us, the way that our maps, the maps we have of the terrain influences our perception of the terrain, and so influences our experience because of the understanding or the beliefs or the reality views that we hold in our mind. So let's begin to explore this, and for this session, we'll actually do some uh walking about in movement, and maybe we'll just even start with that.
SPEAKER_02Just taking a little moment here. See what has been stirred up by you and these considerations, possibilities. Almost picture from the moment you got out of bed a time lapse of the movements of your body through space and the various events of your day so far. You might find that you're almost running it through like a movie.
SPEAKER_00The invitation for this exploration is to to feel like it's not only a movie, but it's each snapshot of the movie is left in time.
SPEAKER_02It's left in space time, and it doesn't fade.
SPEAKER_00This is actually so terrifying, I can barely read myself to existence from one moment as then you as you're playing this replay of your day so far, is uh it doesn't fade in the least in its level of existence. Yeah, you and your experience you've moved on to the next moment, but that previous moment is as equally existing. And so there's this accumulation, nothing dims, nothing fades, nothing gets to slip into the past as less fully real than the next moment, and so it all just accumulates and just continue through this uh visualization until you find that your movie is now current, you've brought yourself back to this present moment with that accumulation just from today, just from today of all those equally real moments, and then welcome to open the eyes and in say in real time and come to standing and go for a little walk where your 3D space or I'll just say your four D space-time worm as you walk across a room is now being left behind as this trace. Since we're uh designed to remember the past, but we don't remember the future, we won't be able to even experiment with uh a sense of the worm extending in front of us temporarily, but maybe there's just this feeling, and maybe it's actually not such an unfamiliar feeling of very little of us actually being in the present moment. Again, we can't can't blame relativity on that, but it can be interesting to exaggerate that tendency to smear ourselves out in time in space-time.
SPEAKER_02Or about a day, for a little walk about the room.
SPEAKER_00But one of the things that we can bank on, being human beings, is that there will be times of great difficulty in any of our lives, and that can take such different forms.
SPEAKER_02And how in our own various ways we can relatively easily feel trapped by the past, defined by the past. And so even project that into the future. That's just who I am. That's just the way the world is. That's just my identity in time. And that nothing gets to fade. Maybe even not the future.
SPEAKER_00There's no knobs on the existence. They're all just equally existent as this moment.
SPEAKER_02All moments equally existent. That particular kind of maps we already. Last week. That's not the only reading of relativity and Einstein's contribution that's available to us.
SPEAKER_00So beginning to first take back from time dimension, take back from this space-time thing, the flow of change, the flow of changing.
SPEAKER_02Even just as you breathe. Your own breathing gets to be a clock. And there's nothing other than these kinds of clocks. No space-time block. No worm. Just dynamically changing things relative to each other. Space between it and your backbone opposite it.
SPEAKER_00Because we do tend to blur, even if just a bit is relational changing. Smear it out in time. Just feeling the distance between the front of your chest and the wall in front of you.
SPEAKER_02Sense of that space. Both ends. Just there in your perception.
SPEAKER_00So we're not even like taking in the light from the wall in front of us. We'll get to that another time, but uh just have that sense that space is there. It's part of our experience. And then to the wall behind, from the backbone, the wall behind. So, in a way, we've felt three distances, three lengths in space, the space in front of us, the space between our and our backbone, the space between our back and the back wall. As we feel into those three spaces, just feeling it's also one length and space from front wall to back wall, and you include it.
SPEAKER_02How the space of the room holds the space between your chest and your backbone. Even as that middle space changes slightly as you breathe, it's always held within the larger space in front and behind you. The changing never escapes being held wholly in this one whole space. Oh explore it now side to side. The movement of that as you breathe. Maybe even noticing how that space is subtly changing as you breathe. Either side of you, and between the sides of you. Held within one space. Nothing sticking out, nothing poking out, nothing escaping the embrace of this one whole space you're in. Nice thing about a circle is we have an intuitive feel of how it's complete. Noticing the breath less as a story in time. Inhale, exhale, and as this unfolding of this circle circumference at your ribs that is itself whole and is wholly held by the space that you're in, even as it's changing. All around you, as far as it would go, to reach the outer edges of the atmosphere in front, behind, and to the sides of you.
SPEAKER_00Feeling the slight movement of your spine as you breathe, elongation and settling.
SPEAKER_02Even as both ends are holy now.
SPEAKER_00We can have that sense of what is consistent with that picture. So we can go ahead and feel all the way to the atmosphere of the earth beneath us.
SPEAKER_02Why not? We're sitting, breathing the earth's atmosphere, held within this three D space to the edges of the atmosphere on all sides. As vast as you might like. The Milky Way. Edges of the universe, whatever that means, or can make it more cozy.
SPEAKER_00Maybe even a sense of VD space just surrounding your body more immediately.
SPEAKER_02Whatever feels good for you. And how this kind of a practice can vary from day to day. Just feeling the flow of breathing held within three D space. Held holy in each moment. This will be more of a preview of what we'll get into next time. I should just say next session. There is no space time. There is no dimension of time. There is no dimension of any kind other than three D space which includes dynamics of changing the completeness of 3D spatial relations.
SPEAKER_00We might experientially tap into in feeling this holding of three space as far or as close as we can conceive of if it's helpful to picture spheres or circles because of the natural sense of completeness.
SPEAKER_02Whatever size, sphere, space, space works for you. And you're held within that sphere.
SPEAKER_00But let's actually see what it feels like. So welcome to stand.
SPEAKER_02And yeah, at first, maybe slowly see what it's like to move. Not in a dimension of time, not in space-time, but where there's no escaping the wholeness of your three D sphere holding you, holding your wholeness.
SPEAKER_00Sometimes in mindful walking, people walk very slowly, even super slowly, to really be in the present, be mindful of the present. Maybe seeing what it's like to pick up the pace move in a decidedly unmeditative kind of way. Because there's just no escaping the wholeness of unfolding spatial relations. There's no dimension to poke out into.
SPEAKER_02It doesn't exist.
SPEAKER_00Spatial relations somehow, maybe in neurons of our brain, who knows? Exactly.
SPEAKER_02What happened earlier? If you're thinking, like, oh well, what's wonder what's for dinner?
SPEAKER_00What am I gonna do next?
SPEAKER_02That too held in just 3D space now. The not yet future. We only have our story future that's affecting us now.
SPEAKER_00Definitely can be more of a challenge to feel our story past and story future are. Part of this 3D space that we can't ever poke out outside of terms of effects or being affected.
SPEAKER_02Maybe noticing.
SPEAKER_00Maybe that's even part of what is so helpful about feeling embodied, feeling the presence of your body. This is even why psychologists are getting more and more interested in practices that help their clients connect with the feeling of their body in the present moment.
SPEAKER_02Because we've all been through difficult times one way or another. But when we get to feel that there's actually nothing, no dimension of any kind. Those past events. All of us is entirely held in this 3D space now. It doesn't have to feel like a limitation, it can feel like a liberation or just maybe a little bit more workable. A little bit more bearable, livable that sphere of beauty space needs to be ours.
SPEAKER_00And among options that can both align with what science empirical evidence will be getting more into that indicates as yeah, I could have this reality view and not bump against something that contradicts it. So we can be 40 space-time worms, or we can have this what Master Park calls the Nowflow view. And we would never bump against bump up against any uh contradiction in our experience. At least according to science. And either one, we could even travel at half the speed of light, or yeah, we won't go more than that because it'd be really hard to give them enough energy for that. But we could we could do that and we would still not have a contradiction. A valid reality view, one that stands up with all our experience, all known experience, without falling into inconsistency. We think one thing with our reality view, and reality shows us another oops. But then we from there we get to choose which of these are more conducive to my own well-being.
SPEAKER_02I've made no uh secret of my my answer to that. But it's what works for you ultimately, is what works for you. And if we take spatial relations, V D spatial relations, we won't encounter something other.
SPEAKER_00So actually, none of this experimenting was about some kind of empirical aspect we could encounter. Even when we were playing that game in a way, in the first part of thinking about our space-time worm, that was still just a memory. We were still thinking about it in the 3D space of now. But also maybe noticing the effect of the reality views I can have in our experience. It can be so perhaps the human tendency is more naturally to feel smeared out in time, the illusion of separation from now.
SPEAKER_02We can either have a reality view that exacerbates that or helps us to even correct that perhaps very human tendency. Curious to hear how this lands for you. So I can see the comments a bit better. Alright.
SPEAKER_00It's good to see you. I've seen you several times, I think, here. Ryan, hello everyone. Hello Ryan. Wow, have we really been going for an hour and forty minutes? I'm not gonna try and make a joke about time.
SPEAKER_02So what's coming up for you all? I see the some heart emojis flying. I'll send it. Send it back. Ryan says it was really good. I was drifting off then.
SPEAKER_00Maybe there's this possibility of uh things being simpler than we tend to make them out to be good for restfulness. Emily says, Oh my, I was so scatterbrained when I began that I was surprised when I heard your voice and really dropped in. I felt the presence of the space around me and my 3D sphere and my body in motion as a clock.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Thanks for sharing your experience, Emily, especially the oh, I was so scatterbrained. We've done, I think, explorations similar to this. As many of you know, my um I tended to find that trying of any kind in my practice really tended to backfire.
SPEAKER_01And so one of the things that I know if I'm scatterbrained is one of the one of the things that will make me feel even more scatterbrained is uh you know, trying to do a narrow focus. Like focusing on the present moment sensations of my breath, and then you know, my mind, my scatterbrained mind going off, and then bringing it back again, and then I'll be like, oh my goodness, I am so scatterbrained, and this is so painful. And you know, I was noticing as I was doing the the talking, I was like, I'm being so negative about like you can't escape.
SPEAKER_00Like you can't escape, like it sounds so scary, but sometimes I almost feel like that reverse psychology is helpful in a way, especially for those of us who are used to a meditative practice and know the benefits of being present and want to be more present in our lives, want to have a good meditation practice, experience the benefits of that, that it's really easy to feel like we have to manufacture something. And one of the benefits of having a reality view that supports us in the sense of we are just wholly in this 3D space in what what we'll see. Uh Master Wanchapark calls essential reality. Emily, you reference this like my clock, my body in motion as a clock. There's just clocks in 3D space. There's just this comparative changing in 3D space, is that a reality view like that can support us when we're very scatter brained in recognizing that we don't actually have to change our experience, but we can appreciate the way reality is, and that however scatter brained we are, we're not escaping from this holding of now. Now flow. David says, Hi, I was a little late joining today. Something about time running in the wrong direction or something.
SPEAKER_01You make you make better time jokes than I do, David. But I joined in time to hear about existing in the same moment as pizza. So I was able to fit straight in and just needed to travel back through a few layers to experience the beginning again.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01If I'm a clock, perhaps my battery is in the wrong way around.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's one of the uh classic examples. I remember being in uh intro um metaphysics class. And for the that perdarantism view, it's like when you're eating, it's like that again. I I think there's just such a natural sense of a sphere as being a whole. So you're looking at a whole pizza, and in the sense of the per durantism and the sense of it's it's a 40 space-time warm, as you're looking at the whole pizza about to have the first slice.
SPEAKER_01That pizza, the whole pizza is just the tiniest slice of the existence of the pizza from you know when it was in the oven, and when it was, you know, maybe back in the store, if it was a store-bought pizza.
SPEAKER_00And like yeah, it's just such a uh a very different way of um using the reasoning um for what is a reality view, it makes what is present almost nothing, which sounds weird, but again, it's it's it's what we tend to, I would say it's what we often tend to do to ourselves with our identity smeared out in time, and this is what we'll even get into probably bring back in Dogen, probably bring back in some Ecartole, um, and get more into the the no problem aspect, not only for physics, but for how our relationship with time can have a real impact on our suffering. Um Vervain says it's difficult to ask questions as the existence of time is presupposed by the language in phrases and tenses. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And there's, you know, in philosophy, there's um a lot of people who really go into kind of like a tense analysis. So like there's existence. That's just you know, existence simpliciter, you know, it's just it's not in really you know, it's just not existence for you, it's not existence now, it's just existence. And then there's all these arguments about tense, and yeah, it gets pretty complicated. What I was already beginning to hint at a little bit with the way uh Wanchill Park goes through this is that we do have story time. We do have story time. My hand, like oh, probably rock, paper, scissors, like what we did several times ago. It's a classic example, rock, paper. When your hand's a paper, and then gonna go into scissors. When you're at paper, my hand was rock.
SPEAKER_02My hand is paper, my hand will be scissors.
SPEAKER_00So we do have their language reflexes, as Raven's pointing out. We do have story time. We couldn't function without story time, we couldn't make a circle with our hands without story time. We have past, present, future, we use it all the time. Yeah, there you go.
SPEAKER_01We use it all the time.
SPEAKER_00Um the question is does that language map onto something that is outside of the now? Or is it information entirely in the now that conceptually points to something that's no longer but that is it's just it's just here, it's just here, and that difference with some of what um Master Park, maybe I'll I'll read this some next time or another time. Um his book Way of Now goes more into this intuitively, while his book Essential Reality and Time goes more into it um technically in a way. So he always stays grounded in in experience. Um but there's just that way that we use past, present, future that doesn't have to separate us from now. And maybe the words, the story past and the gone past is helpful there. So maybe it's not so much that we don't have the language for, but but we need to have kind of almost introduce terms to help us talk about it. So what we're saying with like the now flow view is not that there's not any story past, and we can't talk about the story past and use the story past, just like we can talk about time and clocks, and I'll meet you at the coffee shop at 4 p.m. We can still do all those things. Um, but what we're saying is that there is no gone past. And eternalism and perturantism, you know, they're interpreting relativity to say actually, this is what physics says you need. You need to have a gone past. You you know, it's the correct. Reality view, if you want to be, you know, in alignment with science, is that you're a 40 space-time warm. There is the the gone past exists and exists equally as the now.
SPEAKER_03And yeah.
SPEAKER_00This whole exploration gives gives you my sense about that. Um so Emily says this in response to what I was sharing before. Yes, I feel the wide focus helped me much more than a narrow focus here with my monkey mind.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00And Emily says again, it says, This is the deepest talk about pizza I have heard.
SPEAKER_01I love it. Yeah, we can talk about pizza. I mean, literally, I know I forced you all.
SPEAKER_00Well, I didn't force you, but I I repeated this rock, paper, scissor. We'll probably do this again. But like, I can I can almost now just do that and just be filled with such you know awe and clarity of like this is this is your hand. This is this is this is your you know, Master Park would often say, like, this is your hand, right? This is whole this is whole in each moment. And to just get a glimpse of that profound hands, profound pizzas. David says, I can feel the history of objects when I see or hold them, and I'm able to visualize how they came to be with me that moment in time, and with that huge weight of existence behind them. Yeah. And he continues, and at that point in the sequence, we are able to predict the future just through our own intentions, and so can change that future in a moment. Yeah. So I'd be curious about that when you're feeling the huge weight of existence behind them.
SPEAKER_02That's some of the I mean, we actually don't.
SPEAKER_00I mean, this is what's kind of the paradoxical about this whole exploration. We actually don't uh all the effects of the past are already incorporated into the into the now. So whatever view we have of these two reality views, we're not actually adding any different effects. We'll go more into this because it's it's kind of nuanced. But my goodness, when I have the reality view that all my past events exist. I feel like uh a weight of existence, and then you're also saying though, um, that sense of that you can also change that future in a moment, right? So that's I mean, that's the the asymmetry we so often experience about the past, like, oh my hand was there, and then here, and then it's like, oh, maybe I don't want to complete the circle, maybe I just want to go like that, and then in a moment, it's a sense of the future tends to feel more open than the past. But some of the freedom, and you all can tell me whether I'm gonna go off the deep end too deep here, but some of the freedom of recognizing in a story past, story future, that we don't change what has happened to us, we don't affect the past itself. But if any one of you have done the kind of work of reprocessing a traumatic memory, or doing, say, parts work where you unburden uh a younger part that's holding something, reparenting yourself, all these kinds of psychological techniques, they are built around that sense of oh my goodness, what's actually affecting us is the story past, and we have more the story past is it's like an eddy in a whirlpool, even if it seems very fixed, it is dynamic, it's another dynamical flow in 3D space, and we have the capability to change that dynamical flow.
SPEAKER_02We're never trapped by the past.
SPEAKER_00There only is what there is. I think we'll end with Ravane saying, Deep pan pizza. Some some deep pan pizza. Davis says, I spent most of my life fascinated by history and collected militaria as part of that. But I would find myself almost traveling back in time just by being in the presence of the artifacts around me, which could be a very powerful experience, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. We we are such time travelers.
SPEAKER_00Especially if we're attuned, we can feel the many ways that the past influences us through our present moment surroundings. And that it all happens in our 3D space So that we can let ourselves be affected and affect the story past, present, future all within all within that now space flow.
SPEAKER_02Maybe easier said than done.
SPEAKER_00I would scratch the maybe um on that. But part of my hope is that uh this can make it easier. Um he says this slice is whole in this moment with a little emoji. Yeah. This slice is whole in this moment. Whatever we got, it gets to be whole in this moment, and that I I personally find makes it a little easier to be a human being. And if we happen to be a human being that doesn't like just to believe something, just to believe it, it can be helpful to explore these layers of yeah, there's our observations, our empirical evidence from science. Let us say that this is a view we can hold and not run into contradictions. Okay. And then okay, given that, if I have options, how would I like to choose amongst those options?
SPEAKER_01David says, I got the pepperoni this time. Yes, Everly's emoji does have the pepperoni. Uh my my appreciation to all of you who are here.
SPEAKER_00And I know that many of you join and don't necessarily make comments, and that's all to the good. Thank you for being here. And and a thank you, and I think on behalf of all of us, a thank you to uh Emily and David and Virvain for uh really uh brightening our our oh and Ryan and Jen as well, who began it at the beginning, um for brightening this discussion time and always drop a line in a comment or reach out and appreciate this chance to explore with you. All right, enjoy your deep pan pepperoni pizza and take care.
unknownBye.