Comprehending right NOW

[Someone here]

 

I have a really hard time comprehending time, and as a result motion (location changed over a period of time).

I'll watch my hand wave in front of my face (for whatever reason), but really all that I am experiencing at each point in time is the location of my hand NOW, and a memory of where it was before. I never really can see it move - all I have is the vision of it, sitting still at this point, and knowing where it was before.

Motion is something that has changed from time a to time c. But at what time does it move? Is it point b, in between a and c? But look at point b: it itself is still. There is only motion because...and we start over.

Motion doesn't seem to be possible right NOW...we can only "know" it exists or have memories of it. And in reality, it also seems impossible to me.


Another thing about time, is what the smallest "time unit" humans have. If I am engulfed in something, not paying attention to time, only what I am doing, it could be maybe even half a second. Everything happening in that half a second happened at once. The laugh "HA!" all happened at once.

Then if you pay attention, you can consciously realize when you are at the beginning hhh of the HA, and the end aaa of the HA.

But still, a snap is too quick even for paying attention. I can hear no beginning or end - just it. Yet, two clicks can happen within the amount of time a snap takes place, and I can hear both of them.

Maybe the human brain is limited on this, to the point where eventually two clicks could be close enough just to make one. But just pondering the existence of these clicks is really really confusing.

[Tim R]

What has no beginning and no end? Now.

That's Infinity. 

 

How could "now" begin? When would it begin? Obviously never. And when does "now" end? Also never. When would it end? Now?? 

So you see, "now" is not like a frame. A frame is finite. It begins and ends. Now is in-finite.

 

How do we make sense of something which is not finite? Does such a "thing" even exist? Does "the present moment" even exist? 

Yes and no. 

"It" doesn't exist. There is no "NOW!!" like a split second. No "present moment" which comes, exists for a fraction of a second and then goes like you imagine   silence CLICK silence

 

But infinity does exist. More accurately; Infinity = existence.

What you call "the present moment" is actually just existence. It's infinite fluctuation. "It" never happened. There is only existence, but existence doesn't "happen". 

Coming into existence = Going out of existence = Neither of both actually ever "happen" because "both" are infinity = Emptiness

There is only infinite happening = Nothing happening

 

You must understand what infinity means if you want to understand the present moment. 

[Someone here]

@Tim R What I understand is that motion is necessarily a process. It does not exist at any given point in time. It exists ACROSS time.

[Gesundheit2]

You're trying to comprehend a thought about right now.

[Tim R]

@Someone here What makes you so sure that time exists? I know you've heard this over and over so I'm not going to repeat any of it here. 

Past, present, future - all these exist in your mind and nowhere else. Yes, even present.  Even "Now" is a thought. And me talking about infinity and nothingness, all that is also just thought. 

"What is?" Wrong question, it can't be answered. Think of it, with what would you answer it? Obviously just with more of what is.  It's a bottomless, infinite mystery. 

 

So my question to you is; What makes you think that there is such a thing as "now"?

What if it's something like "up" or "left" or "tall" ? An abstraction? A projection? A thought? Maybe "it" is just that and nothing more?

[Someone here]

@Tim R If there is no "now" then what exists? 

[Rishi9]

Time is a consequence of the mind. When the mind is still, time does not exist, in its ignorant form. 

[Tim R]

@Someone here

1 hour ago, Someone here said:

If there is no "now" then what exists? 

Didn't you read my post??

13 hours ago, Tim R said:

"What is?"

Wrong question, it can't be answered. Think of it, with what would you answer it? Obviously just with more of what is.  It's a bottomless, infinite mystery. 

To speak of a "Present moment" would set up a duality, wouldn't it? If there's a "present moment", then there must be something which is not present, right? 

But how could there "be" anything (presence = being) which is not present, aka which is not? There can't!! Non-existence doesn't exist!

Existence is absolute, there is no opposite to "it". That's infinity. No boundaries, no beginning, no end. That's what the "present" actually is. The present is just another word for Being. 

Present/ Presence= Being = Infinity

 

All you have to do is realize that the present is not a temporal thing. You have trouble realizing what the present is because you think it's (part of) time.

Time does not exist. But you must take this insight beyond philosophy.

[Breakingthewall]

11 minutes ago, Tim R said:

@Someone here

Didn't you read my post??

To speak of a "Present moment" would set up a duality, wouldn't it? If there's a "present moment", then there must be something which is not present, right? 

But how could there "be" anything (presence = being) which is not present, aka which is not? There can't!! Non-existence doesn't exist!

Existence is absolute, there is no opposite to "it". That's infinity. No boundaries, no beginning, no end. That's what the "present" actually is. The present is just another word for Being. 

Present/ Presence= Being = Infinity

 

All you have to do is realize that the present is not a temporal thing. You have trouble realizing what the present is because you think it's (part of) time.

Time does not exist. But you must take this insight beyond philosophy.

Very good way to explain. There is only what it is, timeless, infinite, bottomless, and it is our mind that sets limits to be able to handle it. If you blur those limits you merge with what is, since you are that

[Someone here]

@Tim R the content of this present is constantly moving and changing.  Isn't time synonymous with change?  

How do you explain memory and past events if there is no time? 

 

 

[lmfao]

You seem to be doing your own good contemplation.

I do wonder why many gurus focus on using the language of "now", "It's always now". Unless there's some conniving backing to it as the teaching of some scientific method, just as how concentration meditation is a method, I don't get it. I leave that leeway because I know I'm ignorant about what meditation is, and what all those methods are. But it's more than that, since it becomes an elaborate philosophy. 

I attempt to pay attention to what is so, looking and trying to understand things. I didn't have to think about time to do that. For whatever reason, "time" as a prompt doesn't work for me. 

[Tim R]

15 minutes ago, Someone here said:

the content of this present is constantly moving and changing. 

 

15 minutes ago, Someone here said:

How do you explain memory and past events if there is no time? 

Now we're getting to the core of the problem. "How does the illusion of time work?" 

Just because there is only the present, that doesn't mean that you can't have memories. Because memories are not something which are the result of the past.

"The past" is the result of memories. And so is the future (future = projection of memories, that's what we call "anticipation"). 

That's the whole trick. We got it backwards you see? We think that memories come out of the past. But they don't. They also come out of the present and create an illusion that something "was". But there never "was" anything. There only is. Everything is always now. 

Inspect your memories. Do they create the sensation of there being a past? or is there a past which creates the memories? 

What you call "past" is memories. Not the other way round (memories being the result of past).

That's the "mechanism" by which the illusion of time is created. And so this is really all you have to understand. How memories fool you into thinking that "the past" creates the present with its memories. 

 

All memories are now. All anticipation is now.

Everything that happens, happens now. Nothing ever "happened" and nothing "will" ever happen. 

Memories are not proof for a past. They are images which come out of now just like everything else. 

 

Tbh I don't know how to explain this any better. It's totally obvious once you got it. Maybe there's someone else here who wants to give it a shot. But ultimately, you really just have to realize that memories are not the result of the past, but that it's the other way round and that that's the whole illusion of "time". 

[Someone here]

44 minutes ago, Tim R said:

 

Now we're getting to the core of the problem. "How does the illusion of time work?" 

Just because there is only the present, that doesn't mean that you can't have memories. Because memories are not something which are the result of the past.

"The past" is the result of memories. And so is the future (future = projection of memories, that's what we call "anticipation"). 

That's the whole trick. We got it backwards you see? We think that memories come out of the past. But they don't. They also come out of the present and create an illusion that something "was". But there never "was" anything. There only is. Everything is always now. 

Inspect your memories. Do they create the sensation of there being a past? or is there a past which creates the memories? 

What you call "past" is memories. Not the other way round (memories being the result of past).

That's the "mechanism" by which the illusion of time is created. And so this is really all you have to understand. How memories fool you into thinking that "the past" creates the present with its memories. 

 

All memories are now. All anticipation is now.

Everything that happens, happens now. Nothing ever "happened" and nothing "will" ever happen. 

Memories are not proof for a past. They are images which come out of now just like everything else. 

 

Tbh I don't know how to explain this any better. It's totally obvious once you got it. Maybe there's someone else here who wants to give it a shot. But ultimately, you really just have to realize that memories are not the result of the past, but that it's the other way round and that that's the whole illusion of "time". 

Nice explanation. I think I agree with you. 

I had the same insight. 

I even wrote about this the following passage in my journal :

 

"This is the only reality. Here and now. I know it's a dead horse at this point. But literally think about this. .. You think this present moment came from a past?. Well if you only bother to look right now and see that you can't find any past here. Except maybe in your skull (thoughts) which is where again? Here lol. You can only find here here and now now. You are not moving from a past to a present. You are creating (imagining) a past in the present and calling it a past. Just a label "past" made of present ofcourse. Every word is precisely what's happening. I'm being infinitely accurate please focus on every single word and validate what I'm saying. You got it completely backwards. The present didn't come from the past. The past is constantly coming from the present. And where did the present come from? No need to speculate. Let's find out. Look and see. Do you find anywhere else but here for here to come from? No. Therefore literally the answer is the present didn't come from anywhere. The present is God. Here didn't come from there. You don't find you will never find a here and a there. It's always ever here. Here didn't come from there. There is always constantly coming out of here not the other ways around. THIS is the beginning of time. Right now this is God saying let there be light. Not even being cute or exaggerating. Something very radical is being said. You don't need to believe me. Look and see if it's true. What exists? Here. What about yesterday? It's here. The big bang? It's here. As a thought. Forget about your entire past and literally try to grasp that now is completely fresh unbelievable godness that has nothing to do with a past or a big bang or gods or Jesus or Leo or this or that. And notice that here didn't come from somewhere because it's all here. Everything you want to know is right under your nose. You are literally nowhere. You are literally just here and that's it. I am that I am?.  But but how do you got here? Where did you get here from? Who told you that you got here from there? Do you find or can you find anywhere else but here for here to come from?. This is the first moment in your life. Yesterday is a thought found today. Always. Every yesterday is always found today and it can't be otherwise. You are stuck in todayness forever. This is the last day of your life. No more days. Just being here in the eternal now. Now in the eternal here. The time is not 6 pm or 6 am anymore. The time is always now. "

[BlackMaze]

It's another thing to understand it conceptually and another thing to understand it by feeling it. To understand it by feeling it's an ego 'death' because there is no more to time to create bullshit. You just are. Time is the material of your fake self. You can go there only with feeling and not with thinking. The feeling of a gap. To really understand this means you are dead. But you will snap out of it eventually. 

[Someone here]

So What I understand is that motion is necessarily a process. It does not exist at any given point in time. It exists ACROSS time.

Existence is always in the NOW... But it marches relentlessly forward. We can't actually stop time to examine [time b], thus, this notion of [time b] is in large part a [concept of something that isn't possible to experience]. It happens so fast that we cannot distinguish between it and the infinitely many instants that exist in the micro second before and after [time b]. If we could observe [time b], however, there would NOT be any motion in that (or any other) frozen moment.

I believe we can see the same basic structure in the notion of [infinity]. Infinity is the idea of [endlessness]. In other words, it is an unending process. If the process ever end, what we have is no longer infinty.

[Godishere]

@Someone here honestly bro, you sound like a real intelligent guy, genuinely. But this is wayyyyyyyyy wayyyyyyy too much conceptualizing. 

Your trying to understand the infinite mind through the finite lens.

Edit. Which is a beautiful thing, but you need to change the lens in which you ask the question

Edited August 20, 2021 by Godishere

[Tim R]

1 hour ago, Someone here said:

But it marches relentlessly forward.

No. That's just saying "time" using other words. 

What do you think is left when you collapse the duality between "something happening" and "nothing happening"? 

[James12345]

On 8/17/2021 at 8:23 PM, Someone here said:

 

I have a really hard time comprehending time, and as a result motion (location changed over a period of time).

I'll watch my hand wave in front of my face (for whatever reason), but really all that I am experiencing at each point in time is the location of my hand NOW, and a memory of where it was before. I never really can see it move - all I have is the vision of it, sitting still at this point, and knowing where it was before.

Motion is something that has changed from time a to time c. But at what time does it move? Is it point b, in between a and c? But look at point b: it itself is still. There is only motion because...and we start over.

Motion doesn't seem to be possible right NOW...we can only "know" it exists or have memories of it. And in reality, it also seems impossible to me.


Another thing about time, is what the smallest "time unit" humans have. If I am engulfed in something, not paying attention to time, only what I am doing, it could be maybe even half a second. Everything happening in that half a second happened at once. The laugh "HA!" all happened at once.

Then if you pay attention, you can consciously realize when you are at the beginning hhh of the HA, and the end aaa of the HA.

But still, a snap is too quick even for paying attention. I can hear no beginning or end - just it. Yet, two clicks can happen within the amount of time a snap takes place, and I can hear both of them.

Maybe the human brain is limited on this, to the point where eventually two clicks could be close enough just to make one. But just pondering the existence of these clicks is really really confusing.

Open your arms and hug the moment ?

[Nahm]

@Someone here

Surely you’ve experienced some kind of sense of time & motion in your dreams, which upon awakening were clearly realized to have been the dream, not actual “time” or “motion”. Given ‘it’ could be called literally anything, why would you suppose the word awakening is by far most often used?

What would it be like if this “now” is actually your dream? If this were the case, all of the thoughts would also not be “thoughts” at all, but your dream. How would you be certain, beyond any possible doubt (another “thought”)?

If there really were time, there’d be no use for clocks. 

If there really were reality, there’d be no use for awakening. 

[Tim R]

2 hours ago, Nahm said:

If there really were time, there’d be no use for clocks. 

If there really were reality, there’d be no use for awakening. 

Holy shit that's good