It is nice to feel the sun in February. It is good to feel the warmth and see the colors. I naturally want to turn and face it. To embrace the moment and be and celebrate the sensory now between the ticks of the clock. To stop and smell the roses and be, in that pause, the all that is both rose and nose, sensor and scent. To be the face on both sides of the Daddy-Laz nose-to-nose-to-nose-to-nose game.
This is perhaps one aspect of the meditative experience. Certainly it is suggested by phrases such as “being in the moment” which often get batted around in new-agey circles. But I think perhaps that this is also a bit of a trap, or at least it’s a pleasant truth might hide another one. A false minimum which is not a destination but only a philosophical rest stop and scenic vista. Snap a picture, breathe the air, stretch your legs, grab a snack and move on again.
The thing about being in the moment is that it puts a lot of emphasis on “the moment”. That delta-function pixel point, the little frame marker that ticks across the bottom of the You-Tube window. And the thing about moments is they are always fleeting. To be in the moment is to be alive, but always dying. The moment passes, the clouds roll in and you step on a small green wooden triangle left upright on the living-room floor. Ouch.
In my more lucid moments I can just about wrap my head around relativity and see time as space, force and movement as geometry. As Ford Prefect told Arthur Dent, “Time is an illusion and lunch time doubly so.” We experience time as a sequence of moments, irrevocably dripping from the past to the future but physics, (at least some physics) seems to suggest that this is at least partially a matter of perspective. The moment is the interaction of the stimulus and the sensor, but even that is not quite true. Like a general behind the lines my news is always late. I am never in the moment but always behind it, and the information is never pure. I experience not the warmth of the sun (or the son) but only the electrochemistry of the wetware connecting sensors to sentience. And who or what, pray tell, is the I-I that is receiving these messages transmitted through meat and cabling and imagining a world full of sunshine?
In my really lucid moments I can hold these ideas and get a sense of the path as a whole. Of life not as a series of discrete nows but as a 4D holism. A shape without hard edges, but which, while seeming coherent in the middle, is interwoven with the rest of creation like roots in soil. If I concentrate, method actor me can experience June sun in February and February sun in June. If I pay attention, I am not a creature falling through moments, but a me made of moments. The timeless thus of all the nows. This at least is a sort of description of the incomplete glimmer I get of Big Mind like a tesseract shadow projected down to flatland and uploaded to memeland and propagating now inside your own self dear reader.
Nice day for it.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Metaphysical Flywheel (A Clockwork Marmalade?)
Inevitably, I find that my metaphorical imagery is full of physics. It is only natural, I suppose, given the amount of time that I inhabit that noospace. I suppose it might seem kinda nerdy, or perhaps even sterile depending on the context. Regardless, it is what comes naturally to me, and so there it is.
I suspect it’s not even that uncommon a phenomenon. I dimly recall discussing the dynamics (thermodynamics?) of the “dating” environment with Tara freshman year using a chemistry metaphor. (As I recall, increased environmental pressure and “the ratio” tended to lead to distorted equilibria. And there was something about electronegativity, though the specifics escape me now.) In any case, the point remains: we use the metaphorical structures that come readily to mind, and inevitably those structures are well populated by the language and ideas of our everyday experience.
Thus I tend to use physics metaphors to describe lots of things. Apologies.
Now, as a massive particle I have become keenly aware of inertia of late. Indeed, I seem to battle it on a daily basis. My own mostly. I’ve found it takes a lot of effort to get things rolling, particularly in my head. My headspace has been rather swampy lately: difficult to traverse, far too full of undergrowth and liable to be full of unpleasant smells, quicksand, or alligators. (Not all of my metaphors are physics, apparently.)
Getting things moving in this quagmire has been a difficult task of late, though once I build up some steam, then I can get some things accomplished. On the other hand, I usually get distracted and derailed pretty quickly. Indeed, my life is pretty much divided up into lots of little chunks most of the time. (Thank you academia). So this is perhaps something of a problem. What I need here is a sort of flywheel of the mind. A way to store momentum when I get distracted so that I can get a bit of a rolling start.
Unfortunately, this is where the momentum metaphor seems to break down. The cool flow of samadhi, the laser focus of being “in the zone,” it’s not really about movement. At least not in the Newtonian sense. It’s a gestalt. It’s an eigenstate, or perhaps even an ensemble. A clockwork jammed can sometimes be relieved by a short, sharp shock. But a frazzled self may need more than a boot to the head.
I am out of balance.
The feeling is all too familiar. The fear lurks below the surface of consciousness, a leviathan below mist covered waters. I react too much. I respond too little. I pinball from to to fro without a plan or a clue, and the razor cut of sorrow and regret comes all too easily.
I need centering.
I’ve been here before. There are methods, paths, a way perhaps. But I worry about the cost and second guess the diagnosis. Is this just a selfish desire? A homesick yearning to return to a soothing distraction? Is it selfish to take the time to find an anchor when the storm is raging in all directions and there is water on the deck and in the hold? Is this a luxury I can afford?
Entirely too much Synchronicity II. Time to change the tune I think.
I suspect it’s not even that uncommon a phenomenon. I dimly recall discussing the dynamics (thermodynamics?) of the “dating” environment with Tara freshman year using a chemistry metaphor. (As I recall, increased environmental pressure and “the ratio” tended to lead to distorted equilibria. And there was something about electronegativity, though the specifics escape me now.) In any case, the point remains: we use the metaphorical structures that come readily to mind, and inevitably those structures are well populated by the language and ideas of our everyday experience.
Thus I tend to use physics metaphors to describe lots of things. Apologies.
Now, as a massive particle I have become keenly aware of inertia of late. Indeed, I seem to battle it on a daily basis. My own mostly. I’ve found it takes a lot of effort to get things rolling, particularly in my head. My headspace has been rather swampy lately: difficult to traverse, far too full of undergrowth and liable to be full of unpleasant smells, quicksand, or alligators. (Not all of my metaphors are physics, apparently.)
Getting things moving in this quagmire has been a difficult task of late, though once I build up some steam, then I can get some things accomplished. On the other hand, I usually get distracted and derailed pretty quickly. Indeed, my life is pretty much divided up into lots of little chunks most of the time. (Thank you academia). So this is perhaps something of a problem. What I need here is a sort of flywheel of the mind. A way to store momentum when I get distracted so that I can get a bit of a rolling start.
Unfortunately, this is where the momentum metaphor seems to break down. The cool flow of samadhi, the laser focus of being “in the zone,” it’s not really about movement. At least not in the Newtonian sense. It’s a gestalt. It’s an eigenstate, or perhaps even an ensemble. A clockwork jammed can sometimes be relieved by a short, sharp shock. But a frazzled self may need more than a boot to the head.
I am out of balance.
The feeling is all too familiar. The fear lurks below the surface of consciousness, a leviathan below mist covered waters. I react too much. I respond too little. I pinball from to to fro without a plan or a clue, and the razor cut of sorrow and regret comes all too easily.
I need centering.
I’ve been here before. There are methods, paths, a way perhaps. But I worry about the cost and second guess the diagnosis. Is this just a selfish desire? A homesick yearning to return to a soothing distraction? Is it selfish to take the time to find an anchor when the storm is raging in all directions and there is water on the deck and in the hold? Is this a luxury I can afford?
Entirely too much Synchronicity II. Time to change the tune I think.
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