Now

In the last entry I stated that, in seeking some experience of release from time, some people pursue a discipline of being in the now.  I suspect that many of you reading this may know from your own experience what I'm talking about.

For the sake of this discussion, let's say that there are and have been 2 kinds of human cultures throughout our existence as a cultural species:  cultures of time and cultures of place.  At length I've spoken about our culture, a culture whose cornerstone is that concept we call history:  we (our civilization) has a clear and demonstrable beginning point, followed by a series of events, leading toward some indeterminate, but inevitable end (You can't have a beginning without an end.  One is a priori of the other.).

Because our culture (and thus ourselves, to the extent we have not questioned the beliefs and assumptions held deeply within our own psyches) is defined by time (see yesterday's posting), we are ever and always either moving away from the past or toward the future, both of which do not really exist.  They are simply concepts we accept as reality.  The past is some other now brought into the now via memory.  The future does not and can never exist, it is a series of thoughts and emotions about what might be.  There is, in fact, always and only now.

Inevitably, then, our culture can only acknowledge and experience now as a series of nows leading from one to the next, so that experientially we are never now.  We're never here (now), because we're always either coming from someplace or going to someplace.

Oops, I gave myself away.  Look at how easy it was in the last paragraph for me to move from now to here.  I wonder if it was just a seamless for you, the reader, to go right along with me.  Note how easy it is for us to equate time with place:  I was there then; I'm here now; I'll be someplace else later.  What we've done as a culture is re-place place with time.  What is a priori there?

Place always and everywhere simply is.  Time never is:  what time is it?  8:30, I mean, 8:31, no, 8:32.  Someone invented these minute time measurers, like the atomic clock to try and bridge this cultural paradox of time taking precedence over place.  Perhaps if we can get our measurement of time to be smaller and smaller and smaller, we may finally be able to get here the instant something simply is (read now).

If you are now, you are here.  Now and here are the same.  Being a people of place rather than a people of time means that one is probably in that experiential state of being congruous with all that is around you.  I am now and so is everything else.  There isn't anything else.  This is it.  Even my thoughts about the past and the future are now.  I am inseparable from now, which means I am inseparable from place, from here.

We (our culture) cannot have a true relationship with place (where we are) because we cannot ever be here.  If we cannot have a relationship with here and now, how can we ever know that experience of belonging?  We are always getting somewhere, someplace, sometime (not very precise, is it?).  We can never be home.  No wonder our religions must include the existence of some place out of time beyond when our time is done (death) so we can finally be home.

If I can never know that this is home, why would I care about it.  I'm just stuck here for a time until I can get to where I'm really going...over yonder.  This place doesn't really matter because it's not real to me.  It is only a means to get me over there.