When I was younger, I didn’t know for a fact that time was relative, but understood it intuitively. I would always think about how fast time would move for me when I was sick v.s. sleeping. How in one case an hour could feel like a week and the other an hour could feel like seconds. Then I would wonder about other people and their relative experience of time. Obviously everyone couldn’t experience time in the same way, so I would think about where people would be in time, based on their experiences. If I was in recess while a friend in detention, I would reason that their present moment is different from mine. In these cases it would be pretty obvious to me that they were in a different place in time from me entirely, possibly a few hours behind my time. If someone wasn’t even in the same moment as me, how could I have any chance to interact or connect with them. Think about people who have experienced something like war, with all of its atrocities and horror. Could someone from the civil war still be experiencing time, even though as far as I am concerned they are long dead? According to physics, depending on the velocity of one object relative to another, time doesn’t necessarily work linearly. To an object moving away from Earth at the speed of light, I could have been writing this before the pyramids of Giza were built 1.
A few days ago I was talking about this idea with some friends, and one of them said “The closer you are to the present, the easier it is to vibe with somebody.” I was blown away. Time is a phenomenon more complex than I can imagine, but there is one reality which everyone shares regardless of anything else. What can cause people to be stranded in the past or future is linked to their experiences and personal constitution. People who are stuck in the past and future fail to take advantage of the present because they do not realize where they actually are.
Humans can be categorized into two sections, mind and body. To the person truly living life, this is one integrated whole. To the people who is stuck in their bodies, immediate survival and instinct is all they can experience, often times missing out on the rational, logical side of life. Vince Staples has a line in his song “Senorita”2 where he says “we stuck in the moment” referring to the people in his dangerous neighborhood. People who have not had their physical well being endangered don’t know what it is like to have an unbreakable bond with the present moment. Because of this static nature, they lose what supposedly separates humans from other animals, the ability to project themselves into the future and past to plan and learn from mistakes. This state is ruled by instinct. If somebody approaches you in a way you have learned means danger, you can’t help but respond in a way that means don’t fuck with me. When I first got to Emory, I was sizing up everyone I saw and kept the ice behind my eyes even though I logically knew no one would try to rob or fight me. It took me at least a year to re-learn how to smile while walking in a busy place. Imagine people who live in environments with frequent shootings, stabbings, fights, domestic abuse, or in the worst case, and active war zone. While reading the book “City of Thieves3,” the author does a great job showing how immediate concerns make future concerns momentarily inconsequential.
To the person who lives only in their heads, there is a whole separate set of concerns and worries. Many of the people reading this post are probably stuck in their heads and can not imagine having a controlled, quiet mind. While being stuck in the head, you create realities for your body to respond to. If you slip and fall on the street, you could go on an entire negative spiral and end up thinking you are worthless and stupid. If a person you meet says something that you find rude or hurtful, you can create an entire backstory of why they dislike you, how it is validated, and question everything that you have planned for the rest of the week. Being stuck in the mind creates a life that is never in the moment. You regard reality with a filter of past or future mental images instead of for what it really is. This creates major gaps in communication because everyone brings their own baggage to any given situation. To one person, a book could have been life changing and another couldn’t bring themselves to read past the first chapter. People’s reaction to anything is more a comment on their relationship to themselves, not to the object of their reaction.
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This is one of the main problems of religions. They become academic and the experiential component is lost. Instead of experiencing the truth in the scriptures for themselves, they read it and recite it and claim to know it. “Love thy neighbor as yourself.” Until I started my journey, I had no idea what that meant. The meaning and ramifications of karma were lost to me through reading alone. I had met people all through my life who could tell you that being humble was so important and then tell you exactly how humble they are (it’s usually more than you). Once I had my own personal experience with these concepts and their deeper significance, I came to understand and embody them as never before. Only then can I claim the little bit that I know. I believe that every religion points to a deeper truth about reality, but religions are not necessary to find this truth. This deeper truth is located within the body with steady control of the mind. WIthout a tame mind, it would be impossible to find the discipline to follow “the path.” Without an inhabited body, it is impossible to experience the truth for yourself.
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| Experience Truth for yourself |
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Autobiography of a yogi- Yogananda: https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0876120796/ref=sr_1_1_olp?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1493908505&sr=1-1&keywords=autobiography+of+a+yogi
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