The good lady of the house has been discussing the notion of 'presence' with her friend. (Why she can't just talk shopping and hairstyles.......... ?) They were musing on 'context', and the present moment set in linear time.
Let me explain:
Let's say that you are going through old papers, selling things that you have owned for a long time or having a clear out of accumulated 'stuff'. Will the experience of the present moment, doing each of these activities, be different from... say.... creating a new garden or furnishing a new home or choosing a new car? The former list could be framed in terms of 'dealing with the past', whereas the latter could be thought of as 'creating the future'.
Her question was: when doing the doing, does the fact that it might be contextualised as either past or future focused, actually impact upon the experience of the moment of doing?
Now there is some research that suggests that humans can't envision the future without being able to access the memories from their past. If this is so, then notions of past and future are connected in the brain. So where is the present? Is it lost, somehow, between the past and future? I have also heard told, that the whole idea of linear time is a human construct involving a miss-recognition of consciousness. Also, that neither the past nor the future exist at all; that humans live only in the present but are not 'conscious' of it, living 'as if in a dream'. (Try Eckhart Tolle)
So there you have it. The future/past, thing isn't important. Only the present moment can be experienced and that is all there is. The problem for humans is that you are rarely 'there' to appreciate it! (See interesting discussion.)
Deep for me, or what!!
I'll be tackling Cosmology and The Second Law of Thermodynamics next.
Let me explain:
Let's say that you are going through old papers, selling things that you have owned for a long time or having a clear out of accumulated 'stuff'. Will the experience of the present moment, doing each of these activities, be different from... say.... creating a new garden or furnishing a new home or choosing a new car? The former list could be framed in terms of 'dealing with the past', whereas the latter could be thought of as 'creating the future'.
Her question was: when doing the doing, does the fact that it might be contextualised as either past or future focused, actually impact upon the experience of the moment of doing?
Now there is some research that suggests that humans can't envision the future without being able to access the memories from their past. If this is so, then notions of past and future are connected in the brain. So where is the present? Is it lost, somehow, between the past and future? I have also heard told, that the whole idea of linear time is a human construct involving a miss-recognition of consciousness. Also, that neither the past nor the future exist at all; that humans live only in the present but are not 'conscious' of it, living 'as if in a dream'. (Try Eckhart Tolle)
So there you have it. The future/past, thing isn't important. Only the present moment can be experienced and that is all there is. The problem for humans is that you are rarely 'there' to appreciate it! (See interesting discussion.)
Deep for me, or what!!
I'll be tackling Cosmology and The Second Law of Thermodynamics next.
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