I agree that all we have is Now

I respectfully disagree that time was "invented" by man, but respect that opinion, having heard it before

http://www.wimp.com/spacetime/

When I see we have to give time, time, it brings to mind a few things:

One: Suzuki Roshi said Patience is learning to be happy with what we have now rather then waiting for something to change, Patience is learning to have a constancy

Two: "time" as it relates to "how much time do you have sober" I only have 2 years right now, when I "should" have 20 years according to my ego. This causes me distress, I am embarrassed to go home and get a chip when everyone I know has 20 years, and even all my old sponsees are all in their double digits

This was handled best by my friend walking Don at a VERY large "chip" meeting, maybe 300 people were there, he was picking up his 33 year chip and his friend was picking up his 35 year chip, as his friend picked up his chip he bellowed "I'd have more time then you if I didn't drink"

The room fell apart laughing, as it made us all realize the ridiculousness of our attachment to our "time"

All we were searching for in the bottle was a "timeless time" or in other words, a spiritual experience, the steps teach us how to have that experience without drinking.

As Tom Robbins puts it:

The most intense spiritual experiences all seem to involve the suspension of time. It is the feeling of being outside of time, of being timeless, that is the source of ecstasy in meditation, chanting, hypnosis, and psychedelic drug experiences. Although it is briefer and less lucid, a timeless, egoless state (the ego exists in time, not space) is achieved in sexual orgasm, which is precisely why orgasm feels so good. Even drunks, in their crude, inadequate way, are searching for the timeless time. Alcoholism is an imperfect spiritual longing.

In a hundred different ways, we have mastered the art of space. We know a great deal about space. Yet we know pitifully little about time. It seems that only in the mystic state do we master it. The "smell brain", the memory area of the brain activated by the olfactory nerve, and the "light brain, "the neocortex," are the keys to the mystic state. With immediacy and intensity, smell activates memory, allowing our minds to travel freely in time. The most profound mystical states are ones in which normal mental activity seems suspended in light. In mystic illumination, as at the speed of light, time ceases to exist.

Flowers do not see, hear, taste, or touch, but they react to light in a crucial manner, and they direct their lives and their environment through an orchestration of aroma.

With an increased floral consciousness, humans will begin to make full use of their "light brain" and to make more refined and sophisticated use of their "smell brain." The two are portentously linked. In fact, they overlap to such an extent that they may be considered inseparable.

We live now in an information technology. Flowers have always lived in an information technology. Flowers gather information all day. At night, they process it. This is called photosynthesis.

As our neocortex comes into full use, we, too, will practice a kind of photosynthesis. As a matter of fact, we already do, but compared to the flowers, our kind is primitive and limited.

For one thing, information gathered from daily newspapers, soap operas, sales conferences, and coffee klatches is inferior to information gathered from sunlight. (Since all matter is condensed light, light is the source, the cause of life. Therefore, light is divine. The flowers have a direct line to God that an evangelist would kill for.)

When Western artists wished to demonstrate that a person was holy, they painted a ring of light around the divine one's head. Eastern artists painted a more diffused aura. The message was the same. The aura or the halo signified that the light was on in the subject's brain. The neocortex was fully operative.


The twelve steps just happens to be an extremely fast and effective way to access this power greater then ourselves, to allow us to experience this "timeless time" we were looking for by drinking, and I make no mistake, it IS a Power greater then ourselves, I have seen too many external things fall into place and external seemingly unrelated miracles take place as a result of working the 12 steps.

I have seen people at meetings with "their lights on" even with as little time as a year or two, for some reason their lives just seem to get better and better as they abandon themselves to the steps, outside things falling into place like the old cartoons of the drunk mouse staggering through the clock, or Charlie Chaplin in "City Lights"

At some point with me the line blurred between scientific and "Spiritual", every spiritual program or philosophy tries to teach us to live in the here and now, even AA with it's "one day at a time" philosophy teaches us to live in the now.

When I read The Tao Te Ching, or The Big Book I am not reading some esoteric nonsense written to be confusing and to prove this guy was smarter then everyone else, I am reading observations made by a man who was "in tune" with the natural world and trying to explain it to others, and it all starts with learning how to live in the now rather then the future (fear) or past (resentment)


I should stop now, time and space gets me chatty

-- Edited by AGO on Wednesday 3rd of March 2010 12:33:43 AM

-- Edited by AGO on Wednesday 3rd of March 2010 12:38:19 AM

StPeteDean wrote:

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AGO wrote:

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I agree that all we have is Now

I respectfully disagree that time was "invented" by man, but respect that opinion, having heard it before

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that was all very nice, but  your post didn't prove your point, if anything you proved mine, if it was my point.  If the observance of time is not manmade, then why does our calendar (or the chinese calendar) not begin at the beginning of the universe (or the beginning of the Earth), but rather sometime after made got here?

 

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Beg Pardon, I wasn't trying to prove or disprove anything, I said I didn't agree with your assertion, and then I moved on and discussed different things, I didn't say you were wrong, I said I didn't agree with you, sorry if I gave that impression

I suspect the calender doesn't begin at the beginning of time since no one was here to see it, I mean we as a species didn't even come up with the concept of zero until 300 years after Christ.  Every Calender had a different starting point according to the civilization, from the Mayan Calenders, to the Chinese, to the western, usually the Birth or death or ascension of a ruler. We weren't able to set a beginning on time like we were able to do with temperature, with absolute zero as opposed to the zero in farenheit until recently, the advent of Carbon Dating began to give us a better idea of our place in time.

If I were try to assert the existence of time, it would look something like this:

I personally believe in "Science", so what does science say about this "Time" idea. Well, the history of the Universe is a history of motion. it says about 15 billion years ago it began this one of it's many lives when there was this thing called "The Big Bang" which wasn't really a bang at all, but was an expansion so big, and so fast we could never even begin to understand it, or even imagine it.

The Big Bang expansion happened from a point called a singularity that was almost infinitely hot and infinitely dense and yet occupied no time or space as we know space and time.

This point was a boiling point of light energy and for some reason it suddenly expanded, and from light, all the particles, and all the atoms came to exist, along with space and time. So light gave every particle at the beginning of the Universe that set of characteristics known as "The Tendency Towards Complexity".

From the first seconds, even the first nanoseconds, the Universe was like a rich soup that wasn't even formed in atoms yet. Then these tiny things began to come together to make atoms, which in turn made molecules. As the Universe expanded and cooled, these things came together and made stars. The first stars went through their cycles, and exploded in a shower of yet new atoms, those new atoms came together to make more stars and planets.

So none of these things, these "coming together" things, are what could truly be described as "random", the universe has a "nature" (here we are back at the beginning) which is to combine, in more and more complex ways, to keep building itself, and get more and yet even more, complex. Scientists call this tendency the "tendency towards complexity" and it is the way the universe works.

So, to continue, the universe has been getting more and more complex since time began, it does this because this is it's nature. The tendency towards complexity has carried the universe from perfect and utter simplicity to the kind of complexity we see all around us at this present moment, to all the life we see, the plants, the micro-organisms to the macro, such as ourselves, to the Whales. The Universe is always doing this, has always done this, move from the simple to the complex.

This takes time, it didn't all happen in an instant.

At this point we arrive at the "now" where Einstein discovered the theory of relativity, that time appears to slow the faster one goes, stopping at the speed of light or:

Why does time change?

Ever feel like time moves very quickly and sometimes very slowly? Like how the hours fly by when you're hanging out with a close friend, or how seconds drag on endlessly when you're stuck in traffic on a hot day? But you can't actually speed time up or slow it downit always flows at the same rate, right?

Albert Einstein didn't think so. His idea was that, theoretically, the closer we come to traveling at the speed of light (186,000 miles per second), the more time would appear to slow down for us from the perspective of someone who, in relation to us, was not moving. He called the slowing of time due to motion time dilation.

Imagine you're standing on Earth holding a clock. Your friend is in a rocket zooming past you at nearly 186,000 miles per second. Your friend is also holding a clock. If you could see your friend's clock, you'd notice that it seems to be moving a lot more slowly than yours. Your friend, on the other hand, thinks the clock in the rocket is moving just fine, while your clock on the ground seems to be moving very fast. Sound confusing? Well, remember, it took Einstein years to figure this out, and he was pretty smart

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/einstein/hotsciencetwin/

Time dilation is a phenomenon (or two phenomena, as mentioned below) described by the theory of relativity. It can be illustrated by supposing that two observers are in motion relative to each other, and/or differently situated with regard to nearby gravitational masses. They each carry a clock of identically similar construction and function. Then, the point of view of each observer will generally be that the other observer's clock is in error (has changed its rate).

There are two kinds of time dilation, and both can operate together.

In Albert Einstein's theories of relativity, time dilation in these two circumstances can be summarized:

• In special relativity (or, hypothetically far from all gravitational mass), clocks that are moving with respect to an inertial system of observation are measured to be running slower. This effect is described precisely by the Lorentz transformation.

• In general relativity, clocks at lower potentials in a gravitational field such as in closer proximity to a planet are found to be running slower. The articles gravitational time dilation and gravitational red shift give a more detailed discussion. Special and general relatistic effects can combine, for example in some time-scale applications mentioned below.

Thus, in special relativity, the time dilation effect is reciprocal: as observed from the point of view of either of two clocks which are in motion with respect to each other, it will be the other clock that is time dilated. (This presumes that the relative motion of both parties is uniform; that is, they do not accelerate with respect to one another during the course of the observations.)

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation

So if time changes it's rate depending on the speed you are traveling to something else, it seems "objective", it seems to exist outside of our delusional mind, thus I didn't think man invented it.

 

-- Edited by AGO on Wednesday 3rd of March 2010 07:21:40 AM

Didnt get sick and insane in a few days..

Not going to get unsick and sane in a few days. :)

Well, my mantra used to be:

"Time is a waste of life, life is a waste of time ... so let's all get wasted and have the time of our life!"

AGO wrote:

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StPeteDean wrote:

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AGO wrote:

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I agree that all we have is Now

I respectfully disagree that time was "invented" by man, but respect that opinion, having heard it before

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that was all very nice, but  your post didn't prove your point, if anything you proved mine, if it was my point.  If the observance of time is not manmade, then why does our calendar (or the chinese calendar) not begin at the beginning of the universe (or the beginning of the Earth), but rather sometime after made got here?

 

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Beg Pardon, I wasn't trying to prove or disprove anything, I said I didn't agree with your assertion, and then I moved on and discussed different things, I didn't say you were wrong, I said I didn't agree with you, sorry if I gave that impression

 

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Fair enough.  I'm will Bill about time being merely a tool to locate objects, do math, and to help comprehend past and future events.  The universe doesn't care about time, neither do plants and animals.  Our biggest problem, as alcoholics, with time is the associated expectations attached to it. 

 

-- Edited by StPeteDean on Wednesday 3rd of March 2010 04:05:15 PM

StPeteDean wrote:

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Fair enough.  I'm will Bill about time being merely a tool to locate objects, do math, and to help comprehend past and future events.  The universe doesn't care about time, neither do plants and animals.  Our biggest problem, as alcoholics, with time is the associated expectations attached to it. 

 

-- Edited by StPeteDean on Wednesday 3rd of March 2010 04:05:15 PM

 

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Absolutely agree with you

Time, Space and Physics is a bit of a hobby of mine, so when I went off it was just chittering

I am of the opinion, that we can have different experiences and different opinions yet exist harmoniously, that because you think "this" and I think "that" it doesn't make one of us wrong, it makes both of us learn, both experiences are valid, I just need to be careful to express that sentiment more clearly in the future, beg pardon if I stepped on your toes

 

No not really, that begins to get a bit star trekky, reality is plenty weird enough for me

What I like looking for is similarities between ancient religions/philosophies and modern physics specifically

Such as:

The Big Bang Theory and The Book of Genesis:

Fiat Lux :

"Let there be light" is an English translation of the Hebrew (yehiy 'or). Other translations of the same phrase include the Latin phrase fiat lux, and the Greek phrase (or gentht phs). The phrase is often used for its metaphorical meaning of dispelling ignorance.

The phrase comes from the third verse of the Book of Genesis in the King James Bible:

1:1 - In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
1:2 - And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
1:3 - And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
1:4 - And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

That sounds exactly like the theories of the Big Bang I have read

and

Nature has laws, strangely enough called natural laws, things like how light and matter behave, such as gravity, there are a few ways to try to explain them, such as math, another is religion or philosophy. It is no accident that the ancient texts such as The Tao Te Ching in trying to explain the universe read exactly like a modern physics textbook.

Consider, we exist in three dimensions, if we were to take a point, and put a sphere on it and extend outwards from every direction on that sphere, after an infinite direction on each point, put another sphere and repeat the process, it would still be able to extend an infinite length, and that's just in 3 dimensions, if we add time to that equation, and picture time as a number line, with a dot labeled "now" at the zero point, and take that point outwards in three dimensions, "now" is infinite, just this single moment is infinite in space, then if we consider it going into the past into infinity, and into the future into infinity, with all of those "nows" being infinite, we live in infinity cubed to the nth degree, we can go forward or backwards in time or any direction in space, and it's infinite.

We are like tiny pinpoints of consciousness existing if you will in a limitless Mansion, but we can only see through a pinpoint of light a tiny corner of one of the "rooms" at one time among the limitless possibilities and infinite rooms of this mansion.

At The subatomic level, particles themselves wink in and out of existence based solely on our intention to observe them. That gives new meaning to the old zen koan about a tree falling in the woods.

So what new incredible advancements in Science and Physics have we made lately with our supermodern technology?

Well, entanglement theory for one, Subatomic research has now proven categorically that all matter is interconnected in a single unified mesh, in a sort of Universal oneness.

BUZZZZZ

That is the basic core of most primeval beliefs, Dharmakaya, The Tao, Brahman, as a matter of fact man's oldest spiritual quest was to perceive his own entanglement, to sense his interconnections with all things. To this day Christians and Jews seek at-one-ment, although most forget that it is at-one-ment they are looking for.

What about Polarity, the positive/negative balance of the subatomic realm.

Too many examples to name, but the "duel world" described by Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita written over 2000 years ago as well as the Kybelian talk about Binary systems and the opposing forces in nature, I'll leave the Bible out because it's too easy.

What about the Heisenberg uncertainty principal which states that certain pairs of physical properties, like position and momentum, cannot both be known to arbitrary precision. That is, the more precisely one property is known, the less precisely the other can be known. This statement has been interpreted in two different ways. According to Heisenberg its meaning is that it is impossible to determine simultaneously both the position and velocity of an electron or any other particle with any great degree of accuracy or certainty.

Heisenberg studied the sacred Hindu Vedantic scriptures known as the Upanishads and credited their writings for helping him formulate this theory.

What about cutting edge theoretical physics like Superstring theory and multidimensional cosmological models which state the universe is not made up of one, but ten dimensions?

a swing and a miss

There is a thirteenth century translation of the original medieval Aramaic that describes exactly the same universe just discovered by modern superstring theory, a ten dimensional universe of resonating strings and how six of the dimensions are entangled as one.

So I like looking for similarities between Science and Spirituality, there are quite a few actually, like Einstein said, Science itself seems to prove the existence of God rather then otherwise.

a few of his quotes illustrate what I mean:

A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty - it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man. (Albert Einstein)

A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. The true value of a human being is determined by the measure and the sense in which they have obtained liberation from the self. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive. (Albert Einstein, 1954)

The most beautiful and most profound experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms - this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness.
( Albert Einstein - The Merging of Spirit and Science)

Now our concepts of God are deeply personal, and inviolate in AA, please understand this is just the way I seek mine, by no means am I trying to influence or argue with anyone else's concept, this is just mine and I honor and respect ALL concepts of God as we understand him and the right to have that

Hey Ago, I copy pasted a segment of your post into google to see if you lifted it from somewhere and indeed you did. lol. You lifted it from a previous post of yours, on another message board, not that there's anything wrong with that, I was just wondering how you could compose and type such a complicated subject so quickly. I spend a lot of time composing posts and I was impressed. Cool board this other one.

http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/secular-12-step-recovery/194217-down-rabbit-hole-secular-recovery.html

I found it in the book "my mind is out to get me"

Hey Gang,, wasn't there a song ;IF I COULD PUT TIME IN A BOTTLE!!  I think I did,about 25 years!!!       :)    :)

AGO wrote:

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As Tom Robbins puts it:

Alcoholism is an imperfect spiritual longing.

Yup.

When I was in my first month I had loaned Jitterbug Perfume to a friend and he pointed that line out to me and it made perfect, light-bulb-moment sense. I had been trying to fill a God-shaped hole with everything BUT spirituality so, as a logical and reasonable person I came to the steadfast and sound conclusion that if I were to deal with my alcoholism I would need to satisfy the spiritual void.

Hence an agnostic Came To Believe........

Peace,
Rob

I am reminded of a conversation I had a long time ago about filling a void with something.  It planted the seed of thought that I was doing that with alcohol.

I love the conversation here.  It's the type of dialogue I hoped to have when I first went to college, and instead spent it at parties and bars in chugging contests.

I was hoping to see an interest in parallel existence.  This idea has fascinated me in the past, but ending up thinking more about the drink in my hand.   Recovery holds the kernels of possibilities, so exciting.

Thanks,
Angela

AGO wrote:
"No not really, that begins to get a bit star trekky, reality is plenty weird enough for me"...

LOL Hey now, I LOVE Star Trek!!!! =0) I have time and again asked the boss of our practice to, instead of buying us matching scrubs, please get us Star Trek uniforms, as there is some similarity, save for the cool boots versus crocks or tennis shoes.

About time and AA......

I have, over the past 2 and a half years, sompletely stopped thinking about length of time in my sobriety. In fact, it was not until it had gotten to about 11 months (again) that I realized I was coming up on a year again. It all seemed to make sense for me this time in recovery, as I had focused TOO MUCH on my amount of time before, and that focus made me think at some point that I did not need "as much help" as I first did. Wrong.

I am totally excited when the newcomer stands up and gets his/her chip, or when others celebrate milestones of sobriety. I totally support and applaud and celebrate that.

But for me, and my checkered past with recovery, it was necessary for me to "forget" and just humbly appreciate a DAY of being still sober. Just a little exercise, or lack of one, that I have adopted for my own sanity, and my own continued recognized need for help every day, no matter if it is day 1 or day 5,000. For me, the concept of a year in AA is simply a "full cycle of drinking holidays where I did not drink". (LOL) For some of us, Humility is harder to find than for others.
;o)

Joni

jonijoni1 wrote:

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P.S. Tom Robbins rocks!! I have just begun reading some Kurt Vonnegut books over again, as I first started reading most of his and Robbins' stuff back in highschool or shortly thereafter (over 20 years ago). Thanks for the reminder, I am going to grab some Robbins books next time I am near the bookstore!!!

Joni

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Vonnegut Rocks

Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before... He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way.

 

jonijoni1 wrote:

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LOL Breakfast of Champions?....

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Cat's Cradle