The Meaning of Time

What attracts me to Chinese Medicine?

I have a deep and probing curiosity for holistic healing and understanding the mysteries of the universe as they pertain to the microcosm of the human body and mind. I have been fascinated by and practicing various forms of Eastern mysticism for awhile- more along the lines of Hindu and Tibetan Buddhist lineages- though Taoism was the first Eastern philosophy that caught my attention in my early 20s. I felt great wisdom in the simple poetic wisdom of the Tao Te Ching along with its connection to the natural world and elements. Also- I have had a private healing practice for awhile doing massage, pranic and crystal healing, but I would like to get certified in a modality that would allow me to have my own clinic, temple, or retreat center. I am currently raising funds to build a Native American church, retreat, and living facilities on Native American land in the Sonoran desert outside of Tucson, shared with me by my tantric Buddhist teacher.

What do I honestly think of Physics, really?

I think Newtonian physics probably needs an update, or maybe even an overhaul (I don’t know enough about it to really say), but I think Quantum Physics offers the keys to Western science explaining many of the seemingly inexplicable phenomena which mystics have known or practiced for awhile now.

I think in the past, mysticism has explained things science couldn’t touch, but I think that  we have a chance now to bridge the empiricism of the West with the wisdom of the East.

Quantum physics confirms many philosophical findings of Eastern mysticism: the effect of thought to change probabilities of the future and to influence matter, Emptiness (a Buddhist concept) as the interrelation between all phenomena and the space between sub-atomic particles. The actual sub-atomic particles that compose a human body fit on the head of a pin, meaning most matter is actually empty.

Have I ever experienced time “slowing down” or “speeding up?”

Once, when I was younger and home alone, someone broke into my dad’s apartment. While I was on the phone with 911, I saw my whole life flash before my eyes. In that instance, time seemed to speed up and re-play itself. Another instance of catastrophe warping my perception of time is when I crashed my car. It definitely felt as though time slowed down from the moment I lost control of the car to when it flipped over two times and landed upside down. It also felt like angels or some transcendental force took over the car. Miraculously, I walked away from that accident without a scratch, having crawled out the window of an upside down car that flipped over two times on a freeway in Los Angeles.

On a lighter note, I have had many experiences of time being transcended during meditation and especially Sufi spinning. When I spin, I feel like I enter a meditative space that is beyond time. This space of no-time could be called spiritual atemporality, where time does not seem to exist at all. I feel this kind of atemporality regarding karma accrued in past lives as well, where there is no karmic difference between the past and the present. For instance, during one of my staring meditations in the mirror, I was able to see a past life of mine and was given messages from Spirit regarding how that past life was affecting me in this lifetime. I was experiencing some of the negative repercussions of my past actions that were affecting me now, hundreds of years later. Through the disciplined chanting of a 100-syllable Tibetan Buddhist Vajrasattva mantra, I have been able to successfully burn through much of my karma. In the process of doing this chant, the negative feelings associated with past wrong-doing come back to me and I must experience them, feel remorse, and chant through it while visualizing Vajrasattva and his consort above me. Through this process, the cycle of cause and effect haults and past karma is cleared. The past has no more control over me and I do not attract the same things I was attracting when there were certain unconscious negative karmic causes involved.

My Thoughts regarding the 1^st Week of Class

I think it’s fascinating how the perception of time can differ so vastly depending on one’s Frame of Reference. I wonder then- how certain extraterrestrial civilizations perceive time as passing on Earth, and how that differs from our perception of time here.

I also reflected on the model of the hour glass and how our perception of time is speeding up as we head towards 2012. At the top of the hour glass, our sense of time is expanded. This correlates to the feeling of time in pre-industrial agrarian societies, where the effect of being in touch with the Earth gave one a sense of expanded time. Even 15 years ago, humanity by and large felt like there was more time in the day. I heard one figure a scientist had given about 5 years ago that 16 hours in a day then (5 years ago) was equivalent to what 24 hours was 10 years before that. According to the Mayans, the dimensional shift that is happening on Earth is speeding up our perception of time. By December 21^st 2012, we will be in the cinched part of the middle of the hour glass. After the crunch (and whatever strange phenomena occur during that time), our perception of time will start to unravel again as the hour glass expands on the bottom and we feel as though we are getting more time in the day again. The Mayans say that time isn’t actually speeding up, but that creation is speeding up, which is causing us to feel like time is actually shrinking. I notice this in my own life because 10 years ago, I only needed 8 hours of sleep to feel rested. Now I need about 10 hours to feel rested. I am often surprised at how much time has passed when I look at the clock and feel as though that much time couldn’t have passed.