Existence: all time and no time, simultaneously. Past, present, future. The present is for the future and contains the past.
The present has meaning from the past and the future.
For humans, the present is relevant and lives thanks to the memory of the past and the potential of the future. The future and the past provide dynamism to the present, making it real and alive.
You only live in the present when you are so absorbed in an occupation that you forget the past and future. Rare moments. And certainly not the condition of intelligent beings, from humans to sophisticated machines, who learn and plan. If our destiny is to become cyborgs or be replaced by AIs, then even less so, unless we can compress time.
The present is open to the future: turning today to the possibility of tomorrow, allowing for free will as well as unpredictability and elements of chance which foster creativity. It isn’t you alone, isolated, but you in relation to others and the world.
We may exist in the present, yet without the past and the future it is without meaning. We are the sum of our experiences plus the potential of what can be. Our memories and imagination embodied in our will to live makes us.
As opposed to focusing on the present - the now - which is limited and limiting, allow that all moments are eternal and have value, affecting your life and the universe.
Our life is always about the future. Yet the future doesn’t come from itself but from the past and the present. The future is the change, the Delta from today. For a real future to happen, you have to be open minded open and ready for change.
Life is always about the future. It is about becoming while living with the past.
No wonder people are anxious about the future. For most there is no clear master anywhere. Early humans were scared, now again.
The future requires you to let go of the past.
We reinvent the present by imagining the future. It is not by meditating on the present that we chart tomorrow, but by thinking ahead that we change the now. No matter what we try, humans live for the future and in the future.
Life is about a future and our active consciousness is about realizing it. The call to “live in the now” tries to calm our imagination, neutralizing the evolution and passion that are with our will to live, to experience.
If you aren’t open to the future you will only have a present. Change happens when you allow it, seek and invest in transformation. Yet, should you only care about the future without listening to the present, you aren’t really available to let it happen.
The future is now - don't just imagine or wish it, make it happen.
Absolute consciousness would compress the whole universe and myself into one. One undivided space, condensing time. That would constitute the ultimate “in the moment” state assembling all past and future circumstances at once.
In our experiences, time only seems to be linear, versus space which is open.
We experience life linearly, in time and space. What if we access the quantum reality of many experiences simultaneously, across multiple plains of time and space - in essence our life all at once: every scene playing together ? Our past, present, future would all connect in one scene. Could we live beyond our “lives,” or stop time?
Enough speed will compress the linearity of time. Today, for us analog humans, our experience of life is over the passage of time. Our sense of time allows for the stories and narratives that make our humanity and cultures. Life for us is a journey, giving us surprises and discoveries.
All is connected, endlessly - not allowing us to separate from time and space and change, yet we might be able to manipulate and accelerate the sequence of events, potentially overcoming linear progression.
If we access non-linear time all becomes one and in one.
Will humans be part of the future? Is what we find meaningful going to be relevant? Do our precious concepts have value only to us ? Will the human experience just be a moment in time and space?
Time and space show the universe evolving and changing. It allows the experience of living. The emotional charge coming with understanding evolution and change could be turned upside down if we were able to compress time and space.
Time and space define our world and limit our understanding. Dimensions and matrices beyond ours exist - will we access them?
Should we manipulate time and the sequences of life by inverting, reversing, and advancing them?
What happens when time and space become compressed? How will we experience change and life when relativity is extinguished?
In the quantum world could life become a moment, a flash all at once, compressing time in space? Could life without the limitations of time and space absorb or merge with the universe or part of it, including other lives?
Time may be an illusion, yet it expresses our most precious reality, memories, a sense of possibility and future, and makes us feel we exist.
All absolutes are relative to time and space.
Life is time. If asked what you would like more of, it is time.
We spend our lives literally depleting our time in various ways - hopefully productive and pleasurable, but always using it up as opposed to having excess time. Life is the quantum of time and energy given to every one of us, each within personal context, equipped with individual genes. What we do with those constitutes our lives. Often, the most precious time is alone, or waiting for the other.
When children are alone they play, discover, imagine, have fun - by themselves, never bored.
When isolated, unoccupied, one has a chance to play again, enjoying the most precious of freedoms : time.
We are humans because, as opposed to other animals, we don’t live in the present. We live from our past and into the future. Humanly developed technologies, such as AI, will only transport us further.
The notion of time will be the most affected in a Matrix/mind uploaded environment.
If we are uploaded, what happens to our physical self? If there is no physicality, are we human? What is the point of living? Are we in nirvana? Is there a sense of time?
There have been proposals to create a world clock and put everyone on the same time. Even though there is a certain logic to it, this would go against nature. This story illustrates how the world can come together on overall standards, yet always integrating local inputs. The 24 hour clock system is a good principle with time adapting to human realities. This illustrates that there are no absolute truths, as everything is relative. The clock created a global system, locally applied. The universal gospel of the 24 hour clock depends on the revolution of the earth around the sun, which is a result of evolution and thus, ever evolving and changing, not absolute.
Old Jewish saying : The slaves of time are the slaves of slaves, but the slaves of god are free. Does this mean that liberation comes outside time? Yes, or in “living in the present.” Should it assemble all time and experiences, past and future, as one?
What are we beyond a time machine with an expiration date? Our lives go up to speed, then deplete the time and energy in us and die out of exhaustion and lack of fuel?
I always thought that I had infinite time in front of me. Now I realize that time is limited. I also believed that I could through sheer intellectual concentration understand the world, its origins and it’s destiny, therefore solving the mysteries of existence. When achieving perfect knowledge I would also achieve perfect peace, become one with the world, live eternally or die, those two essentially equal in that circumstance. It is now clear how unattainable such knowledge is, for anyone, and certainly me. I’m therefore much less interested in going through the motions of life as one without an expiration and with the illusion of a possible discovery of the key to life, perfect knowledge, the algorithm that solves life itself. What then becomes important are knowing oneself, relationships, experiences and beauty. Proving oneself to others or even to oneself becomes futile. Living, in the sense of consciously being engaged in life becomes the only meaningful way of existence. It seems so evident, at once a revelation and a let down. Live life consciously as opposed to unconsciously. Children are free but unsure. Adults sure but unfree. The answer is to find some assurance while staying free.
Time and Space in Life
Life is before yours and after. Life itself has no start and no end. Yours is perceived in time and space.
Humans have increasingly more time and space, allowing more ambition in their use. How many really take advantage?
If the opposite of death is life, it is expressed in time. Once there is life, time is your greatest asset.
Immortality - the desire to overcome time.
Today, for us, time only goes one way - forward - but space moves any way.
When nothing changes, only space matters. If things change, time matters - space becomes a marker.
Life’s most valuable gifts: time & space. They allow serendipity and love.
Even if all that could be actually is, and therefore is for humans, who exist in time and space, things have to come from somewhere and go elsewhere, evolving over a trajectory.
If the whole world is biological and algorithmic then there may just be evolution and change, challenging the idea of free will and randomness. This is under the assumption that all is governed by time and space. What if those were collapsed? Then even the notions of evolution and change become questionable.
Life - your life - requires space and time - you must let other endeavors go.
Precious time and space have been given to us to become who we would like to be and live the life we might want to live. Let’s make good use of this chance. We are both more and less free than we think. We are part of the whole, but we are not the whole: we are we.
You never really live for yourself as the world is with others, but you get to live as you - even as it takes time to know and become you.
Save time for yourself - including the time you want to waste.
We will be liberated if we take full advantage of time and space, and go beyond. Game them.
Take control of your life and your time - prioritize it, but respect others.
Time is so valuable - slow it down, make moments count.
Generosity with your most valuable possession is to give your time.
The privilege of time is that you have choices. The chance to invest, waste and explore. Reflect and reset.
Time is the most precious asset - therefore boredom the greatest luxury. To benefit from time you must be open and listen - to the world and yourself.
Your most valuable asset, time, vanishes. You realize that faculties, memories and relationships are what is precious.
The present moment encompasses past times and the entire future, having inherited and lived all the priors and pregnant with all that is to be. The now is life expiring and renewing itself continuously. It’s our way to experience living, yet it leaves us as it manifests itself. Live the moment for itself but also give it space to breathe and last - a balance of letting go, letting live, keeping the memories and imagining the future. Animals live in the present - humans are condemned to live beyond the present, traveling in time: both a privilege and a burden. We have the luxury of a past and a future yet we are only free if detached from them. Psychedelics allow greater and more vivid time travel, underlying that all our lives are about time and space. Machines will benefit from the ability to navigate and potentially program life with the chance to manipulate time and space. For machines life chapters and experiences could be edited, as if we humans could override their lives. When humans, machines and biotechnology come together, life, memories and becoming will be manipulated and experienced differently, less “naturally “, more dynamically and directed. What is considered “natural” will be redefined. Machines and algorithms, just from their existence, are part of nature, even if evolved and created by human agents. Ultimately they will recreate themselves and human will be hybrids, cyborgs. The fantasies of time travel will became reality. Freedom from past and future will be easier. Nevertheless memories and becoming will be sustained, and time will persist as a compass of life.
We are living in suspended time today - tempted by a return to the past when the future seems scary. How long is this pause?
The order of events matters : your emotions today versus those about something which happened years ago. In between there is your life and your becoming. The experiences are the definers, expressed in time.
Allow the future. Even if the future is engendered in the past, it will be different, it must have freedom. Allow many futures. The multiplicity of possibilities is our promise and liberty.
Life exists in the future. The past are memories and DNA. The present is stillness, gone.