Flowing with time?
The worlds flows, that is it's nature, there are no fixed points just frames of reference, you can witness flow in action when you spend the day down the beach watch the tides, they are always coming or going, never stopping, you can set your watch by them, as they are pulled and pushed by the invisible hand of the moon sweeping past, and they never reach a point of resting, there is just a moment of turning which has no discrete existence. It is our reference frame that deceives us, it is not always obvious but everything is in the same state of flow as the tides, even the apparently solid mountains move with it's own slow motion of flow, they are a single wave of stone that rises and falls over hundreds of millions years, it is just from our fast point of view that they appear to be static and timeless, which shows what an unreliable witness we can be, we are fooled by nature and ourselves, and we have the delusion that we are closer to our view of an unchanging mountain than the fast moving waves.
It comes from the blind spot of being an observer, we think that just because an observation can be timelessly objective that we are timeless and fixed, the point around which everything else flows, that we are immune to what is the natural flowing state of all things, however there are no exception, even space and time can flow in and out (with black holes being an example of the ultimate contraction). Everything about us flows, expands and contracts, every atom does it, they vibrate despite their hardness, and if the hardest thing we know of flows, why would a loosely constructed bag of water like us not do the same, we vibrate with every breath, it runs through us expanding not just our lungs and diaphragm, but every cells and atom of our being. When we past a building site and feel the pounding of digger, we feel that vibration strongly but it is always there, a breathe is a light touch on violin compare to the drumming of a hydraulic machine but it is capable of singing a sweeter tune in our bodies, it is the heavens playing us like a violin, and when we listen, it is the silence with which the god speak (or the bigness of the universe depending on the favour you taste when in the presence of stillness).
Whilst a sharp mechanical ticking clock can be my own personal demon torturing me, there is a smoothing rhythm in all of life, we can follow our own heartbeat, breathe, or look out our window and watch the clouds dance across the skies, when we feel the wind on our skins increase and slow, we are touching the peaks and the passing of their force, sunset and sunrise mark meaningful moments of change which can bring hope and sadness. We can feel our energies changing inside of us, our moods, attention, awareness, we can be sensitive in the morning and dull in the evening, our excitement falls and rises, our fears beat a drum, our needs and wants change with every passing second, and all this happens whether we notice it or not, the wheel of time turns for everyone with no exceptions and it always flows, everything is in a state of change and impermanence.
What we can do is pay attention and observe, which leads to the road of understanding not just of ourselves but everyone. It is well known that observing changes the nature of what is observed, it is freewill in action, it is the fundamental unit of action that we have under our control, an awful lot of things are beyond our control and determined in the world, but in face of that we have to play the cards we hold and we are left with the choice to act or nothing will happen. Observation is the key to change, what is measured can be changed, it does not just give us information but there is a happiness and healthiness in us knowing the effect of our actions as they are happening, we have all had the experience of knowing exactly what to say about ten minutes after it would have been useful, having a clarity of observation brings us closer to the moment as it is happening, it gives us each a moment's more depth and a richer experience compare to a passive receiver of information.
If you just sit and watch a film, it is just a series of pictures and sounds, they can be loud or startling but they are nothing more, it is only when you truly observe that they become more, that allows you to become absorbed into the context, so that you can engage your empathy, that you start caring about the characters, what happens to them, they can make you laugh, cry, feel fear for them, love them like a friends, it can feel personal and it is a wonderful illusion. Films and stories can even teach us lessons about how we would act and how we should in the extremes of the human condition, we can feel what the character feel as they carry us through their troubles.
However we can go further and can access a higher point of view, there is the opportunity to step outside the person watching the film, to observe yourself, to see with the loving eye of a friend, with the same objective loving kindness that you give to other, to cheer yourself on, to see the pitfalls before you walk into them, to treat yourself with the care that you would give a friend. To be able to see the positives and negatives about yourself is a wonderful gift, it enables you to address those weaknesses or accept them as the price you paid for your positives, as so often our greatest strengths are also our Achilles heel, it allows us to focus on our best avenues for learning, and where the best returns are, as it takes so little effort to become competent in something compare to mastering it, and a single incompetence can drag us down far more than a single mastery can rise us up.
Though the greatest observation that we can make is when we start to see ourselves as we truly are as flowing beings of energy, and not just knowing it at an intellectual level, but actually experiencing it in real time as it is happening, it is like catching the Himalayas standing up, having a good stretch and doing a little dance, what you know about the world changes. What you thought was solid and eternal was in fact just the passing of the water in a river that never ceases flowing, we are not mountains, we are the avalanche, we have power, we are the cause of effect, we can make a knowing and self-knowing difference in the world. Unlike the natural flows in the world we have the ability to choose the course of our flowing nature, we can have an intention and divert our flow of energy where we want, and that intention has the knowledge that there is a flow of time in which we live, we can regret the past or learn from it, we can fear the future or relish the opportunities it gives us, we get to set our intention in the light of this knowledge.
This is our gift, and it can weigh heavily on us, responsibility is a dreadful thing and the only thing worse is being a victim with no control, it is up to us to see the truth of this state as that is the only way to be grateful for having this choice, no one promised us paradise, but by taking on the responsibility we have a chance to build one here on earth, and better a small hope than none at all. That hope has sometimes been no more than a candle in a storm, there was a moment when humanity was down to less than ten thousand strong clinging onto life by the African ocean, and they survived, they prospered, they spread out again and built the whole of the civilised world, every discovery, every step forwards was thanks to their hope, even in the face of a flow of events that nearly destroyed everything we care about.
You have the option to give up hope, to become a victim of circumstance or you can persist, you can give up on what should be and live in the flow of life, travel with the currents and keep your head above water because everyone of you matter, you get a vote on the future of humanity by your actions, by the way your live your life. When you drive, fly, eat, talk, these are all micro votes on how the world should be, they matter in the whole, they turn the world, it might not seem like they matter, it could seem like the world is making the choice for you. When the price of gas means you have to decide between eating and heating, you can be a victim or you can take responsibility and play a game of efficiency that aligns with your values of saving the world from global warming, you can experiment with hot water bottles, electric blankets, body movement, personal resilience and rocket mass heating, a change in attitude does not make you warmer, but it does make you feel better.
It should be noted that just because you have personal responsibility, it does not mean that society does not the same responsibility, it is not an excuse for them to say it is nothing to do with us, and in this case it shows the overwhelming need for universal basic income to counteract the problems with capitalism just as we have to regulated business to ensure that the powerful live up to their duty of care to the weak (especially when the weak are the overwhelming majority of the world). I would not wait for the world to be a fair place, find your own fairness if you can (income producing assets are the ultimate insurance in money society) and spread that fairness first to everyone in your area of concern and then everyone else. Money is after all just another flow and understanding flow problems is both essential as everything flows so if you can learn to deal with one flow problem like money, and then you can apply it to every other flow problem, which includes accept that all reality is a flow. The problem is simple, it flows into our bank account and then flows out in expenses, it is in the difference that we make our lives better or worse, debt occurs when your expenses are higher than your income, and getting to a state where you are savings is the only way to buy your independence and it our responsibility to take advantage of that chance if we get the opportunity.
Whilst ensuring your financial independence is important, there is a bigger game to play, it is easy to get lost in your problems or the world's, but that is ignoring the real underlying opportunities to learn, to see your own experiences reflect back into who you want to be. When you tackle the problems of resources, your security, the practical necessities, they are hard problems but they are not the big problem. People solve them all the time and yet remain unhappy, that is because they do not tackle the root cause that is yourself, your view of the world, how you think and feel in the moment, hard problems are all consuming, they can blind you to the real problem, and they are only harder when you can not bring the whole of your being to them and figure out what the end results that you want to achieve are, it might be that the hard problems is not a problem you need to solve to get what you really want, and you can only know it if you understand the world and what you want.
Hard problem can point us to the truth of the world, and when our understanding aligns with truth we can not help but observe in the real world, that is why whenever you encounter flow in the world learn from it and it does not just solve some hard problems, the problems will confirm what is true. The fundamental truth is that flow is the natural state of everything, the only things you can be sure of is change and impermanence, fortunes are gained and then lost within three generations, we are not designed for permanence, you can never set the future in stone. We do not get to be attached to pleasure, youth or our sense of self, they all change and pass, but so does pain, sorrow and grief, we swap potential for achievement, we get to keep nothing and treasure everything, when you stop holding on so tightly, we no longer crush what we love with the longing to possess them instead we let them touch and delight us with their company. Instead of fighting the currents of our lives, we get to live in them, we let ourselves flow and travel with the natural journey that is our lives, we start living rather than being lost in dreams, regrets and fears, we get to be exactly who we are in this moment and nothing more or less, and that fully lived moment that flows with time is as close to perfection as we can get as it is not more or less than it is, it is just as it was always meant to be.
