Cleric's time consciousness
Posted: Mon Jan 17, 2022 7:16 pm
Hi all, and thank you for the lively discussions on these topics. I also wish to extend a special thanks to Cleric. I have been trying to bring myself up to speed on some of these conversations and I have found myself consistently impressed at Cleric's ability to draw attention, in descriptions that are imaginative and yet exquisitely precise, to the spiritual activity behind thinking. I think the archives of this forum are a real treasure to anyone who wishes to follow the path of thinking and to be honest, I find some of the responses and rejections to Cleric's arguments somewhat surprising. After all, any disagreement must surely be premised on a closet confidence in the trustworthiness of the very thinking whose validity one is intending to question. Otherwise a person couldn't even affirm, believe, or understand his own disagreement. Doubtless many folks will find fault with my assessment and I will be happy to have my errors exposed, provided that they are indeed errors.
In any case, I was wondering if Cleric would be willing to elaborate on a bit of advice that he offered to someone who wishes to gain greater facility in navigating the so called "time-consciousness spectrum." At the end of the thread following viewtopic.php?f=5&t=509the essay of that title, Cleric wrote:
The prospect of stopping periodically to reflect on the temporal context in which one's present activity is embedded makes perfect sense, intellectually at least. I wonder, Cleric, if you would be willing to expand a little bit and perhaps offer further guidance on how one can work with this. You described, in your case, a sort of epiphany that seems to indicate an experience together with an understanding. I can see the truth of these superimposed rhythms that you are pointing to but I have the sense that there is more to comprehend with this.
This way of relating to time seems almost "synchronic" or "panoramic." You have, I believe, alluded to a "diachronic" or phenomenological approach to time which you characterized as something like "the ability to integrate prior states in consciousness." I can also see the truth of this. I wonder if you have any recommendations for how to work with this aspect of time.
Finally, perhaps you would be willing to explain how these two aspects of time can be integrated with one another. Clearly they are not exclusive but I find myself challenged to grasp their unity.
Thanks and blessings to all.
Blind byþ bam eagum se þe breostum ne starat.
“Blind in both eyes, who sees not from the heart.”
—Durham Proverbs, ca. 11th Century
In any case, I was wondering if Cleric would be willing to elaborate on a bit of advice that he offered to someone who wishes to gain greater facility in navigating the so called "time-consciousness spectrum." At the end of the thread following viewtopic.php?f=5&t=509the essay of that title, Cleric wrote:
Understanding the higher order conscious spectrum requires certain shift in perspective. I'm saying 'understanding' and not 'directly experiencing' because it is completely possible to understand how ordinary consciousness is embedded in the higher order rhythms even if we don't yet see them for ourselves. Changing the way we think about time, for me at least, was the key which allowed my intellectual ego to find it's orientation. I can't describe what JOY this was giving me (and continues to this day). Both religion and mysticism demand from the ego a kind of renunciation of cognition and acceptance that it can never have any thoughtful experience of true reality but only a surrender to the flow of the heart. This was a major pain for me. When I discovered how to move along the Time spectrum, this was like a dream come true. It turned out that thinking could really live along the gradient of higher consciousness. A bridge was built! Of course, as said, it took me a long time to differentiate the actual forms of higher cognition from the intellectual thoughts. It was like placing them in their appropriate frequency bands. But the fact remains to this day that viewing the conscious World in terms of superimposed rhythms, not abstractly, but as expressions of creative ideas, gives me the most flexible language to translate between the higher experiences and intellectual terminology.
As mentioned in the essay, getting in habit to stop from time to time and paying attention to the temporal context, is of great value. Just as we can stop and assess our spatial position, starting from our current place, expanding outside our house, city, country, planet, galaxy, so we can do something similar in terms of time. At any point we can try to encompass what we are doing, what we were doing previously through the day, the previous day, what we're planning to do the next day, in what phase of our life we are and so on. When we do that we really begin to sense these superimposed fractally embedded rhythms within rhythms. One very effective exercise, which Steiner always recommended highly, is to do a retrospective walk backwards in time in the evening before bed. We practically calm down and begin from the current moment to walk towards the past in reverse order, passing through the daily events, until we reach the time we woke up in the morning. This is tremendously beneficial exercise. Not much happens initially but we gradually develop precisely these inner skill that allow us to expand the 'now' and encompass Time as a panoramic image.
The prospect of stopping periodically to reflect on the temporal context in which one's present activity is embedded makes perfect sense, intellectually at least. I wonder, Cleric, if you would be willing to expand a little bit and perhaps offer further guidance on how one can work with this. You described, in your case, a sort of epiphany that seems to indicate an experience together with an understanding. I can see the truth of these superimposed rhythms that you are pointing to but I have the sense that there is more to comprehend with this.
This way of relating to time seems almost "synchronic" or "panoramic." You have, I believe, alluded to a "diachronic" or phenomenological approach to time which you characterized as something like "the ability to integrate prior states in consciousness." I can also see the truth of this. I wonder if you have any recommendations for how to work with this aspect of time.
Finally, perhaps you would be willing to explain how these two aspects of time can be integrated with one another. Clearly they are not exclusive but I find myself challenged to grasp their unity.
Thanks and blessings to all.
Blind byþ bam eagum se þe breostum ne starat.
“Blind in both eyes, who sees not from the heart.”
—Durham Proverbs, ca. 11th Century