Who am I: Time, mental conditioning and mind
Time is a very fascinating thing. It does not exist directly in a physical way (it is not a particle) since the only thing we have is now and the now that you had a second ago is not the same now which is now (pardon the pun). Going a bit further in time travel: where is yesterday or tomorrow? Yes we can schedule meetings for tomorrow and we can talk about stories of what happened yesterday but we really do not know what time actually is or what it is not (since it is not a particle we can touch). We can certainly measure it but we do not really know what are we measuring. Yes at a mundane level we are measuring the flow of the day, first we have a morning, then mid-day and an afternoon etc... but from a more scientific point of view we do not know what time actually is. We do know that if there would not be time our reality would not exist since it's based on the flow through time. So its something very essential to our world. It is a dimension that we live in. Even mass would not exist without time (planets for example). Apparently it all started with a very loud bang and it seems to accelerate even this cannot be explained but that's another story for later.
However one thing that time creates is stories in our mind, history is our story through time (his-story, someone's story). When you grow up and hear the same stories on and on or same beliefs again and again from your contemporaries your mind gets conditioned to a certain view of the world. This creates a belief system. Even if you say "I do not believe on anything" that is also a belief system. We always believe on something or at least our mind does. However this belief system exists in time and it is also changed over time. So time creates stories and beliefs for us. My beliefs were different 10 years ago and they will be different in the future. The conditioning of my mind changes every minute based on the social interactions and other stuff I digest mentally. The media you consume shapes your mind, conditions your mind automatically even if you do not want it. Events flowing through time are stored in your mind as a memory and those memories strengthen the conditioning you have, or weaken a part of it and strengthen another part of it.
OK lets go back in time a bit (this is where you should laugh). When your mind is observing things several things happen very fast. First we get the sensory input of the world - we sense what's going on (I would call this the naked observation). Then, almost immediately but after a minuscule delay, our mind judges and creates an interpretation of the input. This difference is critical. The initial input is what is going on now, what's happening now - the naked observation. The nearly immediate judgement of your brain is not real since it is a delayed interpretation of reality. It is stuff your mind makes up based on your conditioning - and more importantly its not in the original NOW anymore its in your mind. It is the analysis or judgement of the situation but it is not the situation anymore. I call this the conditioned observation or judged observation.
If you remember an event when you were at a very beautiful nature spot (thanks William Bloom for this story). You looked around and felt the place, you had this strong feeling of beauty. Take the landscape away and stay with the feeling of beauty - that is the naked observation - it is the input coming through your senses that creates feelings in your system. Once you say to your friend, "This is a very beautiful place" - that's your judgement of the moment which is now expressed with the word "beautiful". The feeling inside you however does not have words. It is a feeling not a word. Through your conditioning (or education) you connect this feeling with the word "beautiful". This word, however does not have anything to do with the landscape directly. The landscape consists of elements of nature (actually everything are elements of nature). A more naked observation would be to say "I have this wonderful feeling in me, somehow this place creates this special feeling. Perhaps there is something here which touched me, maybe its the group of trees or how the river is flowing between the rocks". A judgement is to label something to a fixed category which is closed. This does not generate a discussion. A more naked observation is open ended, it is like a story in the moment, it tries to capture the magic or the moment. This generates a discussion since it is open ended. However our education or conditioning does not train us to do this. Our conditioning or training is to make closed statements, judgments of the sensory input our mind receives. If you stay in the normal judgmental way of discussing and you declared the place "beautiful" but your friend might not have the same experience or he might be in a bad mood for another reason and not really present in the situation. He might just say "Mmmmh". Then you walk away and start talking about the stock market or the next football game. You lost touch with the nature which was important to you since it felt special. If you however generated a more naked discussion this can deepen your experience of the situation or even help you friends pain. If we go back to the more poetic way of describing the beauty of the place your friend might react differently. He might look into the river and actually connect with the beauty and forget the pain. You would be engaged with a very different discussion now.
Now a more simplistic example (thanks Ben Fuchs): You see a person with a twisted face. You might be thinking "what's wrong with this guy, he must be really sad". The naked observation is the act of seeing the person with a twisted face. The conditioned observation is that you think this guy is angry. In reality this guy might just be twisting his face for a completely another reason. The naked observation here is the twisted face and the conditioned judgement is to declare this guy angry. If you now go and say to this guy and ask for example "why are you angry?" which is a judgement and more close ended question he might get defensive and reply: "I am not angry, bugger off". If you would had approached this guy and said "I can see that you are twisting your face, is there something going on?". This is a more naked way to discuss. The guy might reply "I am just twisting my face because it relaxes my facial muscles". You have now engaged in a conversation and gained more information by being present in the moment and not jumped into a judgement.
Another more "consumer" oriented example: You see a new watch in the mens department. You really feel that you want that watch. You buy it and it makes you feeling better - for a moment. This watch or the brand of this watch has been promoted in the media with pictures with pretty girls. So perhaps you were feeling lonely and your media conditioned experience with the watch made your mind subconsciously think that you will find a girl if you get that watch. The naked observation here is that you saw a watch in the mens department. The conditioned observation is that the watch is cool and it makes you feel better. Since you feel lonely you follow that conditioned observation and purchase the watch based on the programming you have in your mind. Not because you need it. Just because you believe it fixes a problem, which is loneliness. The new watch may boost your ego for a moment but it does not fix the loneliness, you are as lonely with the watch than without it.
See where I am going? If you do NOT observe the life in a naked way you are not living your life in a way that you intend but you live your life through the conditioned program your mind has created based on someone else's input. This is not necessarily what you want. If you react through conditioning you can do actions which you did not want to do. You know - advertising does really work, it would not be a multi billion dollar industry if it would not. But yet another story and we do not want to get sidelined here to wonder your mind to yet another avenue.
Wheew. This leads to the ultimate question: Who am I? Hey you might say, how did we get here. OK lets repeat. If you do actions based on a conditioning which is not you, then the real you is the one behind the conditioning. So in the end its all about you. Time and You are related. The real you lives in the now and the conditioned "fake" you lives a millisecond or a bit more after that now, however in the past, in your mind (this is the ego bit here). So based on this theory your mind is not you (you are not your ego), you are something greater than your mind. And this something greater has a connection with time since that something greater flows together with time - so time and you are connected. Since time is not a particle - the real you is also not a particle but something else.
In the end we do not know what is time and we do not know who are we. But what we do know, at least what I believe (see another belief system), is that if we live in the now, in the naked perception of the world we live our own life. That's what I believe is what we should be doing here, living the life through our own experience and not through a conditioned program someone else created. But the trick here is to be in the Now - and now your mind starts pondering how do i do that? Well not by thinking about it, by living it.
PS. Someone might now argue that the perception that we experience is also delayed. But here I borrow a bit from quantum physics. The part of us which is not a particle (the real me) can be connected with the universe in an immediate way. There has been numerous demonstrations how information can be sent immediately even through great distances (faster than light). I believe that our real self is tangled with the structure of the universe (Time / Matter / Etc) in a way that allows immediate information retrieval from Now as quantum theory explains it. As I am not a specialist in the Quantum Theory I borrow from the masters of the subject:
From Limitless Mind (Russel Targ):
"Quantum theory indicates that there are no such things as separate parts in reality, but instead only intimately related phenomena so bound up with each other as to be inseparable. — Professor Henry Stapp"
"Physicist David Bohm argues that we greatly misunderstand the illusion of separation in space and time. In his textbook, The Undivided Universe, he defuses the illusion of separation as he writes about quantum interconnectedness: “The essential features of the implicate order are that the whole universe is in some way enfolded in everything, and that each thing is enfolded in the whole".
Based on this we are connected with everything and we can be in immediate connection with Nature. But our modern conditioning is not supporting this type of experience - on the contrary. You can learn more about this from various sources one good recommendation is Eckhart Tolle who has written the book "The Power of Now".
