I awakened at - 8:47? I think, 8:47. Too late to Uber the morning rush.
It's now 10:50. I have spent most of the past two hours in my office with the blinds pulled and the lights off so that it's dark. Not nighttime dark. In-between, neither-here-nor-there dark.
No TV, no radio. Silent.
I think the ill-defined darkness and the silence have both contributed to me spending most of the past two hours browsing online - for nothing in particular. After spending perhaps half an hour or more trying to recall an article that I read once about luxury cars that can be bought at discount (I don't remember now why I chose to look for that article in the first place), I've Googled random terms that came to mind, ending with a search for electric cars and hybrids.
I have checked the time at intervals, noting its passing, and noting that I am not getting anything done, And I asked myself, "Why am I doing this?"
What type of pleasure am I getting out of this? It's more than the intellectual/cognitive pleasure of learning new stuff. It's like a physical thing, a feeling.
And this word popped into mind: timelessness.
I know that time is passing, but the darkness, the silence, and the very fact of not getting anything done help to create a feeling as if it weren't. It's sort of like Flow, except it's not. Or maybe it's an aberration of Flow, a mal-Flow.
I feel like I could do this - Google in the dark, follow random link after random link - forever.
******************
Rather, I felt like I could do that forever. But now I'm doing this- writing a blog post: a significant shift in direction of my attention and a heightening of intention. Finishing this, publishing this, matters.
A few minutes ago, part of what I felt was a sense of nothing mattering. I don't mean despair, I mean indifference. A pleasurable indifference arising from the feeling of being disconnected from time. The feeling of timelessness led to feeling as if it did not matter what I did, and that feeling was not painful. It was rather pleasant. Okay, I'll say it - I was comfortably numb.
And it occurred to me that the feeling of timelessness may be a preview of eternity.
As a resurrectionist and an immortalist, I expect to live forever (along with everyone else) in a way that is not limited to this planet. Living forever will mean never running out of time, never experiencing a lack of time. Not being limited to this planet will mean not being bound by the 24-hour day.
I have tried to imagine this. How will we experience time? Or will we experience time at all? Will the concept itself fade away as useless - No time, only life?
And just now the notion came to mind that if time as we know it disappears, nothing that we do will matter.
In respone to which this notion popped up, knocking that one down: in eternity, everything matters.
It suddenly seemed clear to my imagination that the Christian's post-transition life will not be a life in which we need to redeem time, because the days are evil. Nor will it be a life in which we waste time. Rather, it will be a life full of good activity spanning galaxies, and ever-deepening relationships with an ever-increasing number of people, all rooted in intimacy with the Godhead.
It will all matter.
Now, iinteraction with lots of other people would seem to require some means for measuring time. Otherwise, how will I make my appointments with Johann Sebastian Bach for composition lessons (that's on my post-transition bucket list)? But what that means will be, I have no idea.
And given that I have spent 1.5 hours writing this (yikes!), now is not the time to figure that out. I am still largely Here rather than fully There, and here, I am already late for starting an insane day of meetings and tasks. I want to devote more time later to the matter of demonstrating eternal, galaxy-encompassing life within the context of time and space. For now, I'll end with: in eternity, everything matters, so for immortals, everything here matters now.
P.S. - I'm yielding to temptation: this came to mind while writing. Enjoy!
It's now 10:50. I have spent most of the past two hours in my office with the blinds pulled and the lights off so that it's dark. Not nighttime dark. In-between, neither-here-nor-there dark.
No TV, no radio. Silent.
I think the ill-defined darkness and the silence have both contributed to me spending most of the past two hours browsing online - for nothing in particular. After spending perhaps half an hour or more trying to recall an article that I read once about luxury cars that can be bought at discount (I don't remember now why I chose to look for that article in the first place), I've Googled random terms that came to mind, ending with a search for electric cars and hybrids.
I have checked the time at intervals, noting its passing, and noting that I am not getting anything done, And I asked myself, "Why am I doing this?"
What type of pleasure am I getting out of this? It's more than the intellectual/cognitive pleasure of learning new stuff. It's like a physical thing, a feeling.
And this word popped into mind: timelessness.
I know that time is passing, but the darkness, the silence, and the very fact of not getting anything done help to create a feeling as if it weren't. It's sort of like Flow, except it's not. Or maybe it's an aberration of Flow, a mal-Flow.
I feel like I could do this - Google in the dark, follow random link after random link - forever.
******************
Rather, I felt like I could do that forever. But now I'm doing this- writing a blog post: a significant shift in direction of my attention and a heightening of intention. Finishing this, publishing this, matters.
A few minutes ago, part of what I felt was a sense of nothing mattering. I don't mean despair, I mean indifference. A pleasurable indifference arising from the feeling of being disconnected from time. The feeling of timelessness led to feeling as if it did not matter what I did, and that feeling was not painful. It was rather pleasant. Okay, I'll say it - I was comfortably numb.
And it occurred to me that the feeling of timelessness may be a preview of eternity.
I have tried to imagine this. How will we experience time? Or will we experience time at all? Will the concept itself fade away as useless - No time, only life?
And just now the notion came to mind that if time as we know it disappears, nothing that we do will matter.
In respone to which this notion popped up, knocking that one down: in eternity, everything matters.
It suddenly seemed clear to my imagination that the Christian's post-transition life will not be a life in which we need to redeem time, because the days are evil. Nor will it be a life in which we waste time. Rather, it will be a life full of good activity spanning galaxies, and ever-deepening relationships with an ever-increasing number of people, all rooted in intimacy with the Godhead.
It will all matter.
Now, iinteraction with lots of other people would seem to require some means for measuring time. Otherwise, how will I make my appointments with Johann Sebastian Bach for composition lessons (that's on my post-transition bucket list)? But what that means will be, I have no idea.
P.S. - I'm yielding to temptation: this came to mind while writing. Enjoy!
No comments:
Post a Comment