Untimely Thoughts Of An Immortalist

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!

When Days Seem Swift, And Work Seems Slow, And Sleep Is To Be Feared

"Insomnia" - Alex Grey - AlexGrey.com

Exploring the capabilities of Google Hangouts is a perfectly fine thing to do, but 5:30 am after a sleepless night is not the time to do it!

Nor is this the time to post an item on my blog, nor do any of the other things that I want to do right now rather than sleep!

Fear, fear, fear! 

Must work more....must do more...must create value....must get better...must make money...must work more...must do more...must explore more....must find the key, the trigger, the leverage point....must change...must transform...must work more...must do....a little more...must do....one...more...thing....just this...must do this...then a little sleep....as little as possible....because there's so much to do...always...so many promises...so much to say...so many stories to tell...thoughts to share...ideas to manifest....so much to do, always...in all ways....at all times....all the time...

God, I want eternity. I want it now. I want to have forever to work - to dream, then plan, then build and make and do...

Forgive me, God, for I hate time. I hate the finitude of it, the always-running-out of it, the relentless, unceasing disappearance of it.

And yet You placed me in this ....this box, this set of contraints....

Worse, You placed Yourself within it.

What were You thinking?

To demonstrate what eternity expressed in time looks like?

Master, the tempest is raging. How can You sleep?

Because Father neither slumbers nor sleeps.

And now, neither do You. Unresting, unhasting.

And because You do not sleep, I can. It's okay to. It's okay to do only a day's work within any day.

But I feel like it takes me two days to do a day's work.

And there's the rub. It never feels like enough. Always, it's "I should have accomplished more today."

According to whose measure? Who places that burden on me?

The calling is not to wear a cape, nor to have an "S" emblazoned on my chest.

The calling is not to do this or that number of tasks.

It is to do what I can within a day. And to get better at doing what I can within a day.

And on some days that may mean doing more than I did on a previous days

But on some days it may mean doing less.

Because....

Rest is allowed.

Rest is more than allowed.

Rest is where it all begins.

Act from rest.

And from the confidence that all will be well.

Three Men, Three Doors

I just found myself thinking about two of the men who held top positions at the Post-Gazette during my time there (and who still do): executive editor David Shribman and president Chris Chamberlain.

Most people probably don't know that many newspapers have a rule, written or not, that folks on the business side of the company - the advertising people and h.r. people and so forth - do not try to influence the folks on the editorial side - the writers, photographers and the like. At the PG, rule was encapsulated by referring to "the wall," the sacred invisible barrier between the two sides of the company.

I breached the wall enough to establish a personal relationship with Chris Chamberlain, because I was interested in the operations of the company, and because I found him easy to talk to.

In fact, what just struck me is that I found Chris easier to talk to than David. This seems odd, because I would say that my relationship with David was just as friendly as my relationship with Chris. What makes it seem even more odd is that David had an open-door policy, so I could walk into his office at almost any time, while going through Chris's door generally required an appointment.

The difference lay in how it felt to be inside the room. With David, I felt that I needed to keep things brief and to the point: he's a rapid-fire kind of guy, and I was always very conscious of deadlines looming in the background. Chris, despite having come to us from New York, seemed more laid-back. Once I did walk through his door, I felt like it was okay to stay there awhile (although I was always mindful that hey, this is the president of the company).

Thinking about the two men, their doors and what happened when I walked through them made me think of Robert R. Lavelle, the head of Lavelle Real Estate Inc., during my five years there.

Like David, Mr. Lavelle had an open-door policy. And like Chris, once I came through his door, he seemed unhurried in his time with me.

I don't know what to do with all of this, except to note that as I write this, I realize that I want to give people unhurried time when they come to me.

Assuming that anyone will want to come to me.

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