Hello All,
I would like to share my thoughts on a concept of time- past, present, and future. This is how I understand them and I believe it is more empowering way to see them than our conventional understanding of them. It is just my opinion so conclude on your own; I am just sharing my view.
We all have our own present moments. What do you consider as your present moment? You may say your present moment is, "now". But what about the rest of your surroundings? Are their present moments the same moment as yours when you say, "now"? Many of you will say- of course, it is a common sense.
But there is a catch to it. Although you may intuitively understand that we all have the same present moment but just in different places, you may be mistaken about what you perceive to be others' present moments with yours.
For example, imagine you are staring someone across from you, and imagine his/her face that forms in your mind as you see him/her with your eyes. Now, the image that forms in your mind when you look upon that person, is that moment also that person's present moment? Surely, when we say "now", the image that forms in your mind coincides with your present moment. In our everyday life, we tend to assume that the surroundings we perceive of are also their present moments. But in reality, anything we perceive with our eyes are the "past" moments of them.
If you still don't understand why, remember that light is not instantaneous, therefore, it always takes time for light to travel and reach your eyes thereby enabling you to perceive your surroundings. We can perceive our world because light gets reflected from our surroundings and then reaches our eyes. As soon as light gets reflected off of any object, the light that carries the information of that object reflects the "past" information of that object. Thus, we can never truly perceive any other present moments, but only ours. We can only perceive past with our eyes. The world you see and ever saw were only of their past moments. Light in one sense is like a history book. Our Earth's history is constantly broadcast to parts of the universe, just as we are watching the history of the stars in our night sky.
Then, we can deduce that our proximity determines the degree of difference in the perception of our own present moments with the present moments of the external world. The perception of someone who is a million light years away from you differs with your present moment by million years, while the perception of someone who is right in front of your differs with your present moment by only slightly. Thus, the distances between you and all others reflect the points in their timelines you are perceiving and they in yours. Imagine you are very far from Earth, say 1 light-year away, and is watching your friends and family from that distance. What you would be watching are just a part of their timelines, their pasts. So, you can see light as like our timeline that records our moments in this life and broadcast that information all over the universe, forever. In one sense, even though our current bodies will not exist forever, at least a part of us, information of who we were in this life, will always be a part of the universe. We keep photos to remember our pasts; the universe keeps our timelines to remember ourselves.
We tend to consider the surrounding that we perceive to be a part of our present moment. And we are deliberate in whom and what we let into our present moments. We avoid things or places that does us no good and we seek things or places that does us good. We naturally aspire to create our surroundings in the reflection of our inner selves and wishes. But, as I had mentioned earlier, no matter how close something or someone is, our perception of the external world can only be the reflections of their pasts. And our perceptions get stored in our brain as memories. Thus, light carries the information of our external world in which we process them to form images of them in our mind, then stores them in our brain as particular neural patterns called memories. Thus, in this sense looking from our perspective, light is a mean to communicate our state of being with one another which ultimately connects us into a network.
The very present moments of ours would then be, not what you see, but what you are doing. Earlier you had agreed that what you consider to be your present moment is "now", right? That "now" that you consider as your present moment is being continually updated every instantaneous moment. Thus, the action in your moments of "now" reflect your truest present moment. And the action that you perform is your way of interacting with the external world, the messages that you send out into the network. Others that receive and process your actions, which get stored in their brains as memories, will become a part of their collections of data that they collect in their lives. Now, much of our opinions, beliefs, and ideas about the world, the network, are deduced from our collections of data. This means, what we see and hear, and say and act determine what we will conclude of our world. Light and sound connect us all, as we share each other's memories through them.
Now, what about our future? Where does our future come from? I think many of us tend to believe that our future is in the realm of uncertainties. Many of us feel powerless in front of our future's seemingly indeterminate nature. But in reality, our futures start within our minds. If our present moments are "now", then the thoughts that had planned to do certain actions in those "now" moments would be the very start of our futures. As you can see, thinking allows us to access our future. More we think and plan about the future, greater clarity and determinate it becomes. As for our society as a whole, the conglomeration of our thoughts determine our society's future, the future of humanity.
Thinking about future can be quite unusual in nature compared to other types of thinking. Other types of thinking include storing memories, acting, retrieving memories, and etc. But thinking about our future is like choosing our own memories in self-deliberation. Others may influence what memories you will store of this world, but when you are thinking and planning the future, the thoughts that you produce stem from your inner self. If the future that you are dreaming is something that no one has ever thought of before or if it is what you truly desire, then that thought is truly a reflection who you are. I think what we plan to do is truly a reflection of us, and the actions that arise to execute the plan are your reflection that manifests to the external world.
If you are always thinking about your past, then you are literally having your past constantly define you and the others around you. Our past can be a good source of learning, especially of our past mistakes and failures. However, our past serves no positive purpose once learned. I believe the best way to leave imprints of our essences on our external world is by carrying out our own visions into actions. Don't let your past and others' actions define who you are; let your essence and deliberately chosen future define who you are.
Sometimes, the world may put us down and we may collect bad data of our world, but what we decide to do upon receiving them is also our way of reflecting a bit of our selves back to the external world. Live and act in ways that our world, the human network, would appreciate your existence and contributions by the time you send your last message. I personally believe this is what it would mean to die free of sins: that we left the world a better place. However, even with our best intentions, sometimes we may not achieve this due to various circumstances. Thus our genuine intentions should be the one that really counts, not the results. I think we should largely judge others by their genuine intentions, and I think this is what God would do as well.
To sum it up, we had went over that we light and sound connect us. We send and receive each other's information through these mediums and these information become what we consider to be our pasts, our memories. Our present moments constitute our actions in process; what we are doing. And what we do can either be a reaction to the information we receive or an action of our own deliberate choosing. How we decide to react and what we choose to do are our ways of leaving our footprints in the external world and contributing to the formation of our external world as a whole, the human network.
Although we all know the concept of time- past, present, and future- I wished to share my thoughts on them because most people don't give them that much thought, and thus having only elementary understanding of what they really are. Our sense of "knowing" can be quite deceiving sometimes, and I just hope some of you got something out of this paper. It is my way of leaving a part of my essence to the world, as this essence now lives through you. What is your best essence? Share them with the world and let them live through us too.
