So today we are into the second meaning of No Time, No Problem, which is: Is there some way where, if there's not this sense of time, then for us as human beings, there's no problem? In the sense of freedom from suffering. Maybe of the kind of mental extra affliction, dukkha, dissatisfaction, that can be quite enmeshed in the sense of the past — memories of what's happened to us — and the anticipation of the future.
One of the modern-day spiritual teachers who has emphasized this aspect and is quite famous is Eckhart Tolle, in The Power of Now. For those of you who are not as familiar with his story, it begins with this very personal experience, a matter of a transition that happened in a short period of time, where he went from real depths — some of the utmost of suffering — and then experienced this shift. Then he needed to find a way to explain it, put into words, to share with others this highly subjective experience. On the cover of his book: over 15 million copies sold. I'm sure it's many, many more now. And I can almost even just feel the impact of so many people finding, relating to this book, to the message of this book, and their lives being impacted by it.
And I held a copy of this book over and over again 25 years ago, and I was not one of those people who connected with it. I actually wasn't able to finish the first couple of chapters. Even the former news anchorman Dan Harris, one of the hardest skeptics on the planet who then started Ten Percent Happier, even he could get through the book and find it very helpful.
So in some ways, this exploration is also my own kind of reckoning. What it takes this N of 1 to connect to this teaching on time and suffering. If I now could sit beside my 19-year-old self and kind of hold her hand? Maybe she wouldn't let me hold her hand, actually, but be by her side as we looked at some of these passages. What would I say to her?
How would I help her find sense behind Eckhart's claims about psychological time and clock time and "life situation" and "life"?
How would I help her suffer less sooner?
No Time, No Problem?
An Honest Look at “Timelessness” in Physics and Living
What if there’s no time—and that’s not a problem for physics? What if there’s no time—could that be a solution for our suffering?
Rather than offering answers of what to think, this series offers ways of thinking that can move us past the pressures we put on ourselves: from the “should” of trying to “be present” to the “should” of being 4D spacetime worms to be compatible with relativity! Somewhere between those “shoulds,” I got stuck until physicist and Tai Chi Master Wonchull Park showed me how to think about nature simply, livably. Each session includes an hour-long meditation practice, where we get to try on different conceptions and perceptions of time to discover how equivalently valid options that physics provides can impact our levels of illusion and freedom. We’ll be reading together from a few sources—such as Wonchull Park’s Essential Reality & Time, Carlo Rovelli’s The Order of Time, Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now, Dogen’s Shobogenzo Uji—to deeply question the role(s) of time in our lives. Looking forward to our discoveries.
Thank you for Being with Being.
beingwithbeing.org
mackenziehawkins.substack.com
