The Two Clocks

After imagining two spaceships—one traveling forever through infinite time and another pointing toward the possibility of timelessness—I find myself returning to a much smaller question:

How do I actually experience time while I am here?

It is 5:19 in the morning, and I am waking with an interesting impression.

I think I have spent much of my life living by two different clocks.

One hangs inside my mind.

The other is happening right now.

The Clock Inside My Head

The first is what I call psychological time.

It is the clock inside my head—not simply my perception of time passing, but my mind’s ability to travel through memory and anticipation.

It can run backward into the past or race forward into the future. It can spend years replaying something that no longer exists or waiting for something that hasn’t happened yet.

After my divorce and separation, for example, I missed my first wife terribly.

Life itself was continuing forward, but psychologically, I was living backward.

My body was in the present.

My mind was somewhere else.

At other times, I have done exactly the opposite.

I have lived psychologically in the future—waiting for more money, a better opportunity, the next vacation, the kids to grow up, or some future condition that I imagined would finally allow me to relax and enjoy my life.

The scenery outside the window was happening now.

But I was always looking down the road.

This psychological clock is extraordinarily useful.

It allows me to remember.

Learn.

Plan.

Anticipate.

Prepare.

Without it, functioning as a human being would be extraordinarily difficult.

The problem isn’t that my mind can visit yesterday or tomorrow.

The problem begins when it moves there permanently.

The Clock of Experience

Then there is the second clock.

I think of this as experienced time.

Whatever time ultimately is—and the previous writings have certainly complicated that question—my direct experience of life seems to have only one location:

Now.

I can remember yesterday, but I remember it now.

I can imagine tomorrow, but I imagine it now.

I can worry about something that may happen next year, but the worrying itself is happening now.

Even if time is ultimately something far stranger than I understand, consciousness seems to encounter this human life one experience at a time.

I have noticed that something almost magical happens when these two clocks align.

When the Clocks Synchronize

When my attention stops wandering through psychological time and settles into the moment my body is actually experiencing, life becomes more vivid.

I notice things.

Light coming through a window.

The expression on someone’s face.

The movement of trees.

The sensation of air entering my lungs.

Sounds that were apparently there all along but that I wasn’t hearing.

Time almost seems to slow down.

Yet perhaps time hasn’t slowed down at all.

Perhaps I have finally caught up with my experience of it.

That is when I feel most alive.

Most aware.

Most conscious.

Maybe presence isn’t some mysterious spiritual state I have to achieve.

Maybe it is something much simpler:

Psychological time and experienced time synchronizing.

Two clocks finally ticking together.

Resetting the Clock

I am beginning to discover a remarkably simple way of resetting mine.

I breathe.

Five or ten slow, comfortable breaths.

Not mechanically, but consciously.

I notice the air coming in.

I notice it going out.

I feel my chest expand and relax.

I become aware of what is around me.

With each breath, the psychological clock seems to lose some of its urgency.

Yesterday loosens its grip.

Tomorrow can wait.

For a few moments, I don’t have to solve either one.

I don’t have to chase the present moment.

In fact, chasing it would defeat the purpose.

I relax into it.

Where Ego and Soul Meet Time

This brings me back to the distinction I have been making between ego and soul.

The ego needs psychological time.

It remembers yesterday so I can learn from it.

It anticipates tomorrow so I can prepare for it.

It keeps appointments, builds businesses, makes plans, remembers mistakes, and tries to prevent future problems.

That isn’t a defect.

It is part of being human.

But perhaps the mistake is allowing that useful mental clock to become the place where I live.

What I have been calling the soul seems to operate differently.

It doesn’t need to erase the past.

It doesn’t need to ignore the future.

It simply keeps redirecting my attention toward what is actually available:

This breath.

This awareness.

This moment.

The past can teach me.

The future can guide me.

But neither one is where my life is actually being experienced.

My life is happening here.

From Timelessness Back to This Moment

Maybe this is where the enormous questions from the previous writings become practical.

I don’t know whether consciousness ultimately exists outside time.

I don’t know whether the universe resembles a block of spacetime.

I don’t know whether eternity means infinite duration, timelessness, or something our language cannot adequately describe.

But I don’t need to solve those questions to notice something happening within my own experience.

When I stop living primarily through memories of what happened and projections of what might happen, the present becomes remarkably rich.

The ordinary becomes interesting.

Details become beautiful.

Awareness expands.

Life becomes strangely animated—almost surreal.

For a little while, I am no longer merely remembering life or anticipating life.

I am actually living it.

Perhaps this is the closest I can presently come to a psychological taste of timelessness.

Not existence outside time.

Not escaping the clock.

Not stopping time or discovering some supernatural dimension.

Simply becoming so completely present that, for a moment, I stop measuring my life against it.

Maybe that is the magic I have been looking for.

And maybe the show has been playing all along.

I just needed to synchronize my clocks, settle into my seat, and watch it begin.

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