Adams and I discuss timelessness

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    Adams Rubble: Wol, I just read through some of Saturday morning log as I am working on mine
    Wol Euler: mmm?
    Adams Rubble: When I first heard about the possibility of time not exisiting I was very hostile
    Adams Rubble: after all I am a historian
    Wol Euler laughs
    Adams Rubble: but that is not what I am working with now
    Adams Rubble: timelessness is another thing altogether
    Adams Rubble: still past, present and future
    Adams Rubble: but like you said this morning it is God's time
    Adams Rubble: it is seeing beyond the restraints of time
    Adams Rubble: to the eternal
    Adams Rubble: it is a freedom
    Adams Rubble waits for Wol's response. hehe
    Wol Euler is trying not to wail "But I can't see what it is FOR"
    Wol Euler would find that unproductive
    Adams Rubble: I use it to get past my identities...as a tool
    Adams Rubble: our identities (selves) are mired in time
    Adams Rubble: like quicksand
    Adams Rubble: helpless
    Adams Rubble: trapped
    Wol Euler nods
    Wol Euler: I have a fragment of Auden in mind (or Pound?) who says "... like giants immersed in time"
    Wol Euler: with exactly that sense of floundering helplessness
    Adams Rubble: Cheer up Wol, out of our struggles comes the insight
    Adams Rubble: It will happen
    Adams Rubble: keep fighting :)
    Wol Euler nods. I am not un-cheered. And I certainly hope I didn't sound hostile.
    Adams Rubble: No, I had no idea of anything that was said after the milk bottle broke
    Wol Euler: :)
    Adams Rubble: Maybe when I do the log it will make some sense to me
    Adams Rubble: I was mildly annoyed myself because I was feeling pretty good about things before that :)
    Wol Euler: before the bottle broke? Sorry.
    Adams Rubble: The timelessness thing is just a context for presence in the APAPB phrase
    Adams Rubble: It was the missing piece for me
    Adams Rubble: and the missing piece for me to be able to drop my identities more when I need to rather than just when it happens
    Wol Euler ponders.
    Wol Euler: I am looking for reasons to believe, not to reject.
    Wol Euler: but my sticking point is "reality", that time DOES flow damn it.
    Adams Rubble: You can have that and still have presence in the context of timelessness
    Adams Rubble: at least I can :)
    Wol Euler: I accept the context of timelessness, I fully accept God's time and that ours is contained within it but at right angles, not measurable in any sensible way in his time, as his is not measurable in ours. That is fine.
    Adams Rubble: now use that to look at yourself
    Adams Rubble: how do you fit into God's time?
    Wol Euler: that is granularity to me, like the knowledge that my body consists primarily of empty space surrounding a few carbon atoms
    Wol Euler: I know this, but I cannot perceive it.
    Wol Euler: hmmmm
    Adams Rubble: One thing I see when I look is my connection with very human being that ever lived
    Adams Rubble: my fears
    Adams Rubble: my angers
    Adams Rubble: my loves
    Adams Rubble: my pleasures
    Adams Rubble: I do not have to be anxious about any of these
    Adams Rubble: they are part of being human
    Wol Euler nods
    Adams Rubble: and yet we can spend a month worrying about some incident that happened because we got angry
    Adams Rubble: that is not reality
    Adams Rubble: it is a story
    Wol Euler: hmmmm
    Adams Rubble: Anyway, to make a long story short, if we can apply the context of timelessness to that incident, what happens?
    Wol Euler: seeing God's timescale (timelessness) reduces your ... attachment to ... distractions?
    Adams Rubble: yes!
    Adams Rubble: hopefully (hehe)
    Wol Euler chuckles
    Wol Euler: hmmmm
    Wol Euler: I think I get it.
    Wol Euler: it isn't either/or
    Adams Rubble: right!
    Wol Euler: it's both/and - but not in any way that is perceptible
    Wol Euler: like saying "ten lightyears plus seven inches". The scales are incompatible, you cannot usefully express one in the terms of the other.
    Adams Rubble shrugs and says "whatever works" (in a kind way)
    Wol Euler: heheheheh
    Wol Euler: I need these images to help me think. I am a bear of very little brain - but of many words which sometimes confuses people and makes them think me clever
    Adams Rubble: Not so, dear Wol :)
    Adams Rubble: we all are going about this in a different way...a way that works for us
    Adams Rubble: sometimes we are able to get together and make some sense togther :)
    Adams Rubble: but I roll my eyes everytime Wikapedia comes up. hehe
    Wol Euler: heheheh
    Wol Euler: thank you, adams, I appreciate this and thank you for it.
    Adams Rubble: Oh, you are very welcome. I have much to thaank you for :)

      


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    Originally written on 11:04, 10 Mar 2009
    I just spent a half-hour in Google looking for the source of that quotation. Oddly enough the only reference I can find is to Marcel Proust in "A la recherche de temps perdu"! Wouldn't it be amusing if I had read it there and attributed it in memory to Auden?
    Posted 16:02, 9 Apr 2010
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