Diekemper vs Barbour: The Dance of Time - part 1

The present is a border between past and future.

Read part 2: Julian Barbour argues that Diekemper's discussion of past and future misses what really matters.

We live in a dynamic world. That is my starting point for thinking about the nature of time. Time, if it exists at all, must be such that it passes, and its passage, though fundamental to our experience, does not depend upon experience. Another way to put this foundational thesis is to say that temporal becoming is an objective feature of reality, independent of the mind.

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binra 21 February 2016

This written for pre-verbal recognition - so if you are interested - let the stirrings of recognition be the guide rather than sacrificing the new life to an idol of a god that does not feel to know or know to feel.

If "The present is nothing but a border between the past and the future" is asserted, accepted and believed, then living presence is effectively usurped and denied by a disconnected 'mind' in concept. Living presence embraces and includes the capacity to focus in concept and have a seemingly split off experience that neglects full presence to attend in specific and exclusive focus - and identify 'self' in the maintaining of such focus as if only the specific extension of attention is one's being and all else is 'other' or indeed invisible as a result of the filtering and distorting lens of self-concept.

The construct of such differentiating perspective operates as a template of translation whereby the movement or unfolding of the innate qualities of being are filtered through the primary lens of self-concept or definition to a conflicted and fragmented reflection of a conflicted sense of self - because exclusive identity in self-image or concept can only generate a counterpoint to the wholeness of an infinite or non-exclusive appreciation or knowing of being.
Existence includes the extension and recognition of awareness of existence. They are not two. The awareness is not cold, disconnected and differentiating. That is the mind of judgement which is associated with rejection and exclusion that seeks to relate only in terms of its own survival identity rather than to uncover the movement of being in the relationship itself.
All possible pasts and the futures are 'within' Infinite Perspective or timelessness which is not something to wrap a mind around without losing the recognition of self that does not call itself self because it is simply without otherness. "Wrapping a mind around" is in concept according to the definitions that feel resonant to the movement of being that any extension or expression of Life recognizes itself in. The experiencing or feeling of dissonance can be used as a counterpoint for a personal sense of choice between the polarities of freeflowing and limitation - and this sense of power has its foundation in the loss of Presence to an oppositional conflict. This generates a sense of a past in which Everything Changed. From this past - reacted to, accepted and believed - is the present derived or at least its framing is derived. And the framing is change by which light of feeling awareness and presence of unconflicted wholeness is re-defined as Threat, Exclusion and Abandonment and this was lost, usurped or denied. The Fall or Separation - is a breakdown of Communication and not an actual change - excepting of Perspective - from which all else automatically follows in like kind.
For the survival urge of the identity in concept and in form, the future is the persistence of the original intent - so that all that unfolds to awareness is framed in or subverted to serve the framing of the past - as the believed power to control (effect change of outcome on) Life. This momentum of limitation and division works to exhaust the capacity to maintain the capacity to feel and know a life within such perpetual and increasingly futile and meaningless struggle - and so the structure of the defences around maintaining self-concept from change of loss weakens and exposure occurs, breakdown occurs, disease and dysfunction occur. Contrary to the deepest fears of the ego-sense of self, the reconnect to being is not damning or hell-inducing - though the fears themselves are!
But reveal a true foundation in place of the false - a true presence felt and known in which an unconditional embrace of what one truly is - becomes the basis for un unfolding of future into presence terms - as a reintegrative movement of being. The synchronicities that are inherent to Remembering a greater and more embracing perspective are also the remembrance of the timelessness that is always timely - unless timed out in a past and future that have no real relevance to who you truly feel and know yourself to be.
I've run out of time so this is therefore complete!

present as part of the forming of a proxy present in time - the transient almost gone before it has arrived moment of