How to help myself to fully understand "time is an illusion"?

[yangmilun]

1. Is time an illusion?

2. if yes, how to understand what your understanding?

3. then what? how does that change your life? before and after.

4. Why so surprise? I do surprise when I figure out an answer to solve probelms, and I believe that understand "time is an illusion" is helping my life somehow.

[The_Alchemist]

What does illusion mean?
 

[Origins]

Time is not an illusion, you contemplating time is an illusion rendering the contemplation obsolete. This is a simulation of sorts, as its analogous to illusion, simulation isn't Bostrom its just a motorised definition of illusion, meaning illusion with an engine, like a video game. You're God playing a sim. You'll likely never come to terms of this, always aim for higher levels of awareness and maybe you might.

I am a just newborn baby walking a pram to the liquor store with their labor exhausted mother with a fake ID and a machete with an axe to grind on any cashiers that are going to give me any attitude, get used to it.

[ don't misinterpret humour as trolling, first paragraph is deadly serious ]

[Carl-Richard]

Experience it.

[Hulia]

It´s a matter of perspective. Who wants to understand that time is an illusion? If it is a human being, I don´t know your name, for example, Tony Smith, than it´s nonsense, Because time is not an illusion for Tony Smith. For Tony Smith there was a start  - his birth, and there will be an end - his death, and the aging inbetween.  To understand that time is an illusion you need to understand that everything is an illusion including yourself. First of all YOUR SELF is an illusion. It´s like your are sleeping and dreaming that you are running from a monster. And this running creature tries his/her best to understand that a monster is an illusion. But it´s not a point. A point is to understand that EVERYTHING is a dream. Then the monster won´t matter. I know it, because I often had the nightmares as a child with monsters, murderes, corpses, I was lying in the bed and trembling. Since 10-15 years I haven´t had a single nightmare. I still dream sometimes of monsters, murderers, corpses. But now I don´t mind the blockbusters in the nights, I find them entertaining. In the background there is always an awareness of dreaming. 

(Isn´t it funny, that the only difference between "end" and "and" is only one letter which sounds almost the same? Sorry, it seems I´ve found a good platform for amazing conversation with myself and improving my English skills at the same time) 

Edited December 6, 2020 by Hulia

[DocWatts]

A few things.

(1) Saying Time is an Illusion is somewhat Reductive, but what is True is that the nature of Time is highly counter intuitive to our common sense notions. I'd suggest reading up on Relativity Theory if you're interested in the subject, but in short the fundamental nature of the Universe is that the flow of Time is not the same for all Observers. A realworld example of this is GPS, which has to account for Relativistic Time Distortions when calculating your position, because Time slows down for an object traveling at a very high speed.

(2) The human perception of Time is highly variable. Anyone who's experienced altered states of consciousness can tell you first hand how differently Time is experienced when under the chemical influence of psychedelics such as psilocybin. For a more mundane example, think how much more quickly time passes when you're doing something you enjoy, vs how slowly it passed the last time you were in a boring or unpleasant situation.

[kbone]

@yangmilun

All of life is a movement. All creatures seem to register it at some level of other. But, as humans go, each has a cerebral cortex which enable all sorts of creative uses of its abstractions.

The concept of time is a way of quantifying any such movement, Point A to Point B, whether physical, mental, or otherwise. These are all just "labeled things" appearing in/as Consciousness.

Quantifying requires a mental construct using agreed upon terms and generally shared notions of what the terms reference in regards to apparent movement. The key is to understand that the quantifying is a mental construct (i.e., just as the self  is).

The word illusion itself is just a term that refers to its opposite, reality, fact or truth. Most peeps regard truth as something that is not wrong, or not a lie; whereas, in discussions of things spiritual and whatnot, Truth (capital T) refers to a break with the consensual reality trance-like state to a purely Subjective view that exists prior to the individuated mind in which mental constructs are, welp, constructed (usually unconsciously). It might be noticed that when peeps are genuinely on a spiritual search, the narratives can get pretty whacky, intense, otherworldly, or even insane-sounding. Once this is acknowledged, it is easier to see why it is important to be clear on what the context is in a given situation before making such a statement. I digressed here to make a point.

To say that, "time is an illusion" is to specifically refer to the latter context just above, the context of seeking or having Realized Truth, not necessarily the consensual reality one in which, generally speaking, peeps are referring to day-to-day interactions. If one is seeking Truth, then yes, they will need to come to terms with time being an illusion because it is a mind-made thingy, always subject to its impermanence. But, once Truth is Realized, then it would behoove the newly minted dream-character to more-or-less play along with the agreed upon mental construct when trying to get shit done, especially when interacting in cultures/businesses/contexts that HIGHLY depend on, respect and/or value punctuality, precision, and efficiency.

[LastThursday]

On 06/12/2020 at 6:57 AM, yangmilun said:

2. if yes, how to understand what your understanding?

It's really quite simple.

Go back and relive yesterday. Go to bed, set the alarm clock and wake up yesterday. What? You don't know how to do that? The answer is simple, yesterday never existed.

What does knowing that change? On the surface, not much. But imagine you were a time fugitive, where's the best place to hide? Now of course - they'll never find you there. More seriously, it allows you to disconnect yourself from the nasty past and the horrible future and live in the happy present. The past and the future are stories inside your head.

Edited December 7, 2020 by LastThursday

[Brittany]

Differentiate between time and change. 

Change /= time

[kbone]

5 minutes ago, Brittany said:

Differentiate between time and change. 

Change /= time

Change is life; it just happens.

Time is a mental overlay. No other species does it.

 

Starting with the affirmation of man
I work myself backwards using cynicism
(The time monitor, the space measurer)

I live sweat but I dream light years,
I am the tide - the rise and the fall
The reality soldier, the laugh child,
The one of the many, the flame child
(The time monitor, the space measurer)

[seeking_brilliance]

I have been questioning time. Like, It's just way too structured to be real... Seconds exist in imagination, and count nothing (and some change.) the thing I struggle with is 'now' appears different from what I remember...