Buddhists are happy to point out that the self is a mental construct. Physicists are happy to point out that time is a mental construct. Consciousness is what observes the construction and deconstruction of time and self. Deconstructing time can help to deconstruct self. Why is it helpful to deconstruct self? Because that construct leads to suffering and the goal of a liberation practice is to dismantle suffering. Suffering occurs to consciousness in time and self.
The constructs of both time and self have a lot to do with the changing nature of everything. Time is essentially that change. Self is essentially resistance to that change. Suffering is the resistance hurting. That is the simple nature of suffering. From there, it gets much more complex. The number of ways that people can suffer is unfathomable. We suffer from everything from passing disappointments to global pandemics. We suffer from grief and loss. We suffer from pain and poverty. Sometimes the hurt that the self experiences is an instant in an individual, and sometimes it is many generations, passed down through the years, through cultures and systems. A liberation practice makes it possible to experience consciousness, time and self in a different way that eases the experience of suffering.
The most horrible thing that time does to people is it kills them. That is one of the changes that inevitably happens to each self. However, from the perspective of suffering, the most horrible thing that time does to people is to creates selves. In that time, from when a self is created until it is destroyed, it is subject to suffering. To balance the horribleness of death and the cruelty of creation, we have love, the wonder of life, and the project of liberation.
We can’t be liberated from things hurting, loss, the need for food, oxygen, water, and love, but we can be liberated from the suffering that comes with how we think about our lives. By exploring the constructs of our ideas, we can merge with time and consciousness, and emerge from the habit of creating the self.
Creating the self is something that we do from moment to moment. It is a feature of time’s blank canvas. To create the self, we grab onto things. We look out of our eyes and think, this is me seeing that. When we look into a mirror, that sense of self is very strong, we think, this is me seeing me. It is a pervasive habit where everything we experience reflects back and makes us seem solid, just as we think we are.
Time feels like something different. It seems like empty space that we fill with the activities and experiences of our lives. It is the progression of change. The Earth fills time by spinning. One revolution is how our planet fills each day. All the myriads of life on the planet fall into step with that spinning and their lives unfold into the time available. Although everything we do and think happens in its time, we think that we are something separate from time. That is another example of how we continually construct a self as something separate and apart from everything else.
To break a habit, we have to intentionally do things differently. To change thinking habits, we have to think differently. Instead of thinking that we have time, make time, or we carve out time for this or that, we can practice being time. To be time, we become that emptiness with ample space for the unfolding to occur.
One quality of time is that it is always present. To become time, become present. Experience a breath as it comes in and as it goes out. As you breathe in, count from one to five. Then, as you breathe out, count down from five to one. In that brief moment of being present, you experienced both one breath of time, and ten little segments of breathing time. As you are present and focused on your breath, you are breathing in oxygen and breathing out carbon dioxide. You are also breathing time and time breathing. The oxygen enters and becomes your body, and the carbon, that was in your body, leaves. The molecules that were you a breath ago are now different molecules. That subtle change is you being time, embodying the progression of change.
Another important relative of time and self is consciousness. Consciousness happens throughout time in all beings. Whenever time gives rise to a life, consciousness is right there. Consciousness, like time, is open and available to take in whatever fills it. Unlike time, consciousness feels like us. As we construct ourselves, we experience consciousness and think, that is me, I am conscious. When we bring our attention to our breath, we become conscious of our breathing. We are simultaneously breathing, conscious, time, carbon, oxygen and a self. When we practice being present like that, not thinking of all that we are, but being just as we are, the self can drop off. It’s not essential. Whenever that happens, suffering dissipates, and we are liberated.
Like the conundrum of the chicken and the egg, either the self entering consciousness gives rise to suffering or suffering entering consciousness gives rise to self. Whichever comes first, whenever you notice a sense of suffering or a sense of self occupying consciousness, you can put them down, deconstruct them, by bringing your attention to your breath. Let the oxygen, carbon, thoughts, and ideas come and go, and see what occupies time and consciousness where you are. As you embody time like that, you have all the time you need to liberate yourself. You are time, free.
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