The Anchoring of Time in Perception
El Anclaje del Tiempo en la Percepción
A question about why certain aspects of experience, particularly the visual field and emotional pain, seem harder to recognize as momentary and changing, and how the sense of time gets anchored in what appears to be still or lasting.
The Anchoring of Time in Perception
A question about why certain aspects of experience, particularly the visual field and emotional pain, seem harder to recognize as momentary and changing, and how the sense of time gets anchored in what appears to be still or lasting.
The bubble-like nature of experience is really helpful to me: the difference between timeless presence and the bubble-like changes that happen in our experience. It's really easy for me to see in sensations, sounds, and thoughts. But there are two aspects of my experience where I get a bit confused. One is the visual field. Sometimes I'll look out, and especially if nothing is changing, no one is moving, I'm just looking at the environment, it can seem more constant or consistent. The other is emotional experience. Sometimes, especially with emotional pain, it seems to last longer. That bubble, so to speak, persists. I'm not sure whether it's that it's harder to see as momentary change. I notice I get more confused and stop being able to distinguish what is changing from what is timeless presence.
I'm using a metaphor to undo the part of perception that is based on becoming, which rests on an assumption. When I say "assumption," it goes much deeper than a cognitive process. There are mechanisms through which perception occurs, and then there is interpretation. What I call the mind map actually involves parts of the brain where what is brought in through perception gets modified by other regions that have more contact with the frontal lobe, the cortex, where more cognitive processing takes place.
I say all this to point out that, in a sense, it does require changes in the way the brain is functioning. That's why in some areas there is more resistance, which is what you're describing as it not seeming as easy. Consider it like learning a new motor skill: it's going to require some time for it to become natural. Because we've been doing this kind of interpretation for decades, pretty much all the time, there needs to be a process through which we undo it. It begins at a cognitive level, by questioning the reality of some of our interpretations. For example, the assumption that the nature of time is absolute, meaning the assumption that time is built into the foundation of the physical world.
Rates of change and the illusion of stillness
Now, getting to your question: what you bring up has to do with the rate of change. The only difference is whether movement is fast or slow. If everything moved at the same rate, there would be no notion of a contrast. You need some things to move fast and some things to move slow for any such contrast to exist.
The experience of something moving slowly feels more tied to fundamental aspects of reality, more tied to the notion that time is absolute, because that is where perception is getting anchored. For example, as you were saying, if nothing in the visual field is moving, that stillness becomes the background against which you measure something else as moving.
You mean measuring change for other things?
Exactly. There is a background, which is emptiness. That is the timeless. But if you assume the background to be the visual field and you look at something that is not moving, now you are stepping out of the timeless into something that is an appearance, something formed. And now everything moving in relationship to that is how time gets imagined.
What you're describing, that solid, sticky quality, is there because that is where perception is anchoring in order to measure time. If everything moved at the same rate, there would be no relationship, no relativity between fast and slow. The whole perceptual interpretation of time is working against that background.
But if you look closely, that background is just something that moves slowly. Cognitively, you know that even if you look at something and it appears not to be moving, it is moving. You know it was not there a while ago and it won't be there in a while. Though that language itself starts to bring in the absoluteness of time again.
The first shift is to see that everything is just movement at different rates, which does not require time to be absolute. Time, in a sense, emerges from what is appearing, as a map, as a way to measure rates of change. It is very useful. But what happens is that it becomes upside down: we have done this so much that we embed ourselves into it. We end up living inside of time, but it is living inside of a conceptual map. So it is not that there is a present moment and then a past and a future. There is only, let's say, presence. It is not even a "present moment."
That's pretty clear to me. I think the time thing is very clear: the timeless present. The past and future are just thoughts to me; they don't seem real. But there is an anchoring of the perceptual, as you put it, in both the visual field, because it moves slower, and sometimes in the emotional quality, especially if it's painful. I notice it seemingly lasting longer, just continuing to be there.
The role of narrative in sustaining emotion
The emotional dimension is a bit trickier. I would first contemplate what in the visual field is not moving and try to bring into it the perspective and the understanding that it actually is moving, just at a very slow rate, so that you can see the relative nature of that.
At the emotional level, it is trickier because most things remain because of the projection of time. If there were no attachment to time, emotions would move a lot faster and would dissolve faster. There has to be a narrative in time for an emotion to be propagated or maintained. It is a chicken-and-egg situation.
So thoughts continue to create emotions; the story keeps it going. That's how it functions.
You will only be able to have the experience of emotions lasting for a long time if you are, in a sense, believing a narrative in time. If the narrative and the belief in it drop, the emotion moves. It just moves and shifts. It needs to be maintained through an effort, through a mental process.
Is it that I keep believing the story? Because the alternative would be for thoughts to simply pass as phenomena without getting attached to the story, which then creates more emotion.
Attachment as investing in the reality of a construct
Yes. Just look at what aspect of it you are buying into. Attachment means you are believing something; you are wanting something to be more real than it is. To put more words to it: attachment is wanting a mental construct to be more real than it is. I want it to represent more of reality than just thought.
So when that emotion is sticking, when you say it is remaining, look at the narrative that is associated with it and look at what in the narrative you are wanting, what you are invested in the reality of.
I can see that. I think there are layers to this, because as I look at the narrative, some are a lot easier than others to detach from.
Yes.