Showing posts with label time. Show all posts
Showing posts with label time. Show all posts

Saturday, July 6, 2019

Stoic Philosophy - How do you spend your time?

Stoic philosophy is a regular feature on UU A Way Of Life which appears on Saturdays.



From Lucius Seneca's On The Shortness Of Life:

Believe me, it is the sign of a great man, and one who is above human error, not to allow his time to be frittered away: he has the longest possible life simply because whatever time was available he devoted entirely to himself.

Seneca. On the Shortness of Life (Penguin Great Ideas) (p. 10).

Comment:

Time is an illusion. In eternity it doesn't exist. Eternity is timeless and sometimes in this incarnation we experience this phenomenon and say things like, "Where did the time go?" and "It seems like time stood still."

Unitarian Universalists know that time is ephemeral and has no meaning in the context of their faith in the Unconditional Love of God of which we all are a part as we affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person.

A great person, according to Seneca, is a person who does not allow time to be frittered away but lives for the moment in the eternal now. As the Buddhists say with a laugh, "Be here now!"

Of course the past is gone, the future is yet to come, and so awareness of the now is a great gift which is why it is called a present.

Friday, June 1, 2018

Becoming Godliness in the eternal present

Osho says, "Ordinarily you think that time is divided into three divisions: past, present, and future. That is totally wrong. That is not how the awakened ones have seen time. They say time consists only of two divisions: past and future. The present is not part of time at all; the present belongs to the beyond." p. 180, "Ah, This!"

Remember the past are memories and the future is imagination. The present is the eternal Now, what is called in A Course In Miracles, "the Holy Instant."

The Buddhists say, "Be here now," but perhaps it would be better put if it they simply said, "Be Now," or maybe just "Now".

God said in the bible when asked who He is, "I am who I am, " or "I is what is."

When we become aware of the present we experience an Oneness with existence. We become Godliness. We become one with the All in the eternal present where there is no time at all.

Thursday, May 31, 2018

"You got the time?"

The title of this blog is UU A Way Of Life. Is that way of life chemical free? Unitarian Universalists are not Mormons or Methodists. UUs like their chemicals especially their caffeine which they indulge in notoriously in their coffee hours after "worship."

This discussion of the use of chemicals brings us to the famous meme, "Miller Time," and a consideration of the spiritual meaning of "time." What is time? Past, present, future. As Osho says, there is no such thing. We just make it up. The past is nothing but memories and the future is nothing but imagination. All we really have is the present and most of us are not present in the present because we are living the past or the future in our minds. Isn't this a shame? As the Buddhists say, "Be here now." Being here now is tasting eternity, heaven, as Jesus said, "On earth as it is in heaven."

Osho says, "Time means mind. Time is a projection of mind. It does not exist; it is only an illusion. Only the present exists - and the present is not part of time. The present is part of eternity. Past is time, future is time; both are non-existential. The past is only memory and the future is only imagination; memory and imagination, both are non-existential." p.180 "Ah, This!"

"Hey, Bob, what time is it?"

"It's time for a cold one."

"It's always time for a cold one with you."

"That's right, it's Miller time."

And as Kurt Vonnegut has written, "And so it goes........"


Wednesday, February 14, 2018

Est quid est

Universalists know that in the realm of the spirit there is no time. The unconditional love of God does not change. The unconditional love of God is timeless. Right?

What if there were no time? What if time disappeared and things just were the way they are and that's that?

What if the Buddhist expression, which has become popular in our contemporary time, "it is what it is", is true?

Peace descends and we rise above the turmoil of change on the ego plane. We enter a blissful awareness born of forgiveness of the ego world.

Is this heaven? It matters not what we call it. It simply is what it is. That's it. Period. Enjoy.
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