Transitions
Posted: Tuesday, December 08, 2009
by Tony Brussat
http://qualiadelic.com
Qualia, such as color, depth, texture, by themselves, don't tell us much about consciousness. However, the qualiadelic relationships we have with these elements our perception of them is most important. For our perception of them evolves as we relate to them, while, just as importantly, they evolve, too. Our eyes evolve to see color in certain flowers, and those flowers evolve to more effectively produce that color. It's a relationship a qualiadelic relationship.
Among the many qualiadelic relationships that we have is the one with "time." As humans we have evolved a general awareness of time in terms of hours and days, and we can consciously focus that awareness into shorter or longer increments, such as seconds, or years.
But that is about as far as we have gotten. Although we may know about milleseconds, or about millenia, we hardly have put any work toward ritualing with them: therefore our qualiadelic relationship with them is very immature. For instance, consider the difficulty of comprehending the huge stretches of geologic time so difficult is it to contemplate such vastness that it interferes with the acceptance of other epochal concepts such as evolution and astrophysics. Our resistance is a sign of our qualiadelic immaturity with respect to time.
On the other hand, we are readily capable of putting ourselves into the brain of an ant, and imagining that a single day must feel like a year; or into the mind a microbe, for whom a single hour may span an entire lifetime. Such anthropomorphism represents at least the beginning of a qualiadelic relationship with alternative comprehensions of time.
Altered frameworks of time can reduce anxiety and expand our perception of the world around us. Alternative ways of seeing time are necessary for peaceful transitions in life. And from life, too.
The fear of death is both understandable and common. Not many of us can slip into the void with a perfect peace of mind, clear of conscience and of pain. And yet, fear or no fear, as the time draws near, one minute you are here and the next you are not. So it is, at least, for the anxious ones, who have not lived life in order to ensure a good death.
One way to ensure a good death is to ritual with to develop a qualiadelic relationship with time. In this way, when we pass, the last minute becomes the last sixty seconds, and the last second becomes a thousand milliseconds. You see, a wise man once pointed out that, since times slows down when we're bored, the secret to immortality is total boredom.
It may sound like just a playful idea, but really, who's to say that if we are mindful during the "final transition" that last minute could take a hundred years. Who knows what kind of qualiadelic relationships we might form in that time...
"As virtuous men passe mildly away,
And whisper to their soules, to goe...
...So let us melt, and make no noise,
No teare-floods, nor sigh-tempests move..."
--John Donne "A Valediction: forbidden mourning"
This Article has been viewed 150 times. (Not updated in real-time.)
No comments yet.We want your comments! If you can read this, you don't have javascript enabled, so you can't use this comment system. Please enable javascript.