TIME
Time is weird, and works in mysterious ways. It comes from nowhere, and returns to nowhere, without being seen or heard, yet is universally experienced. Sequences of the past appear in people’s minds as memories, which we use to imagine and plan the future, yet we are always living in the now. You can’t hold time, yet it is one of the most valuable things we possess.
The word “weird” comes from the Norse word “wyrd”, which means destiny, or the act of becoming. The Norse used a system of symbols called the Rune Stones, as a way of gaining insight into the past, present, and future. The 25th and final Rune Stone to be added to the system, a modern addition, is called the Wyrd Stone. It is blank, symbolizing the fact that the future is unwritten, and that we are responsible for creating our own destiny.
The Wyrd Stone
Time is experienced by us as motion, which we measure to reference the distance between some point to the present, calling it seconds and hours and days and years. Time moves in cycles that repeat, on many layers of fractal order. We measure the cycles and rhythms of time, giving names and symbols and meaning to each part of the cycle, like the the bull of Taurus or the dragon of Chinese astrology. The moon has a cycle of illumination that happens 13 times each cycle of the earth around the sun, defining the lunar calendar of the Chinese, Mayans, and many others. In many parts of the world, the term “13 moons” is used to define a year.
The Mayan people are considered the “timekeepers of the world”, incorporating advanced mathematics, complex fractal cycles of measuring time, and the value of zero long before other cultures. According to the Mayan calendar, we are currently living at the end of the 13th Baktun. A Baktun is a cycle of time lasting 394.5 years. For the Mayans, 13 was regarded as the most significant number for religious and sacred purposes, and 20 was regarded as the foundation of secular or general time.
The 13th Baktun
To the Mayans, the 13th Baktun represents a significant time. And it has turned out to be extremely significant, just look at all that has happened in the past 390 years. The 13th Baktun began on September 18, 1618. This was the time of the beginning of the Scientific Revolution, a time of radical advances in our knowledge of and ability to control our environment, and a rapid evolution of our way of thinking and understanding. In 1618, Galileo Galilei, Rene Descartes, Johannes Kepler, Francis Bacon, and many others throughout Europe were busy working to lay the foundations for a new world, helped by those immediately before and after them.
As our scientific discoveries increased, we entered a period of the Industrial Revolution, applying the new knowledge learned. And now we are speeding into the Information Age, spinning a web of global interconnectivity happening instantaneously, sharing our knowledge and enabling it to grow at an exponential rate. Advances in nanotechnology, genetic engineering, quantum mechanics, robotics, and artificial intelligence are propelling us ever forward into unchartered territory. Some scientists are now defining the past 300 years as a new epoch in the history of this planet, calling it the Anthropocene, or age of human domination over the planet’s systems.
We are in the midst of the most extreme changes that our species has ever experienced, happening at faster and faster intervals, rushing towards some mysterious place called the future. Moving so quickly into the unknown, we should be asking, “Where are we going?”
But perhaps we are already there. Recent findings of quantum physics describes the universe as being made up of an interconnected whole. Quantum physicist Dr. David Bohm explained that all moments exist equally, at once, and it’s only our consciousness that distinguishes the present from the past or future. Bohm’s work in quantum physics suggests that at the subatomic level all points in time and space are essentially the same, and therefore nothing is actually separate from anything else.
Non-locality is the phenomenon that occurs when something on one side of the universe can instantly effect something else on the other side of the universe. Non-locality has profound implications for the prevailing world view of reality in that it clearly demonstrates the interconnectedness between all matter in the physical universe and the illusory nature of space and time, something that religious and spiritual guides have been saying for thousands of years. Raising awareness of our interconnections helps to lay the foundation for peace.
Like time, we are all in the process of becoming.
