having the time of our lives, wish you were here

The Mega-Story, the Myth, in which we as individuals and as a society are immersed, and therefore do not question, is Journey. We are on the move, going from "here" to "there." "Progress is our most important product." Both mainstream Christianity and most forms of evolutionary theory are based upon this linear progression of time. Hardly anyone questions it. All "move along" as if they are "getting somewhere."

If one stops this feverish pursuit of "the future," one can see that time is an imaginary phenomenon, its "reality" enforced in the main by industry; and I refer not just to corporate industry, but to members of this culture's psychic need for industry. By staying busy, we keep our minds off our situations. We stick our minds into the ostrich-sands of time, but our butts are still sticking in the air, hanging in the breeze.

In this time-drenched atmosphere, pulled hither and thither by time-pieces strapped to arms, many serve their terms, their sentences, looking for eventual release from their jobs or from their current rupture into a coming rapture.

Linear time did not always exist. The ancient Greeks and Persians lived in a world of cyclical time. Linear time came primarily into play (time and play do not go together), creating a world of seriousness (series-us-ness), with the founding of the Christian religion (this world is temp-orary and we are headed toward Armageddon, beyond which is Forever). Christianity, Capitalism, Industry, and Progress are now intertwined and would not exist without Linear Time.

We shall not lightly drop this myth of time and journey. Trying to convince folk to do so is a foolish move, like trying to convince a fish there is air above the water. Nor do we need to drop it. We could recognize that it is just one "reality," one dimension in which we as humans both create and limit ourselves.

The time is always now and the journey is always here. In this sense, both time and journey are a lie, keeping us in the hope and expectation that in some distant future place, we shall be different than we are. We are who we are right now. Transcendent change comes from diving deeply into our morass of being, facing all demons disguised as angels, all angels disguised as demons, and opening from our core. Here. Now.