Time

When pursuing a spiritual path the concept of time comes up over and over. Live
in the present moment. The past has gone and the future is not here yet. All true. There is
a reason for living in the moment. It is because there is only the present moment.
Everything that exists now is in the present moment. If we want to change something
there is only one place to change it, here and now. But the present moment is always
changing and we need a scale to plan and keep tracks of those changes.

It is like the concept of zero. There is no such thing as a zero: there is no such
thing as a nothing. But without a nothing Western mathematics self destructs. Even with
the simplest calculations every time zero came about as part of the process the
calculations would stop. Nothing is nothing and nothing can be done with nothing
because you can do anything with something that does not exist. This was a real problem
with early forms of mathematics.

So what can we do get past this wall of nothing? We pretend there is such a thing
as a nothing, and give it pretend properties that we can manipulate in order for our
calculations to blast past the nothing and carry on. The nothing is not real and the pretend
properties have nothing to do with reality, but at least we can get past the block. The
pretend properties of zero are arranged that they cancel out and do not interfere with the
result.

In more recent times nothing caused all sorts of problem for early PC's. The
program would try to add nothing to nothing (or something similar) and up would come
the message 'This computer has performed an illegal operation and cannot continue'.
Someone with a sense of humour (or maybe he/she was just a nerd) at Microsoft put two
buttons below the massage OK, and Cancel. Like many others I always tried 'Cancel' first
just in case there was a way to cancel the crash.

It is the same with time. Time does not exist. There is only an ever-changing
present moment. We need a scale to manage the changes in the present moment. So we
give it pretend values. It is like an inch or a mile. You cannot go into a shop and buy a
box of inches. The value on an inch is the defined difference in location of two points. It
is a relationship.

So we design a day to be the change in the present moment between the sun
coming up and the next time the sun comes up. We divide this change in the present
moment into two lots of twelve and call the relationship an hour. There is no such thing
as an hour. It is only the relationship between two points of change.

Why two lots of twelve and then divide again into the sixty parts we call minutes?
It is all to do with the magic number 36.

What is so special about 36 is that it is divisible by 2,3,4,6, 9 and 12. And it is

almost divisible by 5 and 7. What was done was to divide the circumference the planet
we live on into 360 (36 x 10) divisions both around the circumference (longitude) and
from north to south and back the other side to the beginning (latitude) we give the angle
between any two of these divisions the label of a degree. We divide each degree into
sixty minutes and each minute into sixty seconds. Then the distance between any two
minutes of latitude was given the label of one nautical mile.

One more thing. If we travel 60 nautical miles forward and one nautical mile
sideways and then back to where we started the angle between the out journey and the
journey is one degree. This relationship is usually called the one in sixty rule.

What is the point of dividing the planet and time in this way? If I fly my plane 90
nautical miles to my destination and after 60 nautical miles I am 4 nautical miles off
course to the left I am 4 degrees off course. I have 30 nautical to go so measured from my
destination I am degrees of course so I must change course 12 (4+8) degrees to the right.
If it has taken 40 minute to get so far way ground speed is 90 knots (nautical miles per
hour) because 40 = 2/3 of one hour and so one hour would be 60 x 3/2 = 90. And I have
30 nautical miles to go so I will be there in 20 minutes.

This very simple example shows how quick and simple mental calculations can
give accurate answers to complex navigation problems. The reason navigation is so
simple with so few mental calculations is that the numbers have been arranged to make it
simple. Once the concept of working with 36, 24, 12, 9, 6, 5, 4, 3,and 2 because the
answer give whole numbers, or simple fractions, has been grasped navigation becomes
second nature to the extent the answers just pop out without conscious thought.

Whoever came up with the concept of dividing the day into 2 lots 12 and dividing
each part of the 12 into 60 and then relating this to the physical Earth was a genius
beyond compare. What makes this so intrepid is that time, with its hours and minutes, and
the pretend degrees minutes and seconds on the Earth's surface are a total fabrication. But
without this fabrication navigation would not exist and the early explorers would have
wandered around aimlessly and never found there way back to where they started.

But we need something to measure the rate of change so we build a device that is
constantly changing at a fixed rate. Typically the early devices had cogs and levers that
moved around or backwards and forward in a set pattern measuring the constant
movement of a pendulum. Attach 'hands' to the cogs and levers that indicated the internal
position of the cogs.

Make it so that the rate of change is relative to the sun and you have a clock.
Build several of these devices that all have the internal rate of change and we can
navigate through the changing moment to meet our friends at the coffee shop or any
number of other co-ordinated activities.

To say you would meet your friend when the big hand was on twelve and the little
hand was on two would be accurate. That is exactly what you are going to do. To say you
will meet your friend at two o'clock is false. There is no such entity as two o'clock. There
is the position of change in the present moment when the big hand will be on twelve and
the little hand is on two but this will not be the time because time does not exist.
Understanding the concept of time is very important on our journey. There is no
way to go back in time. What was done stays done and has help shape the present
moment. Whatever we do now will cause change in the present moment. We have
choices. Every little thing we do is a choice.

Every little thing we do changes the present moment and sets the world on a new
course. Some years ago an Afro-American woman refused to give her seat on a bus to a
white man. We now have an Afro-American President of the USA. That began with a
choice made by a woman on a bus.

The choices we make in the present moment change the direction of history. We
can never know the ultimate outcome but we can set the direction. We can never know
what would have been if we had made a different choice. We can only do best we can
with what we have in the present moment because here and now is the only time we have.