Time and Timelessness

The Eastern philosophies distinguish, rightly, I think, between God unmanifest: undefined and formless, and God manifest and evolving. The first state is prior to time, previous, if you will, to the Big Bang, forever changeless, self-fulfilled, definitionless awareness. The other is God manifest, which essentially is us, the one child of God (there's really only one of us here), manifesting first in an explosion of individualized souls, growing and evolving in form and function, differing in chosen purpose, but cut of the same cloth - a spray of individual water droplets all forming the same wave - creating changes in this realm of time where change can be observed, though it is all happening in this single moment we call now. Time is the measurement of changes that seem to occur in us, with us, and through us, yet we are, in essence, changeless, definitionless awareness, and all that seems to change, be born, blossom, and die, is an appearance, an illusion, but one with meaning, like a sentence full of carefully selected words that together convey just one simple meaning. The individual words, or expressions, or moments of our lives have limited significance, but when they are taken together in a series, they spell out a meaning in their totality that they lack in any other order. Carlos Castaneda's Don Juan Mateus, the brujo, suggested a technique of reviewing one's life, from this moment backward, in order to notice the significance of one's life with adequate perspective. My teacher Paul recommended the same, noting that any incident which brings up laughter or tears in the telling might still need to be further integrated, and also recommended doing a nightly review of the preceding day before falling asleep.