[Here's another course assignment I am sharing: a reflection based on some of the notions of time as a dimension of the physical universe, as described at a webpage of the University of Mannitoba.]
At last! I can begin to write this assignment. Yesterday I could not have written these first words. Now it is time.
I initially took on the “What Is Time” website at the end of a long day. Frankly, I could make no sense of it, and knowing that I would be asked to write 1 to 2 pages on some idea within it bordered on terrifying!
The following day, I re-opened the file with dread but plunged into the black (w)hole of it anyway. In the space of this day, I not only made sense of it, but found I could play with the ideas inside. As the old song goes, “What a difference a day makes!”[i]
In this play space, my next challenge was to sort through the many possible themes to find where the fire was to move my work on this assignment forward. In my reading of “What Is Time”, I discovered a section of text that generated a noticeable body-mind-heart-soul tension, so I focused there. My specific point of reference here is to the author’s discussion of cyclic and linear time, and then how Einstein “changed these ideas totally” with his theories of general and special relativity. Here’s how I took it from there:
First, in receptive stillness, I sit with the tension: I sense there is a dismissal of the cycle, the circle, as the irreversible arrow of time moves the Cosmic Feminine aside. I’m thinking there is something about the interrelationship of Masculine and Feminine energy that’s being missed in this shift. I question that linear time represents a “progressive view” as the article suggests. I sense it’s time to move out of quiet reflection and into hunting mode.
On to the Google search! I play with different search strings: cyclic time and Cosmic Feminine, spacetime and Feminine Principle, cronos and kairos, and on and on, following what attracts me until my head is full of possibilities in a sea of chaotic thought. I have no starting point for writing the assignment. And how did it get to be so late in the day?
I quiet my mind, and listen. Out of the chaos, an image emerges: the Taijitu (yin yang symbol). I have to smile as I relax into cellular memories of my practice of Taijiquan. I can feel the flow of energy, yin into yang, emptying then filling my limbs like a precious liquid poured slowly back and forth between two carafes. In this quiet space of memory I move back through my process with this assignment to reflect on notions of time. Now I see the pattern of subtle flows―circles to arrows, chronos to kairos, male to female, and back again―yet something beyond that, too: an idea that links and integrates older human observations and experience with what is emerging.
“Could this speak to a view of time that is more resonant with body-mind-heart-soul,” I wonder, “the flow between magnetic poles of yin-yang?” I am moved to try one more search: spacetime and yin-yang. In the second page of results I find a link that sparks delightful coherence to my thoughts about co-creative harmony of the Cosmic Masculine and Feminine, and what it could mean in relation to concepts of space and time.
In the preface of his book on YinYang Bipolar Relativity,[ii] author Wen-Ran Zhang outlines his intention to introduce a deeper theory that transcends spacetime. In doing so, he doesn’t focus on defining the smallest fundamental element, but instead proposes that YinYang bipolarity is the most fundamental property of the universe. Though Zhang doesn’t claim YinYang bipolar relativity is a “theory of everything” he sees its potential to unify theories: mechanistic with holistic paradigms, classical with quantum logic, quantum entanglement with microscopic and macroscopic agent interaction, and general relativity with quantum mechanics. It is a deeper theory beyond spacetime geometry with practical applications for discovery in many fields of knowledge.
Tension resolved…for the time being.
[i] You can find this song also under the title: What a Difference a Day Made. I linked the Dinah Washington video because this is how I remember the song being sung when I first heard it as a child. For another take on the song, see Esther Phillips’ version. In the extended comments for the Phillips video, I noted with interest that this popular song was “originally written in Spanish by María Méndez Grever (María Grever), a Mexican composer, in 1934. Originally, the song was known as Cuando Vuelva A Tu Lado.”
