In the second, or rather 5th Star Wars film, there’s a great exchange between Yoda and Luke:
Luke: I saw – I saw a city in the clouds.
Yoda: [nods] Friends you have there.
Luke: They were in pain…
Yoda: It is the future you see.
Luke: The future?
[pause]
Luke: Will they die?
Yoda: [closes his eyes for a moment] Difficult to see. Always in motion is the future.
And I thought the last line was “Always emotion is the future.” Well – it amounts to the same thing. Luke responds by abandoning his training and heads off to rescue his friends.
The point is that the future is very difficult to see. It’s perception is clouded by our own emotional attachment to certain outcomes. It’s also distorted by the change in consciousness. The future is currently in a higher stage than the present so it’s a little like trying to see what it’s like to be an adult when we’re 12. It’s outside of our conception.
Nonetheless, we continue to boldly step into an always uncertain future. To compensate, we listen to pundits pontificate about it. In fact, we pay forecasters a great deal of money to fail. In Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail – And Why We Believe Them Anyway, journalist Dan Gardner explores this topic in a refreshing way. The core research comes from Philip Tetlock, a psychologist at the University of California. Tetlock determined that “experts” in any given field (he looks at many) were just slightly better at making predictions than a dart-throwing chimp! In addition, the more certain an expert is of an outcome and the bigger their profile, the less accurate the prediction was likely to be. Perhaps that makes you a little happier about your own derailed plans.
People talk all the time of predictions, forgetting how often they’re wrong: politics, economics, sports, relationships, and all the latest gossip. Gardner talks about why educated people make dumb predictions, how they rationalize their mistakes, and why we willingly get conned by the experts. The simple answer is certainty. We’re seeking certainty in a world of change so we go with the most confident voice with the best story. The more considered opinions who express cautions and limitations are ignored even when they’re usually more accurate.
We also tend to assume the future is a continuation of the present. I don’t know about you but it certainly hasn’t been in my life.(laughs) Does this mean we should give up and not do any planning? No, it just means we should be flexible and allow whats waiting to be born to reveal itself.
We’re bound to a certain future. But what that certainty is, I certainly don’t know.
Davidya
D, really like the analogy of a 12 year old trying to see what it’s like to be an adult.
I wonder if the future is always a continuation of the past. Just not an obvious one (-;
For certain we’ll always seek certainty in our life. Til we realize we are the ever unfolding certainty we seek.
(laughing) Must have my Teacher hat on this morning (-;
The point is that we assume the future is a continuation when, at some point, it’s not. Some other factor arises to change circumstances, be it the environment, you, your relationships, your boss, etc etc. And then the future takes a new direction. And all of that ricochets off all other circumstances.
One way to look at it is that time is an effect of our awareness moving through the expansion of experience. We experience it sequentially because of the focus of our attention. Because of that factor of growth or expansion and because of the interconnectedness of all things, change is an essential nature of experience. As a result, circumstances change to adapt to the needs of the next experience.
Although we may fear change, its overall movement is one of growth. If we go with the flow of that, we’ll discover that, overall, things keep getting better. Even if we have “down” cycles where things end and wind down, they are a precursor for the better.
Thus, while we cannot base our certainty on the world of change, we can be confident change is moving for the better. Even if we have the occasional dirt road to follow.
Thanks for your thoughts.
Awhile back, I wrote several articles on time. I didn’t have the deeper understanding of time then, but some of the musings in this article and it’s links may amuse.
https://davidya.ca/2008/06/21/time-changes-everything/
But how can something happen in the future if the seed of it does not exist now in the present?
It’s a good question. One way to look at it is that the future grows from the seed of the present, but its from the seed of the total present, not the individual present. Thus, if we have some idea that my personal present is the basis of my future present, we’ll be disappointed. We can think of it like a vast interconnected mesh of energy. There may be individual nodes but they’re inseparable from the whole.
More deeply, the “seed” originates not in the present but in the Veda, in the structure of consciousness. Like music, the sound that motivates the energy of each event (note) falls back into silence and triggers the next sound and its energy event. The happens from cosmic memory. Natures song sheet we could say. Time flows from a sequence of rememberings. Each is based on the last but that last is not in time but rather in eternal being. Time is simply the effect of our perception of that flow in energy events/ experiences.
make sense?
Whoa! That second paragraph! I’ll have to let that one seep in slowly. But LOVE the phrase “Time flow from a sequence of rememberings.”
Who is doing the remembering? (-;
But yes, the idea that the seed of of the total present rather than individual present. That I can grok.
You say we might be disappointed. Might we also be pleasantly surprised?
There’s ways of describing this express and fall back process in terms of quantum physics and the virtual fluctuations of the vacuum state. Or in terms of the Purusha/Prakriti dynamics of the Vedas. Anyonyabhava, the mechanics of the gap between absolute and relative, and all that. Smriti or memory is the key element that structures the intelligence of all expression, the sequencing.
The remembering? It’s Self awakening to Its own nature both globally and at every point (person).
We’ll be disappointed if we have an attachment to a certain outcome. but if we’re a little flexible and open, we can be pleasantly surprised. I have often considered how unlikely some of the things are that have unfolded in my life, but that is of course thinking from the perspective of an individual present.