The problem of how to understand time is inextricably part of the [initial] problem of how to understand change. No time, no change. No change, no time: only the kind of changeless eternity that religious traditions call “God.”
-Filipe Fernandez-Armesto
“Change and processes do not occur in time, they are Time!”
-Meera Chakravorty
An awareness of deep time—both humanity’s deep past and the Earth’s deep future—and an understanding of its existential implications can significantly enhance the chances that humanity might still be able to transition towards an ecologically sustainable way of inhabiting the biosphere. In a 2022 research article called “How Deep Time Can Help Shape the Present: Existential Economics, “Joyful Insignificance” and the Future of the Ecological Transition,” author, Christian Arnsperger, explains, in detail, why this is so, using analysis of a science fiction story that evokes existential horror at humanity’s ultimate cosmic insignificance. With the tools of “terror management theory” (a paradigm of existential thought based on the work of Ernest Becker and emphasizing the saliency of the denial of death in human motivation and behaviour) and of “existential economics” (an approach postulating that the way in which the economic system is organized and operates is crucially influenced by this widespread denial of death), the essay suggests that death denial has turned into the capitalist denial of life, and that only a deep reconciliation of humanity with its true ontological place in the universe will make it possible for us to transition towards a regenerative rather than a destructive system. This will entail new modes of human thinking, feeling, and acting anchored in a shared sense of “joyful insignificance,” as well as a renewed sense of “cosmic indigeneity”—a sense that all humans are indigenous to this planet and that this fact has major implications for how we ought to live into the deep future, anchored in our deep past.
Listen to Sarah Weston of The Kabbalah Centre guide listeners through this serene audio meditation for this part of the Divine Name – DREAM STATE.
Pronunciation: Lamed Lamed Hey
Purpose: Build a vessel to achieve a truthful dream state
Meditation: With this Name I dream truthfully. My soul ascends to safe and loving places during the night. I awaken each morning recharged, reinvigorated, renewed in body and spirit. Wiser.