Four Times of Psychosocial Reality

The Times of our Life

Time is a factor in building character. The four theatres of authenticity certainly develop and change throughout life, but this is physical time. It ends when we die.
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The quality and capacity for being present when a beginner is quite different from that quality when an expert, or in a position of authority. In the same way, the nature of the challenges to be heroically tackled alters through life, as does the way we proceed. Integrity and talent are also not intrinsically constant, but develop through experience, learning and practice.

Time in physical reality is what a clock reads: neither more nor less. It lies outside the reality that THEE maps.
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In our interaction with physical time, we soon learn that our subjective state affects time perceptions. So subjective physical time (as experienced privately) commonly fails to correspond to objective physical time (as measured on a clock).
e.g. in working on this website, I experience the years as rather short, yet the days are long, and the weeks pass in a flash.

There are many puzzling issues in regard to physical time. While physical processes seem to be reversible in principle, complex systems appear to generate irreversible processes. The possibility of travelling back and forth in physical time is also now regarded as possible in principle, perhaps. Such matters, interesting as they are, lie outside present concerns.

Time in psychosocial reality is something else entirely. As well as noting that you exist in time which is the case empirically, I conjecture that you create time—just as you create other aspects of psychosocial reality. That is why, if you want something done, you give it to a busy person.

This creation of time appears to be enmeshed with the processes (Tetrads) for building character. We create and use four forms of time, one to suit each theatre.

The Creation of Time

Linear Time

As a hero-R"G4¹ you create linear time

This form of time is about the adventures in your existence. The journey of the hero reflects the development of character that comes with social maturation. It starts when you venture into the world, leaving behind childhood and home comforts. And it ends with you becoming an adult capable of carrying social responsibilities. Many things happen: the past and the future are both highly significant to the present moment during this journey.

However, that is but one adventure, and you should have many. They are all stories with beginnings, middles and ends. Character is built during these adventures. Often the adventures build on each other to form a sequence. Taken together these are all part of a greater journey in time, one that starts with birth and ends at death.

Linear time is a triple:  Past - Present - Future

Cyclic Time

As you value your talents-R"G4², you create cyclic time.

Talents must be discovered and developed through their exercise. Repetition is essential. You get good at what you do. If you value a talent, then you will put in the many years of concentration and practice needed to bring it to fruition.

During this process, you repeatedly return to the beginning. You realize that there are improvements to make, areas to explore or developments to pursue. You make those changes and reach a new plateau of competence. But this becomes taken for granted and then the same pattern recurs. You find yourself always back where you started: however much you learn or can do, you are still a beginner, there is yet more. Learning never ends.

Cyclic time is a quadruple:  Infancy - Growth - Maturity - Senescence

Time of the Permanent Now

When you are present-R"G4³, you create a time of the permanent now.

Life here is an endless succession of present moments. Your active attention must always be on the immediate situation including where you are in it, the state of others, and how you can contribute.

Experientially, life unfolds in the present. Nothing actually exists except in the present: the past is there as memory and the future is there as hopes and plans. For this aspect of character, any excessive focus on memories or fantasy of the future blocks necessary awareness of the now (g1).

Essential as being in the present is, the promotion of living in the now by spiritual gurus and popular psychology can be misleading. It may counterbalance over-valuation of the linear time of the hero, but the taxonomic finding is that you must learn to live in time in all four ways.

Permanent Now is a duple:  Present real moment - Other unreal moments

Timeless Time

You maintain integrity-R"G4⁴ within a timeless eternity.

Fundamental human issues, which all stem from the absolute necessity to treat others well, are unchanging and therefore timeless. The planes, where good and evil permit the existence of humanity as more than animal, are experienced as existing eternally or outside time.

The categories of past present and future do not apply in regard to ultimate values and goodness. We simply do not understand time very well, even in physical reality. So it is possible that any good act or thought or evil deed or emotion persists forever. We can certainly experience past moments in the present as vividly as they were then; and the future can be similarly perceived by some.

All THEE entities seem to exist in a timeless place, much like the Platonic forms and mathematical ideas.

Timeless time is a unity:  Indescribable.

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Authenticity Abhors a Wandering Mind.

The concern here is with psychosocial reality, not physical reality. So all four times of authentic character expression can and should coexist happily despite their radical differences.

They all have one feature in common: there is no tolerance for distractions or time-wasting. They value conscious joyous human living.

Buddhism and other Eastern philosophies have always emphasized that a wandering mind is an unhappy mind, and there is evidence for this.

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Exploration of this framework has reached the half-way point. The three remaining Groupings have a slightly different quality because they provide motivational input within the production of goodness.

• Start with attaining equanimity.

Originally posted: 10-May-2013