James,

It isn’t that time is an illusion, but that it is an effect, like temperature, pressure, color and sound. All of which pretty much create the reality in which we exist.

That only the state we refer to as the present is physically real seems obvious, but it doesn’t accord with our sequential process of perception and the narrative culture rising from it.

Consider that as energy is conserved, it is always and only present, yet constantly changing form. For example, frequency and amplitude are not what drives a wave, but the descriptive effect. So while the energy goes past to future, cause to effect, these events go future to past, like a wave rising and falling.

So the process goes past to future, while the patterns generated go future to past. As consciousness goes past to future, while thoughts and feelings go future to past. Or individual lives go birth to death, while the process of life goes onto the next generation, shedding the old.

Even products in a factory go from start to finish, while the production line goes the other way, consuming material and expelling product. Or the light of a movie projector goes from one frame to the next, as the story unfolds and the scenes recede into the past.

So this element of consciousness and its biological basis is like an energy, constantly moving onto the next, as the particular manifestations come and go.

I’m not trying to deny death and pain. As I see it, without the ups and downs, it’s a flatline, just trying to dig into the dynamics of life.

We are that element of being, bubbling up through the forms, while the forms give it direction and focus. The anarchy of desire, versus the tyranny of judgement. The heart and the head.