One of the most common devices of Eastern thinking is the concept of yin and yang. That the tension and balance of opposing elements are the basis of the larger whole. It might be a useful concept here.

Consider that as mobile organisms, we experience our reality as a sequence of flashes of perception and then sort and judge them, for the very necessary function of navigation. As the saying goes; Life is like riding a bicycle. You keep moving forward, or you fall over.

It’s that balance between the general and the specific, in that if we stop to examine every detail, they become rabbit holes, sucking us into their own infinity and off the path we had been traveling. Then when we circle back and try examining our thoughts and thoughts of thoughts, the feedback loops do start getting out of hand.

As we narrate our experiences to one another and build civilizations out of the collected knowledge, our cultural assumption is of time as the point of the present, moving past to future, yet the cause is that change turns future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns.

Potential>actual>residual.

So there is only this physical state of the present, which is vastly dynamic and our imagination is constantly conjuring up possibilities and alternatives, so we are often mentally distracted from the physical present, but that’s what makes us human. Much of the rest of life lives only in and for the present.

So time is an effect of activity, like temperature, or pressure. It could reasonably be argued the left, linear, cause and effect logical hemisphere of the brain is analogous to a clock/ruler, while the right, emotional intuitive side is analogous to a thermostat/barometer.

So yes, when we do climb out of our particular narrative ruts and really start examining this reality in which we exist, the narrative flow that gives us meaning and focus is lost.

For example, while the process churns along, from one event to the next, it is going past to future. while the markers and patterns of this dynamic go future to past. Such as consciousness going past to future, while thoughts go future to past. Or lives going birth to death, while life moves onto succeeding generations, shedding the old. Or even factories, where the product goes start to finish, while the production line goes the other way, consuming material and expelling product.

The feedback is that the patterns steer and define the process. As with our thoughts swirling into those rabbit holes of self analysis, rather than simply skipping along the surface of life.

So our thoughts are distinct from our sense of self, as consciousness. They go opposite directions of time! The only connection being this fluctuating state of presence.

Back to yin and yang; Think galaxies. Energy radiating out, as mass/condensed form gravitates in. Our bodies have the digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems to process the energy driving us on, along with the central nervous system, sorting though the forms and information precipitating out, as well as refereeing the emotions and impulses bubbling up. Motor and steering. No brakes.

Not coincidently we associate the heart and gut with emotion and instinct, as what drives us. It is not so much the objects of our desire, as the fact of our desire. The appetite gives the meal meaning.

The problem of thought is that such constructs are like waves. They are only fully formed and defined, as they are cresting. So we get this sense of emptiness, as they recede. If you want to truly live in the present, learn to sense the wave as it is starting to build. Which goes require suspending judgement, letting the wave take its own form, with you riding it.

Obviously with some sense of where it might be going. Emotions and impulses are all well and good, but the function of the executive, of higher consciousness, is to cogitate on and learn from prior experience, in order to act effectively and logically in future situations. Thus the need for the reflection, that can become the aforementioned hall of mirrors, if allowed to run wild.

Then you learn to become one with the larger world, just as a tool, or a book becomes an extension of your body and your mind.

So it is that tension between desire and judgement. The potential is far greater than the actual and the residual, of memory and history, is a tiny fraction of that. We, as will, have taken selection from the natural and it is both our bane and achievement.