We are very goal oriented creatures. As mobile, intentional organisms, our life is about moving forward. Our experience is a sequence of perceptions, which which we then sort and judge, in order to navigate. Then narrate our journeys and build civilizations out of the collected knowledge.

Yet what motivates us is not so much the objects of our desire, the pot of gold at the end of the narrative arc, but the fact of our desire. The fire within, seeking more fuel. Be it pleasure, power, or knowledge.

Our thoughts are simply the cresting waves of our emotions and desires. The form they take, as they recede.

We assume time to be this dimensionless point of the present, moving along the sequence of events, past to future, but it is change turning future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns.

There is just this physical presence and its changing configuration creates this sequence, for us to experience and navigate.

Time is an effect, like temperature, or pressure, or color.

Our consciousness goes past to future, as our thoughts and feelings go future to past. As lives go birth to death, while life goes onto the next generation, shedding the old.

Sometimes we are like plants. Just sitting there and spreading our branches in all directions.

When we get very good at this, we are no longer just a node in the network, but become the network. Like books and tools are extensions of our minds and bodies. The rest of the world melts into us and us into it. Even though we are just one more cresting wave on a much deeper sea.

Then we know utopia. That fluctuation between the absolute and the infinite.

The processes driving us on, versus the patterns precipitating out.

Like galaxies. Energy radiating out, as mass coalesces in.

Cosmic convection cycles.