"The Present Moment"

[Mother Sanity (JackieRodzinski)]

How do you define it, The Present Moment ?. Its a value we are

told by some is 'a mathematical impossibility. We are either approaching it, or moving away

from it. (eg: 1 sec prior to....1/100000 seconds prior to until you get to 1/0, or 0, a

'value' or concept or we're told cant really exsist?. Does that mean the present

moment never actually occurs? If it does, how long does it last? Where exactly does the

truth lie? Do we  never experience this elusive 'moment'? Is life itself a complete

illusion?

Or is there something fundamentally wrong with the long held belief that 1/0 is an

impossibility. In this case, (it seems to me, at least) is  the present moment all that

exsists?

What actually occurs in the present moment? Love, suffering, pain....or is it some great

hallucination we have little possibility of understanding, let alone experiencing?

Just wondering. For a real long time. Love to all, Mother Sanity

[Jack Z]

Maybe because time is always moving, to be in the present is to be outside of time, and to be in eternity ... That is if we care to entertain eternity ... I think like your post suggests, it's more of a philisophical question then mathematical.....

[Mother Sanity (JackieRodzinski)]

But time doesn't intrinsically exsist...its a derived function. And philosophy, mathematics...really, theres a difference?

[Maricel Evasco]

But time doesn't intrinsically exsist...(Mother Sanity)

To support your position:

Physics & Math / Einstein
Newsflash: Time May Not Exist
http://discovermagazine.com/2007/jun/in-no-time

No one keeps track of time better than Ferenc Krausz. In his lab at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany, he has clocked the shortest time intervals ever observed. Krausz uses ultraviolet laser pulses to track the absurdly brief quantum leaps of electrons within atoms. The events he probes last for about 100 attoseconds, or 100 quintillionths of a second. For a little perspective, 100 attoseconds is to one second as a second is to 300 million years.

But even Krausz works far from the frontier of time. There is a temporal realm called the Planck scale, where even attoseconds drag by like eons. It marks the edge of known physics, a region where distances and intervals are so short that the very concepts of time and space start to break down. Planck time—the smallest unit of time that has any physical meaning—is 10-43 second, less than a trillionth of a trillionth of an attosecond. Beyond that? Tempus incognito. At least for now.

Efforts to understand time below the Planck scale have led to an exceedingly strange juncture in physics. The problem, in brief, is that time may not exist at the most fundamental level of physical reality. If so, then what is time? And why is it so obviously and tyrannically omnipresent in our own experience? “The meaning of time has become terribly problematic in contemporary physics,” says Simon Saunders, a philosopher of physics at the University of Oxford. “The situation is so uncomfortable that by far the best thing to do is declare oneself an agnostic.”


My two cents:
The present moment for me is a personal determination and awareness of metaphysical time relative to a continuum of points in our lives. I don't think it is possible to experience the present moment while we are asleep, so lucidity must be a factor in experience.

[Mother Sanity (JackieRodzinski)]

Hyper-cool Marciel!!! I rather suspected something of the sort.

The other thing that occurs to me is how 'time'seems to slow down dramatically when you are facing an accident (for example. Now why would that be?

[Maricel Evasco]

http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/einsteinlight/jw/module4_twin_paradox.htm

The twin paradox uses the symmetry of time dilation to produce a situation that seems paradoxical. In the introductory film clip, we saw that time was dilated when observed from frames of reference with a constant relative velocity v. There is an animation and analysis below, but let's introduce it with a cartoon.

The really strange thing about time dilation is that it is symmetrical: if you and I have relative motion, then I see your clock to be running slow, and you see mine to be running slow. (Revise time dilation.) This is just one example of the weird logic of Einstein's theory of Special Relativity. The theory is counter-intuitive, because most of us are unfamiliar with measurements made at speeds approaching c, the speed of light. Because of this, it is fun to attempt to prove that it is wrong. Surely it's possible to make a paradox out of the symmetry of time dilation? Let's see.

Jane and Joe are twins. Jane travels in a straight line at a relativistic speed v to some distant location. She then decelerates and returns. Her twin brother Joe stays at home on Earth. The situation is shown in the diagram, which is not to scale.

Joe observes that Jane's on-board clocks (including her biological one), which run at Jane's proper time, run slowly on both outbound and return leg. He therefore concludes that she will be younger than he will be when she returns. On the outward leg, Jane observes Joe's clock to run slowly, and she observes that it ticks slowly on the return run. So will Jane conclude that Joe will have aged less? And if she does, who is correct? According to the proponents of the paradox, there is a symmetry between the two observers, so, just plugging in the equations of relativity, each will predict that the other is younger. This cannot be simultaneously true for both so, if the argument is correct, relativity is wrong.

[Mother Sanity (JackieRodzinski)]

Relativity can be wrong...relatively.

[Mother Sanity (JackieRodzinski)]

You are saying it right, and I understand. Still, contemplate the approach and the passing of 'The Present Moment. What do you get?'.

[Mother Sanity (JackieRodzinski)]

LOL. Guess I need to get out more!

[larry kremis]

LOL Sandra.

[kainsworth]

It's about being present within the flow of time. You can be in that present moment even as it changes. This moment right now, as we draw this current breath, contains perfection. It is a place that I try to spend a little bit of time every day, seeing the beauty that is now. Letting go of expectations, of the to-do list, of the chatter that is constantly in my mind. Taking a moment to feel my breath in my lungs, to acknowledge the beauty of the sights and sounds and feels of what is around me, not counting time, but connecting with what is timeless.

[Mother Sanity (JackieRodzinski)]

Then I guess I'm ok....

[Snagg]

Of course "the moment" happens. Try hitting your thumb with a hammer. "The Moment" didn't last long, but the results did, right? Yep, "the moment" definitely occurred..