Linear Time is overrated. Welcome to Circular Time.
Linear Time as it relates to the left brain or ‘masculine’ principle*, looks like an orderly succession of days, with past and future arranged before and after the present time. Like the pages of our diaries. Or the dates and numbers on our digital clocks that increase in regular intervals. Or the chronological chart pinned on the walls of the history teacher’s classroom.
Cyclical Time or circular time, which relates to the right brain or the feminine principle, as you might expect, is, well, curvier. It’s bounteous and wild. It’s what happens to time when you squeeze a loved one before saying goodbye… Eternity packed in a flash. It’s also what happens to time when accidents happen that seemingly make everything g into slow motion.
In this qualitative wilder aspect of time, Time stretches, bounces and is infinitely abundant.
Circular time is never lost
In a Time-as-a-Line paradigm, Time is quantifiable, meaning time is either gained or lost. In other words, linear time is limited: we save time, we lose time. There is time left or time is gone forever.
This may seem like a conspicuously obvious observation but the ramification of this are profound, because we humans tend to ‘write off’ what has been lost.
In Time-as-a-Circle, nothing is lost. Everything stays held within the circle, like a centrifugal force that keeps everything as one whole.
In circular time, all memories are connected like pearls on a necklace. You could detach the necklace and re-form it into a line, but then, you’d be looking at your memories like you would like at a book, you wouldn’t be wearing them proudly, with full body ownership.
If you think about it, we know that nothing is created, everything is transformed. This feels like a circle to me, would you agree? It feels to me that Circular Time is closer to the organic intelligence behind Nature.
Circular time makes everything matter
When Time is a circle, even though each cycle is unique, it bears commonality to the previous and future cycles, by virtue of having the same metaphoric ‘seasons’, thereby connecting past, present and future cycles.
While you walk circular time, all of your efforts from the past can never be “written off”. They are right here with you as you move along the circle.
We try to impart this in our minds, that everything matters, but it doesn’t easily stick because we’ve lost the geometry of the circle.
All the little things you do to create abundance or beauty or health matter. They go right in the soil of seasonal time.
Circular Time supports “consistency”
When Time is a Line, when we want to grow or build something, and we need that famous “consistency”, we are faced with a linear series of repetition.
It is up to you, in the linear paradigm, to lead on, build on and not lose track.
When Time is a Circle though, it is not entirely on you to remember every thread and every project you’re managing because the timing of action self-arises just like in nature. Instead of actively showing up for each action we must take, we end up responding to what is right in the moment.
If you do the work of re-wilding Time, you will get back your capacity to tune into “time cues”.
A little bit like knowing when it’s time to eat (but on a larger scale): hunger arises from us naturally, at possibly various times, but still regularly.
Our ways of living have somewhat atrophied our capacity to hear those internal cues that determine right or ripe timing.
The mind alone doesn’t quite know when the time is right. Only when we are grounded both in Space AND Time does the ability to feel these cues come back.
In circular Time, Consistency is completely redefined as simply “doing what’s required at the right time”. It’s Life coming to meet you, not just you pursuing Life.
Circular Time makes sense of our personal evolution
When Time is a Circle, and outer and inner events seemingly or actually repeat, like a deja-vu, the tendency to judge ourselves or the situation as some kind of ‘regression’ disappears altogether.
“Here we are again”, “I thought I’d already dealt with this [tiredness/trait/challenge]” once uttered with a frustrated sigh, transforms to a much softer inner attitude, because it is expected and anticipated that evolution moves in spiral.
We can’t just believe this intellectually, we must embody this truth. Learning to live in sync with your cycles is one way to do this.
When your whole being curves along the circle of time, in anticipation of what’s to come, and when things come back again, they land more softly, like a ball on an already cupped hand. This is what the curve means.
Circular Time lessens mental overwhelm
It’s so easy to feel overwhelmed by Linear Time, for the sheer length of what ‘ahead’ means.
“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step,” they say.
Guess what though — the original Chinese proverb actually says “the journey of a thousand miles begins beneath one’s feet”.
Take a moment to feel the difference.
Can you guess which version leans towards time-as-a-line, and which version leans toward time-as-a-circle?
One proverb speaks about our capacity to accomplish even the greatest things through the tiniest actions — as long as we keep moving, no matter how small that movement is, we will get there. And that is beautiful for sure.
The original proverb though is rather more mysterious. Were you thinking of the journey ahead? Of how to “get there”? Look at where you’re standing right now. This — your situation, your location, where you are standing! — is where it begins. And because your feet are always standing on something so to speak, you cannot ever not be on your journey. Like a hidden joke, “look beneath your feet” holds an invitation to ponder whether there is truly a gap between your destination and where you currently are.
Isn’t “your journey” literally and always beneath your feet, then?
Yes, you need to keep moving, but also, and perhaps more importantly for your wellbeing (which is the source of your perseverance in the first place!):
you are always right where you need to be.
{More on Circular time in this article.}
