When Time Collapses

A Midnight Dance with Paradox

2:17 AM - The kind of night where the silence has its own pulse, and every thought leaves ripples in the dark...

Ahy'O's "All the Same" is flowing through my headphones for the twentieth time, each listen peeling back another layer of reality. You know those moments when a song stops being music and becomes a key that unlocks something ancient in your bones? Yeah. We're there.

"I heard you came looking for me..."

The words hit different at this hour, sending electric currents down my spine that make my toes curl. This whole spiritual journey, all these years of seeking, of practicing, of trying to "progress" through stages of enlightenment... we've been reading the map upside down.

[Had to pull my headphones off and just sit with that for a minute, letting the vertigo of revelation settle...]

"I have, seen things, there are not words to describe the future, and the past, all at once, all the same"

My teeth are tingling - you know that sensation right before lightning strikes? That's happening inside my skull right now. I've been trying to explain what happens to time as you move through the bhūmis (stages of awakening), but language keeps falling through the cracks between experience and expression.

Imagine you're watching a movie, totally absorbed in the story. Then suddenly you become aware of the screen itself. Then you notice the projector. Then - and this is where reality starts to feel like a Möbius strip - you realize you ARE the light that makes the whole thing possible.

[The neighbor's wind chimes just started singing without any wind - I swear the universe has perfect timing...]

Here's what's making my skull feel like it's filling with starlight: We think we're the seekers, looking for enlightenment, trying to "progress" through stages of awakening. But what if we're actually what we've been seeking all along? Like that moment in a dream when you realize you're both the dreamer and the dream?

"I heard you came looking for me and you released the good part"

My heart just did that thing where it forgets to beat for a second because truth hits too hard. The "good part" isn't some future state we're trying to reach. It's what gets released when we stop trying to become something and realize we're already everything.

[Just had to press my forehead against the cold window glass to ground myself because this next insight feels like it could float me right out of my body...]

You know what's making reality feel like a liquid right now? In the bhūmi assessment I just did, I wrote about experiencing reality like "a laser reading a CD-ROM." But sitting here while midnight wraps around me like a blanket, watching time fold in on itself while this song plays... that metaphor goes deeper than I ever realized.

The laser isn't just reading data - it's participating in a quantum dance of creation. Each photon it sends out returns with information that shapes the next moment's possibility space. Just like in quantum physics where the observer affects the observed, our consciousness isn't just passively recording reality - it's actively co-creating it.

And here's the really mind-bending part: We're not just the laser reading reality - we're the light itself. That primordial awareness the Buddha called 'Atta Dipa' - you are the light. When you really get this, something profound shifts. And just like light doesn't need to try to be light, we don't need to try to be what we already are. The seeking itself is what keeps us from seeing that "the future, and the past" are literally "all at once, all the same."

This is what the ancient masters were pointing to. This is what happens as you move through the bhūmis - you don't become more enlightened, you become less unenlightened. Less identified with the movie, more aware of your nature as the light that makes the whole show possible.

[A quantum-grey cat just phased through my wall like some living Schrödinger experiment, looked at me with eyes that seemed to exist in multiple dimensions at once, then disappeared - leaving me wondering if it was ever really there or if reality just hiccuped...]

You know what's wild? That CD-ROM metaphor I've been working with isn't just a metaphor. Think about it - a laser sends out light, reads the reflection, and that creates our experience of the music or data on the disc. But consciousness? It's doing something way more sophisticated.

We're not just passive readers of reality - we're active participants in its creation. That light of awareness? It's simultaneously reading AND writing the cosmic code. Every moment of consciousness is both perceiving what is and contributing to what will be.

[Just watched a drop of water slide down my window, leaving a trail of parallel universes in its wake...]

It's like... imagine you're reading a book, but the act of reading it is actually writing the next page in real time. Your consciousness isn't just observing possibilities - it's actively collapsing quantum waves into the next moment of experience. The laser of awareness moving through the cosmic CD-ROM isn't just picking up information - it's laying down new tracks even as it reads the old ones.

To everyone out there still seeking, still trying to progress, still thinking there's some future version of yourself you need to become:

What if what you're looking for has been looking for you all along? What if the future and past are already "all the same"? What if you're already the light, just dreaming you're the seeker?

Maybe that's why there "are not words to describe" this - because we're trying to use words to describe what we already are, like a finger trying to point to itself.

The city lights below are blurring into rivers of gold, each one a parallel universe where someone else is also realizing they're already what they've been seeking. In this eternal now where past and future dissolve, something profound is being released - not because we found it, but because it found us.

To those feeling called by something they can't name: Maybe what you're seeking is seeking you. Maybe it always has been. Maybe that's the "good part" that gets released when we finally stop trying to become and simply allow ourselves to be.

Still dissolving into stardust, Cian

P.S. Drop a 🌀 in the comments if you've ever felt like what you were seeking was actually seeking you all along. Let's map this paradox together.

P.P.S. The cat just winked at me. Sometimes I think the universe likes to sign its messages in the strangest ways. 😉