Alyssa Skyes

During that experience, I came to realize that time and space are simply properties of form. They only make sense within a world of form.

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A few excerpts from Two Seconds of Eternity: An Experience in Another Dimension

 

….“I came to see, as we know, that all physical form is made up of atoms, holds energy, and must vibrate at some level. That there is no such thing as ‘matter with zero energy’—but there is indeed energy with zero matter.

 

….Time is measured by change, or seen as the measured duration of something. Without a physical world of form to mark or track passages, and without anything capable of physically changing or evolving, time loses its meaning.  Form, and its changes, together create what we know as time. 

 

…Time is measured through change in matter. Space is measured through extension between forms. Temperature is measured through motion within structure. Remove form, and these measures lose their footing—not because nothing remains, but because measurement itself has nowhere to stand.

 

…Nothing in the world of form remains unchanged. Some things shift in a breath, others over centuries, yet all form moves within time.

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When I was in that formless state, there was nothing to measure or label. So it brought a deep yet simple understanding about the architecture of this world of form. 

 

As for change, like everyone I had settled on the idea that all form must eventually change. Because we know this to be true. But then I had another question… Why? I had not really stopped to wonder why this had to be the case, I had simply accepted that “change is our only constant.” Like Heraclitus said so many years ago: "Nothing endures but change” and "Everything changes and nothing remains still.”

 

But as it stayed with me I was more and more curious: Can / could there be such a thing as matter without change? Why is change built into the very definition of form? No, seriously... could there be form without change??

 

If there could, what would it look like and what would it affect? If there could then perhaps there could be form without time. And if there couldn't... then maybe change isn't simply something that happens to matter. It is possible that it is inseparable from the existence of matter itself, as though all form is part of continual forming.

 

Maybe the Infinite can only express itself through continually changing forms, and so change is the very grammar of creation. And maybe all form is, in some way, expression.

 

Change is one of the very conditions that allow form to exist as form. When I think about it, if something were completely static, with no vibration or change, there would be nothing to it. No story, no relationship to other matter, nothing to receive and nothing to give. In our universe, it would be a nonparticipant in a reality built upon possibility and constant participation.

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Not only that, but every form we know comes with the history of its formation. Form itself implies something that has been brought into being. It is to have shape, structure, or arrangement. If an object somehow remained forever unchanged, it would still have required change to come into existence in the first place. The  process of becoming is the condition that allows form to exist and be ‘formed’ at all.

 

And change also means relationship to other form, participation with it, and then definition of what it is. Everything in our world of form is linked, even the smallest change can eventually produce enormous effects. The moment form appears, an entire web of relationships and possibilities appears with it. Even its absence would then become part of the story. 

 

So without participation, and thus without relationship, what could possibly be known about it? What information could ever be gained from something completely isolated from participation in existence?

 

I am sure one could say, "Well, things don't exist only for purpose or possibility. They could simply be."

I think that may be true of the formless. Being simply is. The Infinite, and the formless energy it contains, are unmeasurable and undefinable. “What can stand opposite that which has no boundary.”  But that places it in a different category altogether, and here we are talking about the rules of form.

 

Form is relationship. From the atoms, particles, and dirt we are made of, to the many layers, sizes, and forms of life, everything is continually collaborating, participating, and cooperating with change, even if each does so on different time scales. Change is our only constant because everything in form must participate.  It is a requirement. Every distinction immediately introduces possibility, and every possibility, given the right conditions, begins its march towards being realized.

 

So even when form appears permanent, it is never truly still. We are more like music than sculptures, we are an ongoing performance. Matter is not simply assembled, it is continually expressing itself and moving.

 

Just as language itself unfolds, every word follows another. If every word existed to reveal itself simultaneously, there would be no sentence, no understanding, no meaning. The same is true of music - a melody only exists because one note follows another, never all of them at one time. Even sight must be an unfolding. We cannot see everything all at once. So just like existence, everything in experience must come to us moment by moment, frame by frame.

And just the same, perhaps matter cannot be a static object because it is a continual act of becoming. Modern physics itself hints at this. Atoms are not only tiny, motionless building blocks, electrons interact continuously, fields change and fluctuate, and particles appear and disappear.

 

Years ago I wrote that "all life is an accumulation”, but “existence is an unfolding” says the same thing.

 

So that makes identity itself is quite miraculous. Why does anything retain its identity while continually changing?  How am I still me when the cells that make up my body are constantly replacing themselves? How does a river remain a river while its waters never stop moving nor does it ever hold the same waters twice? Is identity held together not by matter itself, but by patterns? What tells the patterns to continue?

 

Becoming is the process of change, or of coming into being. Being is the identity that remains, even as that which holds it changes. Life within form is a temporary example of this. Our bodies change continuously, and yet somehow our identity remains, until our time of being is complete. Everything in form is continually becoming and unbecoming at the same time.

 

We must not view our bodies personal march toward change as morbid or terrifying, however difficult that may be. And the fact that we all share those fears is another subject I'd like to explore another time. It seems to me that we should be at peace, even with the changes that eventually bring death. The infinite part of ourselves should already know it is infinite, and yet we resist. Why this is, I have yet to explore further. My first thought is that perhaps we enter this life with our deeper knowing concealed, allowing us to genuinely experience form and duality and to bring about new possibilities, creations and experiences. 

 

A universe that never changes could simply be but it could never be alive. We are not just existing, living is an act, and that requires continual change.

 

Change feels difficult because we long for permanence, yet everything that makes life beautiful; experiencing love, growth, learning, language, music, friendship, even our own identities and those of the people we love, exists only because something is continually becoming. We resist change, while at the same time living entirely because of it.

 

Every breath, every heartbeat, every thought, every conversation, every goodbye, and every beginning are small reminders that to be alive is to participate in transformation, to engage in the great and endless dance of the Infinite expressing itself.

 

—“To be alive is to be open in some way, to take in and to release. To pass through life and to be passed through by life.” 

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Creation is form in continuous motion, and to exist at all is to participate in infinite transformation.