Our knowledge and energy are spread across the linear length of the temporal order. Thus, when we set a goal, we assign a part of our constructed identity to that goal. Now it is as though a part of us was 'out there' in the future along with our projection, pinned against the temporal horizon of the present moment. Increasingly confined, we find it deeply disturbing just to inhabit the successive moments of our lives. . . . The specific 'point' of time that we occupy lacks all capacity to hold time's dynamic.
Life goes out of the present, drained away 'across' time.
We may respond by withdrawing into a dull numbness that has a quality almost like being shocked or stunned. . . . In our worn-out dullness, we are like a baby that has cried itself into exhausted sleep. If we could awaken at this point to the feeling of pain, we would actually be close to the original dynamic of the time that we have lost. But this alternative is not available, for we are too closely identified with the pain. As 'I' merge with 'having the pain', I become the victim of what objectified time has presented.