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In this episode, Taoist Master Mikel Steenrod describes the nature and spiritual significance of time, how the knowledge of your own death is a source of great power, and how to make a spiritual plan.
Living the Tao, a Spiritual Podcast explores how ancient wisdom, a practical perspective, and deep truth can empower you to live your best life.
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Study Guide: Episode 10 of Living the Tao – “Poison of Immortality”
Key Themes
The Nature of Time
- Time can be perceived as linear or nonlinear.
- Linear time: Assumes past, present, and future as distinct and sequential.
- Nonlinear time: All moments exist simultaneously, meaning actions and experiences are eternal.
Time as a Resource
- Time is finite and one of the most significant limiting conditions in life.
- Human plans and behaviors are constrained by time, yet many ignore its limitations.
The Role of Mortality
- Accepting the inevitability of death provides clarity and focus.
- Mortality strips away trivial concerns and reveals what truly matters.
- Awareness of death can empower rather than paralyze, fostering decisive and meaningful action.
Planning and Circumstance
- Effective planning depends on:
- Knowing your starting point (Point A).
- Defining your destination (Point B).
- Accounting for circumstances and resources, including time.
- Misjudging resources or ignoring limits can derail even the best intentions.
- Effective planning depends on:
Behavior and Assumptions
- Humans often act as if they have infinite time, leading to poor prioritization and “foolish” behavior.
- Asking, “Is this important considering I’m going to die?” helps eliminate distractions.
Key Insights
Linear vs. Nonlinear Time
- Linear time is practical for everyday action but limited in explaining deeper spiritual truths.
- Nonlinear time reveals that all moments—past, present, and future—coexist eternally.
Mortality as a Motivator
- Death should not be feared but embraced as a natural and inevitable reality.
- Knowledge of mortality simplifies decisions and helps focus on essential pursuits.
Time as the Ultimate Limitation
- All actions must account for the finite nature of time.
- Ignoring death or time leads to illusion and inefficiency.
The Comfort of Nonlinear Time
- Nonlinear time suggests that every action and relationship endures forever in the “great expanse of the universe.”
- This perspective can be comforting but also daunting, as it magnifies both wisdom and mistakes.
Practical Applications
Evaluate Priorities
- Regularly ask yourself: “Is this worth my time, given that I’m going to die?”
- Focus on actions that align with your goals and values.
Plan Strategically
- Define your starting point (Point A) and destination (Point B) clearly.
- Consider your resources, surroundings, and time when crafting plans.
Embrace Mortality
- Use the knowledge of death as a tool to sharpen focus and deepen meaning in life.
- Let go of attachments and worries that are rooted in the illusion of immortality.
Balance Models of Time
- Use linear time for day-to-day planning and action.
- Contemplate nonlinear time to deepen spiritual understanding and acceptance.
Memorable Quotes
- “Every single thing that you have done, good, bad, neutral… exists right now and will go on forever.”
- “Is this important, considering that I’m going to die?”
- “Humans rarely think of time as a limiting condition because we’re trained to ignore the death limit.”
- “Accepting mortality fosters clarity and eliminates distractions—it is a source of strength, not fear.”
Takeaways
- Mortality and time are interconnected and must be embraced to live meaningfully.
- Planning requires clarity about your current state, destination, and the resources at hand.
- Linear and nonlinear time models offer complementary perspectives—one for practical action, the other for spiritual insight.
- Recognizing the finite nature of life encourages decisive, intentional, and noble behavior.
Introduction
Host Opening
Welcome to Living the Tao, a spiritual podcast that explores how ancient wisdom, a practical perspective, and deep truth can empower you to live your best life.
In this episode, Taoist Master Mikel Steenrod describes the nature and spiritual significance of time, how the knowledge of your own death is a source of great power, and how to make a spiritual plan.
The Nature of Time
Is Time Linear or Nonlinear?
Let’s deal with this whole thought of time being an absolute limiting condition.
First, let’s deal with the thought that time is linear.
Because, to start with, time is linear.
It’s only when you reach a point where time is not linear, that time is not linear.
Taoists in general believe that time is not linear.
What does that mean?
Well, just we’ll jump over this to the side.
The reason I’m pointing this out is just so that you understand both models exist.
So if you’re reading the texts, and you see somebody say, well, the fact that blah blah blah, and you begin to realize that what they’re talking about is time is not linear, you’ll know that that exists as a standard theory.
However, having this piece of knowledge is completely useless to you as a factor.
I absolutely believe that time is not linear for many different reasons, and those reasons all have to do with my own practice.
What Does It Mean for Time to Be Nonlinear?
And by what, time is not linear means, it means that all moments in time exist forever.
So every single thing that you have done, good, bad, neutral, every interaction you have had, every person you have ever had a relationship with, transferred resources with, engaged in personal development with—that moment of doing that exists right now.
And so it’s going on.
Even as you talk.
It will be going on forever.
And it will be going on.
That everything that you’re going to do is going to be going on forever.
That doesn’t mean that change can’t occur.
It just means that time is not linear.
So you can contemplate that for a while, and it’s an interesting little contemplation device.
Later on it becomes useful for certain practices.
Dealing with Linear Time
The Reality of Linear Time
But let’s deal with the fact that time is linear.
So we’ll make this presumption because, as far as you know, time is linear.
And mostly the reason that we assume time is linear is because we have to remember things that we have already done.
If you had absolute memory of things in the past, your concept that time is linear would begin to erode.
And I know this because I have seen it done many many times.
As you meditate, your memory starts to increase dramatically in events that were years ago, or it can be as if they are occurring.
And so you begin to think, well, maybe the only reason I think time is linear is because I have a hard time remembering the past.
If I didn’t have a hard time remembering the past, maybe I wouldn’t think that time was linear.
And really so, based on our assumptions of how we experience the world, we begin to think, “Oh, there is a past.”
And what we really think of something being past is what?
Not so much that we can’t influence it, it’s that we can’t remember it well. That’s what something past is.
And of course, since you can’t remember the future, it must not have been done yet.
So that’s kind of weird.
So don’t think about it too much.
Time as a Limiting Factor
So, time being linear, what this boils down to is that you only have so much time.
So linear and finite for a human.
These go together, by the way. It’s only finite if it is, in fact, linear.
The Role of Resources and Circumstances
Limits in Planning
By limiting condition, ok, there’s a reason that Taoists have written all these things about strategy and tactics and stuff.
Your ability to do anything has certain limits associated to it.
Those limits are usually resources, conditions in the environment, or what’s known as circumstance limitations.
So how much stuff you have, what your surroundings will let you do.
Time as a Critical Resource
One of these factors, that is either considered usually a resource or a circumstance, is time.
These are things that you cannot change at the start point.
So you are given these things.
You have a certain.
Let’s say, as I sit here, magically, I have… ok, this wad of paper in my pocket, and a paperclip.
This is all I have.
These are my resources that are available to me.
Now my plan can be to acquire more resources, using these resources.
So I take my paperclip and I make it sharp and pointy, and I rob somebody—so that I have more resources.
That could be my plan.
But at any given point in time, I have a limited quantity of resources.
I must absolutely accept that those are my resources.
Because any plan I undertake to move from point A, whatever point A is, the origin, to point B, the destination, is going to be dependent upon the resources that I have and what my surroundings are.
Understanding Your Starting Point
Defining Point A and Point B
One of the big resources that we have that we are trained to ignore, and that is very limited, is time.
If I have enough time, I can accomplish almost anything using this piece of paper and this paperclip.
Remarkable things.
Now, directly, with these things? No, but I can create a chain from these things that would allow me to do something else.
So I take whatever start resources I have, I look at my destination, because a plan is always the bridging of a gap from point A to point B, whatever those things happen to be.
And I design, using whatever I have at the start, a way of getting from point A to point B.
Many times plans are flawed by not knowing what your origin is, what your start point is.
And in fact, spiritually, you spend a lot of time discovering what your point A is.
Challenges in Planning
Discovering Point A
What am I at this particular time?
That can be quite consuming.
Then, of course, you have whatever your goal state is: What do I want to become?
And that… just defining A and B can be a process of some outrageous period of time that you’re sitting back—because if you sit back and say, “Oh, I want to go to Phoenix,” oh, that’s pretty straightforward, assuming you’re leaving from Flagstaff.
What if you don’t know where you are?
So I designed a plan while I’m going to journey out two and a half hours in this direction.
And you find out, “Oh, the problem is, I’m in Hawaii. Now I’m in the middle of the ocean. I guess I couldn’t do that.”
So how you plan to get somewhere is hugely dependent on this here.
Understanding Circumstance
And of course, if you don’t have any destination, you’re just heading in a particular direction.
Those are two critical factors for the formation of a plan.
- Point A: Where you are now.
- Point B: Where you want to go.
Circumstance involves your surroundings.
So again, this has to do with your Point A, but it also has to do with the terrain that’s going to be covered going from Point A to Point B.
And so those are dramatically different plans.
Time as the Primary Limiting Factor
The Impact of Time on Plans
If I’m going from Hawaii to Phoenix, besides it being a different starting point, I have to deal with water.
So what I’m going to use my paperclip for, and my receipt for, is going to be different than if I’m going from Flagstaff to Phoenix, because the terrain that I’m passing through—the surroundings, or the circumstance—are different.
Why Time Matters
What limits all of this?
The thing that limits the plan that I can make the most is usually time.
It is not always time, and we’d have to go into a big study of strategy to truly explore this.
But the primary limiting condition is time.
Human Tendency to Ignore Time
Why We Overlook Time
Humans rarely think of time being a limiting condition for one reason: because you die.
You’re trained to ignore the death limit.
Any plan that you have has to take into consideration time.
If you ignore the possibility of death, you will automatically ignore the possibility of time.
And you’ll not just ignore it for yourself.
You will ignore it in the plans that you make for everything else, because you’re eliminating time from your thought process.
Connecting Time and Death
As soon as you start thinking about the limitation of time, the limitation of death becomes inevitable in thinking.
It is impossible to avoid the thought because you’re sitting here while I only have as much time to do blahbaba.
And then one day, when you’re just sitting there, “You go, oh, I only have as much time to do blahbleblo.”
So then you must address this issue.
Spiritual Progress and Time Management
The Role of Time in Spiritual Growth
If you’re looking at spirituality or enlightenment systems, it doesn’t take a huge amount of time to make a dramatic amount of spiritual progress, and it doesn’t, in fact, in any spiritual system.
But you have to sit back and realistically look at the amount of time you have in order to do something as you go along, because if your plans for life, or your actions for life in the three areas—relationships, resources, and development—
If you make an assumption that you have infinite time, the behavior that you engage in is dramatically different than the assumption that the behaviors you engage in, if you sit back and think, “Well, I only have this amount of time.”
Behavioral Changes Based on Time
So suddenly, if it’s three days, your behavioral set is going to be different than if it’s three years, thirty years, forty years—whatever amount of time.
And there is a presumption that underlies all behavior when you’re working these things.
And presumption is, I have this much more time, or I don’t have this much more time.
Advanced Practices: Embracing Mortality
A New Perspective on Death
I could tell you straightforward from an adept standpoint, this condition, if you want to go into advanced practice, is absolutely grilled into you.
It’s grilled into every single thing you do.
And you wake up with it and go to sleep with it every single day.
And you do it to the point where it doesn’t bother you anymore.
You simply go, “Well, it is inevitable that this occur.”
So I must undertake these actions here.
For a lot of other people, that’s freaky.
So it’s like, why are you doing blahblahblah?
Facing Fear with Acceptance
Well, I’m going to die.
As soon as you say that to them, it’s like (look of fear and incredulity).
Now, do I mean this in a negative way?
Now, am I sitting here possessed with the fear of this or that? No, I’ve spent decades with the intimate knowledge of my own death.
It doesn’t bother me in the sense of gasp, and it’s more a matter of, “Well, I can’t do that because I’m going to die.”
Mortality as a Source of Strength
Living with the Knowledge of Death
What do you mean you’re going to die?
It’s like, well, you are too.
What you have to accept is you’re going to die.
So doing these things over here is just completely foolish given those conditions.
And as soon as you sit back and begin to realize, well, I’m mortal.
There’s no reason for me to do this or do that or do that—you start discarding things.
You begin realizing that certain attachments are foolish because you’re going to die.
The Strength of Acceptance
And there is a great strength in that.
There’s a strength in knowing that there is an end to what you’re going to set out to do.
And you can either control that strength, or you can let it overwhelm you because of the fear that’s associated with it.
When you realize that, well, the advantage of this is that there’s an end game, and I don’t really have to worry about that.
And you just go, well, since I’m going to die, I don’t have to worry about that.
And it’s a matter of, well, you know, because you’re presuming that you’re immortal, you have to worry about that quite a bit.
Because I’m presuming that I’m done within this period of time, even if it’s a huge period of time, or if it’s a short period of time, I don’t really have to worry about that too much.
Refining Priorities
Focusing on What Matters
If you don’t think that the knowledge or ignoring death influences you, you can check your behaviors by a simple statement:
“Is this important, considering that I’m going to die?”
And as soon as you start checking things against it, certain things will drop away.
And the reason those things drop away is those things that you are presuming you are immortal—so hence, they are important.
As soon as you start presuming that you are, in fact, mortal, and you go, “Well, that’s not at all important, I guess. Because I’m going to die,” what happens? All sorts of little things drop away.
The Role of Worry
Worry, in fact, is oftentimes the presumption that you are immortal.
Strangely enough, there’s an underlying thought.
The reason you worry about things is because you’re sitting back thinking, “I’m immortal. So this is worth worrying about, or this is worth occupying my resources with.”
It’s not worth worrying about because you’re going to die. So don’t worry about it.
Adapting to Reality
Death as a Condition of Existence
And that’s a strange comfort to people that I have periodically given without even thinking about this.
“Why are you worrying about that? You’re going to die.”
“What do you mean? I shouldn’t worry about my test scores because I’m going to die?”
It’s like, yeah. It’s really not that important because you’re going to die.
Living with Limitations
This can be a strange thing to deal with, but it’s ultimately something that you must deal with because it is a factual condition of the environment.
Now you also have the means of addressing those factors easily.
It is within your human capacity to do so, because generally, you are designed to address normal occurrences within the environment.
You’re designed to address factors that you look at in the environment and go, “Well, you can tolerate getting wet because of what? You get rained on.
You can tolerate being hot because of what? It gets hot.
You can tolerate being cold because of what? It gets cold.”
If you couldn’t tolerate those things, then you couldn’t survive over time as a species.
And we are certainly capable of addressing these issues here, and you’re certainly capable of living with those issues.
The Comfort of Nonlinear Time
The Infinite Continuum
Now, if you’ve been very distant from the reality of your own existence—so if death has not really been in your mind much—then you will have to struggle in order to get to a point of acceptance.
However, you’re built for acceptance.
You can do the struggle, and you can get to that point, and it’s been done certainly by everybody that came before you.
So you can certainly do it in one way or another.
Eternal Existence and Its Challenges
Now, the comforting thing about time is not linear.
And the reason we don’t really spend a lot of time with it initially, is it actually means you’re going to exist forever.
But it also means that you’re going to exist forever doing some really stupid stuff.
So you said, “Oh, yeah, that it’s going to exist forever, isn’t it?”
Nonlinear Time and Its Implications
Avoiding Reality Dodges
So, time being not linear is oftentimes avoided, as a thought, simply because it can be used as a dodge to reality.
And it doesn’t need to be that way.
But the fact is that it’s also true.
Those moments and people that you have interacted with will always have a presence within the great expanse of the universe.
Equality Across Time
Is there going to be a time where you, in some other cluster of time, where you are unimportant and don’t exist?
Yes, as there was before you became important and existed.
That is simply the structure of things as they go along.
Because the nature of all things being equal, which is the presumption of Taoism, is that everything has its time period.
Final Thoughts on Time and Mortality
Time as an Action Guide
If your experience is linear, then certainly you want to use a model that’s truthful for your experience.
As that experience starts to be not truthful with that model, then you start to abandon that model and switch to something else.
Initially, the concept of nonlinear time can be fascinating because it will start to explain small things in the back of your head.
You’ll start going, “Oh, yeah, that would make perfect sense in nonlinear time. I just won’t talk about it.”
And, but that’s all it’ll be. It’ll be that and a fantasy.
