Hi Jeff.
time and self cannot be separated
Yup. For me, realizing that time forms from self-awareness and self-preservation had the practical result that any arising sense of "time" is personally informative (just as breathing awareness informs one's own meditative development). It was akin to realizing the three characteristics in an object that I assumed (ignorance): entering the object through a thought concerning agricultural and math and time-tracking, seeing the abatement of past suffering such as starvation through contemplating future conditions, and exiting on the thought, "time is a product of self-awareness and desire for self's own continuation."
The exit-thought is not any less ignorant than the entrance-thought, and any thrill that arose from dispelling time in this way is short-lived. (At the time, it was personally key to stabilizing equanimity). Both ignorances (the assumption of time and the apparently logical conclusion regarding time) cascade on perception of other objects.
While unable to dispel ignorance at this point, there is its "unknowing" quality (otherwise expressed: naivety) that relaxes the big governing alpha-self (I often compare sense-of-self to a dog that appreciates a good pack leader (an alpha), because a dog can relax and drop its pressure to be the alpha when one of its own fulfills the alpha role). Apperception seems to be the simplest, most relaxing expression of unknowing (and this statement is also ignorant).
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Taking "perception of motion" as object has the same result (as realizing "time"), though has palpable constituents (due to direct physiological underlyers). It has physiological sensory effects and affective realizations, i.e., (i) "flow" (a sense of supra-personal or null-personal ultra-smooth action in timeless continuity), or (ii) "skipping" still-frames (the seeing of an object suddenly displaced (versus visually-smooth continuity of displacement)). Perhaps (i) and (ii) are the opposite poles of our perception of motion.
Skipping still-frames of objects is less reported, and is directly hazardous to one's well-being (therefore, as a species, we vastly exhibit the "visually-smooth continuity of displacement" perception of motion). There are fortunately few persons who inform medical understanding of sustained akinetopsia.
Flow, however, is commonly reported and is often celebrated/cherished. People report amazement with their bodies during flow: "How is this happening so perfectly?" "Flow" dovetails too nicely with "stream entry" to not mention it. A supra-personalism: something "beyond me" may be sensed, or a null-personalism: something "without me" may be sensed.
Lastly, if any of this matters (outside of
curiosity and creativity), it matters to me to the practical extent "assumption" is noted. On what basis is the assumption, and what is assuming?
[edited: added hyperlink]