This feeling is often accompanied by a diminution of ego, as well as a falloff in the attention paid to past and future on which the ego feasts. (And depends.) By the same token, there is a pronounced sense of contraction when I’m obsessing about things or feeling fearful, defensive, rushed, worried, and regretful. (These last two feelings don’t exist without time travel.) At such times, I feel altogether more me, and not in a good way. If the neuroscientists are right, what I’m observing in my mind has a physical correlate in the brain: the default mode network is either online or off;
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