“The separation between past, present and future is only an illusion, although a convincing one.”
- Albert Einstein
“Everything seems to be subject to time, yet it all happens in the Now. That is the paradox. Wherever you look there is plenty of circumstantial evidence for the reality of time - yet you never find direct evidence, you never experience time itself. You only experience the present moment, or rather what happens in it.”
- Eckhart Tolle, “The Power of Now”
Dear Wise Women,
Last week we (re)discovered how “present moment awareness” or “being present” activates a higher vibration we call “presence”.
With a spirit of wonder I asked you to feel how attunement with the vibration of presence IS the transformation of consciousness that we so desire. Paradoxically, we think of the “awakening of consciousness” as a future event when, in truth, it can only happen when humanity becomes fully present.
This makes me WONDER, and I invite you to wonder with me….
“What if we no longer viewed awakening as a future event, but instead assumed it is happening right now?”
“What if how we perceive time is only that, a perception?”
“What if there was more power in presence than we could possibly imagine? What if presence, as vibrational energy, has the ability to positively influence our experience of clock time, as well as past and future events?”
As with all wonderings, these questions are valuable, not because they have specific answers, but because of the additional questions and imaginings that that they provoke. Though I will provide some pointers, I encourage you to focus more on what is possible than what is proven. For, as we have learned, it is in the wondering about what is possible that we gain access to a portal where unimagined possibilities are created!
“Time is not what you think it is. Time is a construct. You can learn to work with time in the same way you can work with any idea. Time only serves as an aspect of consciousness that all agree on. Reality expands and contracts millions of times per second. Time is fluid. It is nested, spiraled, and convoluted in many ways. The past, present, and future are all happening and interacting simultaneously.
Each expansion and contraction allows you to change the reality of the next moment. Invite yourself to expand what you experience—shift your belief of what is possible. Shift your perception to expand to all that is holding your reality in place! Although you may not yet understand this, your actions in the present can alter past and future events. Your future events can alter the present and so on.”
- St. Germain, Maureen J.. Waking Up in 5D: A Practical Guide to Multidimensional Transformation
The idea that the past, present and future are happening and interacting simultaneously is difficult to grasp and may even seem a little far fetched. Yet supportive theories have been and continue to be developed by physicists worldwide. I do not pretend to fully understand this, and I certainly cannot explain it at an intellectual level…yet something about it just feels true.
What feels even more true to me is that there is much more going on than we can ever understand or perceive. The following passage from Eckhart Tolle helps to understand and bring this into a practical context.
“Usually, the future is a replica of the past. Superficial changes are possible, but real transformation is rare and depends upon whether you can become present enough to dissolve the past by accessing the power of the Now. What you perceive as future is an intrinsic part of your state of consciousness now. If your mind carries a heavy burden of past, you will experience more of the same. The past perpetuates itself through lack of presence. The quality of your consciousness at this moment is what shapes the future - which, of course, can only be experienced as the Now.”
- Eckhart Tolle, “The Power of Now”
CLOCK TIME VERSUS PSYCHOLOGICAL TIME
Eckhart Tolle suggests that “we learn to use time in the practical aspects of our lives - we may call this ‘clock time’ - but immediately return to present-moment awareness when those practical matters have been dealt with. In this way, there will be no build-up of ‘psychological time’, which is identification with the past and continuous compulsive projection into the future.”
In his book the Power of Now, which the excerpt above and below are from, Eckhart Tolle suggests that time is an illusion not from a quantum physicist’s perspective but from the very simple fact that there is never a time when your life is not “this moment.” This fact is so obvious that it might even seem meaningless, but once fully realized, it can cut like a sword through all the mind-created layers of complexity and “problems.”
Be aware of clock-time and let go of psychological time.
“If you set yourself a goal and work toward it, you are using clock time. You are aware of where you want to go, but you honour and give your fullest attention to the step that you are taking at this moment. If you then become excessively focused on the goal, perhaps because you are seeking happiness, fulfillment, or a a more complete sense of self in it, the Now is no longer honoured. It becomes reduced to a mere stepping stone to the future, with no intrinsic value. Clock time then turns into psychological time. Your life’s journey is no longer an adventure, just an obsessive need to arrive, to attain, to “make it.” You no longer see or smell the flowers by the wayside either, nor are you aware of the beauty and the miracle of life that unfolds all around you when you are present in the Now.”
NOTICE YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH CLOCK-TIME/ NOTICE HOW YOU TALK ABOUT TIME:
One of the biggest obstacles to maintaining presence is our relationship with clock time! How, after-all, do we be fully present to Now when there appears to be so much that “needs “to be done by a specific time in the future?
A clue to unravelling this conundrum may be in deconstructing our beliefs around the following commonly used expressions:
“If only I could manage my time better!”
”I ran out of time!”
”There is never enough time in a day.”
”I saved so much time today!”
”What should we do to fill the time?”
“When will I ever find the time to get finish this project.”
“Stop wasting time!”
“I’m just killing time.”
“I was robbed of time”
”Where did the time go?
“Time flies by too fast.”
Can you spot the paradoxes in each of these statements? Can you see how our perceived ability to control time is the work of our identified egos… and a recipe for endless suffering?
YOU CAN STRETCH TIME, ADOPT THE MANTRA: “ON TIME, IN PLENTY OF TIME”
“When you believe you have plenty of time, you actually stretch time. You might say you are not stretching time; you are stretching your experience of it. In essence it is the same.”
Try this the next time you are in a rush and starting to “worry that you will be late.”
As you notice that your focus is on the negative possibility, on what you don’t want, change your thought to “I can arrive on time.”
Use your imagination—don’t look at the clock. Instead, see time compressing, expanding, and bending to serve your purposes.
Then, when you arrive at your destination, notice in your imagination that it was perfect timing. And don’t look at the clock afterward either! Instead know you have created divine timing.
- St. Germain, Maureen J.. Waking Up in 5D: A Practical Guide to Multidimensional Transformation
INVOCATION:
“I see through the illusion of time and reveal the magic of this moment”
Photograph taken by Katrina Campbell, follow on instagram at km_bella
Dear “Time”
I am sorry
Please forgive me
for believing I was bigger than you,
for thinking I could
manage you,
control you,
shrink you,
waste you,
and even lose you.
I am sorry
for blaming you,
resenting you,
and feeling stressed “by” you.
Oh Time,
How misunderstood you have been,
viewed as an object and an enemy
instead of celebrated for who you really are:
a mere marker of the
endless, eternal and infinite Now.
- Patti Wardlaw