A New Experience of Time


            Dichotomies have fallen away from me. I no longer have an inner and outer life. If I turn inward I hit a wall. And without an inward there is no outward. Instead, there is just here/now.           I no longer have a higher and lower mind. There is just this mind.
            And as for time, I have no past. The self has a past life, but I feel I have just been brought into awareness. I do have a present and a future, but the boundaries between them are gone, making time just one thing for me: Here/now.
As a writer of fiction it is often the case that I know where my characters are going; I just don’t always know how I will get them there until I am writing it. This is what I have found for my life in the world now. I can sense what’s to happen, but I don’t know the details until they unfold before me. So I feel I am in the present and future simultaneously. I don’t experience them as separate; both are aspects of now.
When this began for me I felt greatly conflicted. I couldn’t reconcile what I saw for the future with a present that didn’t look like it, but which seemed to be given context by it. For a while I took the posture that what I saw was not unfolding now because of blocks in me. This led me to fruitless searching for blocks in myself that weren’t there. More often, however, I doubted what I saw and felt would happen. And here was a deeper conflict, because that meant I would have to dismiss the whole new way of seeing that had come, and if that was the case I was lost.
After months of intense conflict in this area I realized one day that there was no conflict between what I saw and what was unfolding now. What I saw as blocks were simply “not yet”. My new way of seeing meant living in time in a new way. It used to be as though I walked a thin, constricted, linear line of time. I sometimes had a vague sense of things up ahead in time, but they were separate from the present. But my new experience of time means the future I see gives context to the present and the present is the future unfolding. They are the same. This is one way Oneness shows up for me. It is also the way Abundance shows up, because everything feels here/now. Everything feels already given, no matter that it takes time to unfold.
I liken my new experience of time to waiting for a friend to arrive on an airplane. I can “see the future” as her time of arrival. That gives context to my present preparing a room for her, making sure my refrigerator and cupboards have foods she can eat, and to my leaving for the airport soon. There is no conflict between the awareness she will be here and her not being on the ground now. She is in transit; she is in a process through time.
It has always been so, of course, that the present is the future unfolding and that what feels like blocks are simply “not yet”. The difference is now I live in the Oneness of time.

>>>> 
If you want support and guidance from someone who has been there email me at Liz@acimmentor.com to set up an appointment for mentoring. Learn more at www.acimmentor.com.

Comments

Christine said…
Liz, I feel like a number of us are at this same point...when I read your posts week to week, it's like I'm writing them, not as well, but the content is the same.
Deb Baczewski said…
The other day a question arose, "What is here now". A new looking engaged. Different from inquiry and contemplating, "who am I" and so the prospective shifted. "What is here now", I don't know, zeros in and seems truer somehow.

Thank you as always.
sister said…
liz,
i am behind you on the path - i still experience an inner and an outer life, a higher and a lower mind, a personal identity and an awareness of Christ Presence. however, i do have a sense of your wonderful teaching here about the future unfolding in the present. thank you for this valuable teaching. i will go deeper into it, understanding it has been brought to me through you by the HS. and i trust the falling away of all dichotomies is ensured. also this:

one day, when i was a 5 year old child, i was sitting in a sunbeam looking at my legs and contemplating the realization that in many years ahead my body would change and grow old. i wondered if my inner sense would also change. i determined to conduct an experiment, to go within, memorize my inner experience and not forget it so i could compare it when i grew old.

it is now 65 years later and here's the thing: when i turn in to make that comparison, time simply collapses. gone. all 65 years have disappeared. i have no idea what i am and at the same time (no pun intended) am filled with wonder. this path is a deep well.

in gratitude, a sister

ACIM Mentor said…
Sister, you are the Inner Sense (Christ) you tapped into at 5 years old. And You haven't aged a day! You are Timeless.
a sister said…
thank you Liz.

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