Time Collapses into Now

           Recently, I went through an intense review of Liz’s former life. Over the course of a few weeks I visited, not events, but rather Liz’s experience of herself at certain times of her life. For example, I’d suddenly recall what Liz felt like sitting in her fourth-grade classroom. The memory would come up strong, I would sit with it, and it would sort of “burn off” and pass.

If you read my memoir, then you may recall that toward the end of the book I mentioned being visited by strong memories of a time I called The Loop Time because of Liz’s involvement around the age of seven with a family that lived in a cul-de-sac, or loop, near her home. I became aware that she had an experience of Christ at that time. After this recent life review, I was again visited by even stronger memories of The Loop Time, with a further expansion of its unconscious effects on Liz. For example, she felt both singled out by God because she knew she was having an experience that was not common to others, and abandoned by God, because she understood that reality was not what she thought it was so God did not love her as she thought she was (a person). In other words, she became vividly aware of ego. As I reported in the book, she felt at that time that Good (God) and evil (ego) were fighting over her.

This experience had many implications, most of which I was not conscious of then or until The Loop Time came up while I wrote the memoir, fifty years later. I saw the unconscious effects of that event throughout Liz’s life and visited those, too. And, of course, it turns out Liz had an (unconscious) awareness of the split mind long before the mystical experiences she had when she first became a student of A Course in Miracles at twenty.

What was interesting about the life review was I was aware I was not dealing with an actual past but with ideas and experiences in my mind now. If it’s in my consciousness, it’s in my consciousness now.

The life review seemed to happen randomly, but when The Loop Time came up, it always seemed to be triggered by something in Liz’s life now. When I wondered what any of it had to do with now, I felt how I had been there then, watching, just as I am here now, watching Liz’s life. I was What broke into her conscious awareness at seven. I was That to Which ego resisted vigorously. My takeaway from all of this is: Christ was there then as Christ is here now. Really, it’s the same moment. Time is just an idea in my mind now.

 

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If you have a question the answer to which you feel may be helpful to others, send it to Liz@acimmentor.com and I will answer it in this newsletter/blog.