Time, the Greatest Illusion

          Decades ago, when I got stuck and told Spirit I could not go on unless I got an answer to how What is Perfect could have even an imperfect thought, I was given the ontology that I use to this day:

 

God, being All, must contain the idea of Its Own opposite. But being All, God cannot have an opposite, so not-God can only ever be an idea.  But as the opposite of Timelessness, the idea of not-God contains time, and in time it seems as though the idea arose long ago and will be undone in some indefinite future…

 

I realized right then that time was the great illusion on which all other illusions rest. An idea that arose and could not catch hold because of its impossibility seems real because of the illusion of a gap between its arising and being undone. It is in that illusion of a gap—time—that a false reality seems to occur. An illusory sense of deep time is crucial to an illusion seeming real.

While this was obvious, I did not give it too much thought while time was still the dominant idea in ego-consciousness here. But the experience of time here changed with the shift in consciousness six years ago. I was aware of a Constant here that was like an island of peace around which time flowed. And in the past two years, the psychological ego went through an intense life-review on its way out and it was obvious how dependent ego was on a sense of deep time. Ego had a deeply felt story for Liz that relied on time and memories to seem real. But the sense of deep time was not just for Liz, a neutral expression of consciousness ego used for its own sense of reality. It was understood that this singular story was just a puny part of a larger story of time going back unfathomable numbers of years. This sense of time was so integral to ego’s reality it wasn’t recognized for what it was.

During the life review, I came to see that the memories—thoughts and feelings and experiences—were how ego asserted its own reality as Liz, but that assertion was occurring only now. There was no before when it was all supposed to have happened. And with this has come something that I have been trying to convey when I write about time and consciousness as a depiction of that moment of the idea of not-God arising and being simultaneously undone. What appears in consciousness is really quite shallow and superficial because it is occurring only now. Even the sense of deep time is occurring only now.

When I say that no part of God has been lost to God and no part of God has been on a journey or has even dreamt that it is lost to God, what I am conveying is that Spirit does not participate in what is appearing, Spirit only observes the dream figures and their stories representing a false reality. It is not lost in those stories. Consciousness is more like a dream or novel where the dream figures or characters are expressions of one mind (consciousness) rather than a play or movie with actors pretending to be someone else. The figures appearing are neutral, but ego uses them to assert its own reality with a sense of meaning, purpose, and a “soul-journey” over one or many lifetimes. Ego asserts its reality by claiming Spirit is its “True Self” to which it must “return” when in fact ego and Spirit have nothing to do with each other. As I had long suspected, ideas like reincarnation are ego’s way of trying to make itself seem to last, to be “eternal” in the sense of never-ending time rather than Timelessness. Time is essential to ego’s assertion of the dream figures’ reality when they and their stories are all appearing only now.

The oneness of consciousness, of the Atonement, is not that every soul (disembodied ego) must be perfected. But that everything appearing in consciousness is already perfectly part of the Atonement, so everything is part of that oneness. In other words, the illusory “we” of consciousness do not all return to oneness by perfecting themselves individually. Oh, how ego loves that idea! No, the illusory “we” (the appearance of people on journeys) are the oneness of consciousness playing out perfectly in the story of time. Every part is perfectly played because the story of time is already over as it depicts what occurred in an instant.

The idea of time obscures this, it deceives, it makes it seem that something real, serious, deep has occurred. It provides a gap where “sin”, “error”, or a “mistake” seem to occur and need to be corrected when in fact nothing has occurred because the entire depiction is false and not of God. The sense of journey is entirely dependent on time and is the story that seems real when both the seeming error and seeming correction are just a silly story that no part of God has entered at all. Consciousness is the false god that seems to have given rise to a false reality. The oneness of consciousness is the oneness of a false idea.

Once A Course in Miracles introduces the idea of the holy instant it never lets go. For good reason. Because the practice of stepping out of time for a moment and coming into the present invites the ultimate holy instant, Eternity, but as Timelessness, not endless time. And in Eternity there is the awareness “I need do nothing” to be “saved” because Reality (God) is wholly untouched by what seems to happen in the illusion of time and consciousness.

 

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