CHAPTER 12

Time Shifting

We have saved this topic until now for a number of reasons. Prime among them has been to give you an opportunity to put into practice the more rudimentary ideas about the nature of things. We cannot over-emphasize the value of practice. The results of these concepts and meditations put to use in the world are impossible to predict. Some may make great leaps and others step more gingerly and methodically. The effort to integrate revolutionary ideas will always stimulate growth whatever form that growth may take. We have presented to you concepts about the structure of reality that differ greatly from your training as a human in development. Indeed, these ideas differ from the evidence of your senses. You can imagine how much wisdom and intelligence you need to even question the validity of your senses. We applaud this simple act of courage. Question always! Question us, question yourself, question the evidence of your senses. The only measure you need to use to determine the value of your path is how happy you are to be alive.

Your senses tell you that the world you inhabit is made of solid stuff. They proclaim that life itself is all about space, objects in space and the space between objects, however large or small. Your days are filled with activity moving through space, manipulating objects through space. It is little wonder that you find the idea of creating solid matter through an act of willful intent so hard to imagine. Space seems the most passively immense thing to master. Space is, by definition, nothing. It is the ultimate paradox. Your reality appears to be constructed out of nothing, to occupy nothing and when you look at it real close, it disappears, it becomes merely an idea.

We wish you to consider that the vastness of space that you perceive really is nothing. It is an idea. Just like all the objects you perceive in all of that space, even your own body, it is nothing at all. You may have played with this idea before. It is, after all, not a new concept. However, trying to unravel this mystery from the perspective of a space oriented identity is virtually impossible. Too many dead ends. We suggest you set aside the entire space oriented structure of your beliefs about reality and try this new structure on for size. It will push you a bit at first. Give it time!

The most fundamental skill that makes the perception of physical reality and the incarnation into physical form even possible is the ability to freeze the flow of time. It is really not about space at all. It is about time. In order to create matter at all, a portion of your being is constantly engaged in focusing on a vast series of individual moments in time. This is an amazing feat! As a being you are capable of expanding your perception to encompass eternity yet you have willingly narrowed your perception to a linear, moment by moment focus. By freezing the flow of spirit into such infinitesimally tiny bursts, strong ideas, like chair and table and so on, become frozen enough to be perceived as solid. You even measure how many of these moments each object can fill by noting its lifespan.

The very basis of your consciousness as you know it is this freezing in time. It is quite unique! Imagine if you will that this process of focusing into finer and finer points of time consumes the bulk of your being. Portions of you are involved in acts of creation in each level of organization, from the mass level of all humanity and the even more mass level of the entire planetary entity, right down to your almost solidified daily awareness. You are amazing! Still, there is the part of you which languishes in the awareness of eternity and to which you may again gain access by becoming whole. The trick is diffusion. You have created this dramatic reality by the narrowness of focus of your attention, as individuals, as a species and as a planet. To recapture the perception of eternity, you must expand your focus infinitely outward. You must learn to hold in your attention, vast amounts of awareness at the same moment in time. You must be receptive to the flow of everything, all at once, without losing consciousness.

All of your years of meditation have served the purpose of facilitating your learning to control your thinking and perceiving. You have learned to open to senses that are beyond your physical ones. The intense focus in meditation has taught you to hold fast to your awareness of self while being open to the flow of nature, thoughts, feelings and self. Once this ability to quiet inside and be receptive is learned, the skill of holding the vast input from spirit while maintaining your identity develops. The range of inflow expands rapidly as you practice. You begin to access the flow from many dimensions at once. Continue to widen your focus by creating as large an open space inside yourself as you can. Your purpose is to open the doors to multi-dimensional experiences. You have no framework from which to judge what such experiences "should" be like. Relax and receive.

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While in a meditative state, allow yourself to choose and then experience the existence of some simple portion of your reality; like the chair you sit upon or the wall you face. Let your experience of this object expand into the past and future of it. Don't become stuck on the details by imaging the entire creation to destruction cycle of the object. Allow yourself to expand into the experience of the whole cycle of existence in the present moment. Lightly touch on the implications of this cyclic manifestation. Allow the openness to the breadth of time the object exists within. Experience too, points in time where the object does not exist. Do this several times in a row with several objects of an impersonal nature before turning your attention onto a person, not necessarily present before you, who is known to you. Using all the detachment you have learned, let your present moment with this person expand into past and future. Again, relax about the details and do not judge. Expose your feelings to the other person's experience of life through time. You may discover that the swell of strong emotion marks the flow of life from past to future. If you can catch a wave of strong feelings moving through a person's life stream, you can come to understand a great deal about that life stream. For instance, a traumatic experience, fraught with fear and pain, ripples through the past and future like the ripples on a pond when you toss a stone into it. The more potent the experience, like a larger stone, the larger and stronger the ripples. As you move into the future, these ripples follow you and move you along in the same direction like swimming in wavy seas. To move off in a new direction against these currents from your past can require a valiant effort sometimes.

As you open yourself to the ripples in a person's life stream, knowing only little of what they mean or how they still have effect, focus mainly on how they flow through time. Every present moment is at once the culmination of past experience which has been rocketed into its own future, and a creative source of past and future. The distinction is simply how conscious one is in the present moment. You may assume that being totally conscious is an unusual experience. You can safely look for the directives from the past that affect your life and the lives of those around you. As you project your awareness into the life of another person, remembering not to judge along the way, let yourself feel the flow through time as it affects that person. Don't get caught up in interpreting the data you get. Let that come if it will but stay detached from it. Learn first the skill of feeling the emotional flow as it moves through time within another's "atmosphere."

If you have been active in the process of clearing the stuck places in your emotional self, you have likely noticed the ripple effect already. Emotional issues seem to come back around, almost on a regular basis, demanding your attention. Even those you have courageously faced and dealt with lovingly come back around to show you new and deeper layers of yourself. Often this happens in another form from the original experience. For instance, if you were traumatically abandoned as a child, you may push away people who love you the most out of the lingering fear of being abandoned once again if you risk loving and being loved. The original experience ripples through time to present you again and again with the choice to act out of fear or to act out of love. As you act out of fear, or react out of fear, the ripples in time grow larger and more inexorable in their influence. Accepting the flow of that ancient fear, knowing it will pass like the urge for a cigarette or a drink or a donut, and loving that reminder of your desire to love and embrace life, robs the force of your past of its charge. The ripples begin to smooth out and subside. Going back into the past to absorb more of the force of the original experience by applying love and acceptance to it, liberates you and allows you to move in a new direction in life. Such an exploration into the past is a highly conscious way to use the present moment. It applies the present moment state of being to a past moment state of being and at the same time sends a more loving and trusting impulse rippling into the future. Thus, a positive new direction to follow is being constructed ahead of you in time.

Now, what we are suggesting is not a wallowing in the past. Just the opposite in fact. We suggest you bring your most loving and divine state of being backwards into the your past. Instead of continuing to allow past experience to dictate how you feel and act in the present, apply your most highly sharpened conscious attention to the charged experiences of your past. You need not wait for the ripples to catch up with you either. Go in search! Understand that your present state of being is affected by your past and that freeing yourself from old low frequency experiences of pain and fear and trauma means happier times in your future. To choose to avoid those past experiences, to repress and block them, does not prevent them from affecting your present and future. In fact, such avoidance relegates the past to the unconscious expression which you will partake of in the form of situations and circumstances that seem out of your control. Taking the bull by the horns makes a profound statement of self acceptance that explodes into your future. Such a statement provides nurturing circumstances on the path ahead of you.

The experience of time as a complete expression within the moment is much the same thing as the experience of multi-dimensionality. Perceiving time in its wholeness requires a very wide focus of attention, allowing all the input possible in the moment. To hold in your awareness the fullness of time, holds all of your being. You are an expression of spirit in time, not just as a physical being but in every layer of manifestation. As your perception of time widens to include ever more than the linear moment to moment progress of physicality, more of your being becomes available to you. Your emotional body functions more closely in time to your physical body. It is mostly connected to your physical lifetime bringing few, though some, impulses from other life streams. It can be pushed by the higher frequency structures to receive other worldly impulses but it is unlikely to generate such on its own. The mental body is more flexible in its time framework. It can pierce much of the concept of time and conjure unusual temporal landscapes. With sufficient push from the spiritual self, the high mental self can even grasp eternity and work with timelessness as a framework for decision making and daily living. The true impulse to grasping the nature of time, though, comes from the spiritual self. It is from the essence level that this knowing arises. It is to this portion of your being that you must turn in order to begin living in eternity.

Living in eternity! A very large place to be. This is, though, the perspective which can free you from the slavery to your past, a slavery which binds you to linear time. Your future is very much able to expand beyond the limits of your experience but not beyond the limits of your imagination. You bind your future to your past, insisting the future follows the same patterns, filling your world with solid objects and flowing from one moment to the next. If you could give up the fear that you would not survive a large change in your reality, you would liberate your future to reveal the true nature of reality to you in a flash. Indeed, this is what occurs in the flash of creative brilliance that sparks your world's inventors, artists and creative geniuses. Relaxing your insistence on the past's continuance into the future, letting go in other words, opens you to true genius, imagining a world not yet in existence and yet fully formed. Using the creative power of the present moment, you create with the stretch of your imagination the future toward which you careen gaily. Push your imagination to release past experience and expectation and you accelerate the growth of awareness.

Now, this explanation touches the mere fringes of time perception. The very experience of physical solidity is the result of manipulation of time perception. As the ideation of an object is captured by spirit and thrust into your universe, a thought form takes shape by the careful suspension of time within its vicinity. Time is slowed from the simultaneous immediacy of spirit to hold the flow of thought in a form which is perceived by the mental body. This form flows too and to take on an energetic "shape," that flow must be slowed perceptually and so on until a physically solid representation of the spiritual essence of the object is manifested along with the time sense that perceiving it requires. The more such thought forms get slowed to such a solid state, the more can be. A universe comes into being quite rapidly (as you might measure it). These terms are inadequate and we hope you get the sense of this process. As a conscious awareness, you are accustomed to perceiving such manipulated time affected objects to the point of almost believing them all there is to existence. You may, by expanding your perception to include the entire creation process inherent in each object you encounter, free your perception of time in remarkable ways.

Because all perceptions hinge upon the perception of time, each moment of awareness springs from the awareness of the moment. The fullness of your awareness of the moment describes the fullness of your moment of awareness. The vast, all inclusive awareness is the Mind of God, of which you partake. Not only is the physical world which consumes so much of your attention, a metaphoric representation of the infinity of spirit of which you are composed, but also is each limited (though huge) awareness of the other bodies that contribute to your being. All that we have spoken of to this point are metaphors, representations, that expand from the infinitesimal point of present moment awareness.

Just as we described matter, energy, thought and inspiration as having three fundamental states of being, time can also be described so. Your present state of awareness is the result of just how crystallized (rooted in the past) your perception of time really is. Too, as in the condition of emotional, mental and spiritual bodies, the most advantageous state of time perception is the fluid state of present moment awareness. All of our interaction with you is aimed at encouraging such fluidity. What inhibits your achieving such a state of perception consistently is your addiction to the past. This too is akin to the tendencies we have discussed to cast the flow of spirit into human (or three dimensional) models of existence. Unconsciously you assume that all of time will be consistent with your personal past. Even historical accounts must mesh with that past. To accept the modern stories of Atlantis, You must have a point of view that can accept a past that is somewhat different from your present norms. That suggests a degree of flexibility. Those stories are still quite rooted in three dimensions though, so the flexibility necessary to accept them may not be such a stretch. Of course, if all you could accept was the historical account taught to you by your favourite religion, your addiction to the past would be even more crystallized.

From our perspective, your "history" is very much a fiction, made up by you to illustrate and support who you believe yourself to be in the present. The whole idea of an historical past illustrates your attempt to create stability in your perception of succeeding present moments. This is what we mean when we say that who you define yourself to be right now creates your past and your future. Who you define yourself to be right now creates the past and future of your entire universe. You will be hard pressed to sense how your personal and "planetary" history have been transformed as you have gone through life. You are aware only (for the most part) of the history expanding outwards in time from this very moment. You are simply addicted to holding the certainty that your history never changes.

The act of judging is a prime example of an addiction to the past. Each judgement requires a comparison to the past. It limits the experiencing within the present moment as the very comparison imposes form from the past upon what is perceived in the present. For instance, to perceive the energetic form of an object or creature requires you to set aside the comparison to its past existence as you have known it. If you hang on to that past perception, you limit your opportunity to see it right now in its fuller form. To perceive something in its wholeness requires a total immersion into the present moment. That compresses time perceived into a vast present. In such a moment, the complete existence of God can be perceived.

My, these are fine words aren't they? How, though, might you actually reach such a state of fluidity? Imagine how much trust you might need for such an experience. In your own perception, time would cease to exist. All connections to your past would cease; no job, no friends, no body, no world. Considering how threatened you feel by the smallest change in your life, the slightest divergence from your past that takes place, such a leap into the boundless present is pretty terrifying. Why, a passing mood of one most dear to you can make the ground beneath your feet shake, metaphorically (unless you live in California, then it isn't so metaphoric). Learning to trust in your own safety in your own universe is something of an undertaking. The fact that you believe this learning must take place in a linear, step by step fashion, shows how addicted you really are. You really do insist that your present embodies your past. This you project into the future. If you could project a completely different set of parameters into the future, you would be making miracles.

We have repeated the word addiction several times and not unintentionally. All of the life that you consider "normal" follows the addiction model as surely as drug abuse, alcoholism and cigarette smoking to name a few. The most valuable approach you can take to letting go of your past so that your present can expand is to identify and observe and step out of the more gross addictions in your life. You can follow a twelve step program, a support group approach or work on your own. Pick an easy one to start with. Strangely, that would seem to be the most compelling addiction in your life, be it one of the above or sugar or caffeine etc. Choose what you most would like to leave behind. That is what makes this choice the easiest, you already want to let it go. Pay close attention to all that you experience. Observe the interplay of resolve and compulsion. You will find it fascinating. You will see that the arguments you have with yourself to justify your addiction come directly from your fear of change. Become very conscious of this fear. It is the crux of our discussions in this book. This fear represents how you cling tenaciously to the past, how you have come to perceive solidity. Become as conscious of this process as you can and you will gain freedom to choose how you perceive reality.

To become aware of the vastness of the present moment, you need to gain tremendous speed of awareness. As we described in our discussion of multi-dimensionality, you must become able to consciously access a huge range of input at all levels of your consciousness. To practice this as we have suggested in our last exercise, in your normal daily activity will push you beyond judgement quickly. As you begin to allow, for instance, that others have a context within their lives for their actions, your judgements of those actions lose their meaning. You begin to realize that the interpretations that you make about the actions of others are based upon assumptions derived from your experience alone. The actions of others are not about you. Your perceptions of these actions are entirely about you.

Expanding your perception of your world includes the feel of things, the idea and the essence. You experience a larger moment with those things. You will easily embrace their uniqueness and their connection to the whole of life. This applies to your self as well and so your trust grows. This expansion of awareness is not as mysterious or large as it might seem to you. As the process continues it expands itself as well. It becomes easier with each pass.

When we say speed of awareness we refer to the degree of subtlety of thought and feeling to which you gain access. The more subtle your thought processes, the faster they can move along and widen to offer awareness of a larger universe. The humanized, or three dimensional, models of thinking are slow and cumbersome compared to the layers of high mental body awareness which grasps whole vast conceptual structures at once. This is a receptive process and your surrender to it (acquiescence perhaps) encourages its growth.

Consider for a moment that to experience total bliss means the end of the world you now know. When prophecies speak of the end of time, this is just what they mean. When you stop perceiving time in its linear form, all form will cease. Momentarily! You will directly experience the essence of things. Now look at the fear such a thought might engender. Your world will cease! Can you begin to see this as a positive change? Watch carefully as you argue with yourself over the safety of such a change. Don't fight the fear. Feel it consciously. Know that you can change it when you wish. You do not need to cling to how things have always been to be secure.

Your conscious mind has a stranglehold on your attention. Every thought and feeling and action is referred to your conscious mind to assess how safe it may be for you to surrender to its inclusion in your life. This is the aspect of your awareness that insists that you function as you did yesterday. It does perform its tasks exceedingly well. The point to ponder is where this conscious mind stops you from reaching outward to your ultimate goals. When it restrains the awareness of the unconscious layers of the self that hold repressed past experience, it inhibits the inclusion of significant portions of the self. This habit extends to the superconscious layers of the self as well simply because they too are of the unknown and thus a threat to safety and security. This layer is the input from your spiritual self and includes states of profound joy. Letting such habitual repression take place, limits your happiness in large doses. The daily, mundane, conscious awareness must expand to include all of the self for the spacious present to be embraced. All of the input from all corners of your being must be allowed to join in the celebration of the moment to complete your experience.

Can you possibly allow so rich an experience of the present while you hold your attention on what you will do next? Doesn't concern for what lay outside of you cut off the flow of the vast wealth of experience which results from total acceptance of what is? You can begin to practice this profound state of acceptance by referring back to it throughout your daily activity. Become deliberate about experiencing fully whatever you are doing in the now. Whether it be eating, walking, listening to music or using the bathroom, open yourself to paying complete attention to it. Consider the nature of the things you do and the things you observe. Recognize that whatever lay "outside" of you is really still you. Experience the feelings that bubble to the surface while you act. In effect, we suggest you DO less and BE more. What you do is much less important than who you are and thus, less important than how you do what you do. Mindfulness is paramount to a full experience in the present. Go into the quiet recesses of your inner self often and let your conscious mind be washed in its silence. Through such practice, learn to listen to the subtle impulses that can only be heard in the silence of a quiet mind.

We hope you have taken this material slowly and given thought and attention to each step as you go. At this point in our discussions we would share an exercise that can begin to break down the bonds of the past that hold you in place on your path to freedom. The application of your belief in the reality of your experience leaves a marker like bread crumbs on a path that you remain connected to as you go on about your life. Years later, that piece of your being is still out there in your past, calling to you. Even those beliefs that you have "outgrown" remain clinging to your identity until you consciously retrieve them through forgiveness and surrender. The child in you that feared for its life if it didn't please your parents continues to offer this belief to your adult self. This colours your experience of life in the now if allowed to remain unconscious. Every figure who reminds you of your parents, even unconsciously, will set you careening into old patterns of response inspite of your best conscious intentions. This is the specific instance of the principles we have been discussing. The mass of belief and perception you have experienced in life is a juggernaut which pushes you into your future in an increasingly narrow pathway, one excruciating step at a time. That is, unless you break down that massive construct of belief brick by brick until a giant section can be made to tumble and freedom is yours.

To that effect, we suggest a form of re-experiencing your life which uses all the tools you have at hand. As you practice this exercise, you will want to become more and more systematic about it. We suggest though, that you relax and allow whatever life experience that comes up for review to be boldly explored without insisting on some kind of order that you might consciously impose.

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Once more in a meditative state, choose by a combination of thought, memory and intuition, an event in your life. We suggest beginning with an encounter in your very recent past, one which holds little charge. Just a simple, "normal" encounter with other people will do nicely. Replay this event in your mind's eye, allowing all the feelings and thoughts to come to your awareness that you can. Have patience if little comes at first. Your skill will increase with practice. As you re-experience the event, imagine a cord of light or energy which is attached to your solar plexus and is reaching out to the event. This cord touches not only yourself in the past moment but reaches out to each participant involved. Through this cord you will draw back to yourself any energy, thought forms or beliefs and concerns which you discover in the event. As these aspects of yourself become apparent to you in your reverie, draw them back along the cord as you inhale and move your head from right to left. The leftward movement engages the receptive aspect of your being. As you exhale, send back along the energetic cord any energy, emotion or belief about the situation that you have carried with you ever since. Do this with a sweeping of the head from left to right. This rightward movement engages the assertive side of your nature and demands liberation from the tyranny of past events. Every few breaths, sweep your head from right to left and back again with empty lungs. Especially, do this at the end of your review of the event. Do not breathe during this sweeping. Imagine you are sweeping the scene as you might a chalkboard with an eraser, removing traces of connection between this past version of yourself and you, transformed and released in the present.

The ultimate goal is liberation. You will, with practice, discover remarkable aspects of yourself which lay hidden in your most mundane interactions. Each session of this practice, even if you don't throw yourself wholly into it, will provide a touch more freedom and a load of information. You may eventually substitute a more subtle physical movement for the sweeping of the head, a hand or finger gesture for instance. We do recommend using the head movement at first and to always use a physical component so that balance in the flow of thought and emotion can be maintained. Your growing sense of empowerment and freedom from this practice will need physical as well as emotional outlets, grounding in other words. Be sure to search for ways to put your insight, clarity and extra vigour to use in your world. Otherwise, the energy imbalance will produce some interesting emotional effects.

This suggestion holds true for all that we have shared with you. Here in this discussion of time, we have likely stirred up many questions for you. To make these ideas more real, you will need to work with them in your daily life. Ask, "How can I use simultaneous time in this situation? How do I choose my actions in light of the fact that past and future are illusions? If all there is is the present moment, what do I really want right now?" Be determined to break down the beliefs you hold about linearity in all its forms. Karma, Cause and Effect, the solidity of matter, the need to Earn every increment of God's Blessing, the step by step movement of growth, the need to learn lessons in life, the progress from past to present to future, all are illusions which spring from the freezing of perception. Step beyond these illusions to see your self as whole.

To Chapter Thirteen