‘Now’ is the Time!

Last year Ulf and I were enjoying a lovely New Year’s Eve dinner when he inquired about the noise from Time Square on the TV.  When I tried to explain about  time moving forward to another year,  he took my hand, looked into my eyes and said, “Beverly, my being here with you, holding your hand, is the only time there is”.

A Course in Miracles (acim.org) states in lesson 308:  “This instant is the only time there is. I have conceived of time in such a way that I defeat my aim.  If I elect to reach past time to timelessness, I must change my perception of what time is for.  Time’s purpose cannot be to keep the past and future one. The only interval in which I can be saved from time is now. For in this instance has forgiveness come to set me free.  Love is ever-present, here and now.”

We are told that we live in a dimension of time and matter.  Recently, I’ve been watching bio/documentaries.  It is always fascinating to see the many differences expressed in the human experience within a fairly narrow framework.    Their past is briefly brought to life,  the film ends and the spell is broken.  This mirrors all of the many scripts that become a part of our collective reality. It’s as if our bodies were time capsules that temporarily play out our dramas in ‘time’, then  vaporize.  What we call our ‘life’,  the Course calls an ‘illusion’ because we see it in terms of the ‘past’ and ‘future’.

On my last blog post, The Light of Love, I wrote about how a segment of our personal memory acts as a cloud that envelops and shields us from our painful past.  This is how we humans operate in time.  We use our brains to record every instant we are alive, attach it to an emotion, then hide from our awareness the parts that are scary and uncomfortable.  At best our filing system  is faulty.  This amalgamation of thoughts and images becomes our identity and we declare “this is who I am”!  This is commonly called our ego.  We then create our future selves from this collage.  As someone said, “Your past behavior is a good indication of what you’ll do in the future.”  This is how we tap dance through what we call life.  When we begin to question that premise, that is when the fun begins.  Are you ready??

What if there is a space between the past and the future that we actually inhabit. However, since it is outside our ‘time capsule’ identity, it is not a part of our recording and filing systems.   Where is this headed?  To me it implies we have chosen to block, for whatever reason, the awareness of an essential element while using our incredible powers to create. This piece of the puzzle does not fit into our scheme of things.  The Course refers to this “miscreation”, as a delusional system.

Eckhart Tolle, (www.eckharttolle.com) calls that missing link the “Present Moment” or the “Now”.  It is the essence of just ‘being’ without our convoluted, made up, identity.  There are paths to this experience, which is actually a non-experience since it is outside of time, therefore outside the system designed for our ‘time capsule’.  The Course uses profound and lovely words to gently guide us.  Candice O’Denver, (www.greatfreedom.org) presents a simple, non-dualistic guide to what she calls “clarity”.   You might say, all this sounds interesting, but where does it lead us?  It doesn’t lead us anywhere because that implies there is someplace else to go.  Unlike the thought system we made up that says we are separate and need something external to complete us,  these ideas suggest we are already complete and connected to a larger reality.  Form, whether manifested as bodies, flowers, animals, etc., is only a capsule expressing a small part of the whole of who we really are.  As we come into that awareness, form takes on a whole new function.  That’s where the fun is!  We are no longer limited to our ‘time capsule’ thought system.  Maybe it is actually ‘Heaven on Earth’.  There is no beginning and no ending…..just within.

This year has presented me with many challenges.  The world as I knew it has changed dramatically.  I feel the absence of the person I love, called Ulf.  However, since we often spoke of these thoughts, I am comforted knowing he  more fully occupies that expanded experience.  We occasionally share that space without form, outside our time capsules, at least in my imagination!