“Time is something we are doing. It does not define us.”
Consciousness can unhook itself from experience and exist in freedom in the present moment. We can be conscious of consciousness of consciousness of consciousness. It is a liberating and invigorating experience. This is pure vitality. It brings immediate relief from emotion, feeling, physical pain, thoughts, beliefs, agony or guilt that routinely define our state: a taste of heaven – for a moment.
Part of the liberating effect of unhooking conscious attachments is that the cause of much of our suffering is found in linear time.
There is a tendency to give the organization of time into past, present and future an absolute status. This is supported by what we witness as processes of cause and effect. However, while linear time is important, it always excludes us. It is finite and limited. We only get a bit of it, then we are cancelled out. Therefore, the belief in the absolute nature of linear time will always bring a tremendous sense of lack and dissatisfaction.
Beyond that, this organization of time is a functional projection. It is an aspect of linguistic or mental organization which facilitates manifestation. It is a technique for living, but it does not define life.
Time is something we are doing as humans. It does not define who we are.
Fear and its resulting disorder anxiety is hooked into an imagined event or series of events which ‘could’ happen in an imaginary future – a future projected by our minds. This projection is often formed on the basis of events that happened in the past, where aspects of us were broken off in order to survive.
Fear in the present moment will only ever be relevant to the grounded threat of the present moment, which when it is not physical is open to investigation.
A great deal of complicated suffering is a function of linear time – relating to what was or what might be. It is a product of memory – both what the psychologists would term cognitive memory (the chronological series of events) and emotional memory (the memory of events in the terms of how they made us feel).
Cognitive memory can be healed through remembering on the level of the mind and consciousness. Emotional memory works through enlightening and recalling frozen energy on the level of sentience and awareness.
The practice of coming into the ‘now’ – especially in the midst of intense experience or entanglement – is critical to the movement which takes the challenge of being human and turns it into an authentic opportunity. The now brings an immediate relativity to the structures of the thinking mind and allows a perspective which is in itself free of cause and effect.
Consciousness, when unhooked from thoughts, is able to bring us this freedom. It can also allow the opening of awareness and emotional memory – the episodes of sentient regression which can be needed to conclude chapters of our lives and release unnecessary fears for the future.
The return to the present moment, to the here and now, is inherent to processes of inner growth at every stage. Meditation takes place in the Now. Mindfulness is an experience of the Now; as is the expansion of awareness; or the existential perception through emptiness.
Now is all there is.
As we begin opening the windows of perception, we can experience an acceleration of awakening. The rare experience of the Now increases in frequency, reflecting a quickening of the entire energy system. The door to the Now is opened with the release of consciousness from identification with form. The form, thought or feeling is there, but it no longer has autocratic rule over experience. Other possibilities emerge.
Within an effective process of inner growth, what was once NOW (a year passes) becomes NOW (a month passes) and accelerates to NOW, NOW, NOW (second by second).
At a certain stage, the NOW can dissolve, as it expands to an eternal dimension behind time yet ever present within our lives. You have moved to a space that coexists behind this lifetime.
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