TIME

From the Zentai Series "Beyond the 12 Steps"

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Time fascinates people like nothing else. Time seems to be as much a part of the human condition as the mind structures themselves. Time is conceptualized as a changing constant. It is never the same, and this provides the greatest intrigue of all. The mind personalizes time and spends great amounts of energy contemplating it. The life of the mind begins at a certain time and ends at a certain time. This is as sure as anything there is. Thus the mind makes time, the unreality; into something so ultimately real that thousands of "feelings" are generated to support the position that time is real. Grief at the loss of loved ones and anticipation of coming events are common examples of feelings that support the position that time is real. I'm stretching you again.

Occasionally people become truly stuck in the illusion of time. Grief reactions stretch out for years, anger at events that happened long ago, even lifetimes of wishing life had turned out the way it didn't. That which does not generate a condition of satisfaction is a lie by definition. Therefore, the idea that time is real is a lie, regardless of how real it seems to the mind. I hear people all the time wrapped up in "time" which usually is attached to some regret. I hear members of this site lament about "lost time" doing addictive behaviors. The only thing their losing is the moment that could be used in getting better.

Time is a construct of the mind to describe the fact that things change. Time is no more than that. And things do change; in fact, that's all they do: change. The process of change is not something that the mind can alter; therefore, it creates a description of it in an attempt to deal with it. Now, if time is not real, and change is, then the way life works is to be in a condition of Noticing/Observing and giving space for change. The way it doesn't work - that is, isn't satisfying - is to try to stop change.

All the confusion clears up when we realize that there is only one "time" and that time is NOW. If you are willing to experience the truth that is RIGHT NOW, your "problems" about the past and future will clear up. Why? Because there is no past or future; there is only right now. If you are stuck in what you call the "past," you are stuck right now. If you spend your time daydreaming about the "future," you do that process right now. You can't even go to these places called the "past" and the "future." They are not real. They do not exist. Only this very moment exists. Get it?

If the past and the future are not real, what are they? The past is a linear sequential memory trace that exists within the mind, right now. You are aware of it only when your mind chooses to reactivate it. Your mind will choose to reactivate memory traces only to survive or be right and occasionally, for pleasure. So, the past is a memory trace. That's it. That's all. If you think you are sometimes troubled by past events, you aren't. You are troubled by a linear memory trace that your mind continues to reactivate in the present. Needless to say, the future is not. So, if you think you are troubled by the future, you can go play right field. Whatever you will ever bring into being in life you will bring into being in the present or not at all. This is another aspect of the "This is it" way of holding your life. Now is it. Nothing else counts. Nothing else is.

In the case of unexperienced life events, it becomes very real that now is the only time there is. As a person finally creates an experience to complete a past event, it "seems like" the event "just happened."

Actually, I am telling you that the only time there is, is present time, or right now, for practical application. It works to consider there to be only the present. In reality, the present is not a graspable, testable thing, for as soon as you say it is the present, it is gone and there is no way to demonstrate that it ever was. It is gone in less than an instant; actually it is gone in no time. Even the present is not real. Time is not real. All is an illusion. Nevertheless, we are playing a game in which the illusion is considered real and what is real and enduring is considered an illusion. Since this is what we are doing, let us do it with love and great energy. This is it!

Before we invented calendars and clocks to measure our conception of time - there was no time. Time only exists NOW. This very moment.