Time Travelling

Time is a man-made convenience. Knowing the time, being on time, and having time gives us the illusion of being in control of the uncontrollable universe.
 
My main issue with time is that there is never enough of it – but that’s just me!
 
Recently I made an international trip, flying east from Australia. So I left Brisbane at 10am on Saturday and arrived in Los Angeles at 6am on that same Saturday so in effect, I arrived before I left. I really like flying east because it allows me to live the same day over again (and gives me the illusion of having more time!)

​After I arrivedin the US, I stayed with a friend that I’ve known all my life, literally. We were born, over 67 years ago, living next door to each other. While I was staying with her we were looking through some old photo albums of her mother’s. There were my friend and me - as babies, then as toddlers, having birthday parties, starting school, going to high school, getting married, being each others bridesmaids. As we looked at these photos we were transported back in time, recalling other friends and events, remembering smells, weather (oh that snow storm in the spring of ’55) reliving the tears and laughter. Photo albums are an easy way to time travel into the past. Even though all these years had come and gone, we still felt like the same person that existed in those old photographs although in much smaller bodies. Yes, we are wiser and have had more experiences, learned many life lessons we did not yet know back then, but the essence of each of us has remained the same. 
 
                                Is life just one long continuum broken into days and years 
                                           for the convenience of keeping track of time?
 
The planet is travelling around the sun, day in day out. Then 365 ¼ days later we return to the (approximate) place where we were the year before. We may do new things, have new experiences, meet new people, but is it possible that we are just living the same day over and over again? 
 
We have created clocks that are busy keeping track of the seconds, minutes and hours of the day for us. Mankind has also created calendars to help us keep track of the days, weeks, months and years. Both of these tools of creation keep us in a linear time frame thinking that a day begins here and ends there. But does it? What if life is spherical and we really are expanding instead of moving along a time line?
 
Time can become even more slippery when we add the component of daylight savings time. Based on man-made decisions, we can actually have one state that goes on daylight savings time and an adjoining state that does not. People living near the border may have to actually function in two different times if they live in one state and work 15 minutes away in the other state that is operating at a different time.
 
I’m involved in a couple of international projects so it is necessary to know what time a meeting is taking place in my time zone so that I show up on time but for forward planning and as a courtesy to other participants I now have to also be aware of what time it is in say New Zealand, Ireland, or Germany.  So the meeting is occurring simultaneously for all of us, but for some of us it is 5am and for others it is 8pm. Hmmm.
 
All this ‘keeping track of time’ is tiring, isn’t it? Keeping up with time creates an anxiety, a tension for many people. Have you ever been stressed about how quickly the time is passing when you need to meet a deadline?
 
Many of you will have heard of the concept that everything is happening all at the same time. The past, present and future are all occurring at any given moment. There’s even documentation that what you do – or do not do – can impact on the past. The ability of present events to affect those events that happened in the past is known as Retrocausality.
 
There’s also current research being done to prove that our present day decisions can be affected by the future. The phenomenon of the future affecting the present is called Retroactive Precognition. Whoa! It sounds like science fiction but maybe not. 
 
By now you are probably wondering what this meandering around time is all about. Well, firstly I am trying to make the point that time is a complex matter!
 
So with that in place, I can now introduce the real reason for this blog. To live with the limitations of time, we need to diminish the grandness of who we are as eternal beings. There is no man-made clock large enough or calendar thick enough to chart our progress in evolution. If you aren’t sure about eternal life or are dead-set against it, see if you can suspend judgement for just a short while to give eternity due consideration. 
 
If I just live for today, or this week or this year or this lifetime, it may follow that I won’t take much responsibility for my thoughts, words or actions because it will all be over soon enough so may as well do as I like and never mind the consequences. 
 
Whereas, if we are living an eternal life we know that we are always, ALWAYS coming back to deal with whatever situation we have created. Every footprint we have created, we will walk in again and again. That gives us a pretty good incentive to make those footsteps as loving as we can, to care for ourselves, to care for others, to care for our planet.
 
I’ve struggled with time (did I mention that I never have enough of it?) and mainly I’ve struggled against time, rushing, hurrying, pushing, checking off the To Do List items as quickly as possible. For me, embracing an eternal life has taken the pressure off getting things done in a big hurry, the pressure off getting everything done – because I realise that it is more important to attend to the quality of the energy I am doing anything (and everything) in. And if I don’t get it done today, well I can work on it again tomorrow and the next day if necessary. Its all the same day but somewhere along the line someone decided they liked the idea of marking time, keeping track of time and then time became a burden for many of us. I say lets put down the burden of watching the clock and practice living One Eternal Life as we make this journey, homeward bound.  
 
 
                 The moment is not properly an atom of time but an atom of eternity.
 
                                                                        - Kierkegaard -