Time as a construct of reality

There is a remarkable creation called time. It is remarkable because it allows for perfection, strategy,  precise planning, convenience, predictability and many other wonderful constructs of reality. This article will give you some insight into what time is also doing.   

Perhaps you look at time as a convenience especially as so many systems are built around time. Imagine schools, workplaces, trains, buses, planes everything you can possibly think of within society is built around this thing called time. Yet, what is it?

If you have ever been to a third world country perhaps you will understand the concept of stretching time  because for many people in these countries they live by different time schedules than what other cultures experience. Their time is different, they are bred to understand time as a long thing rather than a short thing and that there is no speed associated with doing.

If time can be different in different cultures then what is it? Is time giving you limitations. Is it holding you every second of every day, are you trapped, caught and bound by this thing you call time?

What of holidays is this a place where you can relax and let go of time? What of all the activities we like to cram into our holidays that are time related activities; golf, tennis, TV, leisure, lunch, dinner, drinks, kids activities, etc. When and for how long will you ever go without time dictating what and how you will live your life? If, by chance, you have escaped the pressure of time perhaps it is more subtle the way this construct of reality impacts your life.Since everything around you is dictated by time then so too will your life be in some subtle way, whether it is fresh bread (out of date) or some other seemingly meaningless item which is also governed by the construct of time.

(By now you may be feeling reader fatigue. If you are too short of time to read on, you may wish to skip to the exercise at the bottom of this blog to experience, for a moment, what it feels like to live in a reality without time.) 

Convenience, convenience, convenience. Time has created this indeed but it has also created a people who are slaves to time. You are all slave to something you have created and you have no way of breaking free from this because your whole life is constructed around this. I go back to holidays if perchance you skipped out on time for a holiday and you were say camping in some remote place where there was no connection to anything or anyone – when would you come home? Back to a job, family, life etc., I suggest there will be some point when you will rejoin everyone and become part of time again.

Is there an alternative model? Do we need to shift out of this construct of time and understand our lives differently, even if it is only for a moment?  What if time did not exist? What if you could erase, adapt, stretch, manipulate and exist in life without time? What if you did not even know about time in the first place?

Think about children. Does a child understand time from the moment they are born? How soon is it dictated to by the clock of life? Depending on the parents this often occurs immediately as questions are asked about how long the baby fed for, how long they cried for etc. Already from day dot the child or baby has a time ritual imprinted into its life. It is often imprinted with this constraint from the day of conception as the count down to birth occurs.

Perhaps we could try to embrace a timeless existence for a moment, what would you do? You are born, you live, co-exist with family and are not dictated to by any clocks to decide when you should eat, sleep, breathe, rest or play. You are part of a unit that moves fluidly around and of itself. Your body naturally adapts to sleep patterns that are in tune with nature as with the dark you feel the need to rest and with the light you choose to wake or perhaps with artificial light and computers you may like to stretch the time you spend awake during dark. This will not matter because you are allowed to adapt the patterns to different concepts because you are fluid, flowing like water as is everyone else. The question is does this create chaos?

Sounds like it might. What about traffic, workplaces, schools, routines? Are these all just limitations? Routines were created to make things easier and with this life became more predictable. Constricting your life through routines as you are held in patterns of thought, action and reaction. You are trapped within your own time and you will not choose to escape this because you cannot and will not know how to because it is imperative that you live with time.

It would be easier to do away with money (and revert to a barter system) than it would to throw away time. It is everywhere and it holds you bound in every action that you do.  Seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, years this is your construction, your creation and it is an anchor. Time has not allowed you to move forward it has created fear, (what if I am not on time?), confusion (what time is that on?) it constantly creates restriction (you don’t have enough time for that) and it also created lack (there is never enough time to make all the money I need, be all I want to be, not enough hours in the day etc.).  Every time you feel like you are running out of time that is exactly what you are doing you are running out of time because you have programmed this into your very existence and you will be shortening your life and the life of the whole of humanity through this ongoing perpetual reminder that time is short, or even long. We cannot stress this enough that your understanding of linear time is completely constrictive and withdraws power from yourself, from your future and from your creating.

What can you do? There are no really simple solutions as humans are hooked on this as a drug addict would be to heroin it is your love, it is your friend, it creates order and schedule and predictability. The following exercise provides some insight into time and what it would be like to embrace a world without time, even for a moment.

AN EXERCISE TO EMBRACE LIFE OUTSIDE OF TIME

1.)    Remove all watches and time keeping devices.

2.)    Stop what you are doing. 

3.)    Relax.

4.)    Breathe.

5.)    Focus on time. Focus on time throughout the ages; travel backwards and forwards, travel in your mind through time not only on your time line, just travel in whichever way your mind allows you to when you focus on time. Look at all the events you can imagine; the big ones you remember and the small insignificant ones like rushing out the door in case you are late, events in life, the major catastrophes, the dates when things have occurred keep visualising time past, present and future. Visualise all of it and keep calling everything in that you can imagine like collecting memories but what you are collecting is time.

6.)    Try to concentrate on dates while you are doing this if you remember history that is useful or if you remember visuals representing time clocks, calendars, dates everywhere. The last time you looked at your clock, the last time you checked the calendar to remind you what you are doing next week – keep focussing on time, all the time.

7.)    Now scoop this all up. Allow your mind to energetically connect with everything past, present and future even if you did not consciously bring it into your awareness through the step above allow every element of time to be scooped up in a big bag or vacuum cleaner. It stretches far and wide into the past and into the future and there is much to collect so keep scooping it all up. It is as if you are erasing time as you are doing this, you are collecting up all the events that happened in time and scooping them up as you erase them from linear time.

8.)    Once you have scooped up everything there is you have one moment to collapse it all into something tiny like the size of a pin head.   Focus on this pin head for a moment.

9.)    Now step outside of this pin head, see yourself walking outside of this collection of time related events. Like you left it all behind, take the pin head and look at all the events you can see on this which have been catalogued through time and as you look at such a tiny thing know that this is what your massive collection of events in history represents in the scheme of the universe. It is but a tiny drop and once you can fathom this you can again look at the vastness of what is outside of this tiny pin head of events and begin to understand the timelessness of life (all life).

If you can embrace this limitlessness and you are interested to continue you can create within this space. Create anything you want and remember not to lock this into any time frame. Do not see yourself any age, stage or apply any dates to your creation just create what or anything you want right now. Car, holiday, experience, job, love, relationship, great food, invention, something big etc., whatever you can imagine create it outside of the pin head of events described above.

Now travel to this creation, see it, feel it, become part of it and enjoy it.

You have just created magic without the constriction or restriction of time. You have created within your own reality whatever you want right here and right now.

Congratulations on your first exercise outside of time.