Be Here Now: How To Change Time Frames - And Why You Need To
As I walked through Highgate Cemetery - where so many of the greats are buried - something about the gravestones suddenly caught my eye.
Whether it was a huge elaborate mausoleum or a simple rough-hewn headstone, each life was summed up in exactly the same way: two simple dates and a dash.
It was the dash that caught my attention.
A ‘dash’ can mean being in a hurry or rushing towards something.
And I would argue that most of us approach our life in precisely this way - as a dash towards some promise of future happiness.
Because this ‘dash’ is habitual and unexplored so much of our life goes unlived - so many aspects of our experience, and even happiness itself, are missed out on entirely.
And it turns out that our notion of time has a big role to play here.
In reality, time just means impermanence - the fact that things change moment by moment. But that real aspect of time only ever happens in the moment.
The ‘time’ we project is usually just a mind-made story or narrative that isn't real at all, and that takes us out of the present moment - and out of our real lives - over and over again.
In this way, a gap opens up between our thinking and our Being - between the ‘life’ we project and the real life, here and now, that we miss.
But we can learn to correct this.
According to meditators and contemplatives (and now corroborated by neuroscience) we can learn to shift out of our narrative projection and into a grounded experience of Being itself.
And one of the ways to do that is to change the way we relate to time.
The Flow
Much has been written about the ‘Flow state’, an experience of timelessness and maximum efficacy described by extreme athletes and peak performers.
When we’re in the flow, we’re completely present and completely able - brand new insights and feats become possible.
The question therefore arises - why is this experience of flow so exhilarating and empowering?
Why does standing ‘outside of time’ for a moment produce such a sense of freedom, power, and renewal?
Well here’s the thing: in reality you're never really outside of time. Impermanence is a basic existential reality so you're never actually outside of it.
But in the flow state what you do get out of is the crippling, self-imposed prison of your own projected sense of time.
You get out of ‘the story’, the narrative, the made up drama that was never really there in the first place.
And with that comes a sudden upsurge of the Three P’s - peace, presence and possibility.
Everything becomes peaceful, present and possible - precisely because that self-imposed story of limitation is gone.
In that state there’s a sense of presence that transcends time and space; a sense of peace that’s not dependent on thoughts, circumstances or the opinions of others; and an openness to possibilities that hitherto appeared unthinkable.
How to shift time frames
Learn to shift your attention from the ‘there & then’ into the ‘here & now’ by posing these dia-gnostic questions:
Where am I?
When am I?
Our habituated thinking normally has somewhere else and some other time frame as it’s default setting.The diagnostic questions disrupt that pattern of dwelling in the past or projecting into the future and bring us back into the ‘here & now.’
In reality you don't need to answer these questions - just posing them seriously is enough.
You’ll experience a time frame shift that frees up the flow of life force, releases the transformative power of the Three P’s, and allows your innate physical health to be ‘pro-cured.’
Once you’re familiar with this practice, life stops being a ‘dash’ between birth and death. You’re truly present to the moment - and you’re finally living your life.
Feel free to join me every Wednesday at Sovereign Tea Time to explore these topics further, or find out more about working together.