Patience as a Spiritual Practice

Time is a weirdly funny thing when it comes to us humans. It can drag, it can fly by, it can "take forever" or "happen in an instant". Because of this, time is the first thing we usually associate with being an illusion--once we accept this physical realm as an illusion, anyway.

In my current live-in caregiving gig for 93-year-old Hilbert, I've become more sensitive to time awareness. Hilbert spends his days mostly chair-bound, rarely able to leave his apartment without a lot of help to go to the doctor's office. He has a quip he likes to make: "Another day another 15 cents," as he grins. He ruminates freely about how the "pace of life" has changed so much, and how people have seemed to become so self-absorbed and un-interested in their own activities.

I argue that the stressors of life have rendered so many of us wrapped up in economic concerns and the relational backwash of it, that we are unable to pull our heads out of you know where. It seems the faster technology pushes us to go, the less amount of attention we all have to live full, expansive lives, unencumbered by the worries of modern life.

On a quantum level, of course, time becomes just another dimension--such as width, length and height. In fact, time can run backwards, or suddenly turn into a future that affects a current state. These are considered common quantum quirks. These effects are happening to our human experience, too, but we have that handy tool--the mind--to keep everything in a linear flow, when in Reality, there is no such thing.

Yet, as a major part of the human experience, the forward flow of time is a basic reality, without which there could be no commerce, no language, or perception of manifestation through personal efforts or power. In other words, time affords us a sort of linear playground upon which to express ourselves and to actualize the experiences we desire. This is where the practice of patience comes in.

As some wise person said, "Time exists so that everything doesn't happen at once." True enough, yet if we take into account imagination, it's not quite so true. We have desires that first instantly appear in our imaginations, which then begin their descent into our physical experiences. The "imaginary" fulfillment of a desire is the instantaneous existence of the desire as a certain vibration, or vibratory rate. If we can "hold" that manifestation in our imaginations long enough, the vibratory rate of it will begin to match a vibratory rate of the desire manifested. The crux of the matter is time, of course.

Most of us surround our desires with wall after wall of judgements and conclusions that all but insure the desire remains only in the imaginary realm. By opening ourself up to the possibility of our desire actually appearing in the physical world, then the primary mental and spiritual practice becomes Patience.

We wait. We maintain. We watch. During this sensitive "coalescence" period, we remain committed and pure of intent with our birthing desire. This allows all sorts of blockages to arise to be cleared. Everything from the "how many more miles, Daddy?" to "This is taking forever", to "What if it NEVER happens?" Yes, what if? Good question. The answer is that this is a moot question, because doing the spiritual work of actualizing a desire, that question cannot be entertained, since by asking it, more and more time is injected into the actualization of the desire. Since we are immortal spiritual beings, we actually have "forever", so again, the question is moot.

Treat the practice of patience as the "secret sauce" to the manifestation of your desires, and watch the magic happen!

Back to the Future, Forward to the Past

My brother is always coming up with interesting fringe ideas about reality which inevitably suck me in to a dialogue (I can't resist the fringe, you know). The last one was about The Past.

He said, "I would anticipate that once a certain percentage of correction is made in the past (by re-framing it), it would translate into future events, putting you in control of future outcomes. The body would recover from past damage because you changed the memory of the original incident in a way that removes the repeated memory, allowing the body to return to a state prior to the injury be it mental or physical because, as far as your body is concerned, it never happened the way you repeatedly created it."

I like that viewpoint. I commented back:

"I fully agree. We construct the past as well as the present and the future. Reconstruction of the past (as church and government historians will tell you) is a great way to soften mass traumas. The constant search for what "really" happened is a red herring. What happened back then happened to a different person than you are now, so there is no way to recreate the past "accurately" without physically going back there.

"Andy Basagio, NASA chrononaut, makes this point. When a person does physically go back in time, they become part of the events objectively and subjectively. There is no way to "correct" an "error", because if it weren't for that "error" you would not have gone back to "fix it" in the first place, therefore, you were always part of the event. So changing the "past" from right now is something done subjectively and emotionally. That is what the DNA is responding to--your reaction to the past--not the past events themselves. That reaction energy is always in play, or active, until the energy of the reaction is dissipated (using any number of modalities).

"A 'negative' (or positive) reaction is always caused by a judgement and conclusion about a past event. Remove the judgement and conclusion, and you've removed the energy from that event and the DNA will be unburdened."

In quantum reality, there is no past or future. These are constructs of the mind. What we use as the past is simply a way of categorizing perceptions of experiences in chronological order because it's become easy for the mind to operate that habitual way. Quantumly, however, everything is happening at once.

We say we have "memories", but what we are actually referring to is a state of being within which we perceived certain things. That state of being is then categorized as a "past" event because current perceptions don't match the perceptions in that state of being. We just say something "happened" that is not happening now. The quantum truth is that, yes, it is happening now--it's all happening now--it's your mind and brain automatically categorizing what perceptions go with what states of being across what we arbitrarily classify as the Past and the Future. We call that "time".

We set up all sorts of scenarios and mechanisms to make time "real" to us: aging, property ownership, relationships, consequences, calendars, holidays, maps, news, TV, Newtonian physics... anything on a schedule or in a certain chronological order, usually cause = effect, that builds creative consensus with the society in which we live.

In the quantum world, time has no "flow" from past to present to future. In fact, quantum time can run backwards, skip around and do a mobius strip--of course, all from the reference of our arbitrary viewpoint of what we classify as a past or future event.

Play with this quantum truth in order to free yourself from time-based frustrations and upsets. Consider a "past" event. Now, reassign it to the future. It hasn't happened yet, or it may or may not happen. Consider that event happening to another person, or consider it as having happened to everyone.

This can be a little disconcerting when you realize how fragile our house of time cards is. And, it allows for more possibilities to show up for you. You can consider something you would like to see in the future, and look back at it as it has already happened. You can step into completely other realities in this way, simply by untethering yourself from the consensual matrix of time.

I believe exercising the mind and brain in this way will open up new abilities and super-powers dormant within our DNA--activating new areas of perceptions and experiences; new areas of joy and well-being.