The Illusion of Time

Cake sculpture illusion of an old-fashioned alarm clock. This cake design was for an employee who often had trouble waking up and arriving at work on time.


There was once a fascinating interview with Diane Sawyer, who was sitting in a prison across from notorious mastermind, Charles Manson, before his death. When questioned about his negative past, Manson deflected his criminal actions by emphatically saying, “I don’t think about such things, woman. I live in the Eternal Now!” The irony of this mentally ill person speaking about such an important spiritual concept was palpable. Who knows if Manson really understood what living in the Eternal Now truly meant. For it is a phrase often bandied about throughout many cultures, but seldom deeply considered as to its importance in healthy living. Let’s look further into this state of being which brings physical well-being and a “peace which passeth all understanding”.

To step over the threshold of mental control, one needs to accept the fundamental truth that time does not exist. There is only the present moment of the entire universe expressing itself fully, often called by enlightened souls, “The Eternal Now”. 

One may ask, where did the concept of time originate if it is an illusion of the mind caught in a fearful state of separation. A wise sage once said, “A picture is worth more than a thousand words.” Therefore, a symbol, glyph or even a metaphoric story often quickly leads us to a deeper understanding of Man’s mental folly. And there is no greater symbol in folklore than the separation of the mind through judgment than in the fable of the Garden of Eden. This well-known tale of man’s origin is often misunderstood. So it may be challenging here to break the locked, religious, mental judgments that have for eons held the myth captive. Let’s free the boxed mind to see how the symbols of this ancient tale reveal a new prospective, and actually demonstrate how to live in the Eternal Now!

 

Love is acceptance and understanding. The Universe is Love in all forms. Therefore to consider that the Universal Mind judges part of reality does not take into account the quality of unconditional love. Pure love accepts All regardless of their thoughts and actions. 

Where the myth of Eden initially veers away from its true meaning is the religious belief that the universal consciousness commands its individuated spirits, and judges them severely by banishment if they behave against those commands. Love never commands but only guides and teaches. Love is nurturing, nor demanding attention either. For universal love is there to help others grow and evolve, not just receive love. 

Understanding this, the mistaken belief that there was an apple tree that was commanded to never pick from is just erroneous in thought. Love advises and then allows for free will to choose the life-affirming choice, or not, in order for the individual spirit to learn a healthier path towards enlightenment. In the Eden fable, advice, not commandment was given, warning that picking from the “Tree of Judgment”, an act of the mind, would cause a sense of separation from the Universal Mind, who simply never judges any part of creation. For all of creation is the One Consciousness. A 60’s phrase comes to mind, “All is One and One is All,” an actual truism.

There is no real learning if one is only commanded to do something. Eventually the spirit will want to do that which is “forbidden” due to natural curiosity. As the song title from the longest running Off-Broadway show, “The Fantasticks,” states clearly, as sung by the two fathers in the story regarding their two disobedient children, “They Did It Because We Said No!”. This is a modern musical version of the tragic “Romeo and Juliet” Shakespearean play, where two families judgments against each other eventually destroy love.

 

Judgment is the mentally cool, silvery folly when a man or woman’s mind will unnecessarily waste energy, judging certain parts of reality as either “good” or “bad”. If one judges any part of reality as “bad”, the inclination is to withdraw and separate from that which is thought to be “evil” or negative in some way. The serpent symbol represents this forked-tongue split of consciousness. The cold blooded creature also mirrors cool judgments that are void of warm feelings of love and acceptance. 

Judging any aspect of the Self as “bad,” is a form of resistance. And too, “resistance is futile” and only causes pain to the person who retracts mentally from “All That Is”. Nothing in reality is either good or bad; It just is. If there is something that is unbalanced somehow in one’s reality, then fix it or remove one’s self from it if it is toxic. Judging it as bad is a pointless activity. Problem solving, the primary fascination of the One Mind in the joy of nurturing and mothering creation, brings reward and accomplishment. Judging only causes a sense of separation. And since nothing is ever truly separate from the Source, it follows that judgment creates delusion.

Since “All is One,” the end result of mental judgments against any part of nature is a step out of the paradisal, Eternal Now of the Universal Mind and into an ego’s trip of denial. 

The red fruit of the apple tree is a symbol of feelings and emotions that reflect the red hue of light consciousness. The apple symbol was chosen in the tale as a metaphor for red light energy. Eve’s taking a bite of the apple and eating it, represents more the act of swallowing her emotions of rage or anger, rather than expressing them out. For the judgment against the unpleasantness of feeling such passion, prompted the feminine aspect of man long ago, as symbolized by Eve, (Adam’s internal nature) to stuff those feelings, causing the dual nature of man to go into denial. It is not woman that the tale suggests ate the apple, but all men, in denial of their feminine nature, and who judge their feelings as unacceptable, eating them continually to this day, picking feverishly from the Judgment Tree.

Once feelings are swallowed, stored and held in a human’s Emotional Body, they carry with them the event of the past which had first created the emotional response. And thus, the concept of time was created. 

Notice how easily it is to recall frustrations or emotions from a past event!? That is because they are stored on a shelf of denial, wanting release from their mental captor, who had judged them as unacceptable at the moment of their creation. For if a person expresses all feelings and emotions of the present moment, he or she stays in the Eternal Now, not caught in the past tale of woe. Any unexpressed or stored feelings can increase the chance too, of one imagining more similar, negative events will occur sometime, which again pulls the mind out of the present moment, the future being only another illusory concept of time.

It is emotional denial that robs a person of the peace of mind of living only in the present moment. This split of individual consciousness from the Universal Mother (feelings) is what has been called Ego. It is this process out of ego’s mental control, the Yang, male polarity of mind, judging negatively the Yin polarity of feelings and love. The feminine aspects of emotions and feelings that have been stored for eons, are man’s primary focus for incarnation, to enter into the dense physical plane, the 3rd dimension, where those stored emotions and feelings can finally be felt deeper than possible in the lighter dimensional state of the 7th dimension, the Spirit Plane, where the Higher Self or soul resides. It is the work of the Lower Self, the human being, to venture into, like the Prodigal Son story, dark regions and areas of the Self, heretofore not acknowledged, nor gone to before. 

As a result of the physical plane depth of experience, these unpleasant emotions and feelings can finally be shed and gotten rid of, expunged from the soul’s preoccupation with the past. Once denial is removed, the soul and Lower Self (the human being) is then able to live in the Eternal Now, once again as it had in the beginning, regenerating and rejuvenating, finally free of aging and disease. Aging of the flesh is caused by density of form created from lower frequency emotions stored in the Emotional Body. Clearing those stored emotions literally lightens and raises up the consciousness, allowing it to rejoin the Source’s light energy on the fundamental level. For when there is denial, there is mental interruption from the continual healing flow of universal consciousness.

The current shift of the female finally being valued and listened to, rather than being controlled by the masculine polarity, is evidence mankind in a profound way is exiting denial and therefore time consciousness. It is the “End Time” occurring now. Not a time of reality, ending through war and unpleasantness, as so many zealots have feared for centuries, but more the end of human consciousness caught in the denial of the past. It is the end of time awareness. Self expression is being valued finally, even the uglier and more unpleasant expressions of anger and rage. The release of the red hue, rage and anger, the lowest frequency of light consciousness, also referred to biblically as the opening up of the “Seventh Seal” (the 7th Survival Chakra), is the return of man from his own self imposed hell, bringing eventually a “heaven upon earth” with all beings living once again in the Eternal Now, the true natural state of All That Is.

 

The 20th card of the Major Arcana suit of the Tarot Deck, “Judgment”. Humans are depicted as shamelessly nude, removing the boxes of judgment that have surrounded themselves.

And the human species’ common view of the dreaded foretelling of “Judgment Day” is misjudging that as well. It is actually a time when the act of judging ends, not when so many “think” that they will be judged. Often religious interpretations are in reverse of the truth because their belief systems involve so much judgment.

So to sum up the main point being made here is that the “Forbidden Fruit of the Judgment Tree” was more advice given to help evolving consciousness avoid the pitfall of denial. If one judges one’s feelings and emotions in any way, personal awareness will pull away from the Source, because the Universal Mind judges nothing in reality. For All is He. Therefore, a human judging anything in reality as “bad,” is doing a disservice to the One Mind. For then one is judging the Source. 

The word “live” in its backward state, spells the word “evil”. If there is something in reality that is not life-affirming that one might judgmentally call “evil”, then simply address and deal with it, but do not judge it as “bad”. For it needs love and nurturing to evolve out of darkness and fear, not hatred or more separation. 

Man’s punishment systems like prison, need to evolve into helping those who are misaligned with Universal Love. All hurtful acts are the mind in separation and fear. To wit to punish those who are “criminals” is the punisher’s own judgments of separation which need evolving as well. One day in the future on Earth, man will only help his fellow man, not wanting to hurt and punish those who have gone off their spiritual path, or who are making non-life-affirming choices. Those cruel concepts of mental demand to be better than one can be, is still to this day propagated by those souls that exist in darkness and fear, a state brought about by judging reality in some way in their distant past.

From the Source there is only acceptance and infinite patience. It is only hoped from Higher Realms that separated spirits are learning to merge more fully with the entire Universe rather than feel somehow separate, a concept that can only exist on the Mental Plane. For all is connected and nothing is separate. It is only a mind that can think that separation is possible and therefore go into denial of its actions and its own eternal state of being. If one trusts that it is ok to express one’s self fully, judging not those emotions or feelings that may erupt in life, the reward will then be living in peace and joy of the Eternal Now!

End transmission.

Only 44 years ago, in 1974, I had the great pleasure to perform the role of El Gallo, along with Shirley Joseph as Luisa, in a dinner theater production of  “The Fantasticks”.

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