Physician Healer
Time
This week I thought about the concept of time and thought about all the things it is and all the things it is not. And then, I began to dissect this illusive word further and asked myself,
“Is time even a real thing?”
Many personal growth and spiritual instructors say it is and it is not—real. I, too, believe that time exists and it is also does not. Time is a master of illusion.
I remember distinctly there were days when the passing of 4 hours felt like an eternity and then other days, 4 hours were gone in a blink of an eye. This is easily explained by the property of perception, which is your take or how you define the situation, or your reality, which is connected to the egoic mind. Perception is us giving things that happen a reason when even that word—reason—is different from person to person. When individuals are able to remove reason and perception from the equation, then all you have left it “what-is” or what Eckhart Tolle coins, the “is-ness” of things.
In the last 5-6 years, I have really begun to notice that there is a distinct difference between individuals who are more “consciously aware”(meditators, participating in other methods of doing the inner work) and those who are “regular” (it is said over 95% of the population lives in this level) for lack of a better term. And, this is not a criticism of any level, but an observation to illustrate fundamental differences in the way these individuals handle life. For example, let’s say someone’s car rammed right into yours in the store parking lot. The one who is consciously aware would be upset at first, but then would say,
“Well, so that happened. It just is what it is.”
In this case, the initial shock is the pain that is felt but there is no suffering after that. The situation is accepted and no reason is offered. The event is then released. The regular person, on the other hand not only feels the initial pain, but then goes on this rant,
“Why me? Why are all these things happening to me? Why do bad things always happen to me? That person must be a bad person. I’m sure I can prove it. There must be something wrong with that person to have done this. I want to know the reason. I need justification for why this just happened.” And, this egoic monologue goes on and on for days to weeks to months to even years. Thus, the suffering is generated and persists.
Physicist Albert Einstein, through the theory of relativity, explained that time seems to exist for everyone but not necessarily at the same rate depending on the speed of travel. He talked about the concept of “space-time.” On the other hand, he also believed that time perhaps did not exist and that it was just an invention humans made up to control the world around them and to mark the passing of days on a calendar, plan events, celebrate milestones and other activities that humans do. He also maintained that time, space and distance were all interconnected.
For example, let’s say a car passes from point A to B and you have one person standing just 2 feet away from the passing car and another a mile away; then the one standing closest to the car would report that the car passed in faster time than the individual standing a mile away, yet the speed of the car would be the same. He also believed that if a spaceship traveled at the speed of light, time passed for that individual inside the spaceship would only be hours whereas days to weeks would have passed for the one still living on Earth.
When we go into literature and teachings from spiritual instructors, personal growth and self-development experts, time is treated yet differently still, as well. According to the beliefs of many authors of this genre, such as Eckhart Tolle, Gary Zukav, Michael Singer, Alan Watts, Eben Alexander, Anita Moorjani, just to name a few out of so many others, the concept of time only exists in this realm of existence, the physical human existence.
For individuals with strict religious affiliations and beliefs, further educational exploration stops here. Although I am Catholic, I have always had an open mind and consider myself not so much as religious, but very spiritual, and not because I’m trying to prove or disprove any specific theory; but for me, it is more of trying to quench the thirst for more knowledge after just taking a sip of knowing that what I see with my physical eyes, well, that this just isn’t all that there is.
It is said that Gary Zukav’s “The Seat of the Soul” is Oprah’s 2nd favorite read, next to the bible. As I write this, I am just half way through this book. His theories are fascinating and fills the holes of questions I’ve had for a long time. It has been the perfect next book to read after “The Power of Now.” For me, Eckhart Tolle’s “The Power of Now” builds on top of my previous read, “The Alchemist” by Paulo Coelho, which many of you have likely read. If not, I highly suggest it. Interestingly, I tried to read it back some years ago and could not get into it. Even after the first few chapters, it did not resonate with me. When I finally picked it up again last year, wow, I thought, did I miss all of that? Our lives in truth are never measured by deadlines or time, but by the process, the journey and never about the destination. Our journey is always fueled by the present moment and what the universe is trying to show and tell us.
In bringing us to the awareness of this moment and not the past nor the future, Tolle reminds us to make that distinction between what-is and what is not. The present time or now has no reason or explanation to it. For instance, he suggests that if we feel sad, just admit that we feel sad, allow ourselves to feel the sadness, it leaves, end of story. But no, the majority of us take the long convoluted way around it by either ignoring it, suppressing it, distracting ourselves from it via a variety of different things—get busy being busy and doing, drink more alcohol, watch more Netflix, watch more news, gossip more, call a bunch of friends to commiserate, get on Facebook, and so on. The ease of living comes from knowing that we just need to “be more” and “do less,” being vs doing. If this is so easy, why isn’t everyone just sitting in meditation and doing the inner work? Because, the egoic mind tells us stories that we should not believe any of this path to empowerment garbage. The ego tells us it’s all “woo-woo.”
The next time you feel an unpleasant emotion come over you, just answer to it, admit it, say it out loud without explaining why you think you are feeling this and feel it leave you immediately. Remember that whatever leaves you, does not belong to you and is not a part of you. Things that are a part of you do not come and go. For example, your arm is a part of your body. It does not come and go.
Just the other day, I woke up in the morning feeling awesome all day and then suddenly without provocation, this overwhelming sadness came over me. I felt this heaviness in my chest and body, followed by heaviness in my head which was flooded with memories, egoic reasons and explanations. The ego was showing me pictures of times I had so much fun with people I missed. It was showing me times of predictability and certainty. It was reminding me of love and familiarity of the past and in the comfort zone. It tried hard to pull me into the memory lane. I knew better and stood my ground. I yelled out,
“Yeah, so I feel sad, ok? I am feeling extremely sad and I miss my comfort zone.”
And, just as I started to open my mouth to give a reason and a solution, just as I was about to pick up the phone to call my friend, I stopped and yelled out,
“I am feeling very, very sad and I’m not giving an explanation. I am not going to call anyone to feed a pattern.” (Every time we call someone, we are perpetuating the problem which is an addiction)
I then sat down, closed my eyes, breathed in and out 3 times using a 7 count (filled the belly in and squeezed the belly out), brought my hands to the chest Meridian access points and gently patted/tapped the areas, while simply saying that feeling sad is ok, releasing the sadness now is ok. After 5 minutes, I checked in with myself and the sadness had lifted. The egoic chatter had disappeared. The secret is to honor whatever you feel at that moment, and to avoid giving explanations or making the next future moment better than what is going on right now.
I believe that many people aren’t aware that whatever they are feeling is not who they are, and it is not real. It is merely the voice of the egoic mind. But, if you are not aware that it isn’t your voice that is speaking, then you get duped into believing that the negative talk is your identity. In earlier days when I was just starting to become aware that whenever I felt poorly, it wasn’t me, I would just say out loud,
“Ok, I hear you. Who’s talking? ‘Cause it sure ain’t me.”
These simple phrases effectively separate you from your thoughts, giving you time to reset yourself using mindful, meditative tools.
Negative emotions are nothing more than pain and that pain is felt because it is surfacing. All we have to do is sit and let it leave. Yes, it is that simple. Comedian-turned personal growth speaker Kyle Cease talks about meditation being a portal for the pain and our old patterns to come through and out of us. Much of the pain is from unresolved events when we were children, also referred to as our “inner child” or “inner children” as the great majority of us have more than one. Therefore, whatever we think is the reason for every negative emotion we feel, our anger, sadness, bitterness, hate, disappointment, resentment, regret, loneliness—all of that stems from a core foundation of fear.
They are all fear-based and the present-day triggers tap into our past years as children when we felt we weren’t seen by our parents, we weren’t loved by our parents, we were not enough for our parents, or we were not worthy of our parents. Our feeling that we are not enough can also stem from loss of parents or friends who loved us unconditionally. If these individuals were the only ones with whom we connected, because they really saw and accepted us for who we are and now they are gone, we are left alone once more seeking validation from those who are still alive so that we can be enough again.
The triggers can then repeat themselves causing us mental trauma through the egoic mind when we are older via our relationships romantic or platonic, friendships, partnerships, personal or professional. So, if we never knew any better, this cycle becomes a self-perpetuating one, stacked, layered and reinforced.
Now, back to the concept of time. Suppose we suspend the existence of specific religions for the sake of discussion. Gary Zukav talks about our human life on earth as a physical one, in which our soul works on being more conscious and connecting to the universal oneness. He goes on to say that conscious humans are multisensory and can access the non-physical realm whereas unconscious humans are 5 sensory, reacting to the world with our typical 5 senses. When our physical body dies, our soul lives on and in fact, our soul is immortal and has been around for who knows how long. He calls our lives on earth “the earth school.” This was curious because I had referred to our lives on earth as the earth game, after researching Anthony Chene’s interviews with individuals who experienced NDE’s.
Prior to discovering Chene’s work, I had happened upon this YouTube lecture given by Dr. Eben Alexander, a former prominent Harvard neurosurgeon and faculty member, who retired after his NDE and wrote “Proof of Heaven.” Before listening to his story, I was skeptical and to some extent, I still am, but I decided to keep an open mind. Last year, Netflix first broadcasted a short series called “Surviving Death,” which I found fascinating, talking about individuals looking for signs in the physical world of their departed loved ones, about those who had NDE’s and became mediums afterwards, and about children who told their parents of previous lives they had as different people, or reincarnation. No one else in my family was interested and frankly found these topics quite disturbing, but on the contrary, for me, it was the missing piece of the puzzle. It answered my question of what is this timeless place of “overwhelming love” that every NDE survivor talks about “coming home to,” after they died, let’s say, on the operating table? Every story I have listened to so far talks about coming home to this loving energy that is indescribable using our language.
Then, when we meditate and become increasingly aware of our oneness with the universe or “Source”, is that synonymous with the same place of overwhelming and unconditional love that our souls go to when our bodies die? Spiritual leader and speaker, Reverend Michael Beckwith, who leads the Agape Spiritual Center in Los Angeles refers frequently to the universe, source, God and states unequivocally that there are guardian angels for all of us, all part of source or the timeless universe. Whenever we sit quietly in meditation, we connect with source and our higher intelligence team. Our attention to the present moment is key. Allowing release of mind thoughts of the past and future and all of its attached emotions moves us closer to the real truth of who we are and our purpose for being alive, not the false truths of the egoic, human, physical, unconscious mind.
As much as all of this seems too fantastic, logically speaking, there is just this tremendous plethora of information out there from reputable and respected educators, authors and speakers that these so-called philosophical theories have to be true. Being a skeptic at heart, even I cannot dismiss all of it as hogwash, simply because of the sheer volume of material out there. Is this some kind of global collusion? Even my egoic mind is not convinced. Most importantly, it has always been a feeling of mine and as we know, feelings are challenging to describe in words, as intuition and gut feeling are. It is a sense of knowing.
A few people asked me to explain further my strange vision I mentioned on last week’s newsletter, “Magic” when I was at the kitchen sink where I had my deja-vu experience, but not about something that had already happened, but about something that was going to happen, which was later that evening. The event was very short but contained enough information to take an action. The vision came suddenly and took my by surprise because I was just washing some dishes that morning. When I received the download, I inhaled sharply as it took my breath away, turned off the water, and then I felt compelled to take action and all I remembered saying out loud was,
“Oh…Oh! uh-huh, ok, I understand. I get it. I’ll get right on that immediately.”
I’ve never had this happened to me before. So, part of me thinks it’s all just crazy and another part of me knows it wasn’t. Whatever I experienced was real. Interestingly enough, I had sat in meditation for about 2 hours prior.
So, now, I view time as a human concept used here on earth which is short until we supposedly return to where we all came from, this place without time filled with overwhelming and unconditional love, surrounded by all of the people we’ve known for eons, our parents, ancestors, friends, pets; and, our job is to learn as much as we can about ourselves, love as much as we can, spend time doing things that call to our passion, be with people we care about, and just enjoy and have fun. Our job is to let our soul grow and our spirit soar. It is to take care of our physical body so that we can have more time to make a difference in our lives and in the lives of others. Our purpose is to be of service to others, while doing what we are passionate about and to remember that the external world we see is a mirror of ourselves and our fears. I’m the meantime, meditation guides us in our human paths by getting us closer to Source, to that bright loving place to where we will eventually end up, when we “come home.” That sounds pretty good to me.
Relaxation Exercise Before Bedtime or Before You Get Up in the Morning
1) Find a quiet place with a chair or sofa and sit in a comfortable position. You can also sit upright on your bed leaning against the headboard with some back support
2) Relax and drop your hands to the side or hold them together but relax the arms and shoulders by sloping them downward, allowing gravity to assist you
3) Close your eyes and being the slow and deliberate breathing inhaling through the nose or through pursed lips for a count of 5-7, hold it for 3 seconds, then release the breath exhaling through pursed lips for a count of 5-7, and hold for 3 seconds. Repeat 4 more times for a total of 5 times
5) Begin accessing the Meridian access points on both sides of your chest, tap gently for about 8-10 seconds, then access points on the blades of both hands, taking turns alternating the hands, and tap gently for about 8-10 seconds (you can go shorter or longer)
6) To the 2 points above, now add a 3rd access point, which is above the upper lip or below the nostrils (the moustache area). You can comfortably tap this area with 2 to 3 fingers, for about 8-10 seconds (you can go shorter or longer)
7) Intentional statements while accessing the Meridian points
—You can vary the ones given in previous newsletters by rotating them through or add new ones, here are some examples:
—Why do I feel so peaceful right now that I didn’t notice before?
—Why are my days so blessed now that I didn’t notice before?
—Why are my nights so quiet now that I didn’t notice before?
—Why is my work so easy now that I didn’t notice before?
—Why am I so healthy now that I didn’t notice before?
—Why do I heal so quickly now that I didn’t notice before?
—Why am I so brave now that I didn’t notice before?
—Why am I so enough now that I didn’t notice before?
—Why do I have more than enough now that I didn’t notice before?
—Why am I so passionate about life now that I didn’t notice before?
—Why am I so beautiful (or handsome) now that I didn’t notice before?
Thank you for reading and I hope you found this article meaningful. See you next week!
With love and gratitude,
Celeste Amaya, MD
