What is time? Most people might be unaware that time in the conventional sense was a Newtonian invention. That is why it can feel so varied some days whizzing by and other times an hour feeling like 5 for no apparent reason. Other people have theories that time is in fact circular and not linear and that everything is happening right now.
I find that a lot of people don’t live in the present moment and if they do it is only a small percentage of the time. They often traverse between the past and the future jumping in and out of the present as they go through. This makes sense when you think of time being circular as otherwise you’d never visit the past as it was in the past!
The problem is the less time you spend in the present moment, the less aware you are of what you are creating right now and feeling the joy and spontaneity of life.
Being in the past is problematic as it is always riddled with bad experiences. You don’t often hear people saying great things about their past experiences. A lot of people have painful memories of their childhood, adolescence and early adulthood that they want to try to put past them, but their beliefs have been founded around these bad experiences.
What happens is when a person leaves the present moment to go in the past, they are going back to those old dysfunctional (not to mention untrue) beliefs to check their reality. For example they might see a nice girl at a bar and think maybe I’ll go talk to her but then they instantly go into the past where they say to themselves, she’s out of my league and she’ll just reject me like all the rest. Another example might be that someone wants to go to university but then unconsciously decides they are not smart enough to do it and they should stick to what they know.
The beliefs that we make contact with when we leave the present moment are deeply unconscious and this is why they are so hard to confront and change as most people don’t even realise they are there!
The beliefs you have is what make up the experiences that are around you. This might sound odd but our beliefs are so strong that they end up shining through in situations. You get a job and you are not appreciated so your belief of not being valued is confirmed. However as you have this belief in the first place that is probably what attracted you to the job (subconsciously of course) and why the employer liked you. They weren’t thinking that consciously of course, but remember talking makes up 10% of communication. 10%!! That means 90% of communication comes from body language and energy. So this is what people are reading and it becomes an unconscious agreement, one person saying I agree to allow myself to be undervalued and you agree to undervalue me.
I could give you so many examples of this happening in all areas of life and a popular reaction is often to blame the person doing the other thing. Blame your boss for undervaluing you, your partner for leaving you, for people being rude to you, for friends standing you up and so on rather than looking at what beliefs you have that keep these experiences around you.
Ever notice how the same things don’t happen to everyone around you? Each person has their own little world of beliefs all being replayed in the here and now. When you challenge these beliefs in the present moment by saying why is this happening to me, what is it I think that brings this to me, not only does it keep you in the present moment, but it puts a stop on the past and future jumping. When you are in the present moment you are fully alive and can embrace life.
