No Time

According to the Mayan prophesy, 2012 will mark the end of time, as we know it. Some are concerned that this will bring the end of the world, but the end of time, as we know it, may be a very good thing. Most of us struggle with time – having enough time, running out of time, managing time – especially in our fast paced world that seems to be getting faster as we move closer to 2012. Letting go of time could be a solution.

What does it mean for time, as we know it, to end? To answer that we first need to look at how we know time. The way time seems to function now is that there is a past, present, and future, with the present becoming the past and the future becoming the present. If we examine our consciousness as we go throughout our day, much of our mind-time is spent in the past or the future. We are thinking about what has happened (memory) or what we want (or don’t want) to happen (expectations). Both of these activities take us out of the present.

In Mexican shamanic traditions, initiates focused on erasing personal history as a way of bringing their energy into present time. They believed that the more energy a person has in present time, the more power a person has to create reality. Erasing personal history does not mean that you have no memory, only that there is no emotional charge on memories. With no energy attached to memories, they cannot control your energy in the present.

The future is a similar energy drain if we have attachments to what will happen. We know we have an attachment when thoughts of the future bring judgment, worry, anger, sadness, or fear of loss. Again it does not mean that we cannot visualize a particular future, only that it does not take our energy from the present moment through these emotions.

So perhaps this shift in time that the Mayans predicted will free us from the past and future so that we can live in an eternal now. Or maybe the shift in time will occur because we have released the past and are unattached to the future. Lest you think that living in the now would be boring, just give it a try. If you are really in the now, with no resistance to it, boring is not a word that comes to mind! Instead a whole new level of possibilities opens into awareness.