On Being a Time Traveler (Blog #1062)

This afternoon I saw my upper cervical care doctor and told him I’ve been out of sorts this last week–my skin’s flared up, my sciatic nerve’s been “talking to me,” my shoulder’s been pinched. “You probably need an adjustment,” he said. “Let’s put your head on straight.” (Ha.) This after his telling me two weeks ago that I needed an adjustment but that he wanted to wait, to see if my body would correct things on its on. (This was like a dare, I guess.) And whereas things were better last week, they were–apparently–crap today. “We want to push your body to take care of itself so it doesn’t get dependent on the adjustment, but sometimes we push a little TOO much,” he said.

Ugh. Balance is such a delicate thing.

Thankfully, I’ve felt better since the adjustment. Immediately after, I felt my shoulder relax. Not completely, mind you, but some. So far, this has been my experience with healing. Things get better–some. Then the slip back–a bit. Then they get better–some more. I’ve felt and witnessed some amazing things in my body and have ultimately found myself going in the right direction, but it’s not like I feel fabulous all over every minute of every day. Still, I’ve felt fabulous enough, especially compared to how I used to feel, that I absolutely believe my body is hard at work and can turn this ship around. My job, of course, is to do everything I can to support us and, perhaps more importantly, frickin’ be patient.

You know, some ships turn around faster than others.

More and more I believe that my body is on my side, that, given the right help, it’s completely willing and able to let go, change, and heal. Granted, figuring out what the right help is can be frustrating. Having tried dozens of different therapies and modalities over the years, I know. Whenever I have a pain it can feel hopeless. And yet time and time again, especially lately, I’ve witnessed my body rise to the occasion both in the moment and over the course of days, weeks, months. (Which, incidentally, in the grand scheme of things is no time at all.) So I can’t say that miracles aren’t possible because I’ve experienced them.

Caroline Myss says a miracle is something that happens faster than your watch. To me this means that whenever something happens faster than we THINK it should or are accustomed to, that’s miraculous. This is why I say I’ve experienced miracles. Because although the healing I’ve been experiencing lately is taking time (just as everything on planet earth does), it’s taking LESS time than it was before. For example, yesterday–in an hour with my new therapist–I processed and healed with my mind and body a topic that I’d previously–over the course of six years with my therapist and this blog–only processed with my mind. Was it instant? No, but it was pretty damn fast. Pretty damn miraculous if you ask me.

As far as I can tell, a situation like this is the closest any of us will ever get to time travel. What I mean is that every single person on this planet gets 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365.25(ish) days a year. But not every single person experiences the time they’ve been given the same way. Better said, not everyone has the same relationship with time. What I mean is that if it takes one person six years to process a trauma and another person one hour, isn’t time moving more slowly for the first person and more quickly for the second? And if things used to happen slowly for you and now they’re happening faster, hasn’t time effectively sped up for you, even though you’d never know it to look at a calendar? Even though you could never prove it to anyone else?

Something else Caroline says is that the more psychic WEIGHT you have, the longer you have to WAIT for things (a new job, a new lover, a healing) to happen. Weight=wait. This is why a master like Jesus could make things happen in an instant. Faster than your watch. Because he wasn’t heavy, he wasn’t psychically anchored to the past or the future (which, by the way, don’t exist right here, right now). This is why he taught his disciples to give no thought for tomorrow, to stay in present time. Think of a ship that’s bogged down with cargo. The heavier the cargo, the slower the ship. But throw the crap overboard and watch the ship fly. Less weight=less wait.

Along these lines, and maybe I watched too many episodes of Quantum Leap when I was a kid, I’m beginning to see each of us as time machines, always and forever determining the rate at which change happens in our lives. For example, earlier today I told a friend about once when I left a relationship because I found out there were too many lies, too many drugs involved. Well, I had some shit at this person’s house, and it took me 48 hours to gather it up. This after years of observing bad behavior and not putting the pieces together. Now, I hope, I’d be out of there in five minutes. Or never get involved in the first place. In this sense we truly do determine WHERE we as time travelers want to GO by deciding how much TIME we’re willing to spend there. How do you get out of a bad situation faster? Easy. Throw your personal crap overboard and, in so doing, change yourself and your life (two things you can’t separate). That’s the damn deal. Time only changes when you do.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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Go easier on yourself.

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On Time Traveling and Starting Over (Blog #1022)

Today I’ve been thinking about cycles. I’ll explain. This afternoon I did laundry. You know, put my dirty clothes in the washer, added soap and water, shut the lid, and waited while they went round and round. Then I put them in the dryer, shut the lid, and waited while they went round and round some more. And whereas all my clothes are now clean (except for the ones I’m wearing), next week they’ll be dirty again and I’ll have to start the whole process over once more.

Along these lines, last night for the first time in weeks I went to the gym. Thankfully, I hadn’t lost everything. Indeed, there were stretches and movements that were EASIER for me last night than the last time I went. (I attribute this to the progress I’ve made through upper cervical care.) Regardless, it still felt like starting over. Just like every time I get a sinus infection feels like starting over, and just like every blog I write feels like starting over. Because no matter how many words I’ve written in the last three years (a lot), each post begins with a blank page. My point being–no matter how many times you’ve been there before, every time is new.

This is what I mean by cycles. Our lives go round and round.

Along with thinking about cycles, I’ve also been thinking about circles. Perhaps these are the same thing. Either way, I’ve heard it said that although we think of our lives and time as progressing in straight lines, they aren’t. Rather, they’re circular, cyclical. This makes sense to me because so many things in the universe whirl. The earth rotates around its axis, the planets revolve around the sun, our washers and dryers spin. Likewise, so do our patterns and behaviors. This morning I woke up, got dressed, ate breakfast, drank coffee, and read a book. And whereas I’ve never done these things on January 16, 2020, before, I have done these things over and over (and over) again on countless other days. The logical conclusion being that we don’t start here (at a point on a line) and end there (at another point further down the line). Instead, we move in circles.

Effectively, we repeat ourselves.

The book I read today was a glorious juvenile fiction novel, When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead. My friend Sydnie recommended it (thanks, Sydnie), and it’s about a boy named Marcus (oddly enough) who travels through time in order to save himself and others. At one point during the book, another character (the one who’s telling the story) is discussing time traveling with Marcus and says, “But THE MIDDLE can’t happen BEFORE THE BEGINNING.”

It can if time’s a circle, I thought. Circles don’t have beginnings, middles, or ends.

Well, sure enough, Marcus compares time to a diamond-encrusted ring, stating that we think TIME is moving but, in truth, WE ARE. Using the ring analogy, he suggests thinking of the fixed diamonds as the moments in our lives. Like, past, present, and future all exist AT ONCE. But since we can only experience or be aware of one moment, well, at a time, we perceive moments occurring separately, one before or after the other, and so on. Thus, as WE MOVE from point to point on the ring, we create in our minds (and only in our minds) the idea of time, the ideas of past and future.

How can you say that past and future are only ideas, Marcus (me Marcus, not book Marcus)?

Because search all you want, and you’ll never be able to find any proof of them. Sure, you can drag out your photo album and tell your stories, but when and where will those pictures and stories actually be happening?

Right here, right now.

I know this is a mind-bender.

Earlier I said that by going in cycles or circles we effectively repeat ourselves. Just now I looked up the origin of the word repeat, and it comes from two Latin words–re, meaning “back,” and petere, meaning “seek.” The idea that comes to my mind being “to go back” or “to seek again.” For me this is one of the nice things about life going round and round instead of in a straight line. It gives us a chance to start over (with a diet, with a workout routine, with a friend) as many times as we need to. Likewise, it gives us a chance to find ourselves, to circle back and save ourselves. Time machines aside, isn’t this what we’re doing when we re-evaluate our past, harmful judgments, when we forgive? Aren’t we rewriting history (and therefore its outcome and present-day effect) when we decide to love instead of hate another or any part of ourselves? Aren’t we starting over–anew?

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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All your scattered pieces want to come back home.

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