I often speak with my clients about horizontal, vertical, and circular (sacred) time. This Journal is an attempt to describe aspects of time which are not often considered.
I am beginning this post within a fortnight of horizontal time from my previous birthday. On that day I moved on from the end of one year of life into entering another year of experience, practice, and evolution of my life; spirit grounding in body while using the tools of mind and emotions to enable the journey forward. Such will be the process of this next trip around the Sun.
These trips around our Sun are free…we should learn to enjoy them more while being good citizens and stewards.
The vertical aspect of time, first described by quantum physicist Hugh Everett III, in 1957, contains “choice points” of infinite possibilities of manifestation from the future. We attract and manifest from this field of infinite potential. I call this process the attraction and manifestation of a future memory.
We are accustomed to having our Now being informed by past memory, but the Now is also informed by future memory. Circular, or sacred time, as it is called by the shamans and mystics, is the consideration of the quantum hologram of time, the fractal infinity of Now…a consideration of all time is happening at once.
We should consider our Now as the most important instance and opportunity in our lives. Everything coming to us depends on what we are doing now.
You might keep in mind an alternative, and etymologically accurate, meaning for the word “present.” We are used to considering the word “present” in terms of its relationship to Now, or, present time. We may also consider the word “present” by dividing and conquering its inner meaning. The word actually means “pre sent.” All of the Now has been pre sent and informed by our past memory and future memory.
We may also think that the present is also a gift…a present. The best feeling for a present being gifted to us is the feeling of gratitude. The daily practice of gratitude seems to make everything in life go better.
Being in the present can be better experienced by letting go of the past and the future, and by accepting and knowing what arises right now. It can also be grasped by understanding in this moment how to make sense of our lives in a rapidly shifting world. Being comfortable with ambiguity and paradox helps our consciousness settle into the contemplative and meditative awareness which helps us hold the spaciousness of the moment.
As Einstein once said, “The purpose of time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.” He was referring to horizontal time, even as he was aware of vertical time. His humorous, brain teasing comment was offered to help reduce mass consciousness confusion about the new concepts in quantum theory referred to as vertical time and circular time.
Or, as stated by a poet:
“Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.”
― Four Quartets
It is said by many that our concept of past, present, and future time is an illusion. If all time is truly happening Now, then we must be using our consciousness to create manageable increments of sequences. It may be that it is our consciousness which is moving along on the “timeline,” and not time itself.
Seeming incongruities, or implausibilities, are often an invitation for us to stretch out of our familiar comfort zone of conditioned thinking and feeling. We attempt to move our mind and consciousness beyond the seeming paradoxes which life brings to us. All of the great spiritual teachers have encouraged us to embrace paradox and incongruity in order to expand the reach of our consciousness.
A Fortnight
These days, the word “fortnight” is rarely used. That is to say, I am the only one in my circle of friends and contacts that I hear using the word fortnight. I used it recently and my friend asked me, “What’s a fortnight?” It is a wonderful word from the Old English “feowertyne niht,” which is fourteen nights. It is half of a lunar cycle, which is a practical way of thinking about it.
I also think of a fortnight as a regular 2 week period of time in which I can exercise some passion. Of course every moment is evolving into the next 14 days, and I attempt to hold this fractally nested concept of the evolving Now, with just the number 14.
The number 14 is also associated with the descriptive of Enthusiasm. I went a little further, and looked up Enthusiasm in the dictionary so as to get my sights straight on the etymology. This word is from Greek “enthousiasmous,” and means “to be inspired.” This brings us to consideration of the breath.
Subtleties of the Breath
The breath enters the body bringing in with it more than just the oxygen that we need for cellular metabolism; the breath brings more subtle elements of our sustenance, which enter the core of our being, and merge around the heart.
The heart is the seat of the mind. I sometimes call this sacred place Heart Mind. We create the future memory of what we manifest from the vibrational energetic of the Heart Mind. This topic will recur in these writings well into the future.
There is a pause between every in-breath and every out-breath that most of us pay no attention to. One aspect of meditative practice is to culture more focus on and settling in this pause. The pause is also known in Eastern spiritual and yogic teachings as the Gap. What is happening in the pause?
I think of being in a concert hall to hear a symphony. All are sitting in the concert hall listening to the sound of the various musical instruments. There is a string of notes for a great number of players with their instruments to render into a coherent melody. The arms attached to the stringed instruments are in their vigor, while others muster their breath, exhaling into the fluted tubes. A maestro is waving a wand. Cymbals and drums and ongoing melodic vibration are filling the hall and the sounds penetrate into the flesh of all who are present.
It’s a good thing there are pauses in between those coordinated symphonic notes! Otherwise, the listeners would be subject to nothing more than a discordant cacophony. Such chaos of sound creates vibrational disturbance in the electromagnetic process of the heart…so the new science shows.
Consider this example of Beethoven’s 4th piano concerto. The utility of the Gap is on full display in this musical example. The pianist Mitsuko Uchida registers some interesting commentary about this concerto before her command performance which is designed to well up as a melodic riot in the heart.
A lengthening pause between the in-breath and the out-breath helps bring the restful, peaceful Heart Mind.
The Heart Mind informs the brain mind, and if the brain mind is not overriding this valuable and timely energetic, then we are more willing and able to follow the quiet messaging of our hearts.
American Indian Wisdom and Other Ancient Teachings
The Creek Indians were the indigenous tribe of native Americans in Alabama and part of Georgia before they were made to leave their native land and march away from their home on the Trail of Tears. This tribe of people described the Divine Creator with a special term.
They used a terminology which I shall attempt to spell here…Esaugetu Emissee. The words mean Master of the Breath, or Breath Holder. Esaugetu Emissee is an apt descriptive of a primordial creative intelligence of the universe. Universe is a word which means “One Song.”
We are breathed by the universe. We are breathed by One Song. When the Universe stops breathing these bodies we live in, then we leave the body, cross over into life after life, and then we are breathed yet again via a more subtle breath. Earth plane is just a classroom extension of Heaven, or Paradise. Nothing is separate in the quantum singularity, though dimensions seem to separate the finer and denser frequencies of the manifestation of this Singularity.
In the late 1970’s I was in surgical residency training in New Orleans and Baltimore. During this time in my life I began to study from the teachings of Kashmir Shaivism, which offered me some esoteric and vital information. There is a certain sound which the breath makes on the way into the quantum infinity of the heart, and there is a certain sound that the breath makes on its way out from the heart into the infinity of the field around us.
When you are quiet and gentle and when you focus on the sound of the breath, you can hear simple sounds on the inbreath and on the outbreath on either side of the pause. A pause is located at the end of inhalation, and also at the end of exhalation. As you listen intently, the pause begins to widen in meditation. The in breath sounds like the Sanskrit syllable “Ham,” which means “I Am.” The out breath sounds like the Sanskrit syllable “Sa,” which means “That.”
I am That is an ongoing breath driven affirmation. It is also a prayer offering.
The ancients who gave us the oldest languaging on earth, Sanskrit, devised seed syllable sounds which resonated meaning inside of our flesh, in our body, and in our subconsciousness. These syllabic sounds also require some pause to punctuate them into our evolution.
The breath is informing us to step out of the illusion of separation, the greatest illusion of all. We feel and believe at the level of brain mind that we are separate from everything else, but this is not the case when considering the quantum hologram, or Mind of God. The breath informs us by its very sound, HamSa. “I am That. That I am.”
This sound and meaning revolve on and on with each breath. Listen inside and outside with a certitude of quietness which is known in the pause.
The modern day Indian teacher Bhagavan Nityananda, said, “The Heart is the hub of all sacred places. Go there, and roam.”
While these words were once an abstract concept, I began to live my way into more felt understanding of the meaning of these words.
Nityananda’s words have continued to inform how I attract and manifest my evolving understanding of an important spiritual truth. In 1999 I formulated a simple model to help guide my future understanding. The model keeps me on track, and therefore it offers me a tool that I can offer to others to help them stay on track in their life process.
I call this model Haelan LifeStream, and it is founded on heart based consciousness. Haelan LifeStream is a learning process to help enable health in body, mind, emotion, and spirit; all centered on heart consciousness and the heart’s holographic entanglement with the of I am That.
I often use a simple word based prayer to help me stay focused on these concepts of circular time…
Bless my past, bless my present, bless my future.
In using this prayer I know that it includes all people and events and circumstances which were in my life in the past, in the present, and in the future. Of course I know that this is all happening in the Now.
This is one simple heart centered way to pray for everyone and everything. This is a great contemplation.
Signing off from Crestone and Beyond
Additional Reading
- The 7 Day Challenge…a 5 minute video featuring Dr. Joe Dispenza who offers great advice about how to start rewiring your brain and thoughts and chemistry to bring your desires to fruition. If you like this, then I encourage a viewing of his 3 hour video for full development of this information.
- Time Revisited…a call to practice meditation and a reorientation of your thinking about time.
- The B theory of time…time is tenseless….the flow of time is an illusion.
- The Extreme Dangers of Daylight Savings Time…the practice of moving the clocks ahead one hour in the spring and back one hour in the fall started during WWI to save energy, but with changing technology, it is no longer effective and the associated health dangers impact people of all ages.
- In Tune with Time–Watchmaker Masahiro Kikuno…a fascinating 47 minute video about a young Japanese master watchmaker who practices meticulous precision and artistry in his exacting craft.
- When Am I?…a Buddhist practitioner explores the mystery of the Now in this brief well worded writing.
- A Letter from My Future Self, Encouraging Me to Practice…another Buddhist perspective is shared here in a letter from the author to himself in which he plants some good advice from his future memory of his own goodness…”Once you have genuinely, fully, and tenderly touched your own brokenness, place a seed in the crack. Make a wish in that fissure, and share with yourself the aimless kindness of your own presence.”
- Being in Body Time…this short writing explores the concept of time in meditation and how we can move beyond the present moment to a more expansive—and embodied—understanding of time.”Invite the mind to pay attention to the body’s time so that the mind can learn a simple truth: There is just now.”