The Time Illusion – Excerpt From A Course in Happiness

By Phyllis King

The human body is finite.  It has a beginning, a middle, and an end.   The physical world speaks to us in terms of a beginning, middle and end.  It seeks to quantify, qualify and measure everything to fit into the model, and the structure the ego mind can understand.

In total reality time is an illusion.  It is something the finite awareness uses to define itself.   The essence is timeless and knows no limitation or boundary and needs no point of reference.  It just is, always has been and always will be.  

When we cease identification with experiences as good, bad, right, wrong, important, or not important, we cease the need to measure it.  We become interested observers.  We simply see the value of our role in existence at a particular moment in life.

The use of time is what we do to identify ourselves in physical life.  It does impose and insist value on what we do.   If we seek happiness we must commit first to honor peace, embrace surrender, and to eradicate resistance from our response patterns.   We must accept each moment with gratitude and appreciation.   We must allow every moment to be exactly what it is and embrace it.  In so doing we fulfill our spiritual need which is exponentially greater than the need of our human body.  We are not on our way to somewhere, or trying to achieve anything.  We are existing and expanding through experience.  When we consent to this truth about the purpose of being in a body on the planet, the only experience we can have or create is abundance.

Time imposes judgments such as:

Am I too old?  Am I too young? Am I too heavy?  Are my grades good enough? Do I have enough time?  Am I rushed?  Do I have enough time in the day?

Ultimately each of us sets the rhythm and momentum of our life.  We choose where and when we give our attention.   When time is the master we diminish our own power to create or to experience magnificence.  We have relinquished autonomy in our own world.

If we identify with past wounding, or past programming, we are living in the past.  If we are waiting for our “good” to arrive we are living in a future reality.  Yet, if we are in the present moment unattached and unidentified with experiences, time becomes irrelevant.  We are simply observing expansion and participating in it.  We focus only on being present.   Being present in the moment absent judgment, identification or attachment equals happiness.