Think of past and present time as layers of “times”.
“Times” that we have stored that are still available for exploration,
rediscovery, editing and expansion,
and capable of being re-lived through our current awareness.
~ Jean Houston
Chatting with a friend about chakras, I asked her if her feet are often cold. “Oh, yes, always….” she replied, motioning across her lower abdomen and pelvic region. I mentioned the possibility of working with her timeline to alleviate symptoms of peripheral neuropathy, a result of having lymph nodes removed from her groin.
NLP (neurolinguistic programming) has some really useful tools for thinking about “time.” I’ve known people who have had results nothing short of remarkable, including a colleague who used NLP to imagine going backwards down a spiral stair case, representing her DNA. When she came back up the stairs, she came back up without cancer. She is now on the light side of 80 years-old and still teaching and training.
Play with this…
In your mind’s eye, look back at all of your past experiences—you know some are pleasant and others are unpleasant. See or imagine the pleasant events one color and the unpleasant events another color. Be sure you keep the wisdom and learning from everything, then clear the trash all your timeline. Counting one-two-three, see or imagine the unpleasant events pop right off your timeline. I actually like to think of them as bubbles. When a bubble pops, it is GONE.
Even the way a person speaks about time changes things. When people are experiencing a problem—a stuck state—they often use an all-encompassing present tense: “I can’t learn new things” or “my supervisor is a jerk.” What happens when the verb tense changes? “Learning new things has been difficult,” or “my supervisor has been a jerk.”When a person seems “stuck” in a state or in the experience of a problem, he or she will often use a simple verb tense: “I am depressed.” Simply changing the verb to a progressive tense may help the individual see him- or herself as moving through a particular state or problem: “So you have been feeling depressed.”
Listen for the verb tenses people use when talking about their problems, and think about the way you can use your knowledge of timelines and verb tenses to better understand your own and other people’s problems and their solutions. Use verb tenses to help move problems into the past and solutions into the present and the future.
Remember that the universal present tense exists through time. When you say that something or someone is, by implication the tense includes past, present, and future: “I am depressed” or “Bob is a jerk.” Shifting to the past tense helps move the problem into the past: “I was depressed.” Using the past tense for such expressions also helps limit the context in other ways: “Bob was being a jerk when. . . .”
Changing the verb itself is another way to alter the interpretation of a statement. Consider using feel for conditions you wish to be temporary and am for conditions you want to be permanent. “I feel tired.” “I am confident.”
The friend who had the physical symptoms from a medical procedure can imagine her timeline extending into her ‘past’ back to before that event. She can ‘pop’ her consciousness off her timeline and go back to a pleasant point prior to that event. Reminding her body of how it feels healthy now, she can bring that feeling back along her timeline and ‘pop’ her consciousness back into her body having that remembered wellness.
Years ago I did this with a client who had undergone a double radical mastectomy. So self-conscious of not having breasts, she had stopped wearing strands of beads that were family heirlooms. After she did the timeline therapy, she FELT her breasts and was able to enjoy wearing the jewelry that meant so much to her.
As I was working on this article, Jean Huston announced a new program about which she says, “We know that your perception of reality, values, relationships and roles are the result of everything that happens to you. The majority of decisions you make are influenced by your subconscious and unconscious, the storehouses of these accumulated impressions.”
Wow…
And, “What I have discovered is that time is not just a linear passage, but past and present time are brilliantly alive with memories that are not just stored and static, but reverberating with untapped possibilities.”
Take some time to really grasp the life changes that come with reading the words from the promotional materials for Jean’s “Recreating Your World: Life Beyond Linear Time.”
- Mystical Time, where the local self dissolves and you become one within the unity of all life.
- Parallel Time, where you meet yourself with different and heightened qualities and capacities.
- Transition Time, where you know its time to move onto the next stage of life.
- Creative Time, where your creative urge compels you to action with allies and synchronicities.
- Transformation Time, where you go through a whole systemic shift advancing into a new being.
- Shadow Time, where you make new choices about the self operating beneath your awareness.
- Imaginal Time, where you enter into the great holy place that underscores all imagination.
- Dream Time, where you connect with your unconscious, and all that lies beyond the rational.
Jean says, “What I have discovered is that time is not just a linear passage, but past and present time are brilliantly alive with memories that are not just stored and static, but reverberating with untapped possibilities.”
Why settle for only past, present and future. Perhaps the time is right for thinking about time in a whole new way. What might you have to lose? What might you be able to gain?