Timelessness: Myth or Magical Connection?

"Reality is not only stranger than we suppose but stranger than we can suppose." - J. B. S. Haldane

Have you ever dreamt about being a magician, able to expand time, capable of accomplishing everything important to you? Perhaps you have toyed with the idea of cloning yourself so you can get your work done, and have an amazing personal life too. Perhaps, more often than you like to admit, these musings may seem like the only ways you’ll ever find balance, but alas, they are just myth, the stuff of daydreams and conjecture, of futuristic speculation or physical impossibility—merely wild imaginings or the rantings of a crazy person.

"All great truths begin as blasphemies." - George Bernard Shaw

Something within us knows this potential. We have even experienced it more often than we understand. We actually experience it many times in each day, whether conscious of it or not. We call it flow, effortless, magical. We experience it when we are so engaged in what we are doing that we become the doing. The skateboarder becomes skateboard, concrete, body, and environment. Athletics, our hobbies, our passions draw us into that reality. We become the experiencing, with no separation between us and our heartfelt, fully absorbed engagement. This happens at work as well when we are puzzling a solution, in love with the mystery, open to emerging ideas, unconcerned about time’s pressures. These experiences are what make the thought of timelessness possible. The only difference between normal experience of flow and timelessness is that we see it in snippets and it appears to approach us unbidden. Seemingly we can’t summon it at will.

Einstein realized this when he advanced his theory of relativity. Time is relative. It is the reason as we get old, time appears to accelerate. Christmas seems to come faster and faster each year. When we were young, time stood still, especially so when we wanted it to move. When we were 15, turning 18 and graduating from high school felt as it would never come. Yet, once we had children, they magically grew from 2 to 15 to 30 overnight. Some days feel as if they last forever, others vanish quickly.

If we can experience timelessness, or its inverse, accelerated time, we can choose to live outside of time. After all, time is not real. If it were, would it behave in such a relative manner? In order to live outside the constraints of time, we have to understand the common threads that induce the appearance of timelessness. There are three components that nourish this possibility, what Workplace Evolution calls Love, Grace and Community.

Love expresses as genuine curiosity and openness, an insatiable willingness to learn, being fully present, bowed in humility. It is the hub of wholeness and ‘love in action’. It is the door into absolute potentiality.

Grace flows from the foundation of Love into that place of discovery, where we use everything as catalyst, and enter into the mystery playfully, holding the space to honor all paths and fellow travelers, excited to be smack dab in the middle of this incredible experiment. Grace is the door into unlimited possibility. It is here that flow and timelessness are naturally available.

Community becomes the expression of Grace. Love and Grace extended beyond the ‘me’ into the ‘we’ of Community, beyond ourselves into service and open the door into amplified probability. This is the space of absolute productivity, unreserved commitment, unconditional inclusivity, revolutionary evolution. Here we passionately belong, our values integrated into everything we are and do. Sustainability, both individually and collectively, is an innate outcome, effortlessly a foregone conclusion.

Possible—is it myth or magical connection?

This last six days I have been working with my partners and close friends in San Diego. We had a full schedule of meetings and a hope that we could find time to finish mapping a new ‘WEllness Business Model’ with which we have been playing. I arrived hopeful and yet, aware the full slate before us. The magic began almost instantly although we didn’t notice it until later. Time expanded to allow more in depth conversations, for traffic concerns, to make all the appointments and connections and some we hadn’t planned. It wasn’t just that we got more done, made amazingly deep connections, and felt no time constraints. We felt like instruments, played by the Divine, led effortlessly, spaciously from moment to moment within the context of motionless time. We would arrive home, with only minutes before the next event, and have time to relax, prepare, synthesize, and plan—to take an unexpected shower, a nap, or a walk in the radiant sunshine. Time expanded to include anything we were called to do. This grace descended from our love and expressed in the community we created. Our willingness to be the listening, authentic listening—tuned and refined us, aligning us with our true purpose and usefulness.

What we believe to be possible is our reality. We are the magician, the creator, the crazy person we have held at a distance. Ask and you shall be given. O, ye of little faith. All is possible. This Grace sits with me now as I write this missive from the plane on my way home. I have no reason to believe it will ever leave and if perchance it appears to, I have but to return to Love, and Grace cannot but follow.

"There is only one thing more powerful than all the armies of the world, that is an idea whose time has come." - Victor Hugo