Time Travel

What if the first time you kissed him was not the first time he had kissed you? What if your husband disappeared on your wedding night, but you couldn’t really be mad at him since he was with you the entire time. Of course, the you he was with was only nine at the time. Such is the world of the Time Traveler’s Wife. She met her love when he was an adult and she was just a child. He visited her many times as she was growing up and she fell in love. She spent her life waiting for time to catch up with him. When he did finally meet her—she already knew him, but to him she was a stranger.

The movie is based on a book by Audrey Niffenegger, but it was no surprise to find out that Bruce Joel Rubin wrote the screenplay. Bruce also wrote such wonderful films as Ghost, My Life, and Jacob’s Ladder. I had the pleasure of meeting Bruce in 2005 on the Spiritual Cinema Festival at Sea.

I totally enjoyed this film, but it got me thinking—no surprise—what would happen if time travel really were possible? If it truly were a reality then my future self could come back and tell me if I found my right and perfect church, where it was, and if everything turns out as well as I pray it does. Considering I’ve lived the past year in the void and wondering about my future—it truly would be pretty awesome to have those questions answered once and for all.

I took a class at Unity Village decades ago on NLP (Neura- Linguistic Programming). In this class our future self went back to our inner child to bring them the knowledge that life would turn out okay; that’s a great thing for a child to know. This was all pretend of course. We stood in a constructed timeline and simply moved back in time to assure ourselves that we turned out okay. It’s a wonderful psychological concept.

So, what if there really is a future me hanging around somewhere? That future me would have the answers that I am now seeking. While it might be nice to find out specifics from my future self, it would seem that this is virtually impossible. I have not (as of this moment) figured out how to transport myself into the future.

However, what I’ve realized is, I do know how to travel to my past. The present me can look back at other times in my past when I was feeling stress or indecision and see that I made it through perfectly fine through that stressful time to this now present moment. Knowing this, how can there be any doubt that whatever I am going through now will turn out exactly as it needs to be.

So, it turns out I can time travel—but only to my past. I know we talk in spirituality about ‘being here now’ and living in the present…but I still think it would be pretty awesome to take a trip to the future. Anyone want to go there with me?

Remembrance

I have been re-reading Angels and Demons in preparation for the movie coming out next month. I love the book, because even though it is fiction—there is so much history and truth to be found in it.

One of the things that the author, Dan Brown, mentions in telling his story is a Buddhist philosophy called Remembrance. The idea of remembrance is that if one is having a difficult time figuring out the answer or solution to a challenging or impossible problem, then instead of trying to figure it out, simply ask the mind to remember the solution. “The presupposition that one once knew the answer created the mindset that the answer must exist…thus eliminating the crippling conception of hopelessness.”

I love this idea for a couple of reasons. One, it embraces the idea that time is not linear. In our limited thinking, we think of time in terms of past, present and future happening along a straight line continuum. However, what if they are all happening concurrently?

If that is the case, then somewhere my future self already knows the solution, and I simply need to connect with that future self to figure out and bring the solution into the present. This idea is a bit difficult for us to grasp our mind around, but I love it. Maybe that’s why I love Star Trek so much!

Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) has been using the idea of reaching back in time to communicate and bring resources to our inner child, I see no reason why we can’t reach forward in time as well.

Another reason I love this idea of remembrance is that in Unity we teach that we are one with the Divine Mind of God. Since God is all-knowing, then God already knows the solution to any challenge I may be facing and I simply need to connect my mind to God Mind to remember the solution that already exists.

So next time you or I are feeling frustrated, we just need to take a little time to be still and to REMEMBER. The solution isn’t something we must search after, it already exists, right here, right now.

After all, God’s in charge and all is well.