The other day I was watching a very moving film about the
life of the amazing scientist Dr Stephen Hawking. When only still twenty-one
years old and studying at Cambridge university, he was struck down with a
crippling illness. He was told he had at the most two years to live, with ever
increasing restriction and disability. The Academy award-winning film tells how
even with terrible disability nothing deterred him as a physicist from his
study of time, and the writing of his book: ‘The Theory of Everything’.
What is time? He knew it is an
illusory concept. His life is a story of determination and not allowing a
physical concept of time to defeat him.
Just after watching this film, by chance, I came across
these words of White Eagle :
‘Do not count time. You all make the mistake of thinking in
years instead of eternity. Live daily in the eternal now, and daily, whatever
your need, seek the higher mind, the mind of Christ, and all the petty things
of human life will dissolve just like mists with the sun pouring through them.’
In company with many wise teachers,
White Eagle advises us to live in ‘the eternal now’, but it is very hard to do
this. Our brains and thoughts have a habit of running here and there - thoughts
of the past, worries about the future, this and that and the other, constantly
affecting every part of our being, so that even if we are sitting still, there
is racing-around going on inside. We have internal lists of things we have to
do, wish we could do, or want to change. I think one of the challenges of the
age in which we now live is to find peace in the midst of it all.
How can we do this? I don’t think
the answer is to ignore time and worldly commitments, as part of the reason we
chose to come back into physical incarnation is to learn to deal with physical
conditions, not run away from them.
We know (according to what White
Eagle tells us, and probably feel it intuitively anyway), that time is quite
different in the heavenly life - it is very much a concept of the material
world - that is why it is of such interest to scientists. It is such an elusive
subject which is hard to ‘get hold of’. Although White Eagle tells us to live
in ‘the eternal now’, he is also practical and understanding about how it
actually is living in a physical body, so he has given us a structure for our
spiritual practice (just as Mohammed did with his call to prayer at sunrise,
midday, mid- afternoon, sunset and evening). White Eagle asks us to remember
God and our work of sending out the light at 3,6,9 and 12. So in one way we are
told to live in time, yet in another way, realise that time is not real - just
a concept of the material world.
One way I have found I can live
with greater peace and harmony in my life (as I am naturally someone who is
very conscious of time, and never wanting to be late!) is to accept the way
things are, in as peaceful a way as I can. I do my best within the seeming
restrictions of earthly time, but I really do try to live as White Eagle says ‘in
the mind of Christ’, within ‘the eternal now’. Actually I think this is one of
the blessings of getting older! It is certainly a bit easier for me now I am in
my sixties, than it was in my thirties! I also find using affirmations (and of
course Star-breathing), really helpful, no matter what the outer problem is.
White Eagle tells us that ‘All the
petty things of human life will dissolve just like the mists with the sun
pouring through them.’ Yes. They do. I affirm: ‘I am filled with God`s light
and peace...I am at peace with all life. I live in the eternal now.’ Try
it!
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