The phrase “changing your timeline” is current language to reference healing a past wound, dynamic or belief - something that’s an obstacle to moving forward. In releasing the past, negative or unwanted influences are minimized. Creating a new timeline means being freed from limitations to access new possibilities. We can move forward, even take a new direction toward a desired outcome. Still, since we portray time as linear, it’s always forward - and about the past and the future.
We can employ various techniques to come to terms with our past. Acceptance and forgiveness are two avenues that help. We can work at modifying undesirable behaviours through therapy. Many healing modalities, models and communities also help with the main issue - reducing the energetic charge of an event, circumstance or relationship.
Once I was exasperated about the futility of trying to “delete” negative situations from past lives with someone. “What’s the point? It will never be done!” Guides agreed, but described what was left after my efforts was a “ghost pattern” - carrying so little energy it’s no longer an influence.
Can future lives (possibly with some current players on our stage) affect us? Not really. Future possibilities can inform the present; but since those are decisions not yet taken they are ghost patterns until initiated. Any projection into the future is just that - a “what if” scenario. Every moment there are countless factors influencing the next.
Forecasting the future is a probabilities game. That's why I caution that psychic information needs to be regularly updated; it may be stronger or weaker depending on intervening factors.
I once saw a future image of my client, a young man in architecture school. He was in a luxurious office with an older mentor. I also saw him middle-aged, drinking heavily and clearly unhappy despite his apparent success. After graduation he came to me with a big decision.
He was in love with a woman who had two young children. They dreamed of moving to Australia to create sustainable housing. His dilemma? He had a wealthy uncle in NYC who was offering him a red carpet for his business. Earlier I didn’t tell him what I saw (it didn’t seem productive.) NOW it was essential to relate that future scenario!
We can all sense those “forks in the road” - big decisions defining the rest of our lives. When traveling in Alaska as a young filmmaker I could have married an Inuit man. I laugh when I realize I would still have ended up a healer! What we consider digressions may actually support our life purpose - just in a new circumstance.
In the linear mindset, it’s true that the past is creating the present. Big and little choices contribute to our “timeline”; but in every moment something changes. You can reinforce the status quo (past patterns), react or be distracted. We judge our choices by comparing them with a result. What if we let go of that attachment to outcome? Then we would be truly free to explore what comes up next, without expectations - the only intention being cultivating our best self.
Think of timeline(s) expanding out versus a single track. A tree branch is influenced by the elements; how much sun, wind, or water it receives determines the tree's shape, structure and amount of growth. External events outside our control do play a part in shaping our timeline - but humans can interpret and respond to outside forces differently.
Some of my students have felt they wasted time in work that wasn't “spiritual” enough. We’re the culmination of past choices, but with your current skills and situation you can still express your life purpose. How do you treat people? How do you contribute?*
The Zen story “Taming the Ox” details stages of development resulting in enlightenment. The trajectory is circular; the herder starts and ends up back in the marketplace. From a mundane perspective it looks the same, but their experience of the world is immense. For us outward manifestations of change are usually the goal. What about the interior experience?
Expand your relationship with time beyond the linear. You can course correct at any time and not consider it wrong, a failure or wasted. The underlying impetus and longing to evolve spiritually never changes. How that manifests can take many different forms. Having a more expansive understanding of timelines can create less judgment and open an arena of new opportunities.
Peace, love and healing -
Bear
*The film “Living” is a meditation on the possibility for meaning at any point in our lives.
(Besides, I adore the actor Bill Nighy!)
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