How to Slow Time

How to Slow Time

How do you feel when you feel alive? Where in your life do you feel most alive?

Have you ever heard people talk about surviving a dangerous situation, and talking about how alive they felt? Have you ever wondered why they would feel like that?

When we are in a situation of sudden danger, we are suddenly really paying attention to what is happening in the moment. We open wide to our experience, and take it all in, all at once, full sensory. That opening is one of the reasons we have the sense of time slowing down.

Thing is, that’s available to us all the time. All we have to do is choose it.

Awareness, presence, being in the moment. Experiencing now.

How strange that we should have to learn how to do that, but how wonderful when we do.

Becoming present in our own lives can bring about amazing changes, more intimacy, more bliss and joy, more opportunities. And, remarkably, a sense of time slowing down to a nice, stately pace.

Why am I present? What makes me aware? Why am I alive?

When I become present in your company, I can listen completely, with all my faculties. That means, I hear what you are saying, I recognize the significance of the words you are using, but I also hear your body language, I hear your micro-expressions, I hear your unconscious gestures. I hear your whole self.

We engage. We connect. I like that.

When I am present, all my experiences are richer because I am actually experiencing them. A nice side benefit is that I have far fewer accidents when I am present, when I am experiencing my experience. I tend to walk with a surer step, I see where I am going and what I’m doing. I notice what is coming up, both literally and more so about potential. Time ceased to fly.

When I am present and aware, I can choose more freely, with less attachment to my habits. I like that.

As a living sensory organism, we are meant to experience sensory stuff. We are meant to use our senses as a means of understanding our environment, ourselves. When I am all in my head, or all in my emotions and feelings, I am not aware of the present moment. When I am worrying, or plotting revenge, I am not in the now. When I am stressed about stuff, even if it’s all unconscious, I am not present.

When I choose to step into the now, I let all that stuff go. I feel my feet connect with the ground, I am aware of breathing, I see my environment, I hear, I smell. I am in my world, and, even more profoundly, when I take a mental step back, I experience all those things as a whole, including my own self, and feel some of the mystery of the universe, being a part of it, recognizing that my part is, at least in the now, crucial.

How have I changed from living in my head to stepping into my own aliveness?

(c) Pam Guthrie all rights reserved 03022014

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