Talk: The Present Of The Present

Two Insight Timer teachers in conversation pre-Christmas on the third day of advent. Jacqueline Hollows, aka MamaJ, in conversation with me about cosmic timing, linguistics and the breath. Give yourself a present of the present.

Transcript

This is the third day of our Advent series.

I'm so excited,

I'm a little bit giddy to have Tom Evans with us.

If you don't know who Tom is,

Please do look him up,

He's an amazing teacher and he's going to share some really interesting things with us tonight.

Tonight's theme is patience and how this period is a sort of waiting period,

A waiting for something meaningful to arrive,

Whether you're in the Christian faith or whether you're just interested in Christmas,

But it's all about waiting for this exciting and meaningful thing.

And when I was reflecting on this,

I was wondering if actually,

Is patience more about getting present with what we've already got,

Feeling blessed in the moment rather than waiting and seeing what we've got right now and we have everything we need right now and this waiting is almost an illusion.

And I know when we talked earlier,

Tom,

You've sort of had some thoughts about that as well.

Well,

You know,

As a linguist,

I'm primarily a writer and Insight Time and Meditations was a thing that happened to me because I had no idea that that was my gift,

But I love linguistics and the concept of present and presents,

So some people will be impatiently waiting for their presents at Christmas,

For Father Christmas,

To drop them down the chimney and all that kind of stuff and make sure you've got the glass of sherry and mince pie ready for him,

But one of the greatest gifts we've got is the present.

And I love the concept about mindfulness and allowing us to focus on the present,

But the other thing it allows us to do,

And this is where some mindfulness guidance may not normally go,

Is we have this great ability to focus on any particular time at all.

So we can be thinking in the now about the future or thinking in the now about the past as well.

And when we think about past and the now disappears,

When we think about the future,

The now disappears as well.

So we're time travelers,

Which is just amazing.

But we're on a massive clock,

A timepiece,

The Earth is a timepiece,

If you think about it,

That days exist and years exist,

But months don't exist,

Weeks don't exist,

Seconds don't exist,

Hours don't exist.

None of these things exist in nature,

But they're really,

Really useful because otherwise I wouldn't have arrived at the right time to do this event and the other people on this event wouldn't happen as well.

And I love the idea of us getting back into natural time and remembering where we are in the natural cycle.

So we just come past a new moon over my,

One of my shoulders I've got a moon clock there which shows you the moon phase,

It's just past the new moon.

And on Insight Time,

You'll find in a meditation,

Michael,

The turning point,

And Insight Time asked me to record that and create it several years ago.

And they released it on Christmas Day,

And every Christmas Day I bring it back again.

And it reminds us where we are in the cycle,

So irrespective of your beliefs and your creed and what have you,

Or whether you really look forward to Santa dropping your presents down the chimney at Christmas,

Not that we can do that in our new eco-home because there's no gaps,

There's not even a letterbox for him to get through.

We have to remind ourselves that we're in a cosmic cycle,

Northern Hemisphere,

Which is coming up to the shortest day,

And then more light comes in as well.

So I use this time to,

And the time,

The cusp,

If you like,

Between now and into the new year as a kind of taking stock,

You know,

So not trying to do too much at all,

Have time with family,

Friends,

And that sort of stuff,

But to take stock of what's just happened this year.

And for ages now I've been doing a monthly blog,

Every new moon I do a blog and I look over it this year and what a year it's been.

Getting back to these natural cycles I think is really,

Really important.

So the 21st,

22nd or so,

Is the solstice when we go to the shortest day in the Northern Hemisphere,

Longest day in the Southern Hemisphere,

And then the time changes and we move into a new phase.

And I think when we get into natural time,

We can be more patient about the passage of time and realise what's happening over the seasons and over the cycles and what have you.

And we're in a cycle too,

You know,

We go through a cycle every seven,

Every nine years,

Depending on which sort of methodology you look at.

And so every so often it pays us great dividends to do this stock taking and to take a breather before we then rush forward doing whatever else we fancy doing the following cycle.

Beautiful.

I love that because I also see that we have our own seasons,

Don't we?

We have natural seasons and they might not match the seasons of nature,

But often they do.

In the darker months and the colder times we get,

We want to hibernate and we tend to be more quiet and want to snuggle down,

Which is what you said,

You know,

Take stock again.

And then the lighter months we tend to want to do more,

Be out more,

Experience more.

So I love that.

And I think that if you operate within your own seasons,

Actually life flows a little bit easier as well instead of pushing against.

So if you're trying to create when you're in a hibernation season,

You find it really difficult.

But if you're creating when you're in a sort of more spring-like season,

It feels easier.

You feel you have more energy.

So I really love that.

I'd like to say as well,

Tom,

That I traveled to a different time zone a few months ago and I used your Time Traveler jet lag meditation and I didn't use it quite properly because I didn't listen to it just,

You know,

A week before I listened to it on the plane,

On the way,

But I had an insight because during the meditation,

It talks about going to the North Pole and that time doesn't exist at the poles.

And what I realized when I did that visualization and went to the North Pole and time didn't exist there,

I literally realized,

Oh,

You can do that anytime.

You can set your time at any time.

And so when I got to Florida,

As it happened,

And it was 11 o'clock their time when I was at the hotel,

Which would have been 2 a.

M.

My time that my husband likes to point out,

I actually could see that,

Oh,

I can live in,

This is a really long day for me and it's 2 a.

M.

In the morning and I should be really tired now,

Or I can live in where I'm at,

Which is,

I've just arrived at this hotel and maybe I need to just,

You know,

Get myself ready to bed and have a good night's sleep.

And it was an amazing experience.

I really didn't have jet lag.

I woke up.

It felt like I woke up early,

But I enjoyed waking up early because I thought,

Oh,

I can get to see the morning and so on.

And I felt tired.

I felt like slightly tired or slightly less energetic,

But I didn't suffer.

It was really,

Really interesting.

I was evacuated the next day from that hotel because there was a hurricane,

But,

You know,

That wasn't your fault.

That's it.

We can be so crazy with time.

So,

For example,

I've got a live coming up in the middle of this month where I'm going to get everybody to come to the North Pole and to come into the no time,

Because I found out through another Insight Timer guy,

Deb Flanagan,

That I live right on the Earth's chakra point,

And I'm going to do a live heart chakra activation for the Earth.

But I'm going to bring everyone to the North Pole and then get them to come to the Earth chakra point and join me here.

So I was using that same technique and then get the energies from all the other chakra points.

It was one in Tibet,

One in Lake Tihigarga,

Down in Australia,

In Unuru.

And so I'm going to bring all the chakras to the heart chakra point and then move them there,

But using that same technique to bring everyone's subtle body into the same place.

There's another technique I'm going to share with you.

I'd only found out after my third book,

Which I wrote in about 2011,

That I wrote them all in spring.

So I don't even try to write them now any other time because I know that they're springing forward.

So I might think about it in autumn and stuff.

And there's a great author called Kurt Vonnegut,

And he came up with six seasons.

So he came up with about a two-week season of the locking,

Which is between autumn and winter,

And another season,

Which is the unlocking,

Which is between winter and spring.

I love that concept.

And I love playing with the concepts of time.

And I think that's my encouragement to everybody over this season.

Obviously,

In America,

Thanksgiving's a big thing and don't tend to have much time in the UK.

We tend to close down for about two weeks before Christmas and New Year and stuff like that.

So it's almost like a two-week enforced holiday where there's no business done and what have you.

But it's a great time to take time to reconsider and not to necessarily repeat the things we did in the last cycle,

Just to reset and then move forward in the next cycle.

But from a position where you're doing the stuff that you love to do with the people that you love to do it and think of that whole idea really.

And even if these people are in different time zones,

We can use these techniques to bring everyone together.

So when we're doing these lives,

For example,

Everyone right now on the lives,

Not where everyone's coming from,

Could actually go right up to the North Pole right now.

And we sit there.

And from the North Pole,

Same as through the South Pole,

It's not that you're in no time at all.

With one step,

You can jump into any time zone.

That's the way it works.

You're in all time zones at the same time.

Because time zones didn't exist until 1884.

So we made them up because of transatlantic travel and cross-continental travel in the railways in the US.

So that's when we made them up to run this modern day society.

Yeah,

I love what Dazzle says about it's a good reminder of our natural flux because the stresses of time,

Being early,

Being late,

All of that,

Instead of just being nag,

Which is all we ever really are.

You know,

I never want to watch and I'm never late for anything.

Wow.

So you can be aware of linear time,

But also be in all time at the same time,

Which is kind of interesting.

I call that temporal alchemy.

Wow.

Yeah.

Transmutation of the dimension of time.

Yeah.

So one of the things we do on these Advent Lives is we've been doing a little reflection,

Get quiet,

And then a visualisation.

Would you like to do one of those with us,

Tom?

Yeah,

Well,

Let's use a clock that we forget about,

Shall we?

So one of the clocks that we forget about,

I'm not talking about my moon phase clock behind me.

We forget about the breath clock.

So the breath actually beats time for us.

And if we actually slow the breath down,

One of the consequences of this is that we actually slow the passage of linear time as well.

I did a meditation live for about 100 people once,

Where I've got this ticking effect.

I slow the ticking down,

And it lasts for about 30 minutes,

3 minutes 33,

And ask people to say afterwards,

Close their eyes,

Listen to the ticking slow down.

And as they do now,

Because their breath is changing rate as well.

And the change,

The gap between,

What was it?

The earliest one was like,

Someone said it's two minutes and someone said it's 12 minutes.

So time is very,

Very subjective.

But by tuning into the breath,

We can slow time down.

I want everyone just to take a big,

Deep in-breath,

And then breathe out as if you're blowing out a candle,

Like that.

And then just be mindful of the slow in-breath,

And then a deep out-breath,

Expelling all the air from your lungs.

And just be mindful of this,

Is that a giant tortoise breathes about four to five times every minute.

Lives for about 150 years.

And an elephant breathes about eight times every minute.

Lives for about 80,

90 years.

And our natural longevity is about 50,

60 years.

We breathe about 10 to 15 times a minute.

So as much as you can,

Safely,

Just slow your breath right down.

Don't do this by coming out of breath.

Just breathe slowly.

And then switch your attention from the in and the out-breath to two other points in time that we rarely give any consciousness or awareness to.

And that's the point between the in and the out,

And the out and the in.

So as you breathe in,

Just pause for a while.

Focus on the breath.

Focus on that time between you breathing in and then you breathing out.

When you get to the end of the out-breath,

Again,

Focus on the time between the out and the in,

And then breathe in again.

And what's interesting about when we see the breath in that way,

There's four phases of the breath,

Not two phases of the breath.

And on the in-breath,

That's when we can breathe in ideas.

And on the out-breath,

We can take all those ideas transmuted and take them out to the world.

So like the in-breath is the intake,

Is the inspiration.

And then on the out-breath,

That's our aspiration.

So I'd like everyone to think about this year being a time for all their new ideas to come their way,

To bring them in,

Pause.

And then on the out-breath,

Our aspirations to be flowing out into the world.

In the same way,

There's four phases of the breath.

We can also think of those four times in our orbit around the sun,

The two solstices and the equinox and the spring equinox and the autumn equinox.

So we can think of the equinoxes as the pause points and then the solstices as the breathing in and the breathing out.

We should also remember that every time the moon orbits the earth,

The earth breathes in and out as well.

So the surface of the earth gets pulled up by about 10 foot towards the moon as it's overhead and then it comes down again.

So that's what causes our tides and whatever.

It also causes tectonic activity inside the earth,

Which heats up the earth so we can live in this wonderful golden box.

So everything is perfectly poised with cosmic timing.

And when we get back into that cosmic timing,

We so go with the temporal flow.

And somewhere along the line,

Someone said it'd be a really good idea to have Christmas around then.

So thanks for breathing with me,

Everybody.

Wow,

That's beautiful.

Absolutely beautiful.

So patience isn't really about waiting for something better.

It's about trusting that life unfolds perfectly when you allow yourself to be present with each moment.

And that's the biggest present you can give yourself.

Reviews

Beautiful and fascinating Tom! I always learn so much from you and appreciate your insight. This was just so beautiful!
Thank you 🙏🏻 💕
Merry Christmas 🎄

What a beautiful present! Two of my favourite Insight Timer teachers in conversation about the gifts of time and presence. 🙏❤️

A welcome reminder during this busy season…. Breathe and slow down to be present🙏🏼. Thank you

I love the breath as solsyice and gap as equinox analogy! Wow!
Thank you

That was beautiful Tom! I loved interviewing you and I loved listening back as I got to relax in your dulcet tones :)