CHAPTER TEN: Time, Time, Time, No Time!

More than likely, you have put that crazy CHAPTER ONE out of your mind. I fully understand as I went a bit wild trying to stuff three different stories (Mine, Leah's and Gina's) into that one chapter, along with lessons in physics and calculus.

Hopefully, though, you will recall the lesson that Einstein taught us: there is no such thing as time. That great physicist thought that “the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”

Everything, it seems, happens all at once in the eternal NOW!

I'm not going to take up Einstein's claim, or his scientific reasoning, at least not NOW. But I am going to tell you that for the past year and a half or so, just before I turned 70, I've started to believe what my very spiritual therapist Mary M kept telling me, all those years we spoke. Time, from Mary's perspective, collapses in on itself, folding in and around like a giant spiral.

Remember in the last chapter, how I asked you to keep an open mind? Well, so, please do, as I tell you this: I have myself experienced the malleability of time; I'm referring in part to my ability to be in my bis bis nonna Filomena's life way back in the mid-1800s. Some would say that it's just my imagination at work. Perhaps. But when I get very quiet and close my eyes, I feel her arise.

Or I sink into her life! I am so close to her that I see the pores in her face. I see exactly how her eyebrows are growing, a bit wildly at the center of her forehead. There is some very faint, but slightly darkened hair growing above her mouth.

I am staring now into a bowl of steaming cereal; I pick up a carved wooden spoon and lift a spoonful of the mush to my mouth. I feel it sliding down my throat. I reach for another bowl; the finish on the yellowed ceramic is lined with the thinnest cracks. I drink the thick dark coffee that has been boiled on the wood stove.

That of course is my imagination at work. But then, what exactly is the imagination? When we write fiction, we use our minds to bring a whole world alive, both for the writer and the reader. The mind is conjuring up something that feels real! I think about the fact that neuroscientists have shown in experiments that when a person plays the piano, certain brain circuits are activated in her mind. But when that same person simply imagines playing the piano, the very same brain circuits light

up!

In other words, we can actually create a physical reality by thinking what we think! The implications for this are enormous for our health.

Which is one reason why it's so important to me to try to focus on positive thoughts and feelings, whenever possible.

So now I will tell you about some ancient shamanic practices and what they tell us about stepping out of time into infinity!

*******

Recently, I started an on-line class with a well-known American medical anthropologist, Dr. Alberto Villoldo.

Several decades ago, Dr. Villoldo left a faculty research position at San Francisco State University, where he supervised a lab that was investigating how energy medicine could change brain chemistry. In his words, he "traded his laboratory for a pair of hiking boots and a ticket to the Amazon," where he began to learn shamanic healing. He has spent the last four decades learning to become a shaman himself.

Dr. Villoldo says that shamans are adept at "stepping out of time" by getting in touch with the Wiracocha, the luminous energy field that surrounds the body and connects us to the one great source of light.

Recall the fact, he says, that saints are often depicted with halos. Those rings of light are, in fact, part of the energy system that surrounds all of us humans (the saints are special in that they are more enlightened!) In this week's class, Dr. Villoldo invited us to experience the Wiracocha, which is the Incan people's word for that source of all that is sacred.

Saturday, February 24, 2024 Journaling, I write: This practice is coming at just the right moment today because I am feeling

homesick for the first time since we left Massachusetts on January 10th. I was feeling at loose ends today, not sure what to do with myself. So I decided to switch on Class 2 of the Shamanic Healing program. In the video, Dr. Villoldo is sitting cross-legged on a mat with what looks to be a jungle outside the window behind him. I begin to follow his directions, bringing my arms over my head to feel the source of light that connects me to the Universe.

By the time the exercise ends, I feel energized. Not only that, as I hold my hands about eight inches away from each other, I feel a warm pulsing glow between them. I bring my hands back and forth, closer and farther away and it is almost as if there is an accordion of light and energy expanding and contracting between my palms. And then I open arms and bring them overhead and surround myself in light. The exercise is surprisingly intense. And so very very calming!

Sunday, February 25, 2024k

8:45 a.m.

Sitting side by side with Rich, I switch on Dr. Villoldo's exercise again, the one that enables us for brief moments, to step out of ordinary time and into the infinity of the universe. In Dr. Villoldo's terminology, we are opening the Wiracocha, just as the shamans of the Andes do. "This practice envelops our physical body and allows us, for a few brief moments, to step outside of ordinary time," he says.

We begin. He instructs us to take a couple of deep breaths, and we do, and on the third breath, we slowly raise our arms over our head, to touch the light of our luminous energy field -- it exists in everyone. He calls it the eighth chakra.

Very slowly, we lower our arms to the sides. He tells us to feel the energy field around us. We raise our arms again, and then, twisting slightly, we slowly bring our arms down in front and in back of us.

Do you feel the energy? he asks. It is a giant bubble that surrounds you.

And honestly, I do feel a kind of warm sac. I see it in my mind as rays of sunshine enveloping me.

He asks us to feel the inside of the light bubble. "Are there places that are slightly weaker?" Can you feel those places that need attending to? Can you run your hands over those spaces, covering those weaknesses?

I have my eyes closed, but I have a real sense that I can feel my life force; it is so comforting. And so simple. Once I start running my hands over the inside of the bubble, I don't really want to stop.

Dr. Villoldo then leads us in an experience of our other seven chakras. First, he says, place your left hand on your heart and feel the giant drum. Then move your right hand to your pubic bone: feel the first chakra. After a few moments, move your right hand up to your abdomen, just below your navel. Here is your second chakra. Take your hand and make a circle around the chakra. Breathe into it very slowly.

Up now to the third chakra, the solar plexus. Once again, he says, make slow circles. "Feel the inside of your chakra with your finger, like the inside of a bowl."

Then we are back to the heart chakra, now with both hands covering our chest. We rest our arms there, feeling the great drum that keeps us going for decades and decades! How many times it pumps, in even one day! One hour!

Now we move to the throat chakra, covering it with both hands.

Then to the mythical third eye in the center of the forehead. And then to the seventh chakra, "your connection to the heavens," he says, at the top of the head.

Before we complete the exercise, he has us run our hands up and down the front of our bodies, where the life force meridians lie. And then, we run a hand up the center of the body.

As he finishes, we bring our arms back over our heads, closing the Wiracocha, the sacred space.

I understand now. How I might every day, at any given time, take myself out of ordinary time to experience moments of infinity, moments outside of the "arrow" of time. Dr. Villoldo says this is a key step in improving our health.

One thing is absolutely clear to me: I can really feel the luminous energy field he spends so much time describing. A few minutes after Rich and I finish listening to the video, I get up from the floor to do my regular morning exercises. I always begin my routine by raising one arm overhead, and reaching across to the opposite side. Then I do change sides and do the same thing with the other arm.

What I am not expecting on Sunday morning is that as I start to do my routine, I feel the energy field overhead. I pause the exercise and just stand there, holding my arms above my head, moving my hands slowly in every direction, enjoying the feeling of the warm energy against the palms of my hands.

It's so relaxing that I don't want to stop! It feels wonderful just to stand there being aware of this giant ball of light, feeling it above and all around me!

Rich says the shamanic ritual reminds him of a Navaho prayer that he has always loved:

"In beauty I walk

"With beauty before me I walk

"With beauty behind me I walk

"With beauty above me I walk

"With beauty all around me I walk"