Bruce and I saw this great movie last night: Dr. Strange. Don’t worry, I won’t give the film away—it’s definitely worth seeing. In it, Dr. Strange, played by Benedict Cumberbatch, goes on a spiritual pilgrimage. The film plays with all sorts of permutations and combinations about time, that support, refute, and re-configure our understanding of it.
Since entering the world of healing around the age of nineteen, it has seemed that time is relative, in that the past (in the form of trauma) can enter into the present (in the form of recapitulations and healing). No matter the modality, when a person finally grieves an event that overwhelmed them as a child, they, in effect, free that child, who stunted at that earlier age and stage, has longed to join the rest of their person. Afterwards, that person enjoys a renewed sense of “being all in one place”, which is no exaggeration because previously they were in two places at once!
Healers can use their attention to perceive imbalances, blocks, and memories, in the body and energetic fields of their patients. Sometimes, just by doing that, the charge belonging to the old event or imbalance releases, and often with it, the relevant images, words, scents, and feelings associated with that earlier event.
This may sound new to you, and if it is, you might want to stop there. If it is something you can imagine though, come along to my next curiosity:
If we can unbind the past from the present (and by logic, possibly change outcomes in the future) can we also go into the future and change conditions in our present?
It’s a slippery slope, one that every time I start up, I run headfirst into the ethics of intention. After stumbling around just past base camp, I turn the ethical lens on myself. I could want my books to become bestsellers, I could want a child to come into my life, or to make sure Bruce lives as long as I do, and with those strong wishes, I could supplicate to the multiverse to allow me to resonate with some form where those things do exist…and then…well then what? So I get what I want. What then are the implications? Do I know how my tinkering and time hopping will affect others? The planet? What if something even more me is waiting for me than what I can imagine from the present? The questions exponentiate.
Luckily I’m not left to wrangle alone on these slopes. Coincidentally, Bruce has just shown me some pages from Mediataions On The Tarot, translated from French by Robert Powell. Nice timing! In it, he discusses magic, and since time travel is an act of magic, I consider putting this in my compass:
There are three kinds of magic:
- Fiat voluntas mea; magic for the sake of oneself.
- Fiat voluntas nostra; collective magic, or for the sake of another or a group.
- Fiat voluntas TUA; sacred magic.
The anonymous author says that the first two kinds of magic, for oneself and for another, are born out of one’s will. In that they are enacted out of compulsion. I take this to mean that when met with disagreeable circumstances, we will often try to change them. The author then goes on to say that “will constitutes five dark currents”: The desire to be great, to take, to keep, to advance, and to hold on to at the expense of others. Busted! Yes, all my initial thoughts of what I could do if I could go into the future are indeed willful. The third magic, sacred magic, is not done not through will, but through the purity or absence of the five dark currents.
So, If I or any of us wanted to peer into the future in the name of serving what is asked of us, in whatever form that takes; vocation, parenting, or even as low profile as internal attitude, then might the greatest pleasure, alignment, and learning come through that? Perhaps hopping on the will-train is bottomless? Can you imagine? Finding the right lever to pull, jumping out of space and time, rejigging an outcome in the present so to avoid it, and coming back? We’d forever be plagued by knowing we can achieve everything we want, and the horrendous responsibility to change everything we don’t want. (I laugh to myself because the new age attitude of manifesting your desires is kind of a plague like that anyway!)
Because this is all so fresh for me, I’m going to spend the next couple weeks playing with TUA intentions. And keep in touch, because who knows, after you see the film you find yourself with some urges to jump the space time continuum. If you do, let me know how it goes.