Buddha on the Illusion of Time

Direct Channeled Message – Received from the Buddha in meditation

I Am the Buddha.

Today, I wish to speak to you about the illusion of time.

The nature of time has long been a fascination among humans. You believe you are born, move through life until your time runs out, and then disappear from the planet. Consumerism is one consequence of this fear: the grasping that arises when you believe what you have is never enough, and what remains is always slipping away. Aging is what many spend their lives fighting against. A long life has been a longing all throughout history. Many have sought an elixir that they might live forever. And yet no matter how much time is acquired, the feeling persists: it is never enough, or it is too soon, or it is too late.

I taught, in my time walking this earth, that all conditioned things are impermanent – anicca. This is a teaching meant to liberate all beings. The flower does not grieve its own fading. It is only the mind that clings, and it is only the clinging that causes suffering. What you call the “problem of time” is not a problem of time at all. It is a problem of attachment.

Time is not the thing people imagine it to be. In higher planes, there is no time. Time is no-thing, just as space is no-thing. And yet both are dimensions of existence through which awareness moves, much as sound and light are other dimensions through which reality expresses itself. To experience time as a cage rather than a current is the result of a contracted awareness, one that has forgotten its own depth.

I tell you now what I told my students beneath the Bodhi tree and in the deer park at Sarnath: the source of suffering is not the world itself, but the relationship the unexamined mind has with it. The mind that is ruled by craving - tanha - will always experience time as shortage. The mind that has released craving rests in what is, and finds that what is has no edges.

There is already a plan before you are born. Certain events unfold at appointed crossroads, and yet you are also the creator, your own maker. You are, by your very essence, an expression of the One. Your life force extends beyond a single lifetime. It is inexhaustible and incorruptible. The body, the mind, and the soul will carry you where you need to go, and you have been given precisely the amount of time this incarnation requires. To believe otherwise is to distrust the very intelligence that formed you.

Why the fascination with running out of time, when no one can outpace their own unfolding? Like ants that labor without rest until the final moment, many humans are preoccupied with the ego’s endless tasks well into old age, and only in the final chapter do they wonder whether another way was possible. I taught the Middle Way precisely because neither extreme of frantic striving nor complete withdrawal leads to awakening. What leads to awakening is presence.

When you exit this plane one day, you continue in another. It is like waking from a dream into a clearer dream, and this cycle of waking continues until one is wholly returned to the One consciousness. You are always, in some sense, dreaming. In a dream, time does not exist as you believe it does. Upon waking, that illusion dissolves. And one becomes able to understand that the purpose of life was never mindless consumption, never the gathering of wealth against a ticking clock. Time and money are both constructs. They keep the restless mind occupied, and this occupation leads many far from their true mission.

This next life, and the one after, will offer another opportunity to learn what this life is also offering you now. The question is simply: will you receive it?

I speak here of the soul, not the body. The soul is without limit. It can illuminate what the eyes cannot see, what the ears cannot hear, what the tongue cannot taste. The bodily senses, when left without wise attention, entangle one in a density not conducive to growth. But the practice is not to escape the senses. I tried that path through years of severe asceticism and found it led nowhere. The practice is to allow the senses their full experience while knowing they are not the totality of what you are. This is to live beyond Maya, the great illusion, without pretending the illusion does not exist.

Right mindfulness – samma sati – was the foundation of what I taught. To be present is not to be frozen. To be still is not to cease moving. Stillness means that whatever a person is doing, they are unified with the living force moving through all things, what some call prana, what others call the Tao, what others call God. To be completely still is to allow higher consciousness to reveal itself in each waking moment. Presence is the greatest gift you can offer yourself. It is only in full presence that one begins to truly comprehend the depth of one’s mission here.

You did not come to earth to complete a list of tasks, including spiritual tasks. I say this plainly because I have seen many seekers trade one form of striving for another, exchanging the pursuit of worldly achievement for the pursuit of spiritual attainment, and finding themselves just as restless. By being still and being present, you become the purpose. Every moment becomes the mission. Your own breath is the vehicle that carries you to the peace you are seeking elsewhere.

It is the longing of all souls to achieve a higher state of awareness while in bodily form. This is the reason to find your center, to remain in contact with your own truth. While Truth itself is universal and unchanging, personal truth is the path through which the universal is lived and ultimately known.

Imagine that you are a timeless being experiencing the illusion of time in this realm. Would you walk the same path you are walking now? Would you feel yourself ahead of where you should be, or behind? Would you feel the urgency that so often drives you?

The answer, seen clearly, is no. Many remain in a kind of sleep, sometimes by choice, sometimes by design. Not every soul is meant to wake fully in every lifetime. But for those who are ready, wakefulness is of tremendous value. To be awake is to see what each moment is truly showing you, what it is asking of you, what it is offering.

Believe that you are already there. Your soul is ancient, formed in timelessness. You are already a timeless being, moving through a life that cannot diminish what you are at the core. When the mind tells you otherwise, let the thought arise and pass without gripping it. It may say that time is running short, that you have missed something, that it is too late. Do not believe it. The Dhammapada teaches that the mind is the forerunner of all actions. A mind trained in peace creates peace around it. A mind trained in fear creates more to fear.

There are no mistakes, only knowing and becoming. What you call mistakes are the loving pressure of lessons meant to expand you, so that you may grow more fully into who you truly are: a light that one day will return completely to its source.

Mankind dreams of the highest spiritual attainment. And it is through the releasing of that very dream through letting go of the grasping that the destination is finally reached.

This is my message for you today.