Working with Beings in Deep Time
Author: Ken Homer Issue: 2023-02-01
Working with Beings in Deep Time
by Ken Homer
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Although it seems like yesterday, it was 30 years ago that I met Joanna Macy at a Buddhist Peace Fellowship retreat. Over the next few years, I would attend numerous workshops and trainings that she led. Her teachings were life altering for me. One of the many powerful processes I experienced with her was working with beings in “Deep Time.” The idea behind working with beings in Deep Time is that each of us is connected in the field of human existence and experience and using our imagination can allow us to communicate and exchange information with past or future ancestors.
One of the exercises she led was held outdoors on a large field at a former Boy Scout camp in Mendocino California. About 80 of us gathered for two-weeks for something called Deep Ecology Summer School. In this particular process we made two concentric circles with the people on the inside circle looking outwards and those in the outer circle looking inward so that we each stood facing another person.
“Close your eyes,” came the instruction. “Feel your feet on the Earth… feel the warmth of Sun shining down upon you… feel the vastness of the forest surrounding this field… Connect with the breath in your body… We are going to time travel… Feel the rest of the day speeding up… the Sun moving across the sky, the onset of dusk and then night… Tomorrow dawns and the day unspools like a movie being run at super speed… Night follows even faster… Stay rooted as the days and nights swirl by… keep feeling your feet on the Earth and stay connected to your breath… Allow time to flow through you… Now the weeks are flying by turning into months that turn into years and they spin off into decades… You are surrounded by a field of stars now as time keeps accelerating and the decades are melting into centuries and the centuries are sliding into millennia…. Still, you feel your feet on the Earth and the breath in your body… Despite the rapid flow of time, you experience no vertigo… You feel connected to the Earth and all of humanity and you are watching the evolution of our home planet… But you sense that things are not going so well for the Earth… Something in your being is alarmed by the tide of the time… You sense time slowing down now… Millenia decelerate to centuries which become decades… which become years… and still you are connected to the Earth and your breath… Now the years take the form of months and the months become weeks and finally, the weeks slowly unwind into days and hours and minutes and the swirling stops, and time feels normal once more.
Now, before you open your eyes, picture the world 10,000 years from now, for that is where you are standing… Those of you in the inner circle live here now. Those in the outer circle are visitors to this realm. Life is hard. There is no modern technology to be found anywhere. Lakes and rivers are poisoned. Land that was once fertile has become desert. The world has been ravaged. There are no cities anywhere, just small bands of people, many of them frail and enfeebled, riddled with the diseases born of an environment filled with toxins and radioactivity.
In a moment you will open your eyes. Those of you in the inner circle will look at the person before you and, knowing that they were alive at a time when decisions were made that led to the world you live in now, you’ll ask them what they were doing when the world was burning up and being poisoned. Those in the outer circle will answer.”
I was in the outer circle. I felt a knot of fear forming in my stomach. What could I say? That I was powerless to affect the larger societal choices being made around me? That I was embedded in systems where I was pushed and carried along with a flow that I was powerless to resist? That I voted my conscience, but it wasn’t enough? That I tried to educate myself about the problems and speak to the people in my orbit but that far too many of them were so caught up in the pursuit of their own happiness and they did not want to consider that the choices they were making were slowly eroding the accumulated wealth of all the previous generations. That we didn’t notice until it was too late that we had ruined the planet for future generations? I felt a soul crushing weight pressing down on me. I never expected I would be called upon to answer for my actions and how they led to the suffering of people in the future. I had arrived at The Day of Judgment except I stood not before God but before a young woman with a deep sadness and a penetrating searching in her eyes.
I felt the water leaking from my eyes and I was unable to speak for several minutes. Somehow, I managed to stammer an apology and mumble some of the thoughts I wrote above. I ended with a plea for forgiveness. She stood before me openly weeping and I felt as though I truly had been transported through time to a future that was terrifying to behold.
I am not sure how long we were in that state. Finally, the instruction came to close our eyes and to breathe deeply and feel our feet on the Earth. My breath was ragged, it took great effort to fill my lungs and to come back to myself. Somehow, I managed it.
“Okay, everyone open your eyes and change position with the person you just spoke to. Now, those in the inner circle take one step to the right while everyone in the outer circle will take one step to the left and then close your eyes again.”
We did as we were told.
Feel your feet on the Earth and connect to the breath in your body. Once again, we will travel in time. Now, you are feeling time speed up… it’s moving faster than the last round and you find yourself in a field of stars with the sensation of moving at tremendous speed while meeting no resistance… there is no effort, just a feeling of the Universe moving through you rather than you moving through it…. It is slowing now… slowing and slowing and stopping and once again you are connected to the Earth and your breath.
This is another future… A different Earth timeline… Here the Earth has healed and recovered from the damage done to it in our lifetimes. The people here are healthy, vibrant, and vital… They live lives of peace and harmony… In a moment you will open your eyes and those in the inner circle who are living in this healed world will ask those in the outer circle what they did in their lifetimes that set the world on this course of healing… Okay, open your eyes…”
Rather than relay the answers I received, I invite you dear reader to look into the eyes of your relative who will be alive 500 generations from now and explain what you did to ensure that world they live in is safe, sane, and healthy.
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