UNIVERSE WITHIN by Gwen Randall-Young

Have you noticed how life just keeps getting busier? Everyone seems to be multi-tasking and over-booked. Parents with children are running in 16 different directions. Cell phones are ringing everywhere or people are checking their messages or reading their texts. Want to go for coffee? First, one must check the Blackberry.
At home it is the same. Check the emails; record the TV program there is no time to watch; cook something quick and don’t forget to get to the gym.
We were not designed to function this way. Technology has altered our sense of time. Things used to happen in a more linear way. Now, so much happens all at once.
Recently, my mother came across a box of letters I had saved from my university days. Going through them, I remembered what it was like to sit down and write to a friend and then wait a few weeks for a reply. I recalled what a joy it was to check my mailbox in residence and find a letter from a friend or family member. Reading through some of the letters, I realized that we were sharing our evolving lives. These were not quick messages or something copied and forwarded; they were heartfelt exchanges.
There is no question that the sped-up pace we live with now creates stress and tension. The body/mind is dealing with so much more input and is having to output at an ever-increasing rate. Having to respond to so much in the external world distracts us from our own inner world and the connection with our own souls.
The experience of time is completely different for the ego and soul. Ego is based completely in the world and so feels the pressure of time. Things have to get done; we have to be on time; time is running out; there is not enough time. For ego, it is as though time is a “real” commodity. There is only a certain amount of it. If it is used up, then it is “the past.” If we have not yet used it, it is “the future.”
Sometimes, it is as if we are running through time, trying desperately to keep just a little ahead of it. No wonder it can feel like we are on a treadmill, never able to finish, let alone win the “rat race.” And, of course, this is all the illusion of ego. When we turn ego off, along with its incessant thinking, time ceases to exist. Our soul is that aspect of our being that is connected to the eternal; that is eternal.
This entire lifetime, even the lifetime of our species, is but a brief instant. Perhaps the ego experience is like a reverse dream for soul. Ego goes to sleep at night and for a brief time leaves all that is worldly behind. Life may simply be soul’s dreaming, dropping for a brief time into worldliness.
Soul knows this worldly experience, complete with the perception of time, is not the real thing. That is why meditation can create such a sense of peace. For that period of time, while we are awake, we can transcend the illusion and re-enter the eternal stream. There, there is no rush, no stress, no worry. If we truly transcend the moment, there is no duality at all.
Still, we do have to function in this world. We just do not have to do it ego’s way. You have heard of lucid dreaming, wherein one is aware he or she is dreaming and can direct what happens in the dream. Bringing our soulfulness in the world is like soul’s lucid dream. We are aware we are in the physical world, but we can allow soul to direct this “waking dream.”
The quality of life shifts dramatically when we do this. It is true that when we take away all of ego’s thoughts, perceptions and agendas, all that is left is soul, and soul is love.

Gwen Randall-Young is a psychotherapist in private practice and the author of Growing Into Soul: The Next Step in Human Evolution. For articles and information about her books and “Deep Powerful Change” personal growth/hypnosis CDs, visit www.gwen.ca