Beyond Time and Space: What does it mean to be beyond time and space?

This ACIM Blog post is written by Sudie Shipman

What does it mean to be beyond time and space?

That is a question often heard in A Course In Miracles classes.
This a concept best learned by experience, because how can we describe what has no physical reality?

We humans live in a world of the physical, we see with the eyes of the body and identity what we see with names and labels so that we can communicate about what we are seeing and experiencing.
These names, labels and concepts grow in complexity and lead to laws, rules and regulations that attempt to make our physical reality a better place.

These laws, rules and regulations eventually fail us, because we can never make physical reality perfect.

“I have followed all the rules…why am I not happy?”
This leads to an inner searching.
We look for something to lead us out of our desperation, heartache and upset, and all of a sudden we find ourselves on the spiritual path.
“There has to be a better way,” we say to ourselves. And set out to discover it.

When this occurs, and it has already occurred for you dear reader, we set out on a journey that can not be escaped.

This universal inquiry into “What am I?” and “What is the meaning of this existence?” always and without exception leads to answers.
Maybe not the answers we are expecting, but to the answers we need.

If you take a look at your thoughts and desires, and follow them back to what you really want, you will find that what you really want is peace.

You may think that money, health or a relationship is what you want.
But if you look more deeply, you will see that by believing these things you will provide yourself with something you lack.
Underneath your self-placed sense of lack (if you look deeply enough) you find that you are looking for peace and/or happiness which are synonymous.
I have said that you will be led to answers you are not expecting, and they are answers beyond your imaginings, because what human mind could comprehend that the answers lie not in your humanity but in your divinity?

Now we are again hinting at that “place” beyond time and space.

Yes, what I am saying is that you are divine, not human.

Everyone, and I mean everyone, has taken on a human identity, has disguised their divinity and then forgotten that they did this.

This is why you feel so lost and alone and that you don’t fit in.
This is a universal experience.

We don’t fit here, at least not without the memory of our Self.

And what is the spiritual path if not the discovery of the truth of who you really are?
There is a beautiful passage in the Text of A Course in Miracles called “The Forgotten Song,” (Chapter 12, Section 1) which poetically describes this memory as a song long forgotten with “but just a little wisp of melody” that has stayed with you.
You are seeking to remember that song.
You are seeking to remember that truth.

You are seeking to remember yourself as God’s Creation.

You will seek and find.
You cannot fail and that will lead you to an experience of light which will show you what it means to be beyond time and space.
Going back to “The Forgotten Song,” it reads,
“Beyond the body, beyond the sun and stars, past everything you see and yet somehow familiar, is an arc of golden light that stretches as you look into a great and shining circle. And all the circle fills with light before your eyes. The edges of the circle disappear, and what is in it is no longer contained at all. The light expands and covers everything, extending to infinity forever shining and with no break or limit anywhere. Within it everything is joined in perfect continuity. Nor is it possible to imagine that anything could be outside, for there is nowhere that light is not.”

Now close your eyes and let your awareness drop below your thinking mind, and let yourself open up to the experience of this light.

It is within you.
You will not find it anywhere else.
You don’t have to seek outside of yourself.
It is not in the physical world and is found with the mind’s eye, not your physical eyes.

Another concept that is hard for the beginner to fathom is how everyone is joined.

“How am I one with all things?”
If you can imagine that all are this light and nothing else, then you can “see” very easily that all are one in light, not in form.
All are one in what could be called spirit, not physical reality.

It is often repeated in ACIM that you can not bring truth to illusions.

This is what it means.
You can never make your physical reality perfect, and you can never make your physical reality one, or joined.
It’s impossible, because our physicality sets boundaries that cannot be overcome.

You have probably felt a desire to be one with another human being.

A desire to let the boundaries of your body go, like you can’t get close enough.
This is often felt in romantic relationships.
If you let go of the idea of the bodies being able to join, you can allow yourself to be “lifted” into an experience of joining with your divine Self.

It is here that you will be able to really join with another because the boundaries of time and space have gone.

If this lies beyond the realm of what you believe is possible, you will have resistance to believing it.
Acknowledge the resistance and let it go.
Perhaps there is something that you don’t know?
Ask for it to be shown to you.

The experience of being beyond time and space is something you cannot describe with words, but it is something you can experience and it is within you to experience it.

Have more faith in yourself, your abilities and the assistance of divine Presence.
The Holy Spirit (which is nothing more than your divine Self) wants you to have this experience, and you will be assisted when you open your mind to the possibility and ask to be shown.
Just as the experience of being beyond time and space is beyond your comprehension, so is the idea that you are being divinely guided.

You are being divinely guided.

You always have been.
Open yourself up to this possibility and you will see that it is so, and you will come to accept that it is so.
Trust that it is so, because it is.

The only thing stopping you is your disbelief.

Look within your mind and watch your thoughts.
Watch your thoughts of skepticism and disbelief, and then let them go.

These thoughts are not who you are, they are simply that which you have been thinking and you haven’t been told that they are not your identity.

You don’t have to identify with them anymore.
You are something much greater than your thoughts.
You are something that exists beyond time and space and this is not something that you can divorce yourself from.

You can forget it, you can disown it, you can disbelieve it, but you cannot change it.

What you can do is surrender to it.
You can open yourself up to the possibility of it and allow your Higher Self to show you what you are beyond this physical reality.
Beyond time and space.