Right Now

What Death Taught Me About Time

In death, I experienced the disappearance of time. It was just...gone. Things happened instantaneously and simultaneously, while also seemingly drawn out for what we could consider to be eons. Ultimately, there was a revelation in what I was shown that may help you more easily navigate your existence and its association with time.

When Time Stopped

During my near-death experience, time ceased to function in any recognizable way. Events occurred outside the linear progression we experience here in the material. Moments were both instantaneous and eternal, a paradox that defies the language we use to describe our earthly experience.

What is profound about not experiencing time, was not the absence of time itself, but what that absence revealed: that time, as we experience it here, serves a very specific purpose. It is not merely a neutral backdrop against which our lives unfold.

What Is Time, Really?

What is time? Why does time exist?

Time is an essential tool which allows us to build awareness of our existences.

Imagine God, the universe, the All as a robust and powerful older man in a tunic. He has long gray hair and a long gray beard. He is standing up and in his hand he is holding a green tennis ball. As we observe this figure, he moves his hand and throws the tennis ball down towards the floor, it bounces, and then returns to his hand to be caught. Then, he bounces the ball again, and again, and again.

What we are observing in this example is "time" or the path of existence as the ball leaves God's hand and hits the floor, only to return. We are the tennis ball. We leave the hand, a split second later our existence ends as the travel of the ball hits the floor (death), and then we return to the hand of God to be bounced again.

Time is a slow motion view of the ball traveling towards the floor from God's hand. It allows us "time" to develop an understanding of our existence. It creates "time" which allows us to develop awareness. Without time, our existence would be instantaneous. Far too fast to be truly experienced.

And what returns to the hand is not the same as what left it. The ball carries back every moment of awareness, every choice made in the slow-motion descent. Each bounce is both complete and preparation for the next. Time gives us the space to become conscious of the journey itself.

The Spark and the Breath

On the other side, an entire existence was shown to me as nothing more than fleeting sparks. Like a spark shooting off of hot metal, as soon as it became red hot, it disappeared. A snap of your fingers and it was gone.

This is what existence looks like from outside the illusion of time: a singular breath. A brief, brilliant flash of light and heat and energy, and then, complete. Not ended, but complete.

When you see life in this way, the preciousness of the moment becomes undeniable. Not in a fearful, clutching way, but in a way that can inspire deep presence. If this life is a single breath, why would you spend any of it anywhere but here, fully awake?

The spark and the breath, two different images showing the same truth from different angles. The spark emphasizes the brilliance and intensity of existence. The breath emphasizes its singular, unified nature. Whether you see life as a flash of light or a single inhalation, the message is identical: this moment is all there is, and it is precious beyond measure.

There Is Only "Right Now"

It is always "right now." It's not noon, not six o'clock, not anything but right now. There is no yesterday, no tomorrow, only right now.

This isn't a philosophical theory. It's the fundamental truth of existence. The past exists only as memory, a construct of the mind. The future exists only as imagination, also a construct of mind. What actually exists is the eternal now.

We invented clocks and calendars to organize our collective experience, and they serve that purpose beautifully. But we have mistaken the map for the literal territory. We've come to believe that time is real in the way that this moment is real, and in doing so, we've lost touch with the only thing that truly exists: right now.

The Singular Choice

In each moment, there is only one choice to be made, right now.

Not dozens of choices about your past or your future. Not complicated calculations about what might happen or what should have happened. Just one choice, in this moment: Awake or asleep?

Awareness or ignorance? Love vs the intellect and it's measurements.

I choose love, right now.

That's it. That's the entire choice. In this moment, "right now", do I choose to meet what is here with love, with openness, with presence, with compassion, or do I choose to meet it with resistance, fear, judgment, or disconnection?

You have an endless number of opportunities to choose love right now. An infinite number. Every single point of awareness presents this opportunity again, fresh and new. You will recognize these opportunities if you wake up to what existence is, "right now".

For example, you wake up in the morning. Before the mind floods with the day's demands, there's a moment, "right now", where you can choose. Will you meet this new breath with presence and gratitude, or immediately disappear into planning and worry? The choice is always available to you.

Freedom in the Present

There is profound freedom in only worrying about the moment, right now.

Free yourself from yesterday. You cannot change it. It exists only as a story you tell yourself, and you can rewrite that story any time you choose. Free yourself from future outcomes. They haven't happened yet, and when they do arrive, they will arrive as "right now," and you will meet them then.

There is outcome independence in "right now." When you are fully present, you are not attached to specific outcomes because you understand that the only thing you can actually influence is how you show up in this moment, right now. Everything else is beyond your control and always has been.

The weight you carry, regret about the past, anxiety about the future, all of it dissolves the moment you truly land here, in this breath, in this heartbeat, in this singular point of existence that is always and forever right now.

Living the Fluctuation

Time has never been the same for me since my return. I experience its fluctuation continuously.

Sometimes an hour feels like minutes. Sometimes a minute feels like an eternity. This isn't disorienting, it's liberating. Because I understand now that time is not my master. It is a tool, and like any tool, it can be used skillfully or unskillfully.

When you are lost in thought, time flies by unnoticed. When you are fully present, time expands. A single conscious breath can contain infinity. This is the manipulation of time. Understanding that it is flexible, not through some mystical practice, but through the simple act of choosing right now over absence, awareness over ignorance.

The fluctuation is always available to you. The question is: Are you awake enough to notice it? Are you present enough to experience it?

The Invitation

I cannot give you the experience I had in death. But I can point you toward the experience available to you in life: the recognition that all you have, all you've ever had, is this moment.

Right now.

Not as a concept to understand intellectually, but as a lived reality to embody fully. When you truly see that life is a fleeting spark, a singular breath, you stop wasting it on anything that isn't real. And the only thing that's real is what's here, right now.

So I invite you to repeat a singular choice over and over again in the right now that you are aware of. Choose love, right now. Choose awareness, right now. Choose to be fully here, in this moment, in this breath, in this irreplaceable point of existence that will never come again.

Because it is always, only, ever, right now.