“Time is an Illusion.” See what this means with your body's eyes!

The Lessons in recent weeks often remind me that “time” is only a construct we thought up when we made this world, this universe, this dream. The Course tell us it's an idea. Nothing more. 

I have believed in time most of my life in the same way almost everyone does. I believed time, as in the old cliché, is like a river. I believed that: 

• Time passes from the present moment into the past, continuously. 
• Each future moment flows into the present, continuously. 
• Eternity is the massive span of time that began in the ancient, unknowable past and will continue on infinitely into the future. 

However, as the Course explains, time (and, indeed, even “space-time”) are simply illusions we perceive with the body's senses and our ego minds. But what does it mean that time is only an illusion? How can anyone pin that idea down so it actually makes some kind of sense as we navigate this world of form? 

Here's a mental image that works for me. I'll explain it twice. 

Quick and Simple Version
Imagine someone spreads a deck of cards out on a table. The table represents all of Creation. The cards represent time. 

But then, someone comes along and slides all the cards back into a deck and takes it off the table. That's the end of time. The table didn't change at all. 

The Deeper Version
Here's the same metaphor with more detail and more to think about.

Imagine a flat table that has no boundaries. The tabletop extends in every direction without limit. The tabletop represents the infinite thoughts of God and His endless Creation. Like God, the tabletop exists far beyond even what the word “infinite” could possibly suggest. It simply IS forever and forever.
 
Now, recall that momentary “tiny, mad idea” God's ever-so-powerful Sonship brought to mind for an instant. That idea made this place we call the world. Making this world and this universe also made space and time. So, in your mind's eye, see a magician spreading a deck of cards on the infinite tabletop  as in the video below. 

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That deck of cards spreading across the tabletop represents our making of the world, the universe and time itself, all of which happened when we thought that tiny, mad idea of separating from God and Heaven.

I find several things interesting about this metaphor and those cards. 
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• The cards have numbers, letters and pictures. Each one is different and has its own identity separate from every other. That's the way ego sees itself and all the seemingly separated bodies walking the earth. Ego believes and viciously defends the idea that we're all separate.

• Notice (during the still frame) how each card has its own position in the spread of cards. Following this metaphor, each card might represent an event that happens in time. In this case, the 2♣ (two of clubs) happens after the event known as A♣ and before the 3♣ event. The cards were already in their specific positions before they were spread, just as events in time seem to follow one another. 

The Course explains that everything in time has already happened and everything has already been determined. For example, the Course says “Everything God wills is not only possible but has already happened. And that is why the past has gone. It never happened in reality.”  (ACIM Original Edition Chapter 18.V.40).

For me, seeing that everything has already been determined poses no problem to the concept of free will. We certainly have all the free will we could want to do anything and everything in the world of form. But at the end of time, if we were to look back, we'd see that none of that mattered because it was all illusory anyway. Time ended and the wiser version of what we are folded up the cards.

• Notice, too, in the unbounded, never-ending moment that is eternity, those cards simply lie on the tabletop until a hand appears, collects the cards into a deck and folds them up.

Once they're gone, the tabletop continues to be what it always was: God's unlimited creation. That deck of cards? The illusion of time and the universe? They did not (and could not) change the tabletop in any way.

• Finally, what does it mean, within this metaphor, to fold up the cards and take them off the table? That's the best part. It represents the end of time, the end of learning, the triumph of true vision over perception, and the final approach to Knowledge. 

It is the Second Coming, the correction of mistakes and the return of sanity. 

It is the Last Judgment, the moment when perception ends and all are proclaimed forever innocent, forever loving and forever loved, as limitless as our Creator and completely changeless and forever pure. 

It is the happy occasion when the illusory world disappears and we all fully remember, recognize and rejoin our Creator in our true home. 

Credit: Thanks to TAGMagic for the video sequence.