Here is a fundamental fact to understand about Time: Without Time there would not be anything material, no physical manifestations. 

A few years back my daughter and I were in a minor car accident. The next day I felt jarred by the experience and decided I needed to go for a walk to ground myself. I was glad to be alive and deep into that appreciation as I walked along a dirt path surrounded by oak trees, wildflowers, green grass, a beautiful blue sky. As I observed the natural world around me in this vein of gratitude, I suddenly had the understanding that without Time, none of it would exist. There would be no flowers, no trees, no me, no you, no car accident, no walk the day after, none of it would be possible without the phenomenon of Time. 

Why? Because the natural world and everything in it exists in Time. These are expressions of what I call Time: Transformations In Matter and Energy.

For example, let’s take a tree: First it is a seed on its mother tree, for an oak tree that is an acorn. It is required that the mother tree’s life precedes it for it to even have the chance at becoming a tree.  Events happen in consecutive, patterned order, which is what we think of as Time. 

This seed is released from the mother tree and lands upon the earth. With the combination of sun, water, soil, it begins to settle itself. A small root system grounds it to the soil and eventually a sprout emerges. This series of consecutive events leading up to the growth of a tree is a process spread out over Time. The sprout cannot happen before the acorn falls. The roots cannot sink into the earth and grow without the mother tree passing on her genetic code of how to do that. Next, this seedling gathers into itself water and sunlight, nutrients from the soil and begins to get larger, growing a little more with each passing 24-hour cycle of Time. The tree does not become the tree it is instantly. It becomes the tree it is through changes accumulated over a period of Time. When I look at a tree I am looking at the experience of Time.  

To give you a bigger picture of how multileveled Time is, consider this: The event of this tree is all happening on an earth in a solar system within a galaxy in the universe. It took Earth almost 4 billion years to be able to host a living tree. The solar system almost is 4.6 billion years old. The universe is currently estimated to be 14 billion years old. First we need a universe, then a galaxy, a local star, then a planet. Time created all of that. 

Like the tree, you are a collection of all the experiences you have had over Time. This is what makes you who you are. You are a compilation of events that have unfolded over Time. Time is currently creating you. 

© Theresa C. Dintino 2021

image by Steve ’53 on flickr

Theresa C. Dintino is the author of eight books and serves as a guide and spiritual mentor to many. While attempting to reclaim and restore her ancestral medicine lineage, the Italian Strega tradition, Dintino was surprised to be “claimed” by the West African Dagara tradition of stick divination. Honored by this invitation, Dintino pursued it, and in 2011 was initiated into this potent form of divination. Besides her family and daughter, this turned out to be the greatest gift of her life.

Stick divination helped Dintino find her way back to her own lineage and enables her to help others find and restore theirs. This beautiful practice of Dagara stick divination continues to offer countless gifts. In multiple divination sessions, Dintino was taught about the spiritual membranes that protect, nurture, and inform lifesystems.