When we are in the midst of the experience of flow, being the flow, the appearing presence with its various forms, time changes meaning. We are not then connected with linear time, clock time. Time becomes the flow itself.6 We normally feel the passage of time by being aware of the flow of impressions. When we are the flow, the flowing appearance, then this flow is the context within which experience happens. Both time and space lose their structuring power, and the recognition of them is not separate from other events within the flowing appearance. The expanse of presence gives rise to the concept of space, and its flow gives us the concept of time. But experientially we feel the flow itself as real time, for we are actually in touch with the ground of our normal concept of time. – The Inner Journey Home: Soul’s Realization of the Unity of Reality, ch. 6
It is like creation out of nothing, like a water fountain that does not have a source. The water emerges from nowhere; an experience was not there, and now it is there, while the flow is always present. This is a wonderful way of experiencing our soul: ever fresh, ever new, a source that is also the destination. This type of experience of flow occurs when our inner journey is well underway. It indicates that we are free from the constraints and limitations that keep our experience bound to certain forms, to limited dimensions of possibility. Our potential is literally flowing out, and our consciousness is a fountain of impressions, perceptions, insights, and realizations. We not only have occasional deep experiences of our spiritual depth and nature, but our experience of our soul is a continuous outflow of many new and fresh realizations and perceptions. Our soul is manifesting her inner treasures continually, in an ever-fresh stream of new discoveries; our life is not merely punctuated by deep perceptions and significant experiences and insights, but is more the flow of these significant and deep perceptions and insights. This flow is the inner core of our life, the very substance of our immediate experience. – The Inner Journey Home: Soul’s Realization of the Unity of Reality, ch. 6
Being is not only presence, but the flow of presence. It is a flow of nowness in continuous transformation of the universal pattern. This flow is what we usually perceive as the passage of time. In other words, what we call time is a limited way of intuiting the flow of Being. Since we ordinarily don’t perceive the unity of existence, and so don’t experience change as the flow of Being, we think of change as due to the passage of time.
The flow itself is what I call real time. When we perceive all of reality in constant flow, then we are perceiving real time; otherwise, we see the situation in a distorted way, as separate changes happening in time. So the flow, the experience of Holy Law, is in a sense the source of time, since time is a concept arising from a distorted perception of Being or the totality of the universe in a constant state of flow. – Facets of Unity: The Enneagram of Holy Ideas, Ch. 19