written and produced by Scott Teeters, Host of Far Out Radio.

Transcript of Video:

Hi, this is Scott Teeters, host and producer of Far Out Radio and I’m here today to talk about the Expansion and Contraction of Time. “Time” is something that people have been talking about, probably for a “long time.” Now that I’m into my sixth decade of living, I can honestly say that I can’t ever recall a time when I ever heard someone say, “You know, there’s PLENTY of time!”

No, people have probably always been complaining that they don’t have enough time – even back in the good old days, when times were simpler and we had all the answers – right.

“Time” has also been the topic of some great jokes and comedy bits. One of my favorites was from George Carlin when he explained that we have all these Units Of Time – we have Eons, and Ages, and millennias, and centuries, decades, years, months, weeks, days, hours, seconds, micro seconds and nano seconds and you’ll ask someone, “What time ya got?” and they’ll say, “Ah, I got go’in on.” Sheez… I must be LATE, I had just after!

But Time is funny stuff because in truth we all have the same amount of time – same as we always have. It’s also funny because it’s slippery. We live in the Eternal Moment of NOW and everything else is the near future and the recent past. Don’t think about that too much because it will make you crazy. But you can PLAY with Time and what I want to share with you is a Time, Mind Game. Here’s how I discovered it and how it works.

Back in the late 70’s I was working as a technical illustrator. One day, an older co-worker explained that the only reason he was there was to rebuild his cash reserve so that he could do what he REALLY loved. Sam absolutely loved horse racing and apparently had a “system” that regularly made him money at the track. The reason he was “rebuilding his cash reserve” was because he’d had his pocket picked one day at the track and lost A BUNDLE!
   
Sam was an interesting, although somewhat cranky guy – a real curmudgeon. One day he was lamenting being there and made a humorous statement. He told me that he’d been working on a special project for a while. I asked him what it was and he very seriously said, “I’m working on the Expansion and Contraction of Time. I want to expand time from 5 PM when I leave this place, till bed time, and then from Friday at 5 PM to Sunday at bed time. Then, I want to contract time from 8 AM to 5 PM every day while I’m at work! I want to do this because it seems like it’s the other way around. My evenings and weekends fly by and the work day just drags along!”

I think this is something that most working people can relate to. I sure did. And since I’d never heard anyone express an idea as far out as that, I rather anxiously asked if he’d figured it out. “Nope! Don’t have a clue!” he said. We both had a laugh and went back to our drawing boards. I haven’t seen Sam since ‘79 and have no idea if he ever figured it out. But I did! Or I should say, I stumbled across a technique for doing just that in an amazing book by Tim Piering titled, “Mastery”. When I started using it, I got immediate and dramatic results.

Before I get into the “how to” part, I’d like to say that it had always bothered me when I’d hear co-workers say things like, “Is it Friday yet?” when it was only Monday morning! “Another day, another half dollar…” or “Why does it have to be this way?” or “Here we go again…” or the one I really disdain, “S.O.S., Same Old Stuff, and then you die!” What a way to move through your day!!! Start piling up days like that and it’s no wonder nearly everyone you see is gloomy.

The actual “Expansion and Contraction of Time” is really a mind trick, but it DOES work. This is deceivingly simple, but effective, when you remember to do it. What you are really doing is altering your “perception” of time by making alternate decisions. Stay with me because THIS DOES WORK!

To Expand Time You…

Become sensory oriented. Your five senses pull in an amazing amount of information. You become sensory oriented by paying close attention to as much of your incoming sensory data as you can. By paying attention to what you see, hear, smell, taste, and touch there is “more of you” in the moment. When you maintain a high level of attention, moment, to moment, to moment, you are registering more of reality than what you usually do. Here’s an example of what your morning drive to work COULD BE.

You leave the house and notice the change of air temperature and how the rising sun shines on things from a low angle… You notice the dew all over everything… You notice all of the natural and man made sounds… As you are driving you notice how everything moves about… At stop lights you notice what’s around you, the trees, bushs, birds, people, kids at the bus stop, other drivers trying to wake up…

Essentially what you are doing is an “attention meditation.” By the time you get to work, you will have logged into your biocomputer more conscious awareness than you usually do in a day! Think about it. How many times have we all done just the opposite? You arrived at your destination and don’t really remembered very much of the drive? Or, you’re on an interstate highway and all of a sudden… you’re not sure of exactly where you are!? Kind of spooky, isn’t it? Makes you wonder “who’s driving?” It’s true, we blank, out many, many times every day.
 
To E X P A N D time, put MORE attention into whatever it is that you are doing. Don’t take my word for it, just go do it. Do this when you leave work and you’ll find that the six or seven hours you have until bed time will seem like an entire day. REALLY!!! I’m NOT joking! This is because you are spending more moment-to-moment time being more “in the present moment” than you usually do. At the end of your day, you’ll find that you’ve had a VERY full day. A day that was LOADED with experiences because you brought more awareness, more of “you” into each moment.

Want to take a vacation this weekend? Become sensory oriented starting Friday evening as you are leaving your job and by Sunday at bedtime it will seem like its been ages since you were at the office. This is a simple little “mind game” you can play on yourself that costs you nothing, requires no effort but can yield MAJOR results. Don’t be bothered trying to figure out “how” it works, just try it for yourself and see.

Let’s face it, the ONLY time that you can live in is NOW. We exist in the Eternal Moment of Now… Always have… Always will. Here’s a little joke I used in my Reiki classes. I’d ask, “What time is it?” And a few people look at their wrist watch and tell me what their watch is indicating. Then I say, “Sorry, that was a trick question. The time is NOW.” However, your day is made up of an infinite number of “now moments” most to which we hardly pay any attention to as they flow by. You see this played out when you walk into the office on Monday morning and someone says, “Is it Friday yet?” I heard that once and said to the person, “Do you mean that you only live for two out of seven days a week?”

Now that’s pretty sad.

This simple little mind game can create a shift in your awareness that can add depth and meaning to your experience of life. Why not notice the dew, and the sky, and the kids at the bus stop, and all the other things that are happening? Why not? You’re there… they are there… be with it… enjoy it… put joy into the moment… it’s the only place you can put joy into.

One of my favorite teachers was Earl Nightingale, the founder of the Nightingale-Connant Company. He said many things that have helped me through the years, but related to what we’re talking about here, Earl said this,

“It’s a wonderful thing to take a moment or two every day, and just stop and say to yourself, ‘I’m here… I’m sensing this moment.’

Just like expanding your perception of time, it adds depth to your experience of life.

How To Contract Time You…

If you want to “contract time” all you have to do is GET INTO IT… DIVE INTO IT… IMMERCE YOURSELF INTO IT… COMPLETELY ENGAGE YOURSELF in whatever you are doing and your perception of time WILL contract!

We’ve all done this thousands of times, usually during the time we don’t want to have it happen – such as when you’re having a “good time.” You’ve all had experiences where you get to the office, get busy and before you know it, it’s 11:50. “Where’d the morning go?!” you ask. Time, or at least your perception of it, sped up and it was later than you realized because you were totally engaged in what you were doing. This is what happens during the evening and on the weekends. We get so into whatever is going on that “time flies by.” You’ve heard the expression, “Time flies when you’re having fun.”

Who knows who coined that expression, but I’ll bet that it’s a VERY old expression. But the truth of the matter is that time DOESN’T HAVE TO fly by when you’re having fun. That’s not a RULE! If you’re having a good time, bring awareness to every nano-second of what you’re doing. Okay, maybe every nano-second is a little much, just do it as much as you can. And if you’re doing a task that you don’t particularly enjoy, just dive in. I’ve never enjoyed balancing a checking account. Even with Quicken, I just don’t like it. But, when it’s that time, I just GET INTO IT, and before I know it, POOF!… I’m done.

We all have unknowingly done this “Time Expansion/Contraction” trick thousands of times in our lives. But in the model I’m presenting here, you are doing it in reverse of the way we’ve all been cultured to perceiving time. This is an option that we’ve always had but it wasn’t readily apparent. Don’t let the simplicity of this preclude you from using it. This is a very powerful tool for perceptual change. And remember, perception is everything.

If after reading this you have an “Uh huh!!!” kind of experience, and then go out and use it, be prepared for the following changes.

WARNING!!! DO NOT USE THIS TECHNIQUE UNLESS YOU ARE WILLING TO HAVE THE FOLLOWING THINGS HAPPEN IN YOUR LIFE EXPERIENCE!

    * A sense of fulfillment at the end of the day.
    * A sense that you had plenty of time during your day.
    * A sense of very long weekends.
    * A sense of being really alive.
    * A sense of joy.
    * A sense of ease.
    * A sense of okay-ness.
    * A sense that your love-making lasted a long time.
    * Quality time with the important people in your life has even more “quality.”

The New Time Model

I want to wrap this up with a NEW MODEL OF TIME. Be aware of the fact that what you are doing here is working with a new model of “time.” Because the Western mind thinks “linear”, we have a “Linear Time Model.” We think of time as a “time line” where there are equal incremental units of time, like a yard-stick. Yesterday, today and tomorrow all have the same incremental value. Here’s where we get tripped up.

When we see yesterday, today, and tomorrow as equal units, this is what happens. You get an idea to start a new project. You visualize it, make it real in your mind’s eye, etc. Then the mind says, “I’ll start this, TOMORROW.” And it lives there, shimmering in your mental out-picturing.

Then tomorrow arrives, and it’s just another TODAY, just like the today you were experiencing when you first saw that golden image of your desired goal. But because your perception of past, present, and future are all equal (the “time-line” model of time) it’s easy to put it off into another “tomorrow”, or another “later.” This is how golden dreams can slip away.

But I want to suggest a different way of perceiving time, that is “NOW” oriented. If you see the moment of “now” as being a huge sphere that has a 98% value and the “past” and “future” as very small spheres, each having a 1% value, can you see how that would shift your perceptions? “NOW” is where everything happens. I can ONLY take action “NOW.” Even your plans for what will be addressed later, happen in the NOW. Can you “see” how if you put a value of 98% on the present, and use the past 1% as a reference point for where you’ve been, and the future 1% as a guide for the direction you want to move towards… you will be in the most effective place you can be with 98% of your focused attention on what you’re doing? Can you “get” that? What an interesting place to be. The ancient Greeks knew what they were talking about when one of them first thought, “Carpe diem” … “seize the day!”
 
A note of seriousness here. I don’t want you to form the conclusion that I am suggesting a “Live for the moment and to heck with tomorrow philosophy!” DEFINITELY NOT! Practice goal setting. It’s important to think and plan your future. But the “1% – 98% – 1%” – past-present-future time model will load your day with more perceived experiences and quality than you’re probably used to. The only way to truly experience what we are talking about is to…. try it… you’ll like it…

So, have fun, and take your time! – Scott

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