Hi Clive, it's Clive right? btw, I like that unusual name.

your question : Here's a hypothetical question for other people here.  If you knew that the amount of time you had was literally limitless, how do you think it would change you, emotionally?
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noting that my answer is the same as yours; I breathed a sigh of relief that I could let anxiety go, at least that feeling of 'nothin is getting done around here, what that I have to be the one to do it! grrrr!!!

I mean, looking back, everything that happened seemed like the right thing to happen, although it wasn't expected at the time..I think it's the result of doing retrievals on the inner psyche which causes a resulting philosophical direction, which relaxes us.
I never said angry words to anyone, although when I was teenager I did do a couple of screams.

was referring to u said you were angry now and then, and u come to this site and realize we are eternal, then I suspect this helps you relax the stressed out feeling of anger. thats good to hear, that u can do that here. with me, to compare a little, I was the impatient sort. then I found out what impatience is exactly..is anger with a cork on it.

lol.     Spooky, I'm the same as you. Sometimes I get into that feeling where several hours go by and I'm still in that eternal quiet place, where there's nothing requiring immediate attention and yet it's enjoyable and you're still grounded and observing everything around you. love, alysia

Alan, you sound like you don't have a problem to imagine a state without time. Meaning, no change, no movement, no before, no thereafter, no evolution etc...
   Your statement: "...a construct we have made to measure the rate of movement" doesn't make much sense to me, because when there is movement, there must be time, as that is what movement is defined, change of the place of an object. When there wouldn't be time, we had no change, we had no movement; then, what we call movement, would be the simultaneous being of this object in multiple places.

Spooky

Hi there Vee, Alan and Spooky

I was thinking about this thread yesterday, trying to visualize a reel of film which is my movie, of my life, and the whole movie is there already, in the reel, and there's a movie player, who has utilized physical space as the back drop to play this movie. and each of us has a life script projected this way.
in this movie of my life, there is contained all manner of drama and situations where I must utilize or develop a will, using free will.
there are only certain things I can change in the script; I cannot change that my parents are already chosen. also there are certain people I have agreements with, and these I don't remember, but as Vee says, the memory was erased.
therefore when we start having the return of the memory filter in, it comes as dreams, perceptions, intuitions, obes, intentional akashic record searching, vague yearnings and all this points to our more unlimited selves. we refer to these glimpses we get of our larger selves as the paranormal, when perhaps it is at last we are becoming more normal to remember.

I do agree that we live in eternity, and that linear time is only a condition of ELS, because we can visit the past as well as the future and see it is happening all at once.

while living a singular life though, we seem to become creatures of habit and avoid changes as upsetting our comfort zones. then I think if I had remembered who I was before, I might have wanted to go and pick up the pieces of a former life, be that person once more.
then if I had done that, I would never be this person, with a brand new set of things to go through, all of it quite new and different.

in this linear life I have tried to become a person who adapts the more easily to changes, perhaps Alan is referring to those changes in each moment, where we are choosing, whatever choice we are making.

physical, my body, objects around me seem to be solid and real, but I know this is just one reality I have made, along with all of you, in agreement, yes, this is solid reality.

But I thank god what I see is not all there is to see, and there's so much more universe to explore. we should all be busy for an eternity within self discovery.

Here's a hypothetical question for other people here.  If you knew that the amount of time you had was literally limitless, how do you think it would change you, emotionally?
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Good question, Petrus. Perhaps I might wish to have a few friends along, on that road to eternity. Given all of eternity, there's no telling what we might do.

In the meantime, here we are.

Hi Rog, I remember you and u always have good questions.

you said: This ACIM philosophy raises an interesting question....how do we know that retrievals are not also an illusion?  Perhaps they too are projections of our dreaming minds.

How are we to distinguish?
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it's not that I'm answering for one of my very best friends ever GP, but I don't think he's involved with ACIM, at least not as much as I am. (1986 I began)
perhaps we can suck him in here regarding retrievals as he's done tons more than moi.

my answer to how do I distinguish what's real and what's an illusion in reference to retrievals specifically, is the same answer I would give regarding any question that someone would ask, that it's all relative in the eye of the beholder, what meaning you place on it.

as example, u make me think of my first spontaneous retrieval, and also of my beginning conscious attempts where I wondered the same question and satisfied it for myself, essentially, by realizing retrievals was something I had chosen to do, but didn't have to do, and didn't have to convince anyone else of their authenticity, if I noticed what happened to myself after I did one.

since I already wrote it in my book, chap 17 is about the first retrieval I did, I won't repeat myself the whole story, as I find my redundancy here tiresome, while I find pleasure to meet up with you and others here, so yada yada yada... I'm like Blink, hey y'all, we're together, that's all that counts.

The results on the psyche were not immediately discernible after that first retrieval. I was cast into a state of wonder and awe, as well as perplexity about the young man's state of being whom was looping in his tragic drama. It was an experience I'd not believed was possible and so outside my belief system totally. For one thing, who was that guide, so silent was she, pulling me from my rest and to some unknown point with no explanation where we were bound. It was only later, I discovered I had put out a "wishful thought" that I might go and be helpful to someone who needed me, so I could alleviate suffering perhaps in the world, by helping a single individual, as I had seen my hero Monroe do, all without his intentions even. I was, curious to expand my boundaries of thought. sometimes wishful thinking is turned into an intention in Mind. or if you are religiously inclined, we all can understand, that prayerful thinking can receive an answer.

many years go by and I find Bruce here on the internet and he explains what a retrieval is and that I had done one, but if I wasn't certain, I should return mentally or imaginatively to the scene and see whether I was successful in the retrieval.
without Bruce's gentle nudging, I probably should have forgotten the retrieval and not studied up on this stuff, and not found out about hemi sync and the tones.

back to the immediate aftermath of doing the retrieval to make a point. the question you asked never even occurred at that point, as the retrieval just seemed to happen outside my reference points; my belief systems. that it expanded my conceptional field of ideas, I couldn't say that it did, but something was happening to my heart area.  It started to make me think of all of us. not just the boy in the alley screaming GOD HELP ME!

He pierced my ears with his cry, and he could not reach God himself, as he was stuck in his drama. so retrievals are done on different levels of perception it would seem. In this first retrieval I had extra hearing capacity, so I describe that I "heard" his cry.
At the time of the retrieval, I wondered for a moment how I could be out there, whether this was real or not, as the scenes began to replay, and I didn't take action to engage him, not while I hesitated with whether I was dreaming or not.
It was the guide who had taken me there that yelled for me to move in closer to him and "see what I could do."

who me? I asked her mentally. are u talking to me? so even when out there, we decide things, to take action or not, as to whether it's real, or just some silly dream. hurry up she seemed to say, he's not doing well, he's suffering the same thing over and over. get him out of there!

ok I said, I'll give it my best shot and I waded into his panic, his terror and his intense yearning to bust free of this trap he found himself in.

yes, there were nonphysical guides there, just standing by, ready to take over, if I could retrieve his attention from terror. everyone was waiting on me, and I was procrastinating.
this kind of thing teaches me when I get back to C1 how I don't like to take charge, would rather be a follower..ect.

so that's one benefit, which makes it moot whether it's real.

so I move in and talk soothingly to him to get his attention. it doesn't matter what I'm saying...I soon realize it's my tone of voice effecting him..this has to do with wanting to help him get free. as well, he called for help so he was ready to listen. his suffering was about ready to end as just maybe he started to realize his drama was looping.

In that sense, retrievals can be seen as happening here in C1, physical area, as well as nonphysical areas the same, as it means one person answering another person's call for PUL.
Love saves. if you are religious, you hear this saying. love answers the call.

when I woke up the next morning to C1, it felt like I had been initiated into something important, but I was still confused and put it on the back burner for later study.
I was gratified, not mentally, but in the heart area I was gratified to think I was quite capable to alleviate the suffering I saw in the world, because I had helped this boy move out of his repeating scene, so he could experience growth of his individual character once more.
He had died young, a mini gangster sort of. Only a mother could love this one and I did feel love for him.

thats why the guide knew me. she knew where to place me, she knew I was good at mothering, but maybe not so good at another type of retrieval at the moment.

so was it real? how can we distinguish? some retrievals I did years later, I felt couldn't be real; they seemed like exercises, whereby I consciously did them rather than spontaneously while the body slept, these others I started doing around 2000 seemed like I was practicing for the real thing. like one would develop muscles if you were training for a bout in the ring.
I felt at that time I was sending out "I'm ready" thoughts, as I was aware of guides were everywhere, scouting for those who were willing to be trained in the art of retrieval.
and this was another way of developing patience with myself, to have faith I would be used again, then I would learn that it's true, I can take action in the world to alleviate suffering, to the ones that I am led to do that for.
there are all types of retrievals. some occur without the sense of a guide being nearby, yet I still think they are invisible for a reason, and equally visible for a reason, but always on tap so to speak.

anyway, it changed my life to do this first one and subsequent retrievals and it does effect your physical reality circumstances and opens the heart. in that case, that is what the realness means.
love, alysia