Nov 11 2009
A Magic, Time-Traveling Carpet Ride in Palm Springs – Issue #32
Last weekend I was in Palm Springs with my husband Tom. I’d been there one other time, forty years before, when I left my home in Mystic, Connecticut and was traveling with a friend to Hawaii and California. Back then I was searching for something very important…a reason to live. And I wasn’t finding it. As I walked in the dry heat of sunny downtown Palm Springs in present time, I kept thinking of that young girl who was there all those years ago, feeling so unhappy, so out of place in the world, convinced that she would always be alone in life.
I look at pictures of myself from that time — I was tanned from weeks in Hawaii, as trim as I’d ever been, with golden blonde hair down to my waist, a pretty girl. Yet on the inside I felt pretty empty. Now, 40 years and fifteen pounds later, I caught glimpses of myself in store windows — not so hot on the outside anymore, yet people I walked past were smiling at me. Then I realized, I had a smile on my face and people were responding to that. I was happy inside and it showed; I had discovered my inner beauty, I had created a happy life.
Quantum physics tells us that all time exists simultaneously. In downtown Palm Springs I sat on a bench in the shade and closed my eyes, and imagined reaching through time, aligning with my twenty-year-old self, doing a mind and heart meld with her, feeling her within me. I showed her what her life would become, telling her, “Hang in there Jan, your life will be so rich with love and learning, spirit and play, creativity and discovery — like the amazing discovery that you are creating it all! And…you will be married to a wonderful man! You are NOT destined to be alone forever.” All weekend I held her in the love and joy and reality of this present time, and told her something I heard recently, “Everything works out in the end. If it hasn’t worked out, then it’s not the end.”
Just imagine that it’s true that we can align with our past and future selves in the realm of timelessness that weaves our whole life together, like threads in a magic time-traveling carpet — if you were to talk to yourself in the past during a difficult time, what would you say to that self, knowing what you know now? What encouragement and wisdom would you offer that self? If right now is one of those difficult times, imagine a future self, who has come through it all to a better place, sending you a message of love and encouragement. Open to receive that message — it is ALWAYS there to draw on. Just imagine that!
In Love,
Jan Jacobsen
Jan Jacobsen has been on a 35-year learning journey. She has completed a 2-year training in Hakomi, a mind/body approach which advocates that healing happens when we bring loving presence to what is. She has also apprenticed for two years with Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks (authors of Conscious Loving), learning skills to make love real and fun. Her thriving relationship with her husband Tom is a testament to the effectiveness and value of those skills.
