Time stopped. And before me, eternity unfurled its cerulean firmament. I heard not a sound, not even the whisper of a random thought…

My eyes had panned back from the limitless blue expanse when my mind noted the strangeness of seeing my skis stabbing the sky. Just a moment before they shushed firmly against the packed white snow. Now, I realized, I was airborne – and upside-down.

I had taken too wide of a turn off of the quad chairlift and unwittingly missed the intermediate slope. Instead of guiding me down the scenic route, the mountain jettisoned me off of its shoulder onto a cliff rippling with mammoth icy moguls. I launched like a rocket as I careened off of the first wall of ice.

Seeing the sky below me was not good news. “You’re about to die,” it said. Then, reasoning kicked in: If I were to increase my chances of survival, I needed to throw off my poles and position my skis to release upon the inevitable collision with the mountain. Yet my gloves were frozen to the leather pole-straps and I couldn’t shake them loose. In a moment I would discover, too, that one of the ski bindings was set much too tight to release on impact. But then, flipping backward again and again as I sailed through space, I knew.

Like a flash of lightning, knowing illuminated my mind: If I were to live, I had to prepare to die. I could no longer try to control life; I had to let go. Then, surrendering to what was unfolding, I put my faith in that which gives all. That’s when it happened. Time stopped and I had all the time in the world.

In eternity, the snow-covered cliff of a slope reached out to me for a dangerous rendezvous. Immediately upon our meeting, I heard the splintering of poles, the snapping of pole straps, and the shattering of skis. Witnesses reported later that I left a wake of debris as I tumbled head over heels for more than three-quarters of a mile down that treacherous mountainside – and stopped six inches short of a massive evergreen. Miraculously, I walked away without a scratch.

It’s been the same every time I’ve encountered death just around the bend: Whether my car was spinning out of control down a stretch of black ice on a mountain road with a sheer granite wall on one side and a cliff on the other or I was stranded 70 feet under the sea, hypothermic and unable to put my air regulator back in my mouth – the passage of time ceases. Even when death did catch up with me and held me in its grip for a spell, during a heart attack, for me, time stood still. That’s how it’s been whenever I’ve stepped from mortal into eternal life.

Many of us now, however, have so much to do and so little time in which to do them. We may find, for example, that even though Internet, satellite, and cell technologies have sped things up immeasurably in our lives, we end up being overwhelmed with so much and experience having less time! We are redlining our engines yet we never seem to catch up. What’s behind this experience?

Humanity is awakening as never before. Yet the more conscious we become of the underlying oneness and peace of spirit, the more disturbed we seem to get at first. Our perception has difficulty reconciling unity. It’s impossible for us to perceive oneness separately. Yet if we recognize that there is only oneness, then we can no longer justify our own individual existence. As we consider the essential unity of our being, the gap in our consciousness, created from our perception, starts to close rank. As the distance between perceiver and perceived shrinks, and the mind turns increasingly toward eternity, time begins to feel both exponentially faster in movement and shorter in duration. As long as we cling to what our mind perceptions dictate, we cannot realize our unity and true fulfillment. Yet the moment we relinquish our holdings, we enter into the wholeness of spirit and discover the eternal peace intrinsic to our being. Then, time stops for us. And eternity takes over.

It is our dying that ultimately silences the ticking of time and opens the portal to eternal life. Yet our dying isn’t the death of mere mortal bodies, the cessation of heart or brain activity. Rather, we die by awakening to our true spirit nature and by surrendering our attachments to the ever-changing conditions of the world and our mind.

Time is the “tick-tock” of the pendulum of consciousness. It requires a pair: perceiver and perceived. Without the two, there is no time. Herein lies our constant “battle to the death” in our earthly, mortal life. We cannot help but to move bit-by-bit toward an eventual face-to-face with our Maker – or at least with something major of which we know nothing. If “I” am “me” and “you” are “not me,” when we are confronted with unity, our self-preservation instinct dictates that one of us has to go! In fact, in separation, we perceive oneness as “not me.” And, “one of us has to go” means, that “not me” has to go. Even though we may believe we are whole-heartedly aspiring toward oneness, peace and harmony, more often than not, when we actually have a showdown with oneness, we fight or we flee. Our self-preservation initially kicks in.

Instinctively, we tend to recoil at the threat of the unknown. It may or may not hurt us, but we don’t know for sure. And, when we feel pain, we want to run from it or make it go away. Ultimately, our fear of becoming nothing keeps us wanting to separate, if only to remain being something. We endlessly devise strategies for keeping separate: Judging, blaming, expecting, competing, favoring, self-pitying, and so on. We try to be better, right, or special. Through whatever form, we try to separate and in so doing end up resisting life.

As souls, we must learn to die correctly if we are to claim our immortality. This requires us to regularly practice letting go of our resistance, of our desire to separate. We can choose to forgive ourselves of our clinging to or pushing away anything: Thoughts, feelings, memories, beliefs, judgments, blame, or whatever conditions in which we find ourselves. Forgiving is a choice we make to let go of our fear in favor of the certainty that there is nothing to fear, that all is, and that in truth, there is only love. In forgiveness, two become one – “me-against-you” becomes us. In realizing the All, the separate become the same.

Life offers us every opportunity to practice dying. Each moment, we are presented with a choice: To be or not to be. If we choose to be, we surrender our resistance over to the certainty of being. If instead we succumb to our fears, we end up by default choosing not to be. Beholden to the illusion of not being, we fall out of the grace inherent in eternity. For it is in timelessness that all is given. In time, however, only dreams are fulfilled. So, those who wish to fulfill their dreams dream of more time, while those who awaken from their dreaming realize eternity.

Dying is both an art and a science. It requires much diligence and practice to master. If we wait to practice dying when we are on our deathbed, it is too late. Actors and musicians, for instance, wouldn’t dare postpone rehearsing until show time. Many of us may not need to rehearse for a theatrical performance, but we all need much practice if we are to deliver an Oscar-worthy exit. Remember, every time you choose to accept yourself just as you are, to love and forgive yourself, and to have certainty in Divinity, you’ve practiced dying – correctly.

Michael J Tamura awakens souls. With compassion, humor and wisdom, he heals thousands of people, helping guide them to their true destiny and life purpose. He is revered around the world as a master teacher, life coach, visionary, healer, clairvoyant, and pioneer of spiritual healing and psychic development. Michael offers innovative and inspirational seminars, programs and audio/video products of self-discovery, personal empowerment and spiritual healing. His highly celebrated, award-winning book, You Are The Answer, is now available in bookstores and online. For more on Michael, his work, events calendar and products go to www.michaeltamura.com or call his office: (530)926-2650.