In a recent Akashic Record Insights Workshop, we explored a bit about time and fluidity. Discussion began with this question:
Do people have different experiences of time?
This Akashic Records session explores how time becomes fluid when presence, not precision, guides awareness. Through questions about cultural time, shift work, and soul rhythm, we uncover how linear time dissolves when we return to the lived intelligence of awareness. The Records show that time is not a fixed truth—but a felt experience shaped by trust, light, and our willingness to let go of control.
Student: So I’m just wondering, in this same essence of that disconnect—being on Earth and in space—I’m wondering if that’s also a way, within the Records, to go a little bit deeper into the unknown.
Student: Letting all of that collapse, as opposed to even saying, “I’m opening on Earth as itself.”
Cheryl Marlene: If you go out of the Earth's atmosphere—out there in space between, say, the Earth and the Moon, or the Earth and wherever—time becomes about your awareness of your experience of the present moment, and whatever it is you may or may not be doing in that moment. You send an Earthling out into space, and more or less, they will continue to try to experience time the same way they did on Earth. “It’s six in the morning, time to get up,” and “It’s nine o’clock at night, time for bed.” And somehow, you’re trying to repeat that over and over again, because that’s the reference point you’ve developed to experience yourself within space and time.
Student: I have a question now.
Cheryl Marlene: Yes, please.
Student: Some people don’t have to have those tight deadlines. It doesn’t really matter to them—there’s no stress. “I’m just here.” So is their experience of time different? Or is it the value they place on it?
Cheryl Marlene: Yeah. One of the things that makes cultures on Earth different is how each culture perceives time. Some cultures perceive time in a very exact way—if I say 6:00 AM, I mean exactly 6:00 AM, not 6:05 or “around then.” Whereas for other cultures, 6:00 AM is more like a suggestion. It’s the beginning of when you might think about beginning—but if you show up at 7:30, it’s no big deal. You’re here, and now you begin. So time is one of those things that different cultures and groups of human beings have built different expectations around.
And when we start talking about it this way, time also becomes part of how we distinguish between what’s certain and what’s not certain, what’s known and what’s unknown. There’s a general trend across cultures—though it’s still a generalization—that cultures that want to be very clear about the unknown tend to have a much stronger connection to the exactness of time. Cultures that are more comfortable with uncertainty—or even embrace it—tend to have a much more fluid experience of time. When you’re able to engage with uncertainty and feel less need for exactness, then time becomes less about connecting your present moment awareness to an exact point on a timeline—and more about the experience of how you move into uncertainty in a positive way.
Cheryl Marlene: For example, think about what’s referred to as Aboriginal Dreamtime in Australia. That’s a very fluid experience between present-moment awareness and physical space, and a very expanded connection—not to the passage of time, but to an expanded experience of time. For some, a moment is like a tick of the second hand: one second, two seconds, and so on. For others, when time becomes more fluid, a moment could last ten minutes, an hour, a week, a month. Their present-moment awareness spans that entire experience—without the same kind of discernible divisions that someone with a more structured relationship to time might experience.
That’s why they want to emphasize this: the answer to the question “What is time?” is relative to the point of awareness—not to the ticking of a clock.
So… did that answer your question?
Student: Yes. I have plenty to think about.
Cheryl Marlene: Yeah. And there’s so much more here. Because once you get off the Earth, time becomes something very different. And once you step away from linear time, time is very different again. But the constant—what time is always shaped by—is the point of awareness.
You could say that time is a span of awareness. Which means, time is something we often define mechanically, more than experientially. Mechanically, it’s linear—it’s measured. Experientially, time is always connected to the point of awareness. Which means: each of us experiences time differently. Especially when you remove all the external structures that tell you what time is supposed to be.
Cheryl Marlene: Shift workers know this well. They work at night, sleep during the day—and their sense of time doesn’t match the dominant rhythm around them. People who haven’t lived that way don’t always understand it.
Night owls and early birds? They’re each having a different experience of time, shaped by their physical energy and space. That’s why we have all these mechanical agreements about what time is—so we can stay connected despite our differences. But not all cultures do it that way. Some don’t look at a clock—they feel into the experience. “Is it time yet?” “Yes, now it is.” In that sense, time isn’t linear. It’s still structured by the inner frame of awareness.
Cheryl Marlene: But if you’ve been trained not to trust your own truth, or if you live in a culture where time is only ever dealt with mechanically—then time is no longer about your awareness. It’s only about what the mechanics say time is.
Student: So overall, it’s just a learned thing—
Cheryl Marlene: Okay. Yeah. That’s why they started the earlier answer with linear time—because that’s what we’ve agreed to. But there are other ways to experience time that have nothing to do with linearity—and everything to do with the point of awareness.
Because when time is about my point of awareness, then my experience is going to be shaped by how my awareness moves. That’s when time changes shape. You might think something will take five minutes—and suddenly, twenty minutes have passed. Because your awareness moved differently. You weren’t wrong. You were in it.
Cheryl Marlene: Now, as human beings on Earth, we still tend to hold onto past, present, and future. That’s the gift of linear time—it lets us feel how experience connects across space.
But sometimes something big happens—trauma, fasting, vision quest—and you lose that sense. When you do, time becomes your point of awareness again. That’s how people used to live, before we were driven by clocks. They used the sun, the moon, the seasons. They watched what nature was doing. Nature told them what time it was.
Cheryl Marlene: That’s why being cut off from light can be so hard. Light is one of our deepest time-keepers. Sunrise. Sunset. When you lose those markers, your sense of space—and time—shifts. It can disorient. Or it can open something else. It depends on how you relate to your awareness.
Because in the end, time is not something you follow. It’s something you live through awareness.
Find more content like this on Cheryl's YouTube Channel.
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