Talk with me- Kairos experiences are times out of time

A glitch in the Matrix or A Divine gift?

Kairos times are divine moments.

Chronos times are linear, clock time.

Seeing the gift in the events, and listening for the guidance being sent creates a breathe of The Sacred amidst the ordinary.

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There are a few qualities which might help you recognize a kairos experience. Kairos experiences are not necessarily good, yet many are.

Kairos moments are those which are marked with effect they have upon us, a “glitch in the matrix”, movement ceases, ordinary time does not exist, your awareness almost freezes then expands and shrinks again. We are enraptured. From all the moments that have happened, leading up to the kairos moment, time pauses and nothing will ever be the same.

We might be stunned in glorious amazement, asking ourselves if that was real. We might shudder in horror wishing it was not possible. Both extremes can occur in kairos time. Impossible, yet it happened. This was not a scene from a movie, nor a story we listened to. We just lived it. Disbelief in the immensity of what has happened lingers. Our body remains disoriented. We attempt to make sense of that which is beyond our current paradigm.

The understanding of a kairos experience can take time. We experience that which is beyond explaining, and may spend years attempting to explain it to others let alone ourselves.

While we can share a story about an everyday event, recreating the overall mood, we cannot fully express the effect a kairotic moment had within us.

Kairos times can happen with trauma, causing a post traumatic stress (PTSD) and dissociation. An example of this could be reading a newspaper article about clergy abusing children within their church, the horror of being abused by someone who we’ve been told is the conduit of God. Such events are beyond what any of us can imagine is “normal” and they imprint shock upon our soul. Kairotic moments freeze time.

Kairos moments can also be awe inspiring. We exist within the ecstatic. We experience wonder, reverence, surprise, and mysticism. We are aware that it is extraordinary, breathtaking and supernatural.

I have a tale to tell. Those who are skeptic might remain outside, viewing it as impossible, yet it caused a pivot from the days before to the new days after. Skeptics might imagine I created this, yet I lived it. I have had two kairos times in my life. Both related.

My daughters and I were living on an island north of Seattle, in the Salish Sea. We had moved there, because I felt, beyond any logic, that I had been called to it.

I realize I must now back up and share the first event, which lead me to be called to the island.

We were a transplanted East Coast family when we first moved to WA State. I’ve told some of the stories from those ‘before times’ and more might fall out of my memory in the future. For now, I begin with the first kairos event which paved the way for the second.

I briefly dated a fella who, while a nice person, wasn’t my zing. He took me on a getaway weekend to the special island, two hours north of home. The ferry ride was full of cars and walk ons, each hoping for a taste of the slower life this place embodied. Ferry boat horns announced its arrival, and we, laughing our way back to the car, found our way off the boat and up Main Street to a small Mexican Restaurant. Things appeared normal enough around us, no magical beings, angelic choirs nor fairy bells. It was my first visit to the island. I opened the car door. In the moment my feet landed on the ground, my entire body shook. I looked at my friend for answers, he looked blank. “Did you feel it?” I asked while wide eyed, “What? Did I feel what?” He asked. I had no words.

The ground beneath my very ordinary feet had shaken, as if there was an earthquake. I looked around to other faces, all appeared normal. No one had felt it but me. I stood there, confused and more than a bit surprised. Time seemed to flow back to normal once again, and left me coming out of a daze, realizing I still had not moved. People were beginning to stare as my friend walked around his car to get me. I blinked a few times and we went in to eat

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.Nothing else of note happened that weekend that I was aware of. Though, my pull to live on that island had begun. The more I tried to accept my world as it was, where it was, the more the island called to me. One day, about six months later, all the pieces fell into place, we began our next adventure, and moved to live there full time.

I cannot say it was an easy time to make a living. It is a small place where people greet you on the street by name. I opened my first psychotherapy office, and worked part time at a Native American gift store, selling jewelry, books and cds. We weren’t wealthy, yet life was content.

A year later, I became seriously ill. I had gut wrenching pain, fever, and nausea. Not one MD could solve the cause of my illness. I remember being overwhelmed by pain unable to do anything more. This magical island was home to many spiritual folks. Tarot readers, healers, herbalists, reiki masters, gem stone healers seemed to know the land was sacred. Some might joke that it was a “woo-woo” haven.

I was at the end of tolerance, deep in the illness. I resigned myself to accepting nothing could be done. A friend urged me to meet with an astrologer, who also read tea leaves and knew homeopathy. To this day, I can picture her room, long couch with batik print blanket folded over the back, facing a white stone empty hearth. She sat in an overstuffed light blue chair to my left, diminutive, with a sparkle in her eyes.

We drank the tea, and she looked into my cup. She inhaled deeply and said “I have something important to tell you” she paused to calm herself, saying she had never experienced a reading like this. “You must not die. Your people are coming, but they have been delayed. You have important work to do, you must not die.” I left her building with a tape of our session in hand, and a bottle of homeopathic pills. I was so mystified that I transcribed it to written words. It was August of 1998.

It was the next day, as a last ditch effort, my friend drove me north to one last MD. While the new MD could not discern what was causing the grave illness, he gave me a penicillin shot. I remember feeling very ‘off’ as we drove home. Later that night, I had a bad reaction to the penicillin (giant hives, itching, throat closing, difficulty breathing). I called my Dad (yet another MD who lived across country.) he told me to take two Benadryl and drink a lot of water. I did as he said, and slept on the terra cotta tiled kitchen floor that night. My body improved over the next few days, and average folks decided that I must’ve had an infection.

Another year passed, living normal lives. I had an appointment for a haircut that afternoon. I had gone to this esthetician for years. When I finished, I reached for my wallet but could not find it. (This is something I don’t normally do). We laughed together, and I left saying I’d be back to pay her tomorrow.

I was headed to the grocers the next day, as I drove by the small plaza where the beauty shop was located. I heard someone say “go pay her now.” I shook my head, thinking in response, that it would be easier on the way home. The voice returned but louder now ‘turn in and go pay her now.’ Not completely understanding the choice, I pulled into the plaza and stepped into April’s shop. “Hey Teyani!” She greeted me, “I was just talking about you. I have someone here you should meet.” A woman with chest length dark black hair turned in the chair and smiled at me.

Not even having a conscious thought, I stepped forward, took her hand and out of my mouth fell the words “Who are you, and where the hell have you been?!” (With a small chuckle, as if I were joking with a friend). I again felt as if an earthquake had travelled through me. We shook hands gently, and she smiled. “I’m Diane, and I’ve been waiting for you.” She said softly.

Time froze. Shifted. Reality bent, and settled back to a new place. It might have been thirty seconds or three hours. I felt as though I’d been struck by lightning. Kairos. Deep time. Even as I remember that moment I can recreate the feeling which is beyond expressing.

I drove home, in almost stunned silence. I had a deep knowing, it was bone deep, that my world had just changed, and would never be the same. I’ve never said anything like that to a person whom I’ve just met. I have no conscious thought of where those words came from. I was surprised, but not embarrassed. It felt as tho on some plane of living, it was a moment time stood still. “Let’s have tea tomorrow,” she said to me, “there’s a lot to talk about.”

I have no logical scientific explanation for what happened, what I said, or the way she answered me. My body was anxious and shook the next day as I waited for her to arrive. After all, I did not know her, we had only just met. She began telling me the story of the last couple years in her life. She was from Wisconsin, her husband an artist. They had decided to move west, to our small island, yet he came down with a health issue which was physically taxing. Their belongings had already shipped to a storage place not far away. He was immobilized. They lived in the studio where he worked, and she nursed him back to health. She explained that they were supposed to be here a year ago. It was September, 1999. Delayed a year.

Over the next many years, our families blended into one. She was a Lakota medicine woman. I had much to learn. We worked as a team. I learned the ways of her heritage. She taught me about physical healing and land healing, herbs, flower essences and healing energies of stones.

There is far too much of this story to tell in one sitting.

I became someone more than I used to be. I could no longer live behind the curtains of “unknowing” and the ignorance of being disconnected from the earth we live on.

Every aspect of my life and my being changed in the moment our hands met. Kairos Time.

“Together” is a compilation of thoughts by Teyani Whitman. All posts are free, along with the first half of my book Staying Together. For every three monthly paid subscriptions of $5, I will donate $5 to the nonprofit, The Ocean Cleanup. Thank you for supporting both me and the amazing work of saving our oceans and rivers.