Déjà vu
"the feeling that you have already experienced something that is actually happening for the first time"
This past week I was standing behind a podium, talking into a microphone, looking at a room of people with my boss standing to the left. Déjà vu!!!! Months ago, maybe even a year ago I saw this and just brushed it aside. This would never happen, I’m never around people and so whatever but then it did!!
This isn’t the first time this has happened. In fact, it is almost annoying how often it does happen. In my life I have taken this as a sign that I am right where I should be.
For me this brings up is there really a past and a future? Is there really up and down? Or is it all one, all now, simultaneous yet distinct? Then I remember Richard Rohr and others talking about different kinds of "time”:
“What do you mean by “Deep Time?” Richard Rohr replies “It is used in different ways, but the best way I can come at it is the recognition that the Greeks found it necessary to have two words for time. Chronos was time as duration—sequential time: 10:00, 10:30, 11:00, 12:00. Then they had another word, kairos, and kairos meant time as significance, time when it comes to a fullness and reveals the meaning of chronos, of chronological time. That’s close to what we mean by deep time, a reframed notion. When you fall into deep time, it’s not Thursday anymore. It’s not fall anymore. It’s the way things always are. It’s a deeper level of experience, a deeper level of truth, a deeper level of your own self and life. I’m sure others use it in a slightly different sense. I’m pretty sure that’s what Jesus was trying to point to when he used his metaphor of the reign of God, “in the reign of God,” in deep time.”
So when Deja Vu happens is that a “deep time” experience where without knowing we have crossed over from our thought process of before and after to everything is right now?
I find these moments disorienting and comforting all at the same time. Disorienting in that I don’t know how I was “here” before if I’ve never been “here”! Comforting in a way that it affirms that I’m where I should be because I’ve been here.