I'll give you The Big Picture as I understand it on our current timelines based upon my studies of channeled teachings, and personal discoveries, observations and thoughts over the years.

As I mentioned in my comment to you, none of this is "provable" to yourself in the same way that manifesting is "provable" to yourself (through seeing the physical stuff in your reality) but it might be helpful to others to see the "overall plan" and it will be a useful exercise in dumping some ideas out of my mind to consider more objectively...rather like when you write journal entries for yourself :)

This is going to be as controversial as it comes on IQ but if it makes someone start to think for themselves outside of the usual dogmas (whether spiritual, mystical or religious) then that's always a good thing :)

Alot of this is going to sound like a science-fiction movie but ask yourself where do the ideas for these movies originate from? What is being tapped into? And why do they appeal so much to you?

Why are there so many of those sci-fi themes increasingly dominating our popular culture? Why do films like Star Wars have such an appeal over such a long time? Why is it we no longer even bat an eyelid at yet another movie about inter-galactic conflict? Why do we so readily accept the idea of alien civilizations in movies and TV series now?

I've never met an alien and I don't know anyone who has but we don't question the idea of them anymore in our fictional media and literature. Interesting, huh?

So here goes with the highly over-simplified lazy man's/woman's guide to what the Earth game is about....

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away... :) ...or, better stated, Right Now, in a dimension not so far from where we are...

• Basic problem: The 5th dimension is a mess
• It is rife with conflict and disagreement. And because there are not the same limitations in manifesting what you want that exist in the 3rd dimension, those conflicts - many on an instellar scale - can be quite "brutal". It's like if you wanted to hit someone with a stick, the stick would suddenly manifest and you could do it right there and then :)
• Because of the general understanding in 5-D that you get what you think about, if someone manifests themselves into a mess, there is a general feeling of "It's your fault. Deal with it". After all, what's the point of helping someone if they did it to themselves?
• At some point, it became generally accepted by many of the 5-D groups involved in all this that there had to be a better way to handle these issues so the experiment of Earth was put forward.
• Genetic material was contributed by a vast number of different civilizations and thrown into the Earth "melting pot" ...and the game was on.
• The idea was that by experiencing limitation, various issues that caused such conflict in 5-D could be examined from a very different perspective - that of limited, "disconnected" 3-D - and new ways of dealing with those issues could be produced.
• Many 5-D selves from different civilizations incarnated into 3-D selves over many, many lifetimes as the descent into 3-D took place and the limitation took hold
• The 5-D self is what we know of as The Higher Self and it remains in that timeless 5-D perspective while the many 3-D selves it fractures into, all feed information back to that 5-D self and the rest of the interconnected Universe.
• From the 3-D self's perspective, it just has to keep finding its way back to joy, which is alignment with the Higher Self, but that 5-D self is presenting themes for the 3-D self to explore during various incarnations and the 3-D self's exploration of those themes (while always seeking joy as the target) is what the Earth experiment is all about.
• During this period of 3-D limitation, all knowledge regarding why all this is happening is out of vibrational reach. Occasionally, someone manages to "reconnect" and bring through information. This process is now known as "channeling" and channeled information lies at the heart of all the major religions as the occasional enlightened individual "remembered" the game and tried to tell others about it. As a side-note, channelling becomes less and less necessary as we re-ascend to 5-D because those limitations to information access are dropping away.
• So this Earth experiment (or game) was going fine for a long time. Civilizations were respecting the parameters of the game and staying out of it. Earth was in a vibrational quarantine where galactic issues were being played out on a limited and more focused physical level.
• Unfortunately there came a time when certain civilizations (unrelated to the original experiment, I think) took an interest in this isolated 3-D Earth and started to manipulate the inhabitants of it (through much DNA manipulation) to suit their own needs.
• A re-ascension to 5-D was attempted about 10,000+ years ago but failed because the sector of space that Earth was travelling through did not provide the appropriate vibrational help, and the alien manipulators managed to cause sufficent disruption to prevent it. That failed re-ascension (and subsequent destruction of that civilization) led to the Atlantis legends and the various flood myths that exist in most religions. ("Noah's Ark", for example, in The Bible)
• Now, around this 2012 time, the sector of space that Earth is travelling through has become highly conducive to another re-ascension attempt (it has been forecast for eons) and this time, according to various channeled beings, the re-ascension is now unstoppable on the higher vibrational levels. It is just a case of letting that vibration manifest down into our physical realities.
• It is this sector of space which has become known as The Photon Belt that has caused a huge vibrational increase during these times and allowed us to ride the wave back to 5-D...this bit answers your question about why physically the times are faster now. Because we are riding that wave and are simultaneously increasing our own vibrational levels, time appears to be running faster. Eventually it will run so fast that time will cease to exist...which is what the situation is in 5-D. That makes sense if you think about it because we are re-ascending to 5-D.
• So what has this Earth experiment achieved? Mainly, it is altering the existing 5-D reality with the addition of compassion, an idea that could only come about from experiencing a limited reality where physical manifestations do not occur instantly.
• As a result, these ideas of compassion are altering 5-D to become a different 5-D. So the 5-D that is being re-ascended into is now a different 5-D than the one that was descended from.
• Game over :)

Now before I get blasted for trying to present science-fiction as some kind of truth, I would point out that I'm not presenting any of these ideas as fact but merely ideas for you to think about. Many philosophies only present snippets of the picture, not The Big Picture itself.

You may never have even thought before that there ever was a Big Picture.

By considering that there may be a bigger picture, you may start to see where your own favorite philosophy fits into it.

Also, to complicate things further, there is no concept of Linear Time in 5-D that there is in 3-D so while this may be a rough snapshot of today's reality in the timelines that the mass consciousness of today has access to, it is pretty much definite that as the past changes as a result of the changes in 3-D then this story will also change...because past, present and future are happening now.

So, basically, you have to take the bits of it that resonate with you and leave the rest behind because the story is in a state of flux as our vibrational levels change, because the associated information that we can unlock at those various levels also changes.

As I've said before on this site many times, our truth changes as our perspective changes.

The ultimate value then in this story is to cause you to think that there might be more to your life than you initially thought.

And if that realization causes you to begin questioning long-held beliefs within yourself - even beliefs you thought were definitely true - then that is a good thing :)