Time Keeps On Ticking, Ticking, Ticking…
Just a few weeks into the new year and already I find myself looking at the calendar wondering where January has gone. But the other day, in the middle of that thought I paused and realized: what a futile exercise that is. As busy, move, go as we may be, does it matter where time has gone?
The reality we’ve painted for ourselves is that everything runs by the clock. Time blinks away on our wrists, phones, computers, appliances, and dashboards. The opening and closing of the stock market, the days and weeks on the calendar, births and anniversaries, and the endless moments of history are all marked and measured. Time is never more than a thought, a glance away…What time is it anyway? I’ve not enough time. I need more time. Is it already that time? How much time will it take? Can I have more time please!
Yes, you can.
Recently I read (though I can’t remember where) that stress is the greatest disease of our time. Is that surprising? Probably not. It seems about right that the inevitable result of our obsession with time is some kind of dysfunction.
How did we get to this place, where time has become such a critical measure? When did time become so significant that our entire perspective of life and what it means to truly live became so skewed by it?
Let’s spin this thing on its head. It’s not really time that is the problem at all, is it? Maybe it’s just that we’ve lost sight of its purpose in our lives. How does time serve us?
Time has a practical purpose: it supports the progressive growth and evolution of our body, mind and soul. If we didn’t exist in time and space there would be no way for us to become anything. There would be no growth and no potential. We could not come to know ourselves as the magnificent beings we innately are.
Time has a second and even grander purpose: it works to reveal the highest truth that time is an illusion. Time is not a quality of infinite life. So the paradox of time is that it serves to awaken us to its unreality. (Bang!—that is big.) So what is the value of that in my life, you might rightly ask?
Let’s bring it to something we can get our heads around, the right here and now.
Take a moment (really). Be still. Look all around at the spectrum of life which encompasses you. Take it all in—the people, the space, the objects, your body. Gaze out the window at the world passing by. Now take and release a deep breath and connect with it all. Expand your awareness to take it all in, and just hold it there. Feel the energy of your mind, the vibration of your being in this moment, the only moment that ever was. How do you feel?
This is your reality; not just in the moment of your conscious breath but in every moment. You have called this moment into existence and made it true for you. Every single choice you have made in your life has led you to this, surrounded by these things, connected with these people, experiencing this sense of being. This moment is your life in completion; there is nothing more that you can have or be or add to it.
Do you sense the perfection in that? In the stillness of timelessness, each moment is no different than this moment is right now. And if in this moment there is perfection, then in each moment there is perfection, regardless of what is happening. It takes great learning to hold present moment awareness at all times, yet this is the path to self-mastery.
So as Wayne Dyer blogged recently, “Forget about those New Year’s resolutions in which you decide on the first day of January how you will be conducting your life in September, some nine months later…The important question to be asking is, ‘How am I going to use my present moments this year?’”
After all, you have an infinite number of them.
4 Responses 
Leave a Reply
Thank you for this very powerful and awe inspiring blog, Leon!! I was one of the myriad of folks who made a new years resolution that pretty much encompasses something in the future, the months ahead. Now I realize that what I need to be doing is “taking it all in”, breathing, listening, learning, appreciating and contemplating what in the moment is serving me and what is holding me back…
Thanks so much! Love, love, love, the way you think and of course, write!!!
Kathy
Try working in a school! The next deadline is never more than forty minutes away. Clocks are evil and organizations must limit their importance as much as possible…please
Love this Leon..thanks! The first time I began an active practice of present moment awareness was when I lived in Hawaii in 1986. Pretty easy to do in that slower paced life of the islands. And then… it’s so easy to forget
. I love coming back to this mindfulness. Your writing is, as Kathy mentioned, brilliant!!
Beautiful, Leon. Your words are truly inspiring. I love the thought that “Every single choice you have made in your life has led you to this, surrounded by these things, connected with these people, experiencing this sense of being. This moment is your life in completion; there is nothing more that you can have or be or add to it.”