“The separation between past, present and future is only an illusion, although a convincing one.”
- Albert Einstein
I wish to wrap up our final class in this session by addressing one of the biggest obstacles to maintaining presence: our relationship with what Shakespeare calls this bloody tyrant, time! How, after-all, do we be fully present to Now when there is so much that needs to be done by a specific time in the future?
A clue to unravelling this conundrum may be in deconstructing our beliefs around the following commonly used expressions:
“If only I could manage my time better!”
”I ran out of time!”
”There is never enough time in a day.”
”I saved so much time today!”
”What should we do to fill the time?”
“When will I ever find the time to get finish this project.”
“Stop wasting time!”
“I’m just killing time.”
“I was robbed of time”
”Where did the time go?
“Time flies by too fast.”
Can you spot the paradoxes in each of these statements?
How, for example, can we “manage” time? We may be able to manage what we “do”, but we cannot manage time anymore than we can manage the rising of the sun! Though we may become more efficient, we cannot “save” time anymore than we can save the sensation of kissing a newborn infant. We say we “ran” out of time as if it is the same as the contents of a milk container.
Yes, I am just playing with words here…but the point is to demonstrate how our perceived ability to control time is the work of our identified egos… and a recipe for endless suffering!
“One of the great illusions of our time is that hurrying will buy us more time.”
- John Ortberg
Over the past several weeks, many of us have expressed how much we are enjoying the extra time that we have as a result of the pandemic. Some of us have shared concerns about how we will find time to do everything again once the pandemic ends. This awareness is a gift.
We have been presented with a tremendous opportunity to birth a new relationship with time! To enter into a new paradigm where there IS ALWAYS ENOUGH TIME!
And how do we access this new paradigm? You guessed it - through a willingness to be fully one with the present moment!
(This plus a heightened resolve to catch the voice in our head that will periodically pipe up to argue with us and present ample evidence that there is not enough time and that stress is the only solution).
“Accept the present moment and find the perfection that is deeper than any form and untouched by time.”
“On the surface, the present moment is “what happens.” Since what happens changes continuously, it seems that every day of your life consists of thousands of moments in which different things happen. Time is seen as the endless succession of moments, some “good”, some “bad.” Yet, if you look more closely, that is to say, through your own immediate experience, you find that there are not many moments at all. You discover that there is only ever this moment. Life is always now. Your entire life unfolds in this constant Now. Even past or future moments only exist when you remember or anticipate them, and you do so by thinking about them in the only moment there is: this one.
Why does it appear then as if there were many moments? Because the present moment is confused with what happens, confused with content. The space of Now is confused with what happens in that space. The confusion of the present moment with content gives rise not only to the illusion of time, but also to the illusion of ego.
There is a paradox here. On the one hand, how can we deny the reality of time? You need it to go from here to there, to prepare a meal, build a house, read this book. You need time to grow up, to learn new things. Whatever you do seems to take time.
Everything seems to be subject to time, yet it all happens in the Now. That is the paradox. Wherever you look there is plenty of circumstantial evidence for the reality of time - yet you never find direct evidence, you never experience time itself. You only experience the present moment, or rather what happens in it.”
And rest assured…
”There is no incompatibility between being present and being aware of what time it is, or how much time you have left to get to a particular place. What I call clock time, practical time still operates in our lives and our civilization. So you don’t lose presence when you keep track of time.”
-Eckhart Tolle
On Grace…
“For me, every hour is grace. And I feel gratitude in my heart each time I can meet someone and look at his or her smile.”
- Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor
Our Closing Prayer
Dear Time,
I am sorry
Please forgive me
for believing I was bigger than you,
for thinking I could
manage you,
control you,
stretch you,
shrink you,
waste you,
and even lose you.
I am sorry
for blaming you,
resenting you,
and feeling stressed “by” you.
Oh Time,
How misunderstood you have been,
viewed as an object and an enemy
instead of celebrated for who you really are:
a marker of the
endless, eternal and infinite Now.
- Patti Wardlaw