Who has the time?

In general when a child asks me a question, I feel a responsibility to answer their question with good will and honesty.  “What time is it?”  11:58 I might answer.  Specifically, when a person asks me a question shortly after I have already answered the question, I can get playful.  “What time is it?”  Now, I say.  Dinner time, I say.  Daytime, I say.

In our time focused culture we give a lot of power to the clock, to the ordering of the world in precise organized ways.  Time is a real thing.  We experience ourselves and others aging.  We watch evolution, dissolution, movement and then overlay time on the top to keep track.  Time is also a magical and unreal thing.  How many times have you sworn just a minute elapsed when in creative flow, or binge watching Netflix when many hours may have elapsed according to the clock.  How many times have you sworn time has stopped still when you are waiting for a difficult experience to be over, or for the light to turn green, or for the proverbial pot to boil.  Time is also completely made up.  It really is always right now.  Period.

What would it feel like if you entered a relationship with time that felt generous, malleable and supportive?  What if you truly believed in each moment that you had all the time in the world?  Can such a relationship be cultivated?  Even when life is busy?  Even when facing 5 deadlines?

How we experience time is similar to how we experience anything else; it is a reflection of our insides reflected from the outside.  When I am relaxed into right now and what is emerging, rising or being experienced in this moment, I can expand time; and this is not an alteration of the material world or a piece of cheap magic.  When I tense up to protect myself from time troubles, I shrink my world and time squeezes me tightly in return.

So the practice is, how to relax into the now, allow reality to be as it is in all the ways it’s showing up, and to welcome the dance between myself and the world.  No small feat, but it can be done.

Come find your own anchor in the timeless now.  Enjoy a life of spaciousness and wonder as everything moves and changes.  My Relaxing into Wholeness retreat starts November 23, 2022.  More details here.