Time Passes

We have divided up the rotation of the earth into days, our days into minutes, and our minutes into seconds, etc. We are aware of each second – each tick, a beat, a drumming, a heart pumping. The year it takes us to rotate around the sun we divide up into months and weeks, and the weeks into seven days.

Photo Pixabay, Pexels

From the earliest of ages, man sought to lasso time. We developed tools to increase efficiencies in our daily lives. We grew our own plants and raised livestock instead of expending time and energy hunting and gathering our sustenance. We developed coinage and a monetary system to save time bartering with one another. Yet however man tries, time remains an elusive quarry.

Demands on time have increased. We want it now. Deliveries used to take six to eight weeks; today we want them now. Letters used to take five days to cross the continent, today we can hit send and instantaneously the recipient reads our response. It used to take us months to travel in what today takes hours. Where has all this instantaneous evolved us? Are we better communicators? Have we evolved in awareness, or have we increased impatience which blocks us from being open to Eternal energy?

We track the passing of time. We spend our days waiting and/or trying to race against or beat time – finishing a project before a deadline, etc. We are always either waiting or rushing, rarely are we just being.

We have taken the being out of living. Time becomes what we serve – it subconsciously ticks away. Time passes and we fail to capture it. We cannot stop time – we are linear in our existence. We are born, develop, grow into puberty, mate, raise our young, age, and pass away. Time marches on. In time we live on a wheel, not just as individual lives, but as communities, nations – we rise, then fall, then rise again. We believe our lives, our generation unique, but while existing in time, we are just another going around and around.

There is only one time and that is now. The past and future do not exist, waste no thought or feeling on them. Life is a series, a stack, of eternal nows. (Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth) God lives in the Now and only the Now. He does not exist in the past or future, because they do not exist. Exist with God in the Now and you will truly live.

“Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans.” (John Lennon)

Life is what happens while you are lost in thought, lost in your mind.

I spent much of my life lost in my mind. I would go on long walks and barely remember the beautiful places I traveled. The thoughts swirled and held me captive. I walked and thought. Driving was the same. Any time I was not actively working at a mind task or absorbed in a passive mental activity like television or movie watching, I was in my mind and life passed me by.

Meditation helps teach us how to be out of our mind and present to life. Eckart Tolle wrote in A New Earth that you begin with glimpses of being present now. These glimpses increase to moments and the moments increase to longer moments until one is present and lives completely and fully in the now. It is a rare person who does this.

“Through the present moment, you have access to the power of life itself, that which has traditionally been called ‘God’.… Even belief in God is only a poor substitute for the living reality of God manifesting every moment of your life.” (Tolle, page 267)

Make time for the Eternal a priority. It is so easy to put God last – after work, family, chores, even hobbies. In these days of smart phone planners, add God to your schedule first. Is God important? If yes, then make time; give your time to God in prayer, meditation, and service. God, family, work, other: these are only words unless actions reflect the priority.

Also, it is so easy to think, I am praying and thinking of God while doing all the rest, no need to make special time – how can one tune out the noise and listen, if one does not set aside special time in silence?