walking the sacred spiral
walking the sacred spiral
If you are a parent with young children, you know how time can seem to them to drag during things they aren’t enjoying, or when they have to wait for something they want. It may seem to you that making it through their childhood to “the age of reason” (whatever that is) is taking quite a while, too.
For your friends and relatives, who don’t see your children on a daily basis, their changes are strikingly noticeable. Not only that, but they seem to have happened overnight to those living some distance away. “I can’t believe he’s [fill in an age] already!”
Older people often say that time seems to be whizzing by so quickly they can hardly believe it. The day seems to have passed when it’s barely begun.
What is it about time that makes our experience of it so different when it is ticking away the same as always? We have the same number of minutes and hours whether we are very young or very old.
Perhaps it’s our general disconnectedness to nature that leaves us disoriented in time. When we watched the stars, growing things, and the seasons, and paid more attention to the rhythms of our own bodies, we may have been more in tune with the flow of time. Or maybe it’s simply because the pace of our lives is so hectic we can’t really process all that is happening in them.
You may remember me quoting Peter Russell’s assertion in Waking Up in Time, that “We now experience more change in one year than the Pharaohs did in 100 years.” That book was originally published in 1993 as The White Hole in Time. If things are accelerating as fast as Russell says they are, how much more have they accelerated in the 20 plus years since his book came out?
My intention in asking these questions is to gently remind myself, and all of us, that the moment we are experiencing at this moment is magical and filled with promise and possibilities. Wherever you’re reading these words, stop and take a breath. Go ahead, close your eyes and do it. Very good! In that moment you were inhabiting the NOW.
It may be that an hour from now I will be gone, or one of you reading this will be gone. Life is unpredictable and changes so quickly that we can’t hold onto things or people. We need to let them flow around us with love, as we flow around them on the mysterious journey of our lives.
Savor time. Notice what’s happening around you. That is the real news of the day in your life. What your kids are eating. What your boss needs now, or what you need from your staff. Exploring with your spouse where you will go for your next vacation. Enjoying a game of tennis with a friend. Being with them now is bigger news and more important in your life than what is being broadcast or printed, usually.
Whether life is dragging or rushing by, be with it and see what reveals itself. There is something here in every moment, buried in the now moment. But we have to be receptive and appreciating it to feel it. What’s the magic in your life at this moment?
The Magical Mystery Tour: Time
Thursday, June 25, 2015