“Let­ting go of TIME”

We live world dri­ven by a cer­tain no­tion of time. If we lived un­der the stars, our sense of time would re­spond to the ro­ta­tion of the earth, the cy­cle of day and night. If we were sen­si­tive to the cy­cles of men­stru­a­tion and the tides, we would re­spond to the cy­cles of the moon. If we were farm­ers, we would re­spond to the cy­cles of the seasons. For any of you who have lived a por­tion of your life, ei­ther out in the woods, at the farm, on the seashore, you may have had the ex­pe­ri­ence of let­ting go of ar­ti­fi­cial time and be­ing in real time.

For those of you who haven’t done so, it’s ex­treme­ly heal­ing to take your­self out of the time­line. Whether that be a week­end moun­tain climb­ing, camp­ing off grid, vol­unteer­ing at a lo­cal farm, fish­ing at sun­rise, there are hun­dreds of op­por­tu­ni­ties to ex­peri­ence the sim­ple plea­sures of step­ping out of your world.

For some of you in your teens, 20’s, 30’s and 40’s, you may feel that you are an anom­aly. You prob­a­bly will find your­self in a peer group where no one leaves their phone be­hind. (Yes, I’m glad you are the one per­son read­ing this who does that.) No, you won’t need your phone to take pic­tures, no you won’t need to call any­one in an emer­gency, no you won’t need to re­ceive those im­por­tant txt and post on so­cial media.

The whole point, is that there is no pos­si­ble way to feel the con­di­tion­ing field of ar­ti­fi­cial time, un­less you ac­tu­al­ly es­cape from it. Our lives are time­stamped, cal­endared, cal­cu­lat­ed, sched­uled, in­deli­bly marked by some­thing that is ab­so­lute­ly un­re­al. Un­re­al in the sense that it’s an in­ven­tion of the hu­man mind. Every­one knows there are 365 days in a year, 30 days in a month, 30 days in the bank­ing cal­en­dar, and bills are due on the 1st. Who says?

It’s a fas­ci­nat­ing rab­bit­hole to in­ves­ti­gate the ori­gins of the Baby­lon­ian cal­en­dar, the shift from 13 as­tro­log­i­cal signs, 13 moons, to a 12 month, 7 day a week cal­en­dar. Our job here is not to elu­ci­date cal­en­dar con­spir­a­cies, but rather to say, what is your re­la­tion­ship with time, re­al­ly?

As one spir­i­tu­al teacher has put it, let­ting go of time is the fi­nal fron­tier, the last iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. In­ter­est­ing. We are taught that the fi­nal thing to sur­ren­der, is our ego. Every­one says that, must be true, right? Per­haps not.

Try let­ting go of time, and you will dis­cov­er that’s a lot hard­er than let­ting go of ego. Yes, they are in­tri­cate­ly con­nect­ed. To let go of ego, you can try re­lax­ing any partic­u­lar agen­da; to let go of time, you will have to let go of your whole world.

In fact, much of what we con­sid­er to be ‘ego’ in the mod­ern world, is ac­tu­al­ly a belief in the ne­ces­si­ty of ad­her­ing to some­one else’s time sched­ule. This whole mo­mentum of “hap­pen­ings”, “sched­ules”, “cal­en­dars” was not cre­at­ed by you. It is some­thing out­side your­self, that you fit your­self into.

Yes, you say, it’s so con­ve­nient! How would you know what to do with­out a timeline, a time­piece? Toi­lets are con­ve­nient as well, al­though they pol­lute the world’s water sup­ply un­nec­es­sar­i­ly. It’s con­ve­nient that bills are due once a month....es­pe­cial­ly if you own a bank.

What is con­ve­nient is that every­one is stressed, im­pa­tient to get some­where, social­ly anx­ious, in a rush, try­ing to work on time, ar­riv­ing at church on time for your wed­ding....it’s all very con­ve­nient for those who have an in­ter­est in drain­ing your lifeforce. By psy­phon­ing your en­er­gy for their own uses, these par­a­sitic forces keep themselves alive. With­out your par­tic­i­pa­tion, they would shriv­el away and die, or have to find their own re­sources.