Wouldn’t it be nice, if we could stop time and not feel so overwhelmed at times? Sometimes, life just seems to speed up with so much going on that it leaves us with a sense of barely catching up with it. I want to give you a picture, a picture that you can use every time you feel that way. It can be our little visual mantra.
Look at the clock image above. Imagine a little person hanging on the far end of the minute hand on the clock (just below the number 4). And now, imagine another hanging from the middle of it (next to number 4 and inside dark circle in). Our third hanging person hangs on the starting point of the minute handle inside the smallest circle closest to the centre.
Would you agree that each of them would experience the passing of time differently? As time goes by, the one on the edge travels the most – the whole circumference of the clock in 12 hours. The one in the middle, only travels the circumference of the darker circle, and our third one moves very little comparably. The same 12 hours don’t impact these 3 in the same way. Depending of where the hanging persons are in space, their subjective perception of time changes. One barely notices movements and activities, the other is totally caught in the movement. In life we move between the two.
We do stop time or get caught up in it without knowing it!
We blame time
Not knowing
We can change our subjective perception of it.
by getting closer to the centre,
our own centre.
The way to do this, as one of my favourite teachers – Papaji – says is:
Be quiet. Be still.
We have all tasted moment of such quiet:
- While watching a sunset, clouds passing, birds flying…
- When we practice different forms of yoga (posture, breath, mind – asana, pranayama, Dhyana)
- When we are absorbed in doing something attentively to the point that we become the action (no sense of doer-ship)
- When we lose ourselves to crying, laughing, dancing, swimming, running, walking …
But, we have moved to the edge of the clock, when life is spinning out of hand and we are racing with time. We can choose moments of quietness more often and by choice so that, it gets easier to move towards the centre of the clock and stop our perception of time,
where
time is passing,
life is going on,
events are happening but,
internally,
there is very little movement and agitation.
Dorna Djenab
March 2019
