Time is something we are always short of and therefore we have to be in a rush all the time.
In this 24/7 race against time, sometimes we forget the puepose of the race itself.
Once I heard a joke which goes like :
Once I heard a joke which goes like :
A man sees his friend running on the road and dragging his bicycle with him as well. The man asks, " Hey, why don't you ride the bicycle!" He gets the answer, " I im in a hurry. I don't have time to sit on the bicycle."
Funny, but in our day to day and dawn to dusk racing, what happens is that the troubled and unfocussed mind also works at the lowest efficiency.
In the race to live, we forget to live at all and also how to live.
As a result, all of us, who actually are capable of much bigger and much better accomplishments are doomed to a mediocre life, and at the twilight zone, we wonder where did the life go away, how did the 70 years pass away and what the hell the hurry was for? The hurry doesnt seem to make any difference at the end.
At the end we realize that time was the actual wealth, the actual capital that can only be spent, the property that can not be bought at any price. The total wealth of the universe an create matter and energy but can not create even a minute of time.
So, what this precious wealth , the Time actually is?
We do not know about it. We are not sure about it. We can't see/ smell/ touch/taste it. None of the finest scientific instruments including those who can see the atom to those who can see billions of kilometers far away fail to sense it.Still, Surprisingly, we, every single one of us, claim to keep its account always. What is it?
It it Time!
We claim to measure Time, though we can't detect the existence of even a single second of it.
Every calendar, clock, wristwatch, cellphone, computer, TV, dvd upto the microwave seem to be keeping track of Time.
Time is the most fundamental law of the existence of the universe as well as the Life.
What we percieve and name as Time is nothing but the most obvious yet unnoticed fact of the cyclic nature inbuilt in each atom, each phenomenon of the universe.
Time is the Solemn Statement of God himself, stating the non existence of any begining or any end. Only cycles!
We first observed this law as well as the existence of Time itself with the sunrises and sunsets and invented Day, Then hours and minutes. We watched seasons and invented Year. We watched Moon phases and counted months. Our calendars count the days and watches count the minutes.
Our watches do not measure the time, not at all. They only keep count of the cyclic mechanism, whether springloaded, pendulum, sunlight, sandfall, peizo or atomic. The clocks then compare their cycles with a cycle of nature, ie day and year and fragment it into seconds and beyond.
Hacking Time:
Still, the Time remains unreplenishable, exhausting every second, mercilessly.
Can nothing be done to slow the time even minutely! Can a few minutes not be added at all. Will we never come out of this shortness of Time?
Answer is 'Yes'.
The secret lies in our minds. Time has one more diamension, present in our minds.
Time exists in our minds as well. Which means that Time moves as slow or as fast as we percieve it to.
For example, imagine a 100 m sprint. A Casual watcher who is bored, daydreaming or talking would almost fail to notice anything except the start or finish. An avid watcher would watch the race as it happens but at a very fast speed, too fast to watch all contestents. But the sprinter, for him the time slows down before the race starts, remains slow and becomes slower as his chest touches the ribbon. The experince of these persons of the same 10 seconds quite differ. For the casual watcher, these 10 seconds did not exist at all, for the avid watcher these were like 10 seconds and for the sprinter the time almost took half a minute as per his own perception. In sports many a time a batsman, bowler, golf player or football player finds himself watching the ball frame by frame, almost as if in a slow motion.
This is the power of concentration. The deeper the concentration, the slower is the time. Vice versa, the more fragmented the focus, the lesser aware the mind, the faster is the time. Amphetamines and other stimulats raise the wakefulness to this end.
So, by reducing the extra worries and random thoughts awareness can increase.
For example, imagine a 100 m sprint. A Casual watcher who is bored, daydreaming or talking would almost fail to notice anything except the start or finish. An avid watcher would watch the race as it happens but at a very fast speed, too fast to watch all contestents. But the sprinter, for him the time slows down before the race starts, remains slow and becomes slower as his chest touches the ribbon. The experince of these persons of the same 10 seconds quite differ. For the casual watcher, these 10 seconds did not exist at all, for the avid watcher these were like 10 seconds and for the sprinter the time almost took half a minute as per his own perception. In sports many a time a batsman, bowler, golf player or football player finds himself watching the ball frame by frame, almost as if in a slow motion.
This is the power of concentration. The deeper the concentration, the slower is the time. Vice versa, the more fragmented the focus, the lesser aware the mind, the faster is the time. Amphetamines and other stimulats raise the wakefulness to this end.
So, by reducing the extra worries and random thoughts awareness can increase.
Strangeness:
Another example: visiting an unknown place seems to take more time than a known place at the same distance. In fact, always, going to an unknown place seem to take a lot more time than coming back. Reason is awareness, in this case known as strangeness.
A strange unknown environment raises concentration or awareness and then the time slows down.
Another well known example, while running and falling the time slows down.
Also a strong slap and its stimulus to the mind, slows down time considerably. This technique is used heavily in Zen temples, where a master sometimes slaps or hits a pupil who seems to be at the threshold of enlightent, who is missing the final piece of the jigsaw, who is missing just the bit. In such a case, a slap or a hit might give him the strangeness, that moment of time of heightened awareness when everything comes into place and the light is switched on in the darl, as if a myopic suddenly got the correct glass suddenly.
This is the value of strangeness.
In fact enlightemnt is nothing but a moment of strangeness after one or more lifetimes of query, search and meditation.
The strangeness is also the reason, that travelling helps so much in this query. When going through unknown areas and meeting strange people, one is in a deeper awareness,can question, observe and think over the same things, that he would miss entirely at his own home.
Another exaple of this is that while we can notice all the cobwebs and spiders in the drawing room of a host we are visiting, we do do not notice much larger ones in our own drawing room.
So, the secret of the time is the awareness. By keeping our minds lighter loaded and externalising our minds, we can improve our awareness and then we can be far more efficient, productive and successful. Hours, Days, months and Life will all become longer in your own frame of reference resulting in success and thereby happiness
Some suggestions to this purpose are organizing things and routine, cutting down TV time, being online once in a day or only as per need rather than the present 'always on' system, Reducing the 'multitasking' as far as possible and greatest of all, by meditating.
Good luck to you in developing awareness and harnessing the most previous resource of time!
