"Time is the reef upon which all our frail mystic ships are wrecked." -- Sir Noel Coward, Blithe Spirit
With daylight saving time happening on March 11, I have been thinking about how much of our lives are spent trying to manage and often manipulate something that doesn't really exist. We invented time by placing numbers on a calendar and then by placing them on the face of a man made device called a clock which then aided us in maintaining our lives in a linear fashion based on the three "tenses": past, present and future. The universe knows nothing about time -- it is we who created and live our lives around time, which, no pun intended, makes us "tense" much of the time.
Someone once said, "Time is God's way of keeping everything from happening at once." The past and the future don't exist because it is always Now -- the reality is that everything IS happening at once. Think about it! Take a moment and consider where you "think" you were on a specific day in time 10 or 20 years ago. Notice that as you conjure up that memory it is happening in your mind Now. Even back then, it was Now. The same goes for what you may consider to be your future -- when you arrive there it will also be Now.
While daylight saving time may allow us to better maximize the daylight hours, be it for work or play, regardless of the position of the sun and earth, it doesn't add anything to Now. It is a classic example of how we allow the clock to instantly cast us, 60 man-made-minutes, into the future or the past, magically adding or deducting something to or from our lives that doesn't really exist -- time. In short, the moment we look to the clock it pulls us out of the present moment, which is where life is always waiting for us to be available for that mystical experience of knowing our oneness with the all that is.
Time really is the reef upon which our mystic sailing ship gets caught. So, as you adjust the clocks in your home, car, office or your watch on Saturday night, try to become the silent witness of how, no matter how you may be able to manipulate the hands on a clock, you can't change something that doesn't really exist. Setting your clock doesn't change time -- it only changes your perception of a changeless reality. Enjoy this present moment because, irrespective of what the numbers on your clock may say, Now is all you will ever have -- make every holy instant of it count.
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