Meditation on time
I wound up thinking about time yesterday (or rather this morning, but then with timezones and everything all those labels are arbitrary anyway).
So as I went to bed I made the intention that when I got up I would do nothing until I had done nothing. That is, I would refrain from doing tasks and busywork until I had spent some time being still, whether in full meditation or journaling or whatever.
When I got up I managed to somehow remember this, grabbed a glass of orange juice to warm up the body functions, and found a quiet place to just be for a while. I started by bouncing on my fitball, because it’s an excellent way to wake up the bodymind at any time of day, and after a few minutes of that (it is absolutely glorious to allow yourself that amount of time) I put on some calming music (3 hours worth roughly – I was giving myself plenty of time here) sat down, got comfy, made sure I’d be warm, and closed my eyes.
The noise that came up first of all needed to be dealt with, so I used my favourite technique of writing out the key phrases that needed to be acknowledged (stuff like worries about paying in USD via paypal to someone in the UK, an idea for my 12seconds video of the day, what I should do about a situation that’s been bugging me).
The bit I now get about meditation
A lot of what I had picked up about meditation (you know, the same way you learn about things like the stock market, the country of Iraq, and the idea that pig and pork are different words because of the Norman conquest – i.e. by hearsay) involved the idea that one aimed for a blank mind, letting go of thoughts that came through. However, in my personal opinion, a much better approach is to bring awareness to the thoughts that are going through your mind.
A blank mind is like the uber-advanced level, but for anyone without years of experience and/or training then bringing your awareness to the thoughts you think will get you to a calm and quiet place eventually. Which is where the writing it out part helps.
So whilst I had an intention to think about my relationship with time, I would only consciously think about this when there were no other thoughts whizzing through my brain. During the beginning (I’m not sure how long) I would suddenly realise that I had gone off on a tangent and just try and bring my awareness to the thoughts I was having. Noticing them, and seeing if they had anything interesting or helpful to tell me. If they did, I would note this down and then go back to sitting.
The act of breaking away to note down the helpful part may actually be helping me reset to a calm state again, though I don’t know for sure, but usually this process means that that particular thought has moved on, and even seeing if it wants to come back will not result in the tangent getting picked up again – it has played out. Rinse and repeat and quite quickly (there were only 6 off topic distractions) I’m free to explore the topic I want to meditate on without fighting myself over it.
Exploring what time is
As I thought about how I relate to time I had a few realisations, some of them personal, some of them perhaps useful to you. So I’ll share them here for you to see if any are helpful:
- If I’m up late I can simply bring awareness to the situation. Is it something I need right now, or is it just falling into a habit?
- I am often in denial about time passing. I often resist its flow forwards. I often seek to control it.
- I curl up time in on itself, into a dense tangled knot that stays in a small transparent sphere.
- I think I do this to avoid having to choose.
- I may have to mourn time I have lost in order to untangle this knot and accept reality as it is.
- By keeping time tangled up in a dense knot I can believe that my time (the time in the sphere) is infinite.
- Infinite time means that there is no urgency and so no motivation to go towards my fear.
- Infinite time is the same as no time at all, in that whatever discrete actions we take can be seen as happening all at the same time (given the appropriate scale). <–This one is a toughy to get your head around.
- If there is no sense of one thing happening before another then there is not value in paying attention to priorities. E.g. in infinite time it will all happen at some point.
- Finite time fixes the scale at which we operate, giving a sense of urgency and a value to the order of actions.
- If I embrace my finite time (i.e. accept reality) I must embrace the fact that I will die.
- To not be distracted by my death I would need to make peace with it.
- In the meantime, which may last my whole life, I can give myself permission to be distracted and bring awareness to it whenever I remember.
- I may panic about not having enough time when I acknowledge what I want to achieve and the priority order of actions.
- I can sooth this panic by reminding myself that something is better than nothing; unfinished is better than not started; incomplete, cut short or put away is better than ignored.
Which leads me to my next question
If I decide to be mindful of time, using my thoughts above to help me remain so, then what do I want to do with my time?
Oh yes, we’re back to ‘what do you want?’ folks.
My stock answer (thanks to Charlie’s awesome comment) is: To flourish or to self actualise (pick whichever one doesn’t make you gag).
[Aside: It strikes me that I'm giving a lot of blog love to Charlie at the moment - I hope no one else feels left out - I love you all!]
Another way of phrasing it (because some words make people go ‘ack!’ and because a different word can offer a powerfully different perspective) is to fulfil my potential.
However, it may very well be impossible to fulfil all of my potential in a finite amount of time. The same goes for anyone else, but this blog is about me.
Which some people never forget, but others of us do. (It’s the oddest thing I’ve started to notice. If we could remember all the stuff we knew we’d live in a utopia. Which makes me think that if we could exist outside of time, and therefore live all times at once, and so not be able to forget something that we knew at one point in our lives, then we’d basically be like perfect, boring beings. Which can be a way of rationalising the motives behind the belief that we are spritual beings that put a part of ourselves into mortal bodies in order to travel through time in a linear fashion – almost like a test: how much can we remember? But I digress completely, if somewhat interestingly.)
This question starts to get circular here, is what I was trying to say. What do I want? I want to flourish? What do I want to flourish at? Well, what do I want? Repeat ad nauseum.
The answer to what I want is not to be found in my thinking. It is to be found in my heart (metaphorically speaking).
On a related note, but optional for skim readers, is the idea that I might want to serve others. Which I do. However, I’m starting to understand/believe (depending on your point of view) that I am not able to know ahead of time what value others will derive from what I do. Therefore I am not able to wisely choose based on my perceived value of my actions. I am left again looking at the question ‘What do I want to do?’ to be my guide.
So what now?
Oh hurrah, we’re nearly at the end of the post when this one shows up.
Two things:
- Mindfulness of time
- Mindfulness of heart
With regards the first I’m going to start recording how I spend my time and see if that doesn’t a) make an automatic difference because I instantly pay more attention and b) show up any patterns that are helping or getting in the way.
The second involves things like meditation, journaling and talking about what I love. In the end it’s pretty much just mindfulness full stop.
P.S. It was 8 hours between me almost finishing this post and writing the last few sentences. Hmmm, there’s a few too many hours of blog reading and twitter in there.
[...] I had been aiming for stillness and quiet during meditation, but my recent realistion that there is a better way for me to learn from my meditation has given me my route to epiphany [...]