Our Time is Counted

Our time is counted and we must use it well—for presence. – The Teacher

The old saying goes, “Time flies when you are having fun.” My experience, however, is that time flies whether I’m having fun or not. Time is my most precious commodity, and I sadly waste much of it in sleep.

Identification and imagination manifestations occupy my time that could be used to actualize presence. When I use my time for being present, choosing self-remembering over my engrained patterns of mechanical living, my time is filled well and then time itself ceases to be relevant. In a higher state, it is as if time is compressed or expanded into an infinite dimensionless phenomenon. The quality of time spent in Presence changes the very nature of time.

Conscious time is timeless. – The Teacher

The practical side of being present and using time wisely is that greater and deeper possibilities open or emerge to the practitioner of the Fourth Way. To be awake, I must be less mechanical. To be less mechanical, I must be more awake. One step (effort) in time, begets another step (Presence) out of time.

The mystic, Simone Weil, found similar insights about time when considering people who have an inner life, who are consistent and on the Way. She observed that the growth of being and deeper esoteric understandings are summoned up as one’s higher states reveal themselves.

In the inner life, time takes the place of space. With time we are altered, and, if as we change we keep our gaze directed towards the same thing, in the end illusions are scattered and the real becomes visible. − Simone Weil

It is humbling that my efforts to be present in the School have provided inner mystical wealth and many unexpected nuggets of self-knowledge. The dissolution of illusions frees me from my habits and untethers me, ironically, from the shackles of time, or at least my perception of time. I can see now that time is not the enemy, sleep is! There is ample time right now to wake up.

This is the time and place… - the only time and the only place - where everybody lives happily ever after. Look! – P.L. Travers (author of Mary Poppins)

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Kairos, Roman work after Lysippos