Time-poverty, Ego & Timelessness

Most of us are all too familiar with constantly worrying about time. We complain if we have too much to do & not enough time, we grumble if we don't have enough on the go & too much time, and even get anxious when we have nothing to do at all - nothing but time! Watching the clock seems to make us miserable.

Our obsession with time seems intricately linked to obsessing about ourselves. And we know that identifying with the noisy ego ("small self", "pain body") reliably causes unhappiness.

We also know that when we experience profound happiness, we seem to lose all sense of time, of time stopping, timelessness. On these occasions, we're "speechless," "dumbfounded" or "lost for words."

But as soon as self-talk resumes, the miraculous hyper-reality of the moment vanishes, reminding us of the line from a song "but words get in the way." Indeed, language-related congitive processing takes up much of the mind's energy, leaving direct perception, including vision, hearing, touch etc greatly diminished. The boring, repetitive hum of "the story of me" dominates, dampens & distorts all perceptions. Most self-talk is ego noise.

We perceive the richness of reality only while we leave fear-based self-clinging in the background.

"Leave words be."

"Leave the front door open, leave the backdoor open, and don't serve tea."

"Patiently, persistently, seamlessly bring attention back to JUST THIS."

"To forget the self is to be enlightened by all things of the universe." Dogen