Time

I have been having interesting experiences with time in recent weeks, as I have been without a reliable watch. My old watch started doing odd things – losing time, stopping, starting again, and generally playing up – some weeks ago. Wearing one that is unreliable is worse than not wearing one at all, as it can mislead you, so I have often just left it off and hoped to be able to catch random clocks and the car clock when I needed to know the time. On taking my watch to a jeweller, I was informed that it wasn’t the battery this time – the watch was certainly on its way out, bless. It was only a cheap watch and it has done sterling service for nearly ten years, so I can hardly complain. Now it’s been assigned to the watch and clock graveyard in the sky, and I have had to buy myself a new watch.

However, the experience of not having a reliable watch has been very interesting. I have been enjoying life without a watch, I have to say, and because my normal way of living life is to flow with what is, this hasn’t been a problem, as long as I look at my diary every morning and make a mental note of what needs to be done, and remember where I need to be throughout each day, peeping at the odd clock or my phone when necessary. And the Universe has prompted me on a few occasions, when I was needing to be somewhere fairly sharp-ish and in danger of being late. Sometimes I have had to estimate what time it was, and have been amazed that my perception of how much time has passed has been so inaccurate! It does seem, in my experience, that the further into the right side of the brain we are, the less we are able to perceive time accurately in 3D. This is certainly the case during a gongbath, when the gong sounds catapult us into the right brain meditative state, and we lose all sense of time. Then we often come too at the end thinking that only a few minutes have passed, when the gongbath actually lasted 45 or 50 minutes! This is a very common experience among gongbath attendees.

We rely so much on time in modern life. We say things like – “there is not enough time”, or “I haven’t the time”, or “ring me next week when I’ve got more time to chat”. We tend to be governed by the clock, certainly in the Western world. Most of us have work to do, appointments to keep, meetings to attend - and in my case workshops to teach and clients to treat - so a watch is really an essential to make sure that we turn up at the right time for our commitments. How do we balance being in the present moment and allowing everything to flow, versus being able to operate efficiently in daily life when we have a schedule to keep to, i.e. the balancing between the right and left sides of the brain? Well, that’s where a watch comes in very handy! Having had this watch-less experience for a while, I am now not checking my wrist nearly so often, and finding that for most of the day I am flowing with the moment quite happily without missing appointments! But on the other hand I am also enjoying being able to know exactly what time it is when really necessary by again having my own reliable little clock on my wrist. It really is a balance, like everything else in life. If we are governed by clock time that can be stressful and curtail our freedom considerably. And people who are always “slaves to time” are usually not happy people – it’s not a natural way to live. Conversely, if we are always “out there” and not grounded in our earth reality, it’s difficult to function in everyday life. Let’s find a balance, and then we can enjoy life in all its rich experience, both practical and esoteric, flowing with what is, and enjoying the freedom that comes with not always “watching the clock”.