At some point of time or other, most of us, if not all, have made an attempt to manage our time by following the strategy of making a time table to deal with the heavy backlog of work that got accumulated over weeks, or even months, (courtesy our eternal tendency of procrastination……) and then subsequently swearing on the purest things we know to stick to that time table religiously, yet failing in doing so within a couple of days, or at the most a week. I won’t make conclusive claims about others but I myself used to do this. Whenever I felt overwhelmed by the volume of work that I had to do, or after getting exposed to some strongly motivating factor (like a self help book, video or a movie), I used to rush to my table, sit down, pen down all that I thought I had to do, divide the work at hand with the time available and after a number of “presumptive calculations” I used to get what all I was to do on a daily basis. Taking a “firm” decision for the time I would wake up in the morning to the time I will sleep, I had everything penned down. Utterly satisfied that I was on the right path I felt so relaxed as if half of the work was already done.” Ehh….i have everything under control….I will achieve what I have set out to achieve.” In the subsequent excitement that followed, in 50% of the cases I couldn’t sleep in the night until at least 2 am, hence waking up at 9 am instead of the “committed” 5-6 am, thus ruining the entire plan at the very beginning and shattering the castle before putting even a single brick in place. After failing miserably in this manner for a number of times, I used to feel …”whjat the heck man, even the time I used for making the time table also got wasted…”….” Its REALLY difficult to make and work on a time table”…..”why the hell am I so lazy…?”…..I am such a born procrastinator….I am good for nothing….hopeless case……and so on so forth, my mind almost always used to get flooded with thoughts of worthlessness and pessimism that further marred my all of the future attempts at time management too. I started seeking help. I talked to quite a good number of people, searched the internet and tried to get whatever help I can from anywhere or anyone. But nothing helped for long. Even when I gave up procrastination and started following my timetable for a considerable length of time, I found that I was even more restless all the time. I lived in the persistent fear of time. “time is running away” “I have this thing to do, then I have that thing also….”…I found that I became a very irritating person to others...somebody who always lived in haste, had no time ever to bathe in the rain or smell the roses. And I finally told myself…”what the hell….! I cannot live like this for ever….” But at the same time I also knew the importance of time. So I started wondering if there was any alternative way for making maximum usage of my time AND that too in a pleasant manner. To get the answer to that question I didn’t ask anyone, I don’t know why, but I just felt that nobody can actually help me. I have to have a tailor made solution. Because somehow I felt that everybody thinks that either they can be happy OR they can be disciplined….that you have to do unpleasant things at times going against your desire. I wanted BOTH….happiness as well as maximum time efficiency. So I meditated over this question. I continued for weeks, every day brooding and meditating over this for at least 1 hour per day and kept on living a chaotic life in the meantime. I have to confess, it was a difficult exercise. But in the end it proved to be worth every minute I spent over it. I used all of my varied knowledge from biology, psychology, neurobiology, philosophy…..whatever and what not…..and eventually I got some important insights.
My father had been a soldier in the Indian armed forces. He used to tell me that one day in a potential Indo-Pak war he got a close brush with death that made him think that there was so much more that he wanted to do but never did because of the “more important” things he had to do. In that very moment, of which he gave me a very detailed and picturesque account, he felt “if I die now, all of those wishes will remain unfulfilled…I cannot die in peace.” ….”Dying in peace is very important. Just like the climax of a movie decides the final verdict of the audience, the type of death we have decides the worthiness of our lives and that whether we lived it the way we were supposed to live or not…” he told me.
Starting from the memory of this incident, I also recollected what I had learned long back that “everyday ought to be lived like a lifetime, considering every sleep to be a little death, and every morning to be a little birth.”
Second important insight that I got one day while meditating was….you must stop racing against time because nobody can race with time and that is because ….time is not moving. Time is still. The past, present and the future coexist in the creation. It is you who moves from past, to present to future. As a matter of fact, there is no past and no future except in your head. God created time. Human mind created the distinction of past, present and future to designate what he has finished doing, what he is doing and what he wants to do ahead, respectively....like a progressive sense of becoming from what you have been. God created time like a mason creates a building….brick by brick……second by second. That was the best possible way…..to give man 1 second at a time so that he can make maximum use of it. “One second at a time.” That’s all you have, no matter who you are. Thus, “There is never “enough” time and there is never “scarcity” of time.” Because all anybody can have is one second at a time. And building from each such second, brick by brick, the building of your “lifetime” is built. The way a mason is only worried about putting the one brick he has in his hand at the proper place in the right manner, not about the whole wall, similarly, “You take care of the seconds, minutes and hours shall take care of themselves.” Stop thinking about the future, stop thinking whether the wall that is going to be built will look like what, would be stable or not, etc etc. Just BE IN THE MOMENT. Choose the right bricks in every second. The wall WILL be perfect. It also follows from this that time cannot be managed. We don't have that power. We can only manage ourselves according to time....and how can we do that?....by "being" in one second at a time.
One of the flaws, inter se, of making a time table is the fundamental presumption that you can predict the future…..because only then you can plan for it….isn’t it? We all make a speculation about the future and then plan accordingly. And one of the major reasons why time tables fail is because either something takes longer than we “expected” or shorter, or some “unforeseen” circumstance or person ruins our plan. If it is a person, we are forced to be a little rude to them, or even if we tell them with utmost humility about our commitment, after a couple of such incidents, he STILL feels offended and LESS VALUED. In either of the cases, you don’t feel good either. It doesn’t look like God wanted us to plan for the future, otherwise why would he have kept the future out of our reach, knowledge and accessibility? I am quite convinced that if He wanted us to plan for the future, He wouldn’t have followed the “one second at a time” model. But he did. So that’s a lesson.
We all also know that one of the major reasons of many people’s failures to follow their plan is the tendency for procrastination. But why do we procrastinate? Have you ever thought about it? Is it because we are lazy…? Is that it? Then where does that laziness go when you have just a couple of days left for an exam or when you have something really important to do…? The degree of procrastination is directly influenced by the sense of urgency one has for a particular task. If u knew, and could always be aware, that this moment is the only moment, this moment is all that you have, and that in the next moment you can die, you will be so absorbed, in fact “consumed”, by that moment that there won’t be any possibility for procrastination. I call this “time consciousness”. Further, people holding higher positions of power and authority almost always have a plan and almost always follow it successfully. They succeed and you don’t because they know that if they fail, a hell lot of things can be ruined. They have greater “Answerability”, greater “Accountability”. You don’t have any. Say, if you have decided that you will wake up early in the morning, your “subconscious” knows that there is nothing at stake. So that even if you don’t, “heavens are not going to fall”. And when in the morning your conscious, and the promises it had made the previous night, are both weak due to the trance of sleep, your sub-conscious takes over and unknowingly you shut down your alarm clock for sleeping “just five more minutes” that almost always gets stretched to 2-3 hours.
Further, I don’t think we should or “can” make targets. I feel we should rather prioritize the tasks, then simply take them on, one by one, and don’t stop till they are all finished, after which take a rest, make another list and go ahead again. If something out of our control interrupts, no anxiety….just relax….when the disturbance goes, get back and finish the job. Bur what to do when I know that there is something that I need to do, something that is on the list, but I don’t feel like doing it? Valid question, isn’t it? But I have also observed that any process/pursuit becomes arduous when one has the “end” or "target” in mind that manifests either as the impatience of reaching that end or as the fear of facing it. Have we all not found that the journey towards an unknown destination always appears to be longer and more tiring than the journey back home? This may be because “while going, the mind is looking for the destination all along the journey”. It is gripped by the thoughts of the ‘end’ making the process appear relatively longer. On the other hand, while coming back, the mind is sure of reaching the appropriate and known place and hence is relaxed. That’s why I said not to make targets. But if I don’t make targets where will I go? Which direction shall I proceed?
You don’t need a direction. If you have to take a journey in your car in the night from your home to a neighboring city that is, say, 500 Kms away, you complete that journey with the help of your car’s headlights that can illuminate only may be up to two hundred yards or so at a time. That’s it. Likewise, in life, God has given you 1 second at a time which comes and goes immediately. NOW it has come, NOW it’s gone as the next one has come. This is your 200 yards. That is the limit of direction you need. Make full use of your each and every second and you WILL reach your final destination.
But wouldn’t it be better if I’d know what my destination (to be read “destiny”) is?
No, because your destination and your destiny lie in the safest of all places – the future. If you “know” the future, there is no future because future, by definition, is the unknown.
Does this mean I am not the master of my own destiny?
No, you are still the master of your own destiny.
But how?
When you have to go to the neighboring city it is you who decides which city you are going to. Similarly, the moment your mind ‘conceives’ a desire from the abysmal depths of your soul’s cravings, it creates a sort of “shockwave” of desire, a sort of command to the entire creation. In that very moment your desired future gets imprinted in the space-time fabric as a "potential happening". Hence, the entire creation starts aligning in a manner such that you get all the appropriate things at appropriate times (something that appears as beginner’s luck). To make it easier to handle, God did not give you more than one second at a time, so that when things are happening to you , you could manage happening back to them i.e. make full use of everything that comes into your way at the rate of one second at a time, so as to ensure maximum efficiency. So, after sending the ‘desire wave’ once, start living one second at a time. Stop wondering about the destination or the results, or else only things will be happening to you but you won’t be able to happen back to them, thus disrupting the equilibrium and distancing the very destination that you yourself called upon. This is because the successful arrival/manifestation of your desired destination needs the equilibrium to be maintained throughout. So, from now on, if you really want to have something, anything, want it once and for ever. Don’t ever want it again or long for it. Just enjoy the journey and know for sure (i.e. ‘believe’) that your destination is coming to you and will continue to do so as long as you maintain the equilibrium. In order to do that, love the process, love the journey, live every second fully, and by that I mean make full use of all that you have got in every second. Give “your” best. Don’t compare your temporal results with others. You may be doing better than many in a relative sense. But remember God dispenses justice and bestows the successes and riches in a very different manner and that is an esoteric truth that very few have been able to comprehend.
Kindly elaborate….
(...to be continued in next post)
My father had been a soldier in the Indian armed forces. He used to tell me that one day in a potential Indo-Pak war he got a close brush with death that made him think that there was so much more that he wanted to do but never did because of the “more important” things he had to do. In that very moment, of which he gave me a very detailed and picturesque account, he felt “if I die now, all of those wishes will remain unfulfilled…I cannot die in peace.” ….”Dying in peace is very important. Just like the climax of a movie decides the final verdict of the audience, the type of death we have decides the worthiness of our lives and that whether we lived it the way we were supposed to live or not…” he told me.
Starting from the memory of this incident, I also recollected what I had learned long back that “everyday ought to be lived like a lifetime, considering every sleep to be a little death, and every morning to be a little birth.”
Second important insight that I got one day while meditating was….you must stop racing against time because nobody can race with time and that is because ….time is not moving. Time is still. The past, present and the future coexist in the creation. It is you who moves from past, to present to future. As a matter of fact, there is no past and no future except in your head. God created time. Human mind created the distinction of past, present and future to designate what he has finished doing, what he is doing and what he wants to do ahead, respectively....like a progressive sense of becoming from what you have been. God created time like a mason creates a building….brick by brick……second by second. That was the best possible way…..to give man 1 second at a time so that he can make maximum use of it. “One second at a time.” That’s all you have, no matter who you are. Thus, “There is never “enough” time and there is never “scarcity” of time.” Because all anybody can have is one second at a time. And building from each such second, brick by brick, the building of your “lifetime” is built. The way a mason is only worried about putting the one brick he has in his hand at the proper place in the right manner, not about the whole wall, similarly, “You take care of the seconds, minutes and hours shall take care of themselves.” Stop thinking about the future, stop thinking whether the wall that is going to be built will look like what, would be stable or not, etc etc. Just BE IN THE MOMENT. Choose the right bricks in every second. The wall WILL be perfect. It also follows from this that time cannot be managed. We don't have that power. We can only manage ourselves according to time....and how can we do that?....by "being" in one second at a time.
One of the flaws, inter se, of making a time table is the fundamental presumption that you can predict the future…..because only then you can plan for it….isn’t it? We all make a speculation about the future and then plan accordingly. And one of the major reasons why time tables fail is because either something takes longer than we “expected” or shorter, or some “unforeseen” circumstance or person ruins our plan. If it is a person, we are forced to be a little rude to them, or even if we tell them with utmost humility about our commitment, after a couple of such incidents, he STILL feels offended and LESS VALUED. In either of the cases, you don’t feel good either. It doesn’t look like God wanted us to plan for the future, otherwise why would he have kept the future out of our reach, knowledge and accessibility? I am quite convinced that if He wanted us to plan for the future, He wouldn’t have followed the “one second at a time” model. But he did. So that’s a lesson.
We all also know that one of the major reasons of many people’s failures to follow their plan is the tendency for procrastination. But why do we procrastinate? Have you ever thought about it? Is it because we are lazy…? Is that it? Then where does that laziness go when you have just a couple of days left for an exam or when you have something really important to do…? The degree of procrastination is directly influenced by the sense of urgency one has for a particular task. If u knew, and could always be aware, that this moment is the only moment, this moment is all that you have, and that in the next moment you can die, you will be so absorbed, in fact “consumed”, by that moment that there won’t be any possibility for procrastination. I call this “time consciousness”. Further, people holding higher positions of power and authority almost always have a plan and almost always follow it successfully. They succeed and you don’t because they know that if they fail, a hell lot of things can be ruined. They have greater “Answerability”, greater “Accountability”. You don’t have any. Say, if you have decided that you will wake up early in the morning, your “subconscious” knows that there is nothing at stake. So that even if you don’t, “heavens are not going to fall”. And when in the morning your conscious, and the promises it had made the previous night, are both weak due to the trance of sleep, your sub-conscious takes over and unknowingly you shut down your alarm clock for sleeping “just five more minutes” that almost always gets stretched to 2-3 hours.
Further, I don’t think we should or “can” make targets. I feel we should rather prioritize the tasks, then simply take them on, one by one, and don’t stop till they are all finished, after which take a rest, make another list and go ahead again. If something out of our control interrupts, no anxiety….just relax….when the disturbance goes, get back and finish the job. Bur what to do when I know that there is something that I need to do, something that is on the list, but I don’t feel like doing it? Valid question, isn’t it? But I have also observed that any process/pursuit becomes arduous when one has the “end” or "target” in mind that manifests either as the impatience of reaching that end or as the fear of facing it. Have we all not found that the journey towards an unknown destination always appears to be longer and more tiring than the journey back home? This may be because “while going, the mind is looking for the destination all along the journey”. It is gripped by the thoughts of the ‘end’ making the process appear relatively longer. On the other hand, while coming back, the mind is sure of reaching the appropriate and known place and hence is relaxed. That’s why I said not to make targets. But if I don’t make targets where will I go? Which direction shall I proceed?
You don’t need a direction. If you have to take a journey in your car in the night from your home to a neighboring city that is, say, 500 Kms away, you complete that journey with the help of your car’s headlights that can illuminate only may be up to two hundred yards or so at a time. That’s it. Likewise, in life, God has given you 1 second at a time which comes and goes immediately. NOW it has come, NOW it’s gone as the next one has come. This is your 200 yards. That is the limit of direction you need. Make full use of your each and every second and you WILL reach your final destination.
But wouldn’t it be better if I’d know what my destination (to be read “destiny”) is?
No, because your destination and your destiny lie in the safest of all places – the future. If you “know” the future, there is no future because future, by definition, is the unknown.
Does this mean I am not the master of my own destiny?
No, you are still the master of your own destiny.
But how?
When you have to go to the neighboring city it is you who decides which city you are going to. Similarly, the moment your mind ‘conceives’ a desire from the abysmal depths of your soul’s cravings, it creates a sort of “shockwave” of desire, a sort of command to the entire creation. In that very moment your desired future gets imprinted in the space-time fabric as a "potential happening". Hence, the entire creation starts aligning in a manner such that you get all the appropriate things at appropriate times (something that appears as beginner’s luck). To make it easier to handle, God did not give you more than one second at a time, so that when things are happening to you , you could manage happening back to them i.e. make full use of everything that comes into your way at the rate of one second at a time, so as to ensure maximum efficiency. So, after sending the ‘desire wave’ once, start living one second at a time. Stop wondering about the destination or the results, or else only things will be happening to you but you won’t be able to happen back to them, thus disrupting the equilibrium and distancing the very destination that you yourself called upon. This is because the successful arrival/manifestation of your desired destination needs the equilibrium to be maintained throughout. So, from now on, if you really want to have something, anything, want it once and for ever. Don’t ever want it again or long for it. Just enjoy the journey and know for sure (i.e. ‘believe’) that your destination is coming to you and will continue to do so as long as you maintain the equilibrium. In order to do that, love the process, love the journey, live every second fully, and by that I mean make full use of all that you have got in every second. Give “your” best. Don’t compare your temporal results with others. You may be doing better than many in a relative sense. But remember God dispenses justice and bestows the successes and riches in a very different manner and that is an esoteric truth that very few have been able to comprehend.
Kindly elaborate….
(...to be continued in next post)
