What Is Time?
Eckhart Von Hochheim, commonly known as Meister Eckhart, was a German theologian, philosopher and mystic. He lived, taught and preached in the late thirteenth century, early fourteenth century At the time of his death, his teachings were attacked as a result of internecine intra-church intrigue.
While Meister Eckhart himself was never branded a heretic, the Avignon Vatican pronounced certain of his teachings as heretical. It was just another chapter in the never-ending human drama of one group of humans fearful of losing control over another group of humans. Recent efforts by Eckhart’s Dominican Order to confirm his theological orthodoxy resulted in a letter from the Vatican in 1992 to the Master of the Dominicans stating, “we are perfectly free to say that he is a good and orthodox theologian”.
Eckhart taught that God is a totally transcendent Being, beyond all words, beyond all understanding. From his writings, he stated that “Time is what keeps the Light from reaching us”. With regard to our reality and the “now” of it, he also wrote, “There exists only the present instant…….a Now which always and without end is itself new. There is no yesterday, nor is there any tomorrow but only Now, as it was a thousand years ago and as it will be a thousand years hence”.
Urgent Care Centers
A relatively recent occurrence in the field of healthcare is the proliferation of neighborhood clinics known as “urgent care centers”. When I was very young, the family doctor still made housecalls for urgent care situations. Then, as that era came to a close, the hospital emergency room became the option for immediate medical attention.
In today’s world, the urgent care center, open seven days a week, twelve hours a day, and has emerged as a viable treatment option when you need to do something now about a health related problem. There are even specialized urgent care centers now such as pediatric urgent care, orthopedic urgent care and mental health urgent care.
Awareness Of Being
In your life today, right now, you are in a situation that requires urgent care on your part. So many human beings, the overwhelming majority of inhabitants of planet earth, defer their awareness of being to tomorrow (or some later date). For example, if you do this, then tomorrow you will get that. If you go to work, you will get pay on payday to pay for your food, your lodging, your car, your clothes, your child’s braces, and so on.
All activity is geared to doing something today in order to get something or be something tomorrow (or some later date). It is a true blessing to be able to earn enough money to pay for your needs. The urgent care that you must attend to however, is the endless deferring of your Now awareness of being.
For just a few minutes, cut away all the layers of crap and focus in on exactly what you are aware of being right now. Not what you will be five minutes from now. Not what you will be tomorrow or next week or next year or five years from now, but what you are aware of being right now. This awareness of being, moment by moment by moment, is the very essence of your life and of your existence in this dimension. It is urgent that you realize this because everything that occurs in your life flows outward from your now awareness of being.
Smothers Brothers
Back in the 1960’s, the Smothers Brothers (Tom and Dick) were a very successful pair of folk musicians who specialized in comedy. At home we had one of their comedy LP albums and thoroughly enjoyed it. The brothers went on to have an hour long television variety/comedy show on CBS. While the show proved very successful, it was ultimately cancelled by the network in 1969 due to content that was considered too controversial.
On one of their shows, they had a short film segment that was brilliant. This film was entitled “American Time Capsule”. It was a film that consisted of a multitude of still photos presented in kaleidoscopic fashion and set to a vibrant, yet subtle drumbeat solo. It is actually available to watch on the internet if you choose to do so. It portrayed two hundred years of American history in three minutes.
A Lasting Impression
This short film made a lasting impression on me. From time to time, I reflect upon it as sort of a microcosm of how time flows in the life of a human being. The film commences with the events of the American Revolutionary War in 1776. It proceeds to display in brief but recognizable image flashes, thirteen hundred different images of American history in a chronological fashion until reaching the current date at that time, 1968.
One of the things fascinating about this short film was the subtly changing speed of the display of the images. If you take one hundred and eighty seconds (three minutes) and divide it equally by thirteen hundred (images), it would come to about thirteen hundredths of a second each. The film however did not display each image in equal time amounts. As the film progressed to the latter half of the nineteenth century and throughout the twentieth century, it moved ever faster as the amount of time allotted for each image was shortened. It is a remarkable piece of cinematography.
The sands of time of your life move past you in approximately the same manner as the images of the film American Time Capsule. As you get older, the time, the events, the circumstances of your life, move by with ever increasing speed. Time is the ultimate trickster in this regard. It moves turtle-like when you want it to speed up and then it becomes Speed Racer when you would appreciate it slowing down just a tad.
Time Is What Keeps The Light From Reaching You
So how exactly do you deal with this mischievous imp called time? There is only one best way. Focus. Make the irrevocable free will choice to focus. Focus on the present instant. Leave all temporalities behind. Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow is merely an illusion. There is only Now, your current awareness of being.
You say that you can’t. You have tried and you keep thinking about stuff that is “coming up” tomorrow, next week, next month. Try as you might, you keep ruminating over past events, past grievances, past mistakes. If that is the case, you need to go to your own personal urgent care center. You must generate a desire to “live in the end” right now with as much urgency, with as much feeling, as you are humanly capable of. If you do this, it will assuredly be to your benefit.
Discard Your Concept Of Time
When my youngest boy was around four years old, he became ill one day with a high fever caused by a childhood flu bug of some sort. All of a sudden his temperature spiked with such an intensity that he suffered a grand mal febrile seizure. I was in another portion of the house and immediately heard my wife shout in distress. I did not wait for an ambulance. I scooped him up, ran out to the car and drove at once to the local hospital emergency room which was fortunately only two minutes away.
Pulling up to the ER entrance, I jumped out of the car and carried him inside, imploring the nearest nurse to help my boy. They quickly took him and employed immediate measures to hydrate him and successfully reduce his temperature. He recovered nicely. During that entire urgent situation, there was no yesterday, there was no tomorrow. The entire focus of my life at that time was totally centered on one thing – getting my son help in that Now instant. I had no concept of time.
What Do You Desire To Be?
I now pose a question to you – What do you desire to be, to have, to achieve, to experience? In your Now awareness of being, be that – now; have that – now; achieve that – now; experience that – now. Commit yourself, once and for all, to choose your ever present Dwelling Place to be the Kingdom of God within. Humbly allow the Divine Presence to fill every part of you. Heed your intuition and pay attention to Divine inspiration. Do this with a peaceful urgency and every other thing in your life will subsequently fall into place naturally for you.
Believe. Receive.
