LETTING GO OF PSYCHOLOGICAL TIME

 

Learn to use time in the practical aspects of your life — we may call

this “clock time” — but immediately return to present-moment

awareness when those practical matters have been dealt with. In this

way, there will be no buildup of “psychological time,” which is

identification with the past and continuous compulsive projection into

the future.

Clock time is not just making an appointment or planning a trip. It

includes learning from the past so that we don’t repeat the same

mistakes over and over. Setting goals and working toward them.

Predicting the future by means of patterns and laws, physical,

mathematical and so on, learned from the past and taking appropriate

action on the basis of our predictions.

But even here, within the sphere of practical living, where we cannot

do without reference to past and future, the present moment remains

the essential factor: Any lesson from the past becomes relevant and is

applied now. Any planning as well as working toward achieving a

particular goal is done now.

The enlightened person’s main focus of attention is always the Now,

but they are still peripherally aware of time. In other words, they

continue to use clock time but are free of psychological time.

Be alert as you practice this so that you do not unwittingly transform

clock time into psychological time. For example, if you made a

mistake in the past and learn from it now, you are using clock time.

On the other hand, if you dwell on it mentally, and self-criticism,

remorse, or guilt come up, then you are making the mistake into “me”

and “mine”: You make it part of your sense of self, and it has become

psychological time, which is always linked to a false sense of identity.

Nonforgiveness necessarily implies a heavy burden of psychological

time.

If you set yourself a goal and work toward it, you are using clock time.

You are aware of where you want to go, but you honor and give your

fullest attention to the step that you are taking at this moment. If you

then become excessively focused on the goal, perhaps because you

are seeking happiness, fulfillment, or a more complete sense of self in

it, the Now is no longer honored. It becomes reduced to a mere

stepping stone to the future, with no intrinsic value. Clock time then

turns into psychological time. Your life’s journey is no longer an

adventure, just an obsessive need to arrive, to attain, to “make it.”

You no longer see or smell the flowers by the wayside either, nor are

you aware of the beauty and the miracle of life that unfolds all around

you when you are present in the Now.

 

I can see the supreme importance of the Now, but I cannot quite go

along with you when you say that time is a complete illusion.

When I say “time is an illusion,” my intention is not to make a

philosophical statement. I am just reminding you of a simple fact — a

fact so obvious that you may find it hard to grasp and may even find it

meaningless — but once fully realized, it can cut like a sword through

all the mind-created layers of complexity and “problems.” Let me say

it again: the present moment is all you ever have. There is never a

time when your life is not “this moment.” Is this not a fact?