There is a thief who lives among us!
Every day, and indeed in every way, he robs us blind! We cover for him, rationalize his actions, forgive his trespasses continuously, and rarely do we hold to account. Just like pampering the indiscretions of a favored child, in our perspective he can do no wrong. Well, nothing that is not forgivable, anyway.
He is ‘Time’. He is ours, for we created him, just as we did his errant sister ‘Space’.
Initially, his purpose in our life was to explain the sequence and perhaps the significance of changing events and experiences. He was a servant, a tool to help us manage the unfolding Present. Then we promoted him, granting him two additional, but illusionary characteristics, the Past and the Future.
Why are these illusionary? Well, we can never go to either place, not even with a time machine. We cannot change or reconstruct anything in the past and we certainly cannot guarantee anything for the future. They are just figments of our material mind. They exist so long as our material mind is conscious and aware; they disappear completely when we lose consciousness and/or dream because they have no substantive reality.
Yet we feel bound to Time’s will, it would seem. We can be held in the prison of the past, dominated by its goalers, Regret, Resentment, Betrayal and Depression. Captive in these dark, dreary places we are constrained, even paralyzed, by self-doubt inaction, sometimes for weeks or months at a time.
Alternatively, we can be readily tempted to wander aimlessly in the fog of the future. Surrounded by formless, shifting specters as we delude ourselves into believing we are masters of our destiny, able to shape unfolding events by our will alone. There’s no safety, security, or real comfort in either place for they can’t even exist without our imagination. They certainly can’t survive without it!
Let’s get real! The only reality for our material mind is the progressive present. It’s real because this is the one and only place where we can do anything. It’s progressive because it unfolds as we experience it in our living awareness. It’s infinite for as long as our conscious awareness exists, but only for as long. It has value, if we choose to engage and work with it, but no value if we don’t use it to our deliberate advantage.
Time is a great servant and facilitator; it is a terrible master – a tyrant whenever it escapes our deliberate management. When harnessed by our self-identity and life purpose, it’s our ally and friend in all things; when left to its own devices, unmanaged, it will waste and destroy our life.
It is time to take back control in the only arena where this is possible – within our mind, right now!. Changing our perspective will certainly change our life and our fortunes. If we aspire to be the very best we can be, this is our essential first step.
Let’s take it together!
