Imagine we live in a great big house that has one room we don’t use, so it becomes a room for storage. We push a few things into it helter-skelter and if we had to tidy it up at that point, it wouldn’t take too long. Imagine over time we let things pile up until that room’s filled to the brim. We’re lazy and don’t want to hassle with sorting things and putting them away as we go. Now we’ve got a tougher job on our hands. It’s just like this with the time we have at our disposal…
If we have a problem area and at the first sign of feeling troubled we heed it saying, “Why am I just a little disturbed?”—rather than packing it away into the storeroom of our unawareness—we will be able to sort out what it’s about in jig time…But if instead we let it ride, pushing it out of our mind, it will fester underground. Now it starts to create negative patterns and vicious circles that seem to trap us in wicked chain reactions that eat our lunch…
This, folks, is why we need to learn to make better use of our time, especially when we feel any discomfort or disharmony…If we heed the little signs, we can do a little shoveling as we go and the messes won’t build up. The problem is we wait—often through one incarnation after another—before we look at ourselves in truth…If we work it right, we will reach our potential, and in that case, the limitation of time won’t be a hardship. On the other hand, a person who has a potential to grow but doesn’t use it, will be a more troubled soul than someone who exerts less effort but is working closer to their given potential…
We can look at any unwelcome emotion as a result of not using our time wisely in getting to the bottom of inner conflicts and confusions. These include boredom and apathy, frustration and tension, anxiety and hostility, impatience and nervousness, listlessness and depression…Any negative emotion essentially conflicts with the limited fragment of time we have. Conversely, feelings that are positive, constructive and realistic don’t conflict with time because we’re using time the way it’s supposed to be used…
Our vague awareness that time is limited creates a special tension in us. Therefore we strain against time like a dog pulls on a leash; it holds us in its grip and we feel strangled by it…We can face tensions and conflicts head on and find freedom, or we can live with the tension and conflicts created by our avoidance—our improper use of our time—and stay stuck. Our choice…
Experiencing everything, then, and not straining away is the way to automatically flow into the next time-dimension…We think we must first free ourselves of our problems before we can live in some faraway spiritual land of the Now. It doesn’t work that way…We are mistaken when we believe that living in the Now means we live in a state of bliss and beauty. We want blissfulness when in fact unblissfulness is still in us, but we don’t want to acknowledge it…
This doesn’t require some special time-travelling ability, we just need to learn to be present with what we think, feel and experience now. We can start by admitting that we don’t want to face our current unpleasantness, if that is what is present in the moment. Just be fully with that…This is the doorway to becoming spiritually evolved. No special gifts or stunts are required…
If self-confrontation does not, in the end, lead to an uplifting experience, we are not yet at the end…Why does it happen that after a painful or unflattering awareness—provided we go all the way to its depths and don’t stop halfway—we experience such a state of aliveness and harmony? It’s because in that moment, we have fully used the fragment of time at our disposal.
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Read Original Pathwork® Lecture: #112 Humanity’s Relationship to Time
