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Time and Timing 1
As timing belongs, centrally, to music - and to humour - so it is also a central aspect of the Heartland – or of Cosmic Harmony.
When I'm in harmony with myself, and with reality (of which I am part), I'm ‘in the rhythm’. I don’t trip over my feet, or wrong-foot other people, I don’t catch them at a bad time, or vice versa. Things just happen, easily – in ways I could never have organised.
When I'm in the flow, I move with time, without effort, carried along in the current of reality. I am not ‘passive’, but alert and responsive - aware, tuned in.
The right thing at the wrong time is not the right thing. It is essential not to push, when we meet resistance.
Timing is not the same as time, and yet it is of time.
Human beings, starting as infants, seem particularly responsive to rhythm, while other beings and creatures (animals and plants) respond to other facets of music (melody, tone, even musical style), but not to rhythm.
song: More of what you want
Timing also accentuates meaning, for us. For example, when apparently unconnected events happen at the same time, this suggests to us that they are mysteriously connected, whether we use words like coincidence, or synchronicity – or even ‘cause and effect’ to describe them.
We human beings notice such things, and attempt to understand them. Scientists call it 'pattern recognition', and ascribe to it huge evolutionary significance. At any rate, it is clear that timing matters to us.
Song: Everything is Momentary
Time and the Organism
The slowness of the journey into the Heartland reflects the slowness of organic growth, of the arc of human life, where each step happens in a given order, and each step merges into the last and into the next in one continuous flow of transformations.
ancient grove on Mull
We in the West are aware that our way of life is speeding up, and has been gradually accelerating for at least three or four hundred years. This industrialising, science, technology and profit-driven process began in post-Reformation Western Europe - a fact the Chinese are noting, and seeking to encourage now in China by allowing Protestant churches in particular to flourish there!
People who’ve been alive for long enough to make comparisons say that there seems to be less and less time – to relax, spend time with their families, be still, do nothing.
the shape of speed
A common complaint I heard in East Germany, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany, was about the loss of the leisurely pace of life (and sense of security and stability) people used to enjoy in the ‘bad’ old days.
The reality of time, to each of us, is our experience of time, more than what clocks and calendars tell us – so in a sense it is true to say that, if we feel our lives are speeding up, and we can’t find time to do things, then time itself is indeed accelerating – at least, for us.
A week, or even better, a month in a different culture – in a rural area of Uganda, say – would restore to us a more spacious, generous sense of time (and of much else).
 slow - slow
The narrowing and collapsing of our days, weeks and months into straight time-lines, two-week and one-week holidays, term dates, and nine to five, Monday to Friday routines, narrows and flattens our lives.
The more open we are, the more new experiences we are absorbing, the more slowly time passes for us. For example, on our way to a new place, the journey seems longer than it does on the way back. The first few days in a new city last for ever, while the last few rush by.
 quick
 quick
 slow
Now – each moment, as it emerges from the last, newborn and again newborn – each present moment is fresh, like fresh air, fresh fish. The present is not stale, is not a rerun. What worked last week, or yesterday, won’t do – it’s how I am, and how I feel* NOW that matters, that makes the difference.
* At this point, I added ‘what I do’ to this sentence, but immediately felt the threatening, fear-arousing heft of that phrase, which is so often used by campaigners (as well as by advertisers) to pressure me into – into what? What I do matters, of course – but what matters more, I believe, is the feel of my actions, and the feel of the thoughts behind them.
How I act is more to the point than what I do. I can be bounced, guilt-tripped or coerced temporarily into ‘good’ behaviour – but what will endure is what feels right.
The feel, the taste of the present is what matters in life, moment to moment. Perhaps it is all that matters. The present bubbles up, like a spring of water, ever afresh. As long as I live, as long as any creature lives, it will always be NOW.
A haiku?
Good writing, and wisdom, reach across centuries to touch us NOW, between this breath, and this next breath.
For our own wellbeing, each of us needs to find ways to feel free of the treadmill fiction that has been imposed on us (starting with school) by our goal-oriented culture.
We need to cultivate our access to ‘timelessness’.
Time is not money – time is space for living in.
Time is the medium through which we organisms experience our world, including one another, and our own awareness. Time is our element.
(for the text, see Songwords, in Miscellaneous)
Please wait a few seconds for the song to begin.
to be continued in issue 2 |
