Time and Rhythm

What is time? We wake up at a certain time in the morning, we get dressed, go to work and need to be there at a certain time. We're expected to put in a certain amount of hours to get paid our salary. We get given a certain amount of time to rest, to eat and for some of us time is directly proportional to money. I can't help thinking that we are slaves to this thing called time, this clock that we have created to keep the machine moving.

The problem with time is that it is uniform and it is one measure applied to all people. Nature doesn't have time. Nature has rhythm. There is a difference. Nature is full of rhythm, different rhythms that move in and out of one another. The moon revolves around the earth, the earth around the sun. The tide comes in and it goes out. It's predictable, but not slave to one beat, second after second, minute after minute.

As human beings we try to live outside of nature. We have our houses that protect us from the wind and rain. We have shoes on our feet that protect our feet from the earth. When we sit down we very rarely sit in the sand or on the grass. We nearly always put something between us and the earth.

But our rhythm betrays us. The rhythm we naturally experience reminds us that we are children of the earth. Our heart doesn't beat in time with the clock that we have created. Our breath has it's own rhythm - and responds to our needs, which also vary according to the rhythm of our body.

Sometimes we can be so caught up in the ticking of the clock and the mechanisation of our daily lives that we forget how to see and feel who we really are. We think that our day-to-day life by the clock is real, but it is just an illusion, something we created to help us, but by which we are now enslaved.

Perhaps part of letting go is letting go of time, and finding the rhythm of the earth once again. Dying to that which is already dead and opening our eyes to who we really are.