While turning my compost heap a few days ago I was struck by a spontaneous flow of thoughts:
What if time goes faster because we go faster and not the other way around? What if we are not the ones living in the river of time but it is time which lives in us?
And what about space? What if we weren't the ones living in the dimension of space but it was space living in us?
Watching myself following these thoughts with my usual explorer's curiosity, I dug into the compost with more enthusiasm than usual, as if my interior adventure had just freed up more energy for the work I was doing. These subtle shifts in my physicality are often clues, like Hansel's and Gretel's pebbles, pointing to a trail into the unknown waiting to be discovered. And so, on I went into my thoughts, happily plunging the garden fork into the compost heap once again.
If space and time lived in me,..... if I am the container of space and time, then if I slowed down, would time slow down too? And by expanding myself as a container of space, would space expand as well?
The turning of the compost come to an end, the dog's droppings were next, soon to be followed by some detective work in my vegetable garden, where a cutworm had made its way through a few lettuce heads like a well primed guillotine.
As I did so, a very unsympathetic inner commentator pontificated that my reflections made no logical sense and lacked the academic prowess of a rigorous scientific discourse on time and space.
'I know, you are right,' I quickly replied and off I ran after my flow of thoughts, like Alice chasing the white rabbit.
What if time was living in me and not me living within time?
What if space was living in me and not me living within space?
What if time and space were living in me and not me living within them?
The rhythm of a chant settled in the lower part of my rib cage.
Something made perfect sense.
Not even the puzzled look of disapproval from the inner jeering crowd, gathered next to the commentator disturbed me. It all slid off my back, almost unnoticed.
A grin beamed across my heart and my belly, while my breath settled in a place of rest and relieved exhale. I felt as if I had reached a shore of truth.
How beautiful it is to know what's true... To touch this truth.... that time can slow down if I slow down?
How comforting and nourishing it is to experience that I am neither servant nor slave to time, nor space, but rather, that time and space are here to serve me and support me.
And perhaps, if living from this place of plenty, this place where both Being and Doing can radiate from the experience of the abundance of time and space, then I, then we, can breathe more fully into slowing the pace of our days. I, and all of us, can begin to let time and space seep into our cells and in our bones; we can open ourselves to see that it is not time that mercilessly slips away but it is us who, anxious and afraid to live consciously from a point of complete stillness and surrender, are the ones slipping away from the rhythms of life.
More time comes when we let go of our fear to waste it, lose it or miss it.
We relinquish our grip on time and in turn it releases us into a state and a space like no other.
We feel like we are suspended in what I can only describe as a time/no-time and in a space/no space.
For me this is the presence of eternity..... and here nothing else matters.
We can be held here.
We can take in oxygen here and deep, regenerating rest.
We can witness our fears, our anxieties and all our internal chatters, arguments, debates and agitations slowly dissolve.
Not because they have been analyzed and understood.
Not because they have been fixed.
Not because they have been dismantled and disposed of.
No. They dissolve because, having been accepted to sit around the 'table of plenty' - plenty of time and plenty of space - they, the many parts and the many conversations which make up our humanity in all its lights and shadows - they know that their work of guiding us into the stillness, the silence, the eternity of no time and the endless vastness of limitless space, has been accomplished and they can too, now, enter their 'holy' rest.
What if
time
and space
existed
to serve
and support
ALL OF US?