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By Root 1025 0

we have to look into relationships. When you meet someone you know well—let’s say your best friend—what happens? The two of you perhaps meet at a restaurant to catch up, and your talk is full of old, familiar things, which feels reassuring. But you also want to say something new, or the relationship would be static and boring. You know each other extremely well already, which is part of being best friends, yet at the same time you aren’t totally predictable to one another—the future will unfold new events, some happy, some sad. Ten years from now one of you could be dead or divorced or turned into a stranger.

This intersection of the new and the old, the known and the unknown, is the essence of all relationships, including the ones you have with time, the universe, and yourself. Ultimately, you are having only a single relationship. As you evolve, so does the universe, and the intersection of the two of you is time. There is only one relationship because there is only one reality. It’s been a while since I referred to the four paths of Yoga, but each one is actually a flavor of relationship:

• The path of knowledge (Gyana Yoga) has a flavor of mystery. You sense the inexplicability of life. You experience the wonder inside every experience.

• The path of devotion (Bhakti Yoga) has the flavor of love. You experience the sweetness inside every experience.

• The path of action (Karma Yoga) has the flavor of selflessness. You experience the connectedness of every experience.

• The path of meditation and inner silence (Raj Yoga) has the flavor of stillness. You experience the being inside every experience.

Time exists so that you can experience these flavors as deeply as possible. On the path of devotion, if you can experience even a glimmer of love, it’s possible to experience a little more love. When you experience that little more, then the next degree of intensity is possible. Thus, love engenders love until you reach the point of saturation, when you totally merge into divine love. This is what the mystics mean when they say that they plunge into the ocean of love to drown themselves.

Time unfolds the degrees of experience until you reach the ocean. Pick any quality that holds charm for you, and if you follow it far enough, with commitment and passion, you will merge with the absolute. For at the end of the path, each quality disappears, swallowed up by Being. Time isn’t an arrow or a clock or a river; it’s actually a fluctuation in the flavors of Being. Theoretically, nature could have been organized without a progression from less to more. You could experience love or mystery or selflessness at random. However, reality wasn’t set up that way, at least not as experienced through a human nervous system. We experience life as evolving. Relationships grow from the first hint of attraction to deep intimacy. (Love at first sight takes the same journey but in a matter of minutes instead of weeks and months.) Your relationship to the universe follows the same course—if you let it. Time is meant to be the vehicle for evolution, but if you misuse time, it becomes a source of fear and anxiety.

THE MISUSE OF TIME

Being anxious about the future

Reliving the past

Regretting old mistakes

Reliving yesterday

Anticipating tomorrow

Racing against the clock

Brooding over impermanence

Resisting change

When you misuse time, the problem isn’t at the level of time itself. Nothing has gone wrong with the clocks in the house of someone who loses five hours’ sleep worrying about the possibility of dying from cancer. The misuse of time is only a symptom for misplaced attention. You can’t have a relationship with someone you don’t pay attention to, and in your relationship to the universe, attention is paid here and now, or not at all. In fact, there is no universe except the one you perceive right now. So to relate to the universe, you must focus on what lies in front of you. As one spiritual teacher said, “The wholeness of creation is needed to bring about the present moment.”

If you take this to heart, your attention