“You can’t save time, you can only spend it. But you can spend it wisely or foolishly.” – The Tao of Pooh
Pooh Bear’s reminder for us today is that in every moment we are spending the precious resource called time. We mostly spend it unconsciously, not weighing up whether we’re spending it wisely or wasting it away, so for today’s meditation I want to draw your attention to being present by looking at being present in two ways:
Being present – now:
Being present in this moment requires me to let go of my idea of “what this moment should have been”. Subconsciously we always form an expectation of what we’d like a moment to be, this is not “wrong” it’s just what a brain does but if I don’t catch myself I’ll end up spending all my energy on an idea that has followed me from the past, leaving me without energy to deal effectively with the present.
“Things just happen in the right way, at the right time. At least when you let them, when you work with circumstances instead of saying, ‘This isn’t supposed to be happening this way,’ and trying harder to make it happen some other way.” – The Tao of Pooh
Remind yourself, to ask yourself, in as many present moments as you can remember to do this:
- “What does this moment require of me?”
- “What does this moment ask me to step up and do?”
- “What does this moment make available to me?”
Being present – over time:
I’m looking over the span of my lifetime (so far), and I’m asking myself, “what do I spend most of my time doing?”
We are always chasing goals – and goals are not bad – but we have to realize that our goals are what dictates how we spend our time, and by the end of our lives we’ll have a small collection of goals reached, but we will have spent an inordinate amount of time in the process of chasing those goals. This process shapes us! Who are you becoming in your process?
How we spend our time is who we become and at the end of our lives we will have become the sum total of the processes we were involved in.
“The Christmas presents once opened are Not So Much Fun as they were while we were in the process of examining, lifting, shaking, thinking about, and opening them. Three hundred sixty-five days later, we try again and find that the same thing has happened. Each time the goal is reached, it becomes ‘Not So Much Fun’, and we’re off to reach the next one, then the next one, then the next.
That doesn’t mean that the goals we have don’t count. They do, mostly because they cause us to go through the process and it’s the process that makes us wise, happy, or whatever. If we do things in the wrong sort of way, it makes us miserable, angry, confused, and things like that. The goal has to be right for us, and it has to be beneficial, in order to ensure a beneficial process. But aside from that, it’s really the process that’s important.” – The Tao of Pooh
“The honey doesn’t taste so good once it is being eaten; the goal doesn’t mean so much once it is reached; the reward is not so rewarding once it has been given. If we add up all the rewards in our lives, we won’t have very much. But if we add up the spaces *between* the rewards, we’ll come up with quite a bit. And if we add up the rewards *and* the spaces, then we’ll have everything – every minute of the time that we spent.” – The Tao of Pooh
Look at the process you’re involved in and ask yourself:
- Am I present in this process, or am I on autopilot?
- What kind of a person is this process creating, am I growing or breaking?
- If I don’t reach my goals in the ways I thought I would, will I be happy with who this process made me?
Whatever moment I find myself in, I’ll either be foolishly wasting my units of time being in resistance to what this moment is, or I’ll be spending it wisely in the process of creating the human that I am happy to be.
Wishing you a sense of presence in your life.
– pierre –
Today’s LIVE meditation is: The power of NOW.
(credit: https://www.benjaminhoffauthor.com/ )