Who owns our (life)time?

Photo: Barbie Robinson

“I do not have time to practice!” How many times have we said that? And this erosion of our days and time becomes more intense when it is a body-led tradition that invites you to recognise your desire/yearning to dance/move rather than follow a “spiritual” routine that is mind-led.

Yesterday at the discussion forum we have as part of my courses, we reflected on this behavior we all manifest—outsourcing our time to external demands. Most of the time we feel we have no choice—we “need” to prioritise everything else above our own yearning. Our minds present us with the all or nothing duality which is characteristic of mental consciousness—either we do what we “need” to do externally or we have to run away from life itself. This of course is an intractable situation which is ultimately not a choice at all. And so we indulge in short escape stints—a retreat, a weekend intensive, a routine process of time out in some practice.

What if a spiritual practice is not time out but in fact time that is most present, dynamic and pulsating? What if it is in between the “tasks” of our daily life and not separate from these? What if it is attending to the hidden sensation patterns behind all the mechanical activities with which we fill our days?

This attending is not “mindfulness” but a recognition of the eternal presence of movement and flow even in the most mundane of our activities. It is when life is a dance and it is drenched in sensation. We are not “witnessing” life, but we are life that throbs with colour, scent, touch, sound and taste.

This perception is entirely one of sensation, our own sensation, and not a technique or a process that is a roadmap which we follow. It emerges when we can move into “Yagna”, the state of being of intense and passionate presence where we bring time, sensation and movement back into our own bodies. In other words we are not enslaved by outsourcing all these to external agencies and feeling that we are simply automatons following somebody’s directions.

I have heard from people in my programs how they have been looking for changes externally to make them feel hopeful and how even when the changes appear to happen the despair does not leave them. I feel this is because in these times our bodies know at some deep level that external transformation is not the paradigm shifting movement—that radical and uprooting movement is completely intimate and body-led. We can move into this without waiting for anyone to give us permission. And it permeates our intimate and cosmic existence and enlivens it, brings agency back to our own bodies, and unconditional sensation that is beyond the dualities of sorrow and joy.

Over centuries we have accepted that the brutality of routine is the only way to manifest the divine. The ancient invitation in body-led and artistic traditions was to attend to the calling of our yearning for beauty, movement and expression, whenever and wherever we feel its whisper within us. It may be two minutes of moving to birdsong on a walk, dancing in the shower when the water cascades down our bodies, or finding a corner in the office to allow a movement to flower quietly.

We are invited to free ourselves from timetables and hear the pulsation of our desire that always calls us quietly from the depths of our bodies—what makes us human is when we can reclaim our time and our lifetimes to its divinity.