Nick's Laws of Inverse Logic Number Two | Beautiful Summer Morning

Nick’s Laws of Inverse Logic Number Two.

A Tree Stands Still in Time: Courtesy of Pauline DeForest

Nick’s Laws of Inverse Logic
Law #2
The amount of time you have is reduced in direct proportion to your need for it.
Or: Trees live so long because they live very slowly.

A lie inhabits the very core of time. The hourglass is a graphic image of the lie: the grains of sand running through the narrow center appear limited and cannot be slowed down or stopped.

The truth is time is extremely fluid or elastic and can be slowed, speeded up, twisted and yes even stopped.

Unfortunately we are so aware of the ticking clock we allow the tick tock, tick tock, to rule our lives.
There is a simple proof of this elasticity which I think you have all experienced. Think back to a time when you had to go somewhere, a long way away for the first time. Didn’t it seem to take forever to get there? Yet the next time you travel to that place, even when you take the same route at the same time of day, it doesn’t seem to take as long, and it doesn’t seem so far away.

Our present day understanding of quantum physics adds to the view of time as extremely elastic.
All our time management systems are base on a shortage of time and attempt to manage all the competing tasks in some hierarchy that offers you a way to pick the most important tasks. These methods simply manage a scarcity and we all know what the Law of Attraction says about that.

Our modern society exemplifies our manic obsession with time. As our awareness of time grows, with every gadget in our house having an LED digital clock, with time checks on car radios, and car clocks, our scarcity is reinforced almost every second. A quick walk around the house revealed 17 devices that tell time including a coffee maker, microwave oven, cell phone, computers, wrist watch, radio alarms and more. Everywhere we look we see the tick tock man counting down our time.

Conversely in the darkness of the middle ages, man did not know his life by clocks or watches. He lived out his life unsure of the time, the day, the month, the year or even the century. His life revolved around the slow turning of the seasons. He did not have a wall calendar with pretty flowers. He might know his birthday, if there was a village with a church nearby to record his birth. His mother may have died in the year the river last flooded or the bad harvest.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not advocating we revert to the middle ages. Life there was hard and short, at least from our view.

Change did not conflict the man of the middle ages. He could go his entire life with very little change; no new subdivisions, or new roads, or airports. A trip to the village might be a whole day affair that now takes us half an hour by car.

If we can do that, travel around the world in a day, drive a hundred miles in a single hour, enjoy all the machines of modern convenience; washing machines, dryers, food processors, hot running water, why then do we suffer for such a lack of time?

Look at a tree. No literally, go look at a tree. Does it count down the dying seconds of its life? Look at it standing there in stately disinterest; does it measure time in anyway? We do! We count the rings of a tree and come up with a good estimate of its age. But does the tree know? Does it care? A tree is simply there, in the present living in the moment.

The tree doesn’t stand outside of time in our view, but in its view time is simply not an issue.

Listen to what Eckhart Tolle says in his book The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
. In talking about the most precious thing “The Now”, he explains:

“Why is it the most precious thing? Firstly, because it is the only thing. It’s all there is. The eternal present is the space within which your whole life unfolds, the one factor that remains constant. Life is now. …Now is the only point that can take you beyond the limited confines of the mind. It is your only point of access into the timeless and formless realm of being.”

You have the power to step outside of time by living totally in the present, like a tree. A tree does not think about the past or worry about the future, it just is.

So remember, the next time you are chasing after time, going faster and faster so you have time to cram in an evening with your spouse over a quiet dinner where you can linger by the candle light and gaze into each other’s eyes, you are doing just the opposite, reducing the time you have.

Step out of the river of time onto the sandy bank of an island pulsing with the joy of the present moment. Stop your head long rush toward your destiny and be a tree, if only for a little while, if only to gain a little sanity, if only to catch your breath before you wade back into the river.

You deserve more time than you have, but only you have the power to gain it back by recognizing you can step outside of time and stop the whole onward rush with one deep breath.

Think about the tree.

Nick

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