Time & Interiority

Our time is hungry in spirit. In some unnoticed way we have managed to inflict severe surgery on ourselves. We have separated soul from experience, become utterly taken up with the outside world and allowed the interior life to shrink. Like a stream that disappears underground, there remains on the surface only the slightest trickle. When we devote no time to the inner life, we lose the habit of soul. We become accustomed to keeping things at surface level. The deeper questions about who we are and what we are here for visit us less and less. If we allow time for soul, we will come to sense its dark and luminous depth. If we fail to acquaint ourselves with soul, we will remain strangers in our own lives.

- John O'Donohue, from his book, Beauty: The Invisible Embrace

I am starving for free time; for simple, basic, unstructured and open-ended free time that allows the mind to wander into secret uncharted territories. Our society is too obsessed with keeping busy and doing rather than being. Every minute has to be somehow "productive," as if we are our own mini factories of industriousness. Even after all these years without a television to devour my few free hours, I'm still catching myself being a slave to the clock and judging my use of time. There should be a law against the 40-hour work week. Supposedly the people of the Medieval ages could get by just fine working for 20 hours a week to sustain life. How is it we have become so much more uncivilized today than those people back in the "Dark Ages"?

Silence, daydreaming, and stillness. These things are as vital to me as air and water. If I go along for too many days, whisked away into busyness and socializing and chores, without a chance for my spirit to catch its breath and my mind to find stillness, my inner sense of sanity starts to crumble. I get anxious and frantic, like a trapped animal. It is hard for me to imagine how others can constantly be on the move, or socialize for hours day after day, or find quiet alone-time to be lonely and scary. If I could get away with living as a hermit in some far remote place I think I could do just fine.

Here is a tip from Full Catastrophe Living by Jon Kabat-Zinn:

The essence of mindfulness in daily life is to make every moment you have your own. Even if you are hurrying, which is sometimes necessary, then at least hurry mindfully. Be aware of your breathing, of the need to move fast, and do it with awareness until you don't have to hurry anymore and then let go and relax intentionally. If you find your mind making lists and compelling you to get every last thing on them done, then bring awareness to your body and the mental and physical tension that may be mounting and remind yourself that some of it can probably wait. If you get really close to the edge, stop completely and ask yourself, "Is it worth dying for?" or "Who is running where?"