I Give You My Time Beloved

 

Beloved. I wonder if you, like me, find that relating to time puts you instantly in a straight jacket. Deadlines, appointment times, schedules – relating to these can put me instantly in a more contracted state. I know this contracted state to be what Joe Dispenza calls The Habit of Being Myself. In other words, my relationship with time tends to get me identified with a familiar, habitual sense of myself.

 

Picture the scenario. A bird comes along and with the tilt of a head, the flap of a wing and the most delightful song, totally captures my attention. The rest of the world disappears; it is just the bird and me in this eternal moment of now. And then my alarm goes off. In shock and a flurry, I rush off to see what appointment I may have missed. My heart beats faster, my muscles contract and I get this familiar feeling coming over me: Oh yes, I am a somebody with a name and a life to keep together. A moment ago, the bird and I were one, and there was no time, just the delight of now.

 

Sounds familiar?

 

Upon one such a moment in the last couple of weeks, I fell into a deep contemplation of my relationship with time. A prayerful contemplation. And from this contemplation arose a prayer that radically changed things for me. The prayer goes like this: Beloved, I give you my time.

 

The moment I said this prayer, I felt a visceral relief, as if the whole construct of time rolled off my body like old clothes. As I repeated this prayer to the Divine within me, a very clear response came from within – a response that directed me into right alignment with time. I knew how to move in time now, because I was guided by this inner knowing. But time was no longer ‘mine’ to manage or to have – so the burden disappeared.

 

I started to repeat this prayer often. Beloved, I give you my time. I would feel the tug of the parts of me that want to own and control time, but they would soften and let go at the knowing of the relief that would follow. And almost miraculously, time started to move itself around in my life. Appointments fell away and shifted into different shapes. Time-bound activities such as tasks to complete started to do the same as the bird for me – they would take me into that timeless place of present. I discovered that the more I slow down, savor the moment and relish it, the more time I seemed to have.

 

The next step was to say this prayer about any area of my life that created contraction.

 

I give you my plans, Beloved.

I give you my relationship, Beloved.

I give you my money, Beloved.

I give you my body, Beloved.

I give you my health, Beloved.

 

The same thing would happen. When I pray: I give you my plans, Beloved – I suddenly notice how I’ve held ‘my plans’ in a way that created tension and separation. In giving them to God, the responsibility would drop, and I’d find myself in a deep enjoyment of God’s plans for me.

 

How much of our lives do we spend ignoring the vertical axis of relating – what Martin Buber calls the I-Though relationship? We do so at a cost to ourselves. Returning to the love affair with the Beloved with a capital “B” is returning home in the most real sense of the word.