Are you going nowhere…mighty fast? Do you find yourself waking up from a night’s sleep with your mind racing over what needs to be done? Do you find yourself showering and brushing your teeth as if you are privy to the imminent end of the world and need to look your best? Do you rush to appointments, eat on your feet and have a cell phone permanently attached to your ear?
Slow down! Don’t rush! You’re caught in a web of ambition and desire and don’t realize it. You don’t need to be in a hurry to accomplish your tasks. Besides, what do you think is happening to the quality of your life? How many bodies lie in the grave mourned over by souls who only now see their folly?
Being in a hurry is an indicator of a deeper dynamic. First of all, it shows that you have left the present and entered the future. And what is the future? A figment of your imagination! Only the present can be verified as real, the past and the future only exist in your mind.
Let’s take a typical scenario, suppose you are getting your two young daughters ready for school in the morning. You awaken at the usual hour, in plenty of time to prepare their lunch and fix their breakfast only this time Uncle Bob calls and before you know it, you are behind schedule. The girls will be late. What do you do? You kick yourself into high gear and begin rushing both you and the girls. Instead of that nice warm oatmeal breakfast with maple syrup and lots of melted butter they now get a half a slice of toast to eat on the drive to school. Worse, you are now yelling at them to “Hurry! We’re going to be late!” and off you go, moving like a roadrunner down a deserted road. Patterns are being reinforced and set and you don’t even realize it.
Try this experiment: the next time you feel rushed, pressed for time, in a hurry or panicked because you think you will be late, stop, take a deep breath and slow down. Then proceed one-pointedly and appropriately but do not hurry. Then watch. Watch what happens. A miracle. What you thought was going to be a late arrival becomes a non-issue. The client you thought was waiting for you is herself 15 minutes late. The “last chance” item you wanted to purchase is not only still there at the store but now there are 5 more. Or, as so often happens, you are not even late in the first place – you arrive perfectly on time.
At the root of this sense of needing to hurry are desire, ambition and fear. You want something or you fear something. It is always the same. Desire and fear take us out of the certain present and deposit us in the uncertain future. But miracles happen in the present for that is the only place change can take place. Change does not happen either in the past or the future; change is the result of the creative force of the universe expanding and contracting in each moment. By taking yourself out of the present, you take yourself out of the very medium by which you can affect change in your life. Desire and fear are the obstacles to achieving what you want in life.
One of the more insidious aspects of hurrying is the pattern it lays. I remember once, while taking a morning shower, realizing I had been washing my hair and scrubbing my body like a madman. As they say “Where’s the fire?” I caught myself that morning and examined my inner stance. I had no appointment, no deadline to meet. But there I was, taking my shower as if I had a drill instructor waiting outside. I saw that being in a hurry had become the routine to the point where I was in a hurry even when I wasn’t hurried. I had become addicted to thinking about my next task and what I would do next rather than what I was doing at the moment. This was a very stressful and unproductive way to live.
I looked at other areas of my life and realized that I was hurrying throughout the day and, again, without any reason to hurry. Eating fast, walking fast, driving fast – I was going nowhere mighty fast. Hurrying had become more than a habit; it had become my way of life.
So, I took a deep breath and slowed down. I practiced keeping my mind in the present and did not let it wander off into the mythical future. And when it did, I gently reeled it back in. Now, my pace is natural – not too fast and not too slow. I accomplish my tasks without undo stress and at the same time my productivity has increased many fold. Interesting how that works, isn’t it?
Have faith in your Self. You are great and wonderful and you have the power to move mountains. Don’t let desire, ambition and fear block you from your greatest treasure – inner peace. Nothing is so important as to justify that sacrifice.
Om!
