The days are bleeding triage-style. The weeks (yes, plural) are gushing into one another and there seems to be no clotting; as of yet. I greeted a friend last week (social distancing method, ie: texting), by saying ‘Happy Tuesday!’ When indeed it was no longer Tuesday, but Wednesday. We are in need of habits, patterns, and normalcy to right ourselves. Get back on to the physical plane of measuring time in our stress-filled ways: minutes, hours, lunch time, selfcare day, annual family excursion, weekend escape, etc.
Or do we? Yoga tells us something a little different. The never ending cycle of lives for one. Why get stressed over time because we have nowhere to be but where we are now. Our actions lead to reactions, death is but a reaction to life in transformation to build another. But reincarnation is another topic, though contextually useful in my yogic opinion.
The sequence means an uninterrupted succession of moments which can be recognized at the end of their transformation.
Sutra IV.33
I listened to a podcast yesterday (On Being, episode: All Reality is Interaction) and the guest discusses how we as humans measure time in the familiar units I listed earlier in this ramble, but we feel time through our experiences. We experience time different than we measure. Seemingly obvious, but it’s interesting that what we measure doesn’t capture much of the meaning. The passing of time out rank the impacts. Why isn’t there a unit of measure that registers how we value and feel time since this is how we appreciate it?
Yoga is tells us to keeping moving through the cycle(s). While practicing under the shifting sun beams that will become moon beams, we practice our asanas by bend and blending our bodies with the actions and reactions of living. These actions transform to interactions with others and with ourselves forming this elusive non-physical entity we call time. Something we cannot hold, but that somehow holds this existence.
‘Hi, My name is <insert name here> I have physically lived for 32 years on this planet and I’ve authentically lived during 987 profound experiences with my physicality.’
Still needs some work. But maybe you get the idea. That units of measure do not correlate to the living we do. Nor does the living we do correlate to the units of measure we quantify. Seems we’ve been using a stop-gap. From the here and now (or then or will be) where I stand, there seems to be room for improvement .
roadside yogi 