A very wise man recently said to me, “It is only time that makes one feel stressed”.

Have you noticed that whenever you feel worked up or overwhelmed, everything in your body speeds up? Your heart rate increases, breathing becomes more rapid and the body heats up as molecules vibrate more quickly throughout your system. Studies on the aging process show that more stress leads to more rapid aging as the body races to keep up with the demands of life.

As everything cranks up on a physiological level, your mind is also filled with a multitude of thoughts and waves of anxiety may cloud your emotional state. There is a sense of pressure that time is running out. In this state we can easily slip into a kind of “last chance” mentality where it feels like time is racing by.

“I’m X years old and I still haven’t done ABC”
“I’m at X stage of my life and I still haven’t acquired DEF”
“I can’t believe it’s 2012 already”
“I don’t have enough time to…”

Compare this to when you were a child playing on the beach, completely absorbed in what you were doing. You didn’t mind what time it was or how long it took to build that sand castle or how many times you had already thrown the ball. You were like a little time-billionaire, connected to your environment and completely in the moment. You had all the time in the world.

So what happens to us? Why do we lose this innocence and sense of abundance? Why do we speed up? Why do we feel like we are running out of time? Why does time seem so scarce? How do we go from being a time-billionaire to a time-pauper?

When we are born we are born whole. By whole, I mean our sense of unity with the most subtle essence of creation is intact. There are fewer barriers to us recognising our essential nature – our oneness or unity with the field of energy and intelligence that permeates everything. That field of creative intelligence that is transcendental, beyond the gross surface layers of life. Our memory of interconnectedness is more available to us in this state of wholeness.

However over time we learn to engage more and more effectively with the relative environment. Our senses are continually dragged into the ever-changing world of things and experiences and relationships. As a result our senses become strongly identified with the more manifest, more gross layers of life. Our identity is bound up with the transient, passing layers of life. As we grow and mature, our society supports and encourages an identity based on individuality and separation from something deeper and universal. Thus, overtime our connection to, and our memory of, that unified wholeness is weakened. Our essence, our spirit aspect is overshadowed by the more active, manifest layer of life. Quite simply – we forget.

We forget that at our core we are beyond time and space.
We forget we are all one with the underlying field of Being.
We forget who we are at our source.
We forget we are an expression of infinite energy, intelligence and time.

Naturally we feel this loss. The most fundamental knowledge of who we are has been hidden, resulting in feelings of lack and scarcity. Time, in particular, becomes a commodity – something that we can sense is being consumed, like every other aspect of relative existence.

A stress reaction is a peak moment of disconnection from wholeness. And so it is not surprising that in these moments we feel more acutely the lack of abundance, the sense that we are under pressure and that this is our last chance.

When we meditate we are restoring memory of our essence. Each time we close the eyes we step beyond the relative and recognise the Absolute aspect of transcendental consciousness at our core. We restore our sense of identity by coming back to Being. The direct experience of the infinite twice a day leads to direct knowledge of abundance and creativity. We become calmer, more stable, more balanced, more confident, more self-assured in this knowledge of who we are. By knowing both aspects of life – Absolute and Relative – we come back to wholeness. We can then directly feel the source of all abundance and fulfilment in life. We then know we have all the time in the world.