By Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar┃Posted: September 12, 2018

Time is one of the great mysteries of life. It’s the best storyteller and there’s no witness like time.

It’s an objective truth in the outside world, running uniformly for everyone, but depending on one’s state of mind, it can fly or drag on. Time is the distance between two happenings.

Time, events, the mind, logic, and liberation

At one level, everything is changing every moment and at another, nothing really changes. Linear logic dictates that only one of these two contradicting views must hold true, but the reality is that they’re both undeniably true.

There’s a very intricate connection between time, the mind and events. Like events, time too impacts the mind. Liberation is freeing the mind from time and events. While you cannot ignore  all that’s happening around you, you can’t afford to get consumed by it, either.

Often, it’s past events and mistakes that occupy the mind, causing pain and regret. Reviewing events in time with the right perspective frees your mind from them and also provides valuable lessons to learn. The new year is a good time to contemplate the events of the past year, learn from them and move on with celebration.

Changing events, unchanging wisdom

When the new year turns, there’s hype about the latest trends and fashion. While fashion changes every year, wisdom never goes out of fashion; qualities like genuineness, depth and sensitivity will always remain trendy.

Wisdom is recognizing the timeless in the unceasing movement of time, the changeless amidst the changing events, and the space of no-mind that pervades all the mindless chatter. This recognition adds a context to everything that you see happening around you, which would otherwise seem to be random. You cannot separate time from an event, but you can separate the mind from both events and time; the way to do that is meditation.

A dance on the edge of a sword

There’s one kind of joy and thrill in getting engrossed in events and activities, and another kind of joy in reposing within one’s self. Life is not complete until you savor both, and this requires one to be totally centered.

Who says spirituality is boring? Spirituality is a dance on the edge of a sword between the opposites of life. If you can comprehend this space where both yes and no can simultaneously be right, a new dimension opens up within, a field of infinite possibilities.

Billions of years have come and gone. Countless events and innumerable people have come and gone and you, who are here now, will also be gone. Wake up! One who is asleep cannot celebrate. Some have said that time does not stop for anyone, but for one who has woken up to eternity, time doesn’t move at all.

I wish you a timeless new year this time