I remember when I reached my thirties having a sense of urgency that it was now or never if I wanted to have children. There was a distinct sense that ‘time was running out’ and as the years ticked by the pressure of the burning question increased. My husband obviously felt the pressure of my need and was not open to having a child. |
At the time we were travelling through Thailand and I had been making daily visits to a Buddhist monastery that was set in the forest in Chiengmai. I had so many questions which I asked the monks and they eventually offered me a little wooden hut to stay in and I lived like a nun for 3 months with monthly visits to Laos to renew my Visa. My husband and I had agreed to go our separate ways.
I was deeply inspired by a beautiful connection with one of the nuns. I asked her if she ever wanted to have children and she replied that she no longer felt the need to do so as she had been a mother many lifetimes before. When she said that I felt a release of pressure in my body as I reconnected with a deep knowing of the cycles of life. The burning question disappeared and I felt a sense of settlement.
It was a healing as I gave up trying to decide and my husband and I got back together on a new footing. One day he said ‘out of the blue’ that he was ready to have a child. We made love beautifully that evening and I knew I had conceived. It felt like that child had been waiting in the incarnation queue for quite some time and dived in once we said yes.
As we get older, we often have a sense of time ‘running out’. The ‘Bucket List’ is people’s attempt to fit in things before they pass over that they’ve always wanted to do. It’s as if they want to cram everything in to this one life and people often hang on to life well after their ‘Use By’ date in order to prolong the line of existence.
What does it mean for us to believe that time ‘runs out’?
Such behaviour suggests that we think there is a finite line that comes to an end at some point – like the deadline that has a beginning and an end. We say things like “It’s high time you learnt to do such and such”. “I haven’t got time to do such and such” usually means “I don’t want to do it therefore I won’t put emphasis on it as part of my purpose.”
It also suggests that there is some goal to be attained that will somehow bring a sense of having done something worthwhile or produced something that we want.
Yet if we see life as cycles there are no straight lines. Even when we build straight roads, they follow the curve of the earth. We are constantly being reminded of the cycle of life. We watch the sun come up in the morning and go down at night, a constant reminder of the daily cycle. We watch the moon wax and wane and the plants grow from seed they have dropped on the earth. There is a Mexican Proverb which says: “They tried to bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds”.
So how then can time ‘run out’?
The old clock face is now largely being replaced by the digital face. The clock hands go round and round reminding us that each day is the same day repeating. This is not so obvious with the digital face as the numbers increase with each minute even though they do eventually come back to 00 at midnight and begin again.
Time ticks away and when we get caught in the belief that time is ‘running out’ we change our movements to fit. Such sayings as ‘Time flies’ ‘Time waits for no-one’, make us believe we have lost time and have to rush to catch up, or we regret the loss of time which often means that we have procrastinated.
Yet do you remember those days when we feel the spaciousness and are in the flow and everything seems to unfold beautifully in perfect synchronicity? When you phone someone you’ve been trying to get in touch with and they are there, you bump into someone who offers you something you needed to hear, when things seem to complete without effort and you are fully aligned to purpose. There is a natural sense of fulfilment and settlement rather than that ‘normal’ sense of achievement at having ticked off the ‘To Do’ list.
Have you ever stopped to wonder why time can sometimes drag on, other times it flies by and other times it seems to not even exist?
As William Shakespeare said:
‘Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear,
Too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice,
But for those who love, time is eternity.’
Is Time really running out?
Sandra N. Australia
If you enjoyed this article you may also like to read:
We Live in Cycles
I was deeply inspired by a beautiful connection with one of the nuns. I asked her if she ever wanted to have children and she replied that she no longer felt the need to do so as she had been a mother many lifetimes before. When she said that I felt a release of pressure in my body as I reconnected with a deep knowing of the cycles of life. The burning question disappeared and I felt a sense of settlement.
It was a healing as I gave up trying to decide and my husband and I got back together on a new footing. One day he said ‘out of the blue’ that he was ready to have a child. We made love beautifully that evening and I knew I had conceived. It felt like that child had been waiting in the incarnation queue for quite some time and dived in once we said yes.
As we get older, we often have a sense of time ‘running out’. The ‘Bucket List’ is people’s attempt to fit in things before they pass over that they’ve always wanted to do. It’s as if they want to cram everything in to this one life and people often hang on to life well after their ‘Use By’ date in order to prolong the line of existence.
What does it mean for us to believe that time ‘runs out’?
Such behaviour suggests that we think there is a finite line that comes to an end at some point – like the deadline that has a beginning and an end. We say things like “It’s high time you learnt to do such and such”. “I haven’t got time to do such and such” usually means “I don’t want to do it therefore I won’t put emphasis on it as part of my purpose.”
It also suggests that there is some goal to be attained that will somehow bring a sense of having done something worthwhile or produced something that we want.
Yet if we see life as cycles there are no straight lines. Even when we build straight roads, they follow the curve of the earth. We are constantly being reminded of the cycle of life. We watch the sun come up in the morning and go down at night, a constant reminder of the daily cycle. We watch the moon wax and wane and the plants grow from seed they have dropped on the earth. There is a Mexican Proverb which says: “They tried to bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds”.
So how then can time ‘run out’?
The old clock face is now largely being replaced by the digital face. The clock hands go round and round reminding us that each day is the same day repeating. This is not so obvious with the digital face as the numbers increase with each minute even though they do eventually come back to 00 at midnight and begin again.
Time ticks away and when we get caught in the belief that time is ‘running out’ we change our movements to fit. Such sayings as ‘Time flies’ ‘Time waits for no-one’, make us believe we have lost time and have to rush to catch up, or we regret the loss of time which often means that we have procrastinated.
Yet do you remember those days when we feel the spaciousness and are in the flow and everything seems to unfold beautifully in perfect synchronicity? When you phone someone you’ve been trying to get in touch with and they are there, you bump into someone who offers you something you needed to hear, when things seem to complete without effort and you are fully aligned to purpose. There is a natural sense of fulfilment and settlement rather than that ‘normal’ sense of achievement at having ticked off the ‘To Do’ list.
Have you ever stopped to wonder why time can sometimes drag on, other times it flies by and other times it seems to not even exist?
As William Shakespeare said:
‘Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear,
Too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice,
But for those who love, time is eternity.’
Is Time really running out?
Sandra N. Australia
If you enjoyed this article you may also like to read:
We Live in Cycles