by Gabriele Conrad, Goonellabah NSW Australia

I discovered something truly amazing this morning and it has to do with time, this precious and ever more precious commodity in all our lives.

I awoke, checked the clock and realised that I had woken up super early and in accordance to the time zone I had left the previous day to travel to Western Australia. No way was I going to get up at 15 minutes past midnight!

I snuggled back under my doona, rested for a while and then decided to use my two eye pillows. One across my eyes and one on my heart. It felt great and I was just about to relax very deeply when I went, “Wait a minute! I can’t remember putting the eye pillows there!”

I realised that I had gone into automatic pilot – one second the eye pillows had been on my bed, the next second they had somehow landed on my body. Oh yes, they felt great, but I hadn’t consciously been involved placing them there.

Where had that time gone?

It must have existed, surely – even if it was only a couple of split seconds.

And then I realised that during the day and in my daily activities, every time I am not present and involved in what I am doing I am actually squandering time. I negate time by acting like it does not exist whenever I am not present whilst at the same time lamenting the lack of time and how there is never enough of it.

I could feel that by being present I actually create space – and space equals time, whereas I have forever tried to make more time by rushing and squeezing more and more things into my minutes, hours and days.

And thus, lack of time is actually my self-perpetuated illusion and imprisonment, aided and abetted by not being present.

Thanks to Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine for the inspiration that led to the realisation. And thanks to Featherlight for their amazing eye pillows!