Time on your side

As a drummer I am kinda obsessed with time keeping. 183 beats per minute with a slight drag. Threes in fours. Swinging fives in straight eights. All that jazz. And when you are really in the middle of stuff like that something strange happens: time actually almost comes to a standstill.

That becomes extra funny when you are counting/focusing on the gaps rather than the notes (like many good drummers do). And it becomes really interesting when on top of experiencing all that you are also a meditator. Because if you truly are in the present moment, by default time stops completely. 'Just now' is just gone and 'in a split second' is still a split second away.

When I meditate, though, I still get swept away by thoughts about tomorrow or yesterday or even some event in imaginary time. (If you want to read about time and mass and energy and imaginary time I can wholeheartedly recommend 'The Hole in the Universe: how scientists peered over the edge of emptiness and found everything' by the way).

Anyway: I keep on having to pull myself back into the now. One reason why is of course that I'm as scatterbrained as the next guy. That takes time to fix. But the other reason why I kept thinking stray thoughts like 'are we done yet' or 'I hope I still have 20 minutes' was actually very easy to fix: I got rid of my meditation timer.

Sure, if I really have limited time I still set my mindful clock. But lately all my evening meditations have been untimed, timeless and because of that very tranquil. It didn't make any sense before to wonder what time it was or how many minutes were left. But now that you're not waiting for a bell to ring it becomes utterly rediculous and is not on your mind at all.

I can recommend it to enyone. Just sit how long you sit. And especially don't try to sit longer that ever. If it turns out to be 11 minutes: so be it. And if it's one hour: just as good.