We tend to spend a lot of time on the idea of ‘time’, yet when we look for it, just as when we look for an individual self, it can’t be found.

Where’s the past or future other than a thought? Can we follow a thought to some location? Has time travel been invented? Time is a practical tool, but when it’s used as a vehicle towards something like spiritual advancement, e.g., ‘Just a few more years of intense meditation and I’ll be enlightened,’ watch out. You’ll never get there. The progressive path never ends.

We can’t go anywhere in time because there is only this. Ever-present this. But just for fun, let’s name some of the ways we use time (might not be enough time to list them all):

All in due time

All time high

All time low

Big time

For the time being

From time to time

Give it time

High time

In the mean time

In the nick of time

Long time

Lost time

Make time

Marking time

Not enough time

No time to lose

On time

One time!

Out of time

Play time!

Plenty of time

Running out of time

Saving time

Short on time

Small time

Time!

Time after time

Time bound

Time flies

Time heals

Time in

Time is dragging

Time is money

Time is not on our side

Time is on our side

Time off

Time out

Time passes

Time’s up!

But to discover that you are not an individual self is well worth the time, which, you’ll be surprised to find, takes no time at all.

Why would we want to discover that we’re not an individual self? Its absence reveals our unnamable, invisible source as an open, loving, limitless field of knowing. And being limitless there can be only one – no separation between any thing. All is embraced in the all-embracing all.

How does one discover that they are not an individual self? Take the time and look for what you are not. You will experience your body-mind as an unending parade of short-lived thoughts, sensations, and perceptions, none of which can be considered the real you. The real you is that which is ever-present and unchanging. That which experiences, yet cannot be experienced.

We say that there is no time like the present.

But experience says that there is no time, only presence.

We are not that which comes and goes. We are that which knows the coming and going of all things. We are that in which all things arise and with which all things are made.

And who is it that knows this?

The Timeless One.