Time is the essence of life.
It is all that really belongs to us.
Sometimes it moves fast.
Sometimes it moves slow.
And sometimes, on that rare occasion, it appears to stand still.
It is in these moments that we are able to clearly see
the things we value most in the world.
For many of us living today, experiencing time in this way
is something that happens by sheer luck.
Everyone has the same 24 hours in a day,
but the pressures of modern life,
imposed by artificial deadlines and strict schedules,
create the sensation of a scarcity of time.
It feels like time is not our own.
Since the Industrial Revolution,
our lives have been structured by mechanical clocks
that divide the day into artificial units of hours, minutes, and seconds
that have no relationship to the natural rhythms of the Earth.
They tell us when to wake up,
when to go to work,
when to eat,
when we get to go home,
and when we get to sleep.
Mechanical clocks changed the way we experience time
to fit the needs of a factory-like model of the world
and in doing so, they also changed us.
Gone is the reverence we once had for the mystery of life,
replaced by an unnatural obligation and duty
to make the world-devouring time machine go ever faster and more efficient.
Humans have not always lived this way.
Before mechanical clocks were invented,
we thought of time in terms of naturally repeating cycles of activity:
night and day,
the tides,
the phases of the moon,
the four seasons and the agricultural cycle,
life and death.
Our lives were inseparable from the living Earth,
the biorhythms of the seasons,
and the life cycles of crops and animals.
All around the world people celebrated the equinoxes and solstices
with festivals that brought communities together
in joy and celebration,
song and dance,
laughter and love,
to share the abundance that resulted
from their harmonious connection to Mother Earth.
We felt a deep connection to plants and animals
and all of life that extended out to the stars.
Our modern way of life has brought us incredible scientific achievements,
but it has also cost us dearly.
We’ve lost touch with the natural ways of knowing time
and the deep reverence for the living Earth that came with it,
fueling not only the many environmental crises
but also the ever present anxiety and depression
that has become all too normal in our society.
We are rushed to do everything in life,
and it is the tick, tick, tick, of the mechanical clock
that creates this constant pressure.
But it’s not too late to make a change.
While we will likely never abandon the mechanical clock,
we can begin to reorient ourselves
back to the natural cycles of time that sustained us for millennia.
Our bodies are designed to thrive on balance, predictability and rhythm.
Inside our bodies, time is measured in biorhythms:
our heart beat, breath, and various endocrine cycles.
Learning about the relationship between personal and planetary biorhythms
can bring back to disconnected and distraught individuals
a new, deeper, yet also intensely more personal sense of order, meaning and beauty.
We need to restore the Earth,
the Earth’s biorhythms
and biosphere,
back to the center of our collective attention and awareness.
When we do, those timeless moments
that we only seem to experience by luck
will become a regular part of our daily existence.
To heal humanity and our world, we must restore The Essence of Time.