How do we handle the pressure when an important work deadline appears to be looming? What can we do when we feel there’s not enough time? In this video, Yogacharya O’Brian demonstrates how to change your relationship with time by changing your mind, with light-hearted Self-awareness.
Self-Awareness: Change Your Perception
There is clear evidence that we can think differently about time. In the autumn, the clocks move forward by an hour and we collectively agree to the change. “We change our mind and decide we are going to have an extra hour,” says Yogacharya. “There’s actually the same number of hours in the day but we usually feel we do have more time! It’s a change in perception.”
We make up our minds to feel more expansive.
Beyond simply changing our perception, we can change our mind by changing our state of consciousness. Kriya Yoga shows us how to shift our consciousness into an expansive state through intentional superconscious meditation and lifestyle practices.
In expansive states, we can shift into the timeless, into a state of flow, inspired action and optimal functioning. Yogacharya describes the process of writing her latest book under the pressure of a publishing deadline. Like any labor of love, there were contractions and expansions of consciousness. She says that when she felt there was not enough time she realized she needed to change her mind. “There wasn’t going to be any more, or less, time. I decided to experience it differently.”
Self-Awareness: Be Happy for No Reason
Yogacharya quotes Paramahansa Yogananda. “The mind is like an elastic band. The more you pull it the more it stretches. Every time you feel limitation, close your eyes and say I am the Infinite.”
“It doesn’t help anything or anyone to be in a state of contraction,” she says. “From attunement with the Infinite, we realize that there’s plenty of time and an abundance of grace.”
In contemporary language, she says,
“Notice when you move into the apartment of contracted mind. We can open the door and move out any time we want. Spirit is always inviting us to expand our consciousness and live in a higher way.”
Unconditional joy opens the door to experiencing plenty. Yogacharya says, “On the list of all I had to accomplish each day, I added, ‘Be happy.’”
Yogacharya concludes by reading an inspiring poem from her book, The Moon Reminded Me, from which we receive the transmission of compassion and equanimity for our states of contraction and the ever-present grace and mercy of the One.
Fire in my Heart
Some days I sit near your fire
feeding it the kindling of desire.
Live in the way, the Buddha said,
and the light will grow in you.
Sorrow and joy come in
sit down together as friends.
Everything that is needed appears.
Other days I forget about the light
set out alone in the dark –
ambitious prodigal with damp wood
determined to start my own fire.
When the invitation to the heavenly feast
arrives from the universe, I politely decline.
I have prepared a feast for you,
Will you come?
No, I am too busy
with matters of life and death.
I insist on my own way, saying no to love
until no becomes sand in my mouth.
Why all this suffering I ask?
Come, sit by the fire,
forget about life and death,
being and doing,
coming and going.
Soon the sitar will begin,
its notes will make you weep
for everything lost and gained
for the extravagant mercy of the One.