DAY 29
“I,” the ego-personality, grapples with the stuff of creation every day, turning new ideas into reality. We call this progress, and it is—of a sort. The ideas we turn into reality have an agenda and a past. They crop up in a context that accepts or rejects them. The conditioned mind has no choice but to respond to all kinds of external limitations. Once a wish, hope, or dream manages to turn into reality, we cling to what we have created. We ignore the inevitable ruin of all things—one day the things we’ve built will be relics like the Parthenon or the Egyptian pyramids.
Creation that is lasting must be built upon the timeless. That’s not possible with physical things, and since physical objects represent ideas, even ideas cannot truly last in the face of the ravages of time. In the timeless, what lasts isn’t an idea or a thing but creativity itself. The “stuff” of creation is our own awareness and its infinite capacity to create. By waking up, you create on the basis of being a creator, not on the ideas and things that surround you. You are beyond things and ideas, a conscious being of timeless dimension.
Timeless is a concept that feels very far removed from daily life, but it comes closer when you realize what time is. Time is the process of creation and destruction. Therefore, if you don’t identify with creation and destruction, you stand in the timeless. You have a choice to shift your allegiance to the timeless whenever you want. Stop for a moment to look around the room. When you return to reading this page, everything you looked at is in the process of decaying, dissolving, and fading away. But did time take away the present moment? No—it only took away the things you noticed in the present moment. The present moment constantly renews itself. It stands for the timeless that persists in the activity of time. When you are awake, the timeless takes precedence over everything else. This shift allows you to celebrate creation without feeling anxiety over things passing away.