A life full of hurry cannot possibly advance spiritually.
A constantly fast-paced life cannot have any spiritual wealth in it. Advancing on the path of spiritualism needs slow-time. This is time that would ideally be spent on meditation, spiritual reflection, reading spiritual literature, and spiritual writing or journaling. On the other hand, any fast-paced time is not a spiritual. A person in a hurry is also in a hurry to see something happen, or not happen. He is in a state of mind that craves some results from his senses. As I have discussed in this earlier note such sense-subservience is a profound hinderance to being spiritual.
A hurried mindset is pernicious and contagious. Pernicious because it takes away the quality of a person’s life. A person in a hurry is fretting about the destination and not enjoying the journey. And it is contagious because a person who is in a hurry in one activity often starts working similarly on other tasks too. This hurry also leaks into core spiritual activities like meditation. At a deep level, meditation requires a significant control of the breathing process. Each breath is taken, not in a hurry, but with focus and calibration. Focus concentrates the mind to the spiritual eye between the eyebrows. Calibration keeps the breathing slow (in line with what the body can sustain) and waits for the breath to properly target the spiritual eye. I have provided a description of this in this article. A hurried mindset can completely degrade a mediation session. Instead of focusing on the breath, the mind is highjacked by myriad thoughts. The result is a severely diluted meditation session that falls far short of its potential.
In conclusion, surprisingly, time management skills that ensure that we are conducting our activities in an unhurried manner are important to facilitate spiritual advance towards timelessness.
Recommended Reading
Scientific Spirituality: A scientific, experiment-based approach towards spiritualism and ancient Indian texts could serve us well.
Controlling the mind: It is possible to acquire significant level of control over one’s mind and thereby lead happier lives. The approach may need to be radically different from what you might expect.
The Advanced Meditation Exercise (TAME): This meditation technique is an incredibly powerful way to keep the mind peaceful. It is prescribed in Bhagwad Gita, the primary book of Indian spiritual heritage. It derives its power by activating three key things in us: detachment, stillness, and transformation.
Why TAME meditation appears to work better than other techniques: TAME meditation appears to be more effective than other meditation techniques because it activates three essential elements of meditation: detachment, transformation, and stillness. Meditation needs all three.
