Last night, I watched Francis Ford Coppola’s new film, Megalopolis, in which the protagonist can stop time. In Yoga Sutra III.53, BKS Iyengar comments on the yogic interpretation of time.
In [the present] moment, neither psychological nor chronological time is felt. Moment comes between rising impressions and their restraints and vice-versa: it is a quiet intervening state, auspicious and pure, and is to be stabilized, prolonged and expanded so that consciousness becomes absolute.
As the atom is the minutest part of matter, the moment is the minutest particle of time. The moment is singularly alone. Moments succeed one another in sequence, and these sequences put together constitute time. Thus the spokes of moments move into the wheel of time. The movement of mind in a continuum is psychological time. The movement of moments in present, past and future is chronological time.
Iyengar teaches that when yogis hold the present moment in their awareness, they conquer both psychological and chronological time. The capacity to remain aware in the present and to not be distracted or disturbed by patterns of movement allows us to glimpse our “exalted integlligence, the secret and sacred knowledge.”
My poem below illustrates some of the mystery and exalted intelligence we encounter on this human-spirit journey.
Time Travel
In quiet space, you cannot hear
descending grains of sand
drizzling through hourglass funnels.
That’s OK, time doesn’t really travel
as imposed counting schemes suggest.
Rather, a pattern creeps into our awareness
or an old identity begins to slip away, and
a new mission seizes our heartstrings.
Awakened from our cocooned life, we
once again co-create what is needed now.
Each emerging time, each moment taken in
dynamic oneness, for us, from us, for all.
For more yoga teachings, yoga actions, and poetry, click here. Namaste.
