Sorry, I Have No Time!

“Sorry, I have no time”: this is probably one of the most common phrases of today’s time. We live in an age where almost everything is instant. One can do almost anything by just clicking some buttons, from making coffee and food, to mailing, shopping and booking tickets. Man has worked hard to save time, with remarkable technological advances. Modern machinery can definitely make life easier but cannot add hours to our day. We will always have a maximum of twenty-four hours each day. Technology can save us time; we can do a lot more with our days. Today we can do so much more than we could in the past, but the question is, do we?

In the past we complained and today we still complain that despite all of these technological advances, we have even less time. But the fact is the time has always been there and hasn’t changed at all. We had twenty-four hours before and even today we have twenty-four hours. In fact we are at an advantage today as we have the help of all this new equipment to help us with our work and save us all those hours. So if everything is quicker today, why do we still complain? Where has all the so called ‘saved’ time gone?

Ask anybody and you will find that he has no time. The labourer has no time; the engineer has no time; the doctor has no time; the industrialist has no time. Who has time to relax? Who has some moments of leisure? No one.

What then have we gained from all this progress, from all these developments? We cannot find an hour for ourselves, not even half an hour in which to relax.
_{Maharaj Charan Singh, as quoted in Treasure Beyond Measure}

These words apply to us even today. In this rat race for money, fame and what we think of as success, we are sacrificing ‘living’. Not only do we find that we have no time for all the little things in life, we don’t even make time for the most important aspect of our lives, our meditation. We don’t realize how lucky we are to have been initiated by a perfect living Master. Sant Mat is our path to real success, yet we are not ready to give the necessary time to this practice.

The day we were initiated we made a promise to our Master that we would dedicate at least two and a half hours of our day to meditation. So if we think about it, from that day onwards our days don’t have twenty-four hours anymore, they only have twenty-one and a half hours. Two and a half hours of our day is booked for meditation and we have no right to use that time for worldly pursuits. For these purposes we have 90 percent of the day !

So now we have to re-manage our twenty-one and a half hours of the day to fit in our daily activities. Two and a half hours of the day is pre-booked, for the Master, and is not for our use. This is precious time; it is a daily meeting, a one on one with the Master, which we are most privileged to receive. What would we do if we got a call today saying that Baba Ji is coming tomorrow and we have been given a personal interview with him? Will it even cross our minds to say: “Sorry, I have no time”? No, we would leave everything aside and make time for that interview.

Well, this is an everyday scenario. Luckily for us the call has come, and we are the fortunate ones to be invited by the Master himself. Let’s not let this opportunity go. Let us tell him, “You have all my time.”