Follow time, but let time not follow you!

It puts me off when people disrespect time. How do I handle this negative feeling?

My next door neighbor is an old retired man, about 55 years of age. Whenever he meets me, he takes great pride in telling me his time table. 'Now it's 4pm, time for tea, now it's time to say talk to my wife, now it's 9pm, time to sleep'. He has spent decades of his life in exactly the same pattern. What is wrong in this, you may ask.

To answer that I should quote an incident with the same neighbor, when things don't turn out timely. We had invited him home for a function last year. Initially he was smiling and chatting with everyone around. But, because of all the festivities and guests, lunch got a bit delayed. When he realized it was past 12:30pm and he hadn't eaten, it started to show on his face and I'd never seen him so upset before.

This may be an extreme case. But most of us are conditioned with time. We do not eat because we are hungry, but we eat because it is 12:30. Same goes with our sleep, work etc. What does this mean? Time literally has bound us. Why else should our dear neighbor be upset? Am sure we wouldn't die of hunger if we had a meal at a later time, or even skipped it for one day.

Our body is intelligent enough to know when it needs what. But we do not even give it a chance. We use an external reference when all we need to do is quietly listen to the signals that this body gives us. It is pure conditioning.

The second disaster we invite by being bound by time is that we make our life dull and monotonous. Change is our very nature. By being a slave to time, we have reduced ourselves to machines. The juice in life is lost the minute we have decided not to be spontaneous. And spontaneity cannot come when we are checking external time tables and clocks all the time.

You may ask 'does this mean it's ok to be late for meetings?' Nithyananda says that punctuality is alright for a social etiquette. As far as appointments and meetings with others go, please keep up time. We are after all living in a society where we interact with others and a standard is necessary. In fact when we are relaxed and not constantly worried about following time, we will see that we our sensitivity to time and punctuality increases.

But there are more instances when we are bothered about time unnecessarily. Nithyananda gives us a simple experiment to break free from the clutches of time. The minute you enter home, along with your coat and shows, relax from this time-boundedness also. You can remove your watch and put it aside when you are at home. Don't worry, no disaster will happen. Whenever you do not need to use a watch, put it aside and experience the deep sense of freedom it gives.

Watch Nithyananda talk about how our inner nature is actually liberated from time and space.