We spend so much time managing our schedules, our notifications, our to-do lists, and so little time managing the one thing that sits behind all of it: the mind. Or, more precisely, the awareness that runs the mind. And it is here, in this overlooked space, that the real answer to our time problem actually lives.
The Constant Witness
As human beings, we are constantly changing — child, teenager, adult, eventually old age. The person in your oldest photo isn't just younger-looking; they thought differently, wanted different things, and were embarrassed by different things than you are now. But the "I" who has been watching all of this happen over the years, who has been awake through every version of you, stays constant.
So, the practice is to stay aware of that "I" — a spiritual being temporarily living in, and acting through, a body and a set of roles that keep changing shape. I may play my part in the world with full responsibility. But I can also step back mentally and watch myself play it. I remain inside time, inside the daily drama of my own life, but I can also step into a quieter, timeless awareness alongside it.
Meditation As A Skill
This isn't a mood. It is a skill built through silence and meditation.
None of this works as an idea you simply agree with in your head. It has to be practised.
Five minutes a day. Leave your phone in another room — not on silent mode in your pocket, because silent still buzzes into your peripheral vision, and that is enough to break the exercise before it starts.
Over weeks, not days, the gap between losing focus and catching yourself gets shorter. And that shrinking gap is the whole skill.
What Begins To Change
And here is what nobody tells you about this skill. It quietly begins to change everything else.
Your conversations get fuller. Your decisions get cleaner. Your day feels less like something happening to you and more like something you are actually living. You stop being a passenger in your own time and start being its author.
And perhaps that is the real point. We don't need to find more time; we need to become more present in the time we already have.
Five minutes may sound insignificant in a life measured in years. But five minutes of being fully awake, every day, can slowly change the way the rest of those years are lived.
(The writer is a spiritual educator and popular columnist for publications across India, Nepal, the USA, the UK, Canada, South Africa, Australia, and Mauritius. To date, more than 9,800 published columns have been written by him. You can reach out to him at nikunjji@gmail.com or visit www.brahmakumaris.com.)
