What Is Really Good?: Time Flies and Time Drags

The boy who threw his clock out the window because he wanted to see time fly wasn't just the punchline of an old joke. There is an amazing amount of truth to this concept. Here is an excerpt from my book What Is Really Good? on the topic:

Time Is Relative

"Time flies when you’re having fun." "A watched pot never boils." These two phrases are well known because of their truth. We can all relate to doing something we enjoy and time seeming as if it has sped up. We can all relate to anticipating something to come and every minute stretching for an hour. How can this be? This is occurs because of where our focus is directed. Depending on where your attention is focused, time really does lose its incremental value.

If you want to stretch time, do something that makes you uncomfortable. The more uncomfortable, the longer you will feel each and every fraction of a second. Embarrassing situations can be equally as uncomfortable as being in physical pain; sometimes more, depending on the person's ego identification.

Time is so relative that Albert Einstein, one of the greatest scientific minds ever, derived the conclusion that time depends on the observer and the observer's relative position to what they are observing. The special theory of relativity drastically changed the scientific community's view of what time really is, but it has not affected the way society as a whole views it.

Einstein's theory proved mathematically that the faster you move through space, the slower you move through time. It therefore stands to reason, the slower you move through space, the faster you move through time. This is consistent with your resistance to what is stretching time. When you are resistant, your mind is full of motion, content, or thoughts; all the same thing. When you are in acceptance, your mind is closer to being still, being in the moment, and time races on by.

To better illustrate this, imagine the experience of driving. If you are on a clear freeway driving at 80 mph, and you look to the left or right and can see people; they seem to be moving very slowly or frozen. This is the mind state of resistance to what is; the mind moving at "a mile a minute" to get away from the situation. If you are on the same clear freeway and are driving at 3 mph, the same people are now moving at a normal speed and seem considerably faster than you at 80 mph. This is the mind in acceptance and in the present moment.

This is the power of perception. Where your attention is placed or what it is placed on is the key.
Mental discomfort or pain, is based on what the ego is identified with. Embarrassment, for example, occurs when your ego is injured. Your ego is in pain. Physical discomfort or pain is literally the physical aspect of resistance
to what is. As you well know from your own experience, being in mental turmoil or physical pain, slows and stretches time. This is because of the constant signal of stress. This stress is motion; the motion of trying to get away from the present moment. This includes background stress.

When there is no resistance to your situation, time is not given a thought. Non resistance is acceptance by default. The physical aspect of acceptance is a neutrality or contentment, and to a higher degree, pleasure and/or joy. This is when you look at your watch and say, "Whoa! Where did the time go?" You are in alignment with yourself during the period of seemingly timelessness. It could be your egoic false self or your ultimate true self, but nevertheless, when you are in the moment, time is not a factor.