Set your Internal Clock When mind, body and spirit are in harmony--when you are at peace--amazing and downright practical internal techniques surface. Topic du jour deals with the internal clock... not the biological clock for life and fertility particularly... but the simple consciousness of the passing of time. Stop reading for a moment; take a look around your present surroundings. How many timepieces are within your location? In my bedroom (where I'm not at right now), you'd find that I own several wrist watches. On my stereo, it tells me the time. So does my VCR. On my computer, Windows 98 is kind enough to also provide the time. I also have an alarm clock. In the space of an 11'x11' room, there are at least 5 time pieces to tell me the hour and minute. Take a look around your location and see how your numbers at up. Now, time of course is a factor in our daily life. We have to be at school and work on time. The traffic lights are timed for traffic flow. People act strangely when a late-running sports telecast interrupts the proper start time of their favorite TV show. We watch the microwave count down as it cooks our dinner. Time is an element of everyday life. Since time is a factor and more importantly, since time is handed to us, people become dependent on being told the time versus knowing it internally. Do you panic when you look at your wrist and discover that you forgot to put on your watch? Take a challenge; re-learn to sense time internally. In a survey course of English lit. I once had, I was terribly bored. I became aware of the fact that I was either looking at my watch or turning around to check the wall clock every three or four minutes. I decided to test myself and learn to gauge the passage of time. To do so, I took off my watch and put it in my pocket. Then, I made sure to sit(in class) where I could not easily view the wall clock. I'd get the time once to establish a starting point then would open my mind--listen to the class lecture--and gauge for myself when I'd thought 15 minutes had passed. What I was pleased to discover was that my sense of passing time was quite good. I was generally within 1 or 2 minutes of the chronological time! Ever since practicing in English lit, if I have a starting point to refer to (the start of class or a work meeting, etc), I can mentally gauge the time without looking at my watch. The next step is to "throw away your alarm clock." Well, not literally! I read once in a book on meditation that you can tell yourself what time to wake up and you will. Hooray for the powers of the mind! Two nights ago, I had to reset my alarm clock for an earlier time. I set the time but forgot to actually turn on the alarm. The time the alarm was set for--5:50 AM--was well-ingrained in my mind because I had whined about having to get up at such an early hour. Well, at 5:50 AM, I awoke, though my alarm had not sounded. Still, the stereo clock, the VCR clock and the silent alarm clock all told 5:50 AM. Give these exercises a whirl some time. Don't necessarily plan to go out on a date and be on time based on your internal sense of time right away. Still set your alarm (especially on work and school days)... but tell your mind to wake you up 5 minutes before the alarm. Otherwise, I can just imagine you saying, "Well see, the reason I am late is because I listened to an essay by... Spark Vallen."