Urgency

WED., FEB. 6, 1991, 5:58 AM
FARM, STUDY

Another dream… this one somewhat memorable… and the dominant feeling was urgency. There was more to do than you could do, there was disorganization, there was a task to perform, a trip to make, and insufficient time. Therefore there was urgency. Hear, o son, what I have to say about this disturbing feeling.

Yours is a culture that encourages urgency, and you respond to such encouragement. Success often seems to depend on accomplishing in response to urgency. You have been success-oriented, and so you quite often feel urgency, looking often at the clock or your watch. You know, objectively, that this sort of normative behavior is not healthy, at your age, and you don’t really want to have a heart attack or a stroke. And so, what advice do I give?

Your life moves, inexorably, toward a realm of timelessness. Your culture would call it death, and would recommend many strategies and treatments to avoid this, often with much urgency. Medical personnel are often pictured as working frantically and urgently to prolong a life, and prescriptions, after success, are quite time oriented.

You continue to work, and of this I approve, but you must diminish the urgency of your life. The demands on your time and energies are now excessive for one of your age, and you must act to diminish these. You worry too much about your income in retirement. You need to complete this current investigation, but I tell you, in the way that I, as Jesus, spoke, that you need not be concerned about what you are to eat, or wear, or where you shall live. Though a maximum income would be nice there is no way to control the many forces of your economy. You just must trust.

I realize that I am a force for urgency in your life. I bring you, in one way or another, to this time of teaching. I encourage you to write four Ruminations a year, which means you should be starting another one soon. And I do say that the care and usage of these Teachings from Me should become more important in these last years of your life. Therefore, if I say this and also that there should be less urgency, then you should diminish other activities and concerns.

This advice you must keep before you each day, as decisions must be made. And yet that even sounds urgent, now doesn’t it?! My intent is that you assess that for which you are already committed before taking on some other task. You need not become more popular. Your time of volunteering for many diverse activities is past. You should be moving, without urgency, toward timelessness. You cannot yet appreciate fully the lifestyle of your parents, but you see that they are rather comfortable in a condition of timelessness. They have some routines, but there is nothing they must do. Theirs shall be an easy transition over into actual timelessness.

Read again your Letter on non-attachment. Making a tape for Dorothy should accomplish that. It matters not whether you teach one more year or five more years. It matters not whether you continue to live here or move into town. There should be less and less urgency about such decisions and actions. Hear again that as you give up one pleasure you can pick up another. Give up easily what must be given up. And be cautious in what you take up anew.

The life I lived as Jesus was not one of urgency. So it is interesting that Christianity is the dominant religion of an urgent culture such as yours. I went about teaching, and yet I often wandered off to pray, to meditate, or just to enjoy the quietness of the life that I knew would be short. I stopped to talk to people who were not important. I did other non-urgent things that were not recorded in the Gospels. I wasn’t concerned with developing a church… and I may have been right in that.