The Lottery

The Lottery

I was pondering this idea of time. It's sort of like the story of a friend of a friend. He won the lottery. Not a huge amount, just a couple million pounds. He was a very sensible person so he figured the thing he must do is to speak to an investment broker to figure out how best to use the money. But as he had only just received it and was in a celebratory mood, he decided he would search for a broker later.

He started spending a little of the money - a couple hundred here, a few hundred there - to just enjoy himself before he got down to the business of deciding what to do with it. He gave some to family and bought a few things for friends. He was spending sensibly - not too much because he wanted to retire early and live off of what he had left. And what he did spend was just a drop compared to what he had won.

Time passed and he still had not contacted a broker. He knew he should, but his social life had taken off and he just wasn't finding the time to do the research and start the interviews. Besides, he had met someone new and was trying to keep her happy.

Eventually he got to a point where he wasn't sure how much he had left and if it was enough to live on. He was afraid to contact a broker now because he might get bad news and so he procrastinated further. When he finally did contact someone, a recommendation from a friend, he found out he still had enough to retire on, but not enough to support a family or allow him the same sort of lifestyle without earning income elsewhere. Where had it all gone? He realized then that it had slipped through his fingers all too quickly because he was not aware of how he was using it.

Time works much the same way. In India, men will put off spiritual practice until retirement age. Then they renounce everything and devote all their time to their practice. That's all well and good, but where is the guarantee that we will reach retirement age? We don't know how many days we have left. Isn't it better to take stock now, increase our efforts and stop putting off those disciplines that we have been collecting but not using? It's our future that we're working towards. So you have to ask yourself, what kind of future do you want?

Thank you for reading. For more information on Raja Yoga philosophy see www.bkwsu.org.