Too many today are stressed and without a way out. There is too much work. Too much paperwork. Too many chores. Even when one finally has free time, often one does not replenish from it and exits it as if nothing has changed.

If you ever feel this way, you are not alone, and, further, you’re not wrong to feel this way.

Today, I talk about sheltered time and how it is not, and can never be, the same as unoccupied time.

Sheltered time is time in which one comes to rest and dwells in it without an urge to go or be somewhere else or for things to be different than they are. Sheltered time is primordial, perhaps the original way of being human in the world. Sheltered time differs in kind from ordinary clock time, irrespective of whether one is occupied or unoccupied. As long as one remains in clock time, true rest and space for thinking and creativity remain elusive. It is sheltered time that provides the space of time for sense to arise, and sense has a time dimension and a direction to it. To understand something, to think and feel it, and from out of it, requires experiencing it from its origin and onto its destination, its telos.

It is sheltered time that gives a feeling of being able to breathe, to stretch out, to be disencumbered, to dwell in that which arises into thought and feeling. It is in sheltered time that ‘things’ begin to make sense. You see how each thing and all things together unfold over their lifetimes. The sense of your own lifetime, how you got to be here, and what drives you forward, also comes into view.

All that I wrote so far may seem perhaps intriguing, but confusing and perhaps too esoteric. What, after all, am I on about? My response: what I write about is very much an experience, one that, although uncommon, is an experience that any human can have and that many humans, likely you too, have had, even if fleetingly.

What I refer to as sheltered time has other names. The Greeks called it schole, from which school, scholar, and scholarship are derived. Currently, the most common translation of schole, however, is leisure, as in leisure time. To introduce another aspect of schole, Aristotle wrote that it is the foundation of the polis, of the organization of society itself. He also equated schole with happiness or, as the Greeks referred to it, eudaimonia. Now, eudaimonia is more fully captured by words such as well-being or flourishing. How can one word, schole, have so many meanings and associations: school, leisure, eudaimonia, as well as being the foundation of society?

Here’s a brief and inadequate answer: it refers to something we can call sheltered time. It is where humans have the time and space for sense, in its temporality, to arise.

When sense arises, and things begin to make sense, and there is no urge or reason to leave and all the reason to stay and hold open this dimension, that is when true happiness (and a sense of belonging too) arises.

What are some of the core features of sheltered time? Here are a few:

Timelessness of Sheltered Time

The paradox is that it is in sheltered time that sense in its temporal dimension most fully arises, and, at the same time, the duration one spends in sheltered time feels timeless. This paradox is resolved in that when sense arises and is understood, it is then that the past, present, and future are experienced in each one of those sheltered moments of time. A person can feel as if partly outside of time, as if viewing from an eternal perspective. Time is experienced more fully than ever before – in each moment – while the experience of the passage of time withdraws. Even a moment in sheltered time may give an understanding of a lifetime.

William Blake captured the essence of the experience of deep sense in its temporal dimension and the flash of insight that can arise in a moment, in this famous stanza:

“To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.”

How did he know to write this? He experienced it. We don’t need to be poets to experience this dimension of being in which time dilates, and sense engulfs us. All of us can.

Time of Sufficiency

As mentioned, in sheltered time, there arises a sense of sufficiency. This sufficiency relates both the feeling that is extant within sheltered time and also ‘back out’ in ordinary time. In sheltered time, there is a sense of coming to rest and not needing to strive for anything, strive towards anything, or be in strife about anything. The current time and place are all that is needed. Of course, in sheltered time, because sense arises and so much of everything makes more sense now, there is an anticipation of more sense being on its way towards the dweller of sheltered time. But this anticipation is patient. The human trusts in the always coming on of sense, and letting it do so at its own time and in its own way. There is no sense of urgency, impatience, or fear of missing out. The current moment is complete in itself.

Also, this sense of sufficiency is carried over into ordinary time and one’s ordinary life. Many of the things that one strived for, status symbols perhaps, now seem … senseless, quaint at least, and ridiculous at most. Many of one’s worries now also may seem overblown or perhaps irrelevant. One carries over into daily life a sense of being grounded, less anxious, and more discerning.

Time of Letting Be

I wrote above that in sheltered time, there is trust in the always arising sense of things. When one has such trust, together with the realization that sense arises through itself and that all things are on their own way, selfing to be themselves, the individual human can let it be, to let the all-together come into its own being and true to each thing in itself and in relation to everything else. The world worlds. The future arrives without prompting. We do not need to withdraw into solipsism, of course. We can and should carry our fair burden. But we shouldn’t – because we can’t – carry the burden of the world. We, each and together, do our part. The rest is destiny.

Time of Belonging

Perhaps it’s already evident from the way I’ve described sheltered time, but to expand: sheltered time is an experience of belonging. It is the dimension of human being in which things make sense, we are embedded in trust, time becomes transparent, we feel unconstrained, and are free to breathe and to be, to think and create. Sheltered time is our native place, our home. When there, we are on the way but from out of the upholding, yet giving way ground that is home to the human way of being and thus, by extension, to each human being.

Thus, it is only in sheltered time that we can be refreshed, to discern next steps, to have a ground from which to judge. I think that love cannot exist when sheltered time remains unknown to a person. It is through this eternal, sheltered, sense-giving place of human dwelling that love and commitment and devoted action arise.

How can you find your own sheltered time? First is to know it is there, available. It has probably already made itself known to you more than once already. You might not have fully recognized it. None of us can snap our fingers to bring it on. There is no button anywhere to press to enter it. But, second, we can cultivate our own being to be more inviting to its coming towards us. Sheltered time, this dimension of (primordial) human being, is already inviting us towards itself too, sending out hints, giving us inklings.

To let sheltered time come onto you and let you come in it, you can start by giving yourself the gift of silence, to allow thoughts and feelings to arise. To give yourself alone time, which is more likely to let that expansiveness set in. Some people meditate. If you don’t like or don’t want to do a form of sitting meditation, you can do a form of moving or working meditation, which is simply doing a task – any task – with full attention, to the best of your abilities, and with devotion. Each of these brings us closer to sheltered time or lets us enter into it in a gentle merging or in a flash of insight.

Do what you intuit may work. Learn as you go. When you do this, you’re already on your way.

Until next time,
Dr. Jack

Quotes from William Blake

“If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite”.

“Imagination is the real and eternal world of which this vegetable universe is but a faint shadow”.

“A robin redbreast in a cage puts all heaven in a rage”.

“He who kisses the joy as it flies lives in eternity’s sunrise”.

“Eternity is in love with the productions of time.”