You are like a grandfather clock!

The other morning my bluetooth headphones ran out of battery near the end of my meditation. Having spent 25 minutes or so without gaining new messages or insights, I decided to find a repetitive sound to focus on instead for a few minutes.

The irony of the interruption became immediately obvious as the insight I was looking for came in the very sound I focussed on – the only sound there was, in fact, when removing the headphones – the steady tick-tock of the grandfather clock in the dining room across the hall in my parents’ house where I am staying.

I have been practising tuning in, steadying my consciousness, so I can receive wisdom from my Inner Being, an urge to take action or simply an idea or thought that feels good – anything that comes “down the line”. 

To receive these insights requires regular practice, through meditation. The grandfather clock provided a nice metaphor to illustrate and emphasise the need for this practice. 

To keep the clock telling the right time, you need to wind it up – which raises the weights that keep the pendulum swinging which in turn keep the cogs turning behind the hands on the face of the clock.

With that short description of a clock’s mechanism, I’m sure you can see the richness of the analogy. Let’s explore it.

On the face of it…

Let’s start with the outer, obvious element, the face. Some clock faces are simple and practical, others highly decorative – sometimes making it more difficult to tell the time (especially with some smart watch displays!). 

As people, we may be easy to read, wearing our heart on our sleeve, or hiding how we really feel among the niceties of conversation and pleasing others. Are we authentic, allowing others to see deep into our being, or do we interact superficially with others, keen to keep up appearances?

The different style of clock face could also be a metaphor for the contrast between the clear, direct way some people have of communicating, which may appear cold to others, and the elaborate, at times difficult to read, manner in which some communicate.

What makes you tick?

This idiomatic expression nicely illustrates how we are all influenced by hidden dynamics. How hidden or transparent these are reflect how authentically we live and act. Being true to ourselves means allowing others to see and begin to understand (if they choose to) what lies below. It will not appeal to everyone, but being in harmony with ourselves is the only way we can avoid conflict with others.

This is so deep and important I will repeat it. The only way we can avoid conflict with others is to be in harmony with ourselves.

We will always connect more with some than others, and this reflects the different vibrations,  the different frequencies at which our energy vibrates.

If we are not “vibrating authentically” we create dissonance which others will pick up on, usually at a non-conscious level, just as you are picking up on others when you get “bad feelings” about someone. Or when you talk about someone “lighting up the room” when they walk in.

Up to speed

To ensure an old clock keeps the right time – based on an arbitrary division of the time it takes the earth to complete one rotation – it needs regular attention.

Another irony of this analogy is that as we have become more and more reliant on technology, with our smart phones and watches automatically synchronised (literally!) with atomic clocks, we have also become more disconnected with spiritual practices that keep us at the vibration of our Inner Being.

Still, at least the arguments over whether your watch is fast or slow are now over!

Seriously, though, I love the analogy of the grandfather clock as a metaphor for the need to regularly take the time to get up to speed with our Inner Being, to ensure our vibrations match those of our Inner Being – and what we wish to create and manifest in our lives.

Daily meditation takes us there and with practice can keep us vibrating synchronously – and even make it much easier to tell when we are out of sync. 

Of course the easiest way is to observe our feelings – whenever we feel anything other than peace and joy, as I have so often said, we know we are out of alignment. 

The more we meditate, the more we bring ourselves back up to speed and the more familiar that sense of alignment and vibrational matching becomes, and with it a more constant and reliable source of calm, happiness and physical manifestation.

Service your Inner Being!

Not to push the analogy too far, but the more we look after an old clock, the better and longer it will serve us. 

So it is with the attention and care we give to ourselves and the more we can understand who we are, our beliefs, why we react to things as we do, when our (human) ego is in charge…all of which is essential to learning, growth and relationships.

Remember, though, knowledge is not power, what we do with it is power. The “servicing” we give to ourselves allows us to utilize our strengths, work on our weaknesses and generally become the best version of ourselves.

To be honest, I preferred the way I had ended before extending the analogy, but felt it needed this additional dimension so we take some extra time, beyond our daily meditations, to dig deeper. 

My favourite way to do this, which I am spending increasing amounts of time on at the moment, is reading or listening to spiritual teachers and either incorporating the new knowledge into part or all of my daily meditation or simply pondering and journaling or writing about the insights I gain.

This way I can speed up my “journey” and increase that inner peace and joy and the physical manifestations of what my Inner Being has already created energetically.

I invite you to take the time to “wind yourself up” 😜😂 – find and tune into the frequency of your Inner Being – and always seek to know and care for yourself better and so be able to love and serve others better. 

This, as I have been talking about in my emails and live workshops, is the practice of “selffulness”.