On Stepping Out Of Time
The Clock That Ticks But Does Not Tell
Time, as we commonly speak of it, is not a thing that moves but a measure of movement.
It is the grammar we impose on change—a way of saying this, then that. But when movement ceases, even briefly, the grammar falls silent. There is still the world, still the pulse, still the breath—yet no time in which these occur.
To step out of time is not to transcend it, but to cease participating in its grammar.
When you stop moving, you stop conjugating your life in tenses—no longer was or will be, only is.
Awareness itself has no clock. It does not age, it does not hurry, it does not look ahead. It simply attends.
This is why hours can collapse into minutes when you are fully present, and why minutes can expand into hours when you are waiting.
Time stretches and contracts not according to the clock, but according to the density of your attention.
When attention deepens, duration dissolves.
The broken clock that still ticks is a perfect companion to this truth. It marks movement but not measure—a heartbeat without expectation. Its pendulum swings not to tell you what hour it is, but to remind you that you are within one.
To listen to it is to remember that rhythm precedes timekeeping.
You adjust it, not to synchronise with the world, but to re-tune your hearing—to the slow, audible reminder that existence continues even when no one counts it.
Sometimes you can hear it clearly; sometimes it disappears. In those moments of disappearance, you have joined it. You have stepped out of time and into presence.
True stillness is not a pause in the flow of life. It is the recognition that the flow was never measured to begin with. The clock that ticks but does not tell is proof enough: you are alive, and life, in its quietest form, keeps perfect time.
