Day 168: Time Dissolves in Devotion

A reflection on how creativity shifts your relationship to time

When you are deeply devoted to something — a painting, a piece of writing, a song, a garden — time begins to behave strangely. Minutes stretch, hours contract, and sometimes the passing of time seems to vanish altogether. This is not because time stops, but because you stop tracking it. You are no longer outside the moment. You’re inside it.

Devotion is not discipline. Devotion is softer, deeper. It’s not about controlling your time but about giving yourself over to something beyond yourself. It begins with care, with the quiet act of saying: This matters enough that I will show up for it, again and again. Not to finish it quickly. Not to impress anyone. But because you know that something real, something essential, lives there.

When you create from this place, time is no longer measured in hours and minutes. It’s measured in presence. One brushstroke, written sentence, or folded piece of fabric becomes its own world. You stop asking, How long will this take? Instead, you ask, What is this moment asking of me?

This kind of relationship to time is deeply restorative. It heals the fractures that multitasking and modern urgency leave behind. Devotion gives coherence back to your mind and body. It invites the soul to reenter the room.

And while devotion may seem like a spiritual word, it has very practical consequences. When you work from devotion:

• You create more honestly, without constant self-editing.

• You become less attached to outcomes.

• You finish work not because you're rushing, but because you're attuned to when it feels done.

• You leave your sessions feeling nourished, not depleted.

In creative work, devotion changes everything. It’s not a technique. It’s not a strategy. It’s a way of relating — to your work, your time, and your self.

And the result? Time lets go of you in return.

Devotion is not an effort to escape time. It’s an invitation to live inside it more fully. Not through planning or precision but through presence. And when presence becomes your creative practice, the world opens.

Time dissolves. And something more eternal takes its place.

Practices for Letting Time Dissolve

Here are five ways to bring timelessness into your creative life:

1. Set a Devotional Frame: Before beginning, whisper to yourself: “This next hour is a gift. I offer it to what wants to be created through me.” Begin with reverence, not performance.

2. Replace Deadlines with Rituals: Instead of obsessing over time blocks, create entry rituals: light a candle, open the same notebook, or put on the same playlist. These cues help your nervous system slip into presence.

3. Stay When It Feels Alive: If you're in the flow, resist the urge to stop just because the clock says so. Ride the current a little longer; this is the zone where the truest work lives.

4. Reflect on Temporal Feelings: After a session, journal about your relationship with time. Did it speed up? Did you feel timeless? What did your body experience? These notes help you recognize the shape of flow.

5. Protect the Timeless Zone: Turn off notifications. Hang a "do not disturb" sign. Let your family or team know that you're stepping into sacred space. Devotion needs silence to breathe.

The Neuroscience of Timelessness

Psychologists call this experience temporal distortion, a key feature of what’s known as the flow state. When we’re deeply engaged in something we care about, the brain enters a different operating mode. Time, as we normally track it, starts to warp.

This happens because of a temporary downregulation in the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for self-monitoring and time awareness. When this area quiets, you stop thinking about yourself as separate from what you’re doing. You stop measuring time. And you start fully participating.

Neuroscientifically, this is accompanied by an increase in dopamine and norepinephrine, two chemicals linked to motivation, learning, and attention. Your brain is telling you: stay here. This is working.

In these moments, your heart rate might slow. Your breathing might match the rhythm of your actions. You may feel physically still but mentally electric. And remarkably, this experience has been observed not just in artists and writers, but in coders, athletes, chefs, and even surgeons.

A 10-year study by McKinsey & Company found that top executives were up to five times more productive when working in a flow state. But this isn’t just about output. Flow reduces stress, boosts emotional resilience, and enhances learning. It allows you to process complexity without panic — because you’re not outside the problem. You are the process.

All of this happens most reliably when you're not just focused but devoted.

The Vanishing Clock: Returning to Presence

You’ve felt it before. That moment when the world fades away — not dramatically, but gently. You sit down to write, and when you look up, the sun has shifted in the sky. Or you start drawing, and suddenly two hours are gone. You didn’t ignore the clock. The clock just... let go of you.

This sensation isn’t rare. It’s universal. And it’s sacred.

We usually treat time like a container. Something we fill with tasks, with plans, with obligations. But creativity teaches us something different. It shows us that time isn’t fixed. It’s fluid. It stretches when we’re present. It contracts when we’re distracted. It dissolves when we give ourselves fully to the moment.

Devotion — not speed — is what allows this to happen.

In the 2017 adaption of Call Me by Your Name, based on the 2007 novel of the same name by André Aciman, Elio sits in front of the fire, mourning and remembering. The world around him doesn’t ask for anything. And he doesn’t rush to leave the moment. His grief, his longing, his memory — they are all expressions of devotion. And through them, time slows down enough to hold them all.

Creativity offers this same kind of presence. When we enter it with reverence — when we stop measuring and start feeling — time responds. It doesn’t just tick. It breathes.

This is more than romanticism. It’s a profound way of understanding our inner world. Most of us spend our lives in divided attention — multitasking, context switching, always aware of what’s next. But in a moment of true devotion, the timeline collapses. Past, present, and future converge. There is only the now.

And this is why creative work — whether it’s making music, organizing a bookshelf, or writing code — can feel so healing. It’s not just that we’re making something. It’s that we’re recovering ourselves in the act.

When time dissolves, it’s not because we’ve left life. It’s because we’ve finally entered it.

Closing Thought

When we create from devotion, we’re not just making art. We’re making meaning.
We’re not just passing time. We’re transforming it.

Let the hours dissolve today. Let them blur into brushstrokes, into sentences, into songs, into soil.
Because presence is what gives time its shape — and devotion is what gives it its soul.

This is not the absence of time — it’s the fullness of it. And your presence is the offering.

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