Look, you want to stop rushing. It is not for you to be in a dither of activity. It is not efficient to rush. This does not mean you have to plod.

When you have a job to do, do it. Move along. Sometimes, it would seem that you think finishing what you are working on is urgent. Do you feel that you must be done or you will be thrown off the planet? Just what do you think will happen if you don’t finish a project on time or ahead of time – whether it is housecleaning or an essay assignment – would the world collapse? Would your world collapse?

Beloveds, time does not exist, and yet you are ravaged by it. It claws at you. It gets you out of breath. You panic with it. You do not know how to get out from under the pressure of time.

What happened to enjoy?

The thing is that once you finish this job, there are two waiting for you, and you rush and pant and rush again. Because of something in your approach to life, you spend a lot of your time – and your life, beloveds – rushing to finish something. You are like a rabid weeder in the garden. As soon as you pluck one weed, then two seem to grow in its place, and you are ready to pounce.

Okay, what is so important? What is worth your very breath to the degree that you expend it? Your duress is as if you are being hunted by a murderer. As soon as you slam a door in the murderer’s face, you turn around, and another dangerous interloper is waiting inside to leap upon you.

How much do you think I am exaggerating? This is the way some of My children live their days, weeks, months, years, lifetime in a tense race against time.

You put yourself in a vise of time time and time again. When are you going to even your pace? When are you even going to do what you have forgotten, and that is to forget the panic and live life instead?

Instead of viewing life as a marauder, view life as a lovely calming bath you relax in. You will see that nothing is chasing you. You don’t have to gasp and pant to keep ahead of a bill-collector who is chasing after your time.

There is an easier pace to life, and you can have it. Your life does not have to be harried. Your life can be enlivening and relaxing. You don’t have to be on the firing line. Honest, you are not trying to win a race. It is you who keeps raising the rope higher. Something in you says that you have to raise the stakes higher and higher, that you have to outdo yourself, that you have a race you must win, or else.

Alas, beloveds, those of you with this temperament, no matter your speed, no matter your frantic activity, you do not ever seem to get out from under. You are your own whipping boy.

What will you do about this?

Do you agree that you spend too great a chunk of life in this situation of a kind of imposed direness? Awareness is a first step.

Can you see the possibility that you don’t have to run around in so many circles? That you don’t have to expend the degree of energy that you do?

If you are worn out, you are the one wearing yourself out. Somehow, you have had the habit of confining yourself in a small space of time even as you try to get out of it. It is like you are pushing and resisting at the same time.

This is called tension, beloveds. You don’t have to be so tense. Who requires this of you? Not I. It is good to get into activity, but, not, dear ones, a constant flurry of energy. This just isn’t a way to live.

Perhaps you have not really taken a moment to look at the whirlwind of activity you put yourself in. Pause. What you wear yourself out over, someone else is taking it in his stride. You take on too much. Or whatever you take on, you make too much of it. Take a break. Life is not out of hand, nor do you have to be. There is no race to run.