Every moment should contribute to your growth as a man and a warrior. If you are truly living with urgency than no moment should be of waste. There is no such thing as dead-time. How do you live with urgency, you ask? One way to do it is to be deeply aware of death. I sometimes meditate in graveyards in order to remind myself of the shortness of life.
We literally live in a reality that is very disconnected from death. I’ve noticed that when I don’t remind myself of my impending death for a few days, my days lose a certain magic. Our busy lives tend to fill up our minds with distractions. These distractions blind us from the essentials of life. When you are on your purpose, you don’t feel like wasting a single moment.
Everybody has different essentials at different phases of their lives but the point of this article is to instruct you on how to never waste a moment of your life again.
When you live deeply, you milk every moment for all it’s worth. Not a second of your life should be wasted in unconsciousness. For me, life has become a meditation. If I sense my thoughts and focus wandering (which it does several times a day) I become present again.
My vision for the ideal man is a warrior who uses every single second to expand. Most people’s lives fly by in the daily grind…”the rat race”. Even most old people are afraid to talk about death as though it is something negative. Most old people only see death as a concept and not as an actual reality that they WILL face someday. Those in the rat-race (99% of humanity) never lift their nose from the grindstone of life because they don’t see death as a fundamental part of their reality.
So what am I advocating? I’m advocating that each moment be part of your evolution. How do you do that? Become aware of death. Meditate on it. Or at the very least, spend one minute per day contemplating your mortality. This will bring the awareness necessary to live deeply.
The next step is to actually live deeply and use each moment no matter how trivial for growth. For me this means that the majority of time is dedicated to my purpose; Which is evolving to the highest degree possible and serving men to master their lives.
Even supposedly trivial moments are immense opportunities for growth and mastery.
If you are not immersed in your craft, your job, your business or whatever it may be. Take that supposedly trivial moment to evolve. A man on his purpose has no dead-time. Dead-time is an expression for moments where you are unconscious to life. It’s the waking equivalent of a coma.
Walking to the bus? That’s dead-time for most. Waiting in line? That’s dead-time for most. Waiting in traffic? Dead time. On hold on the phone? Dead time. Being driven by a cab? Dead-time. You see we all have moments of dead-time in our day and the trick is to make those moments count for something as-well. That way your life becomes this constant flow of movement, growth, energy and awareness…
What do you do during dead-time then? You can learn new things by listening to an audiobook. You can ground yourself deeper in your purpose by listening to an inspiring song. You can get down and do 50 pushups. You can also (and this is one the easiest) use dead-time as an opportunity to practice presence.
Practicing presence is tuning out of the chimp-chatter of your mind and tuning into your environment in a way where you are completely aware of it. Become aware of your breath and start to breathe deeply. Observe the shapes and textures of the scenery that is around you. Become aware of your feet hitting the floor as you walk. Become aware of the people who pass by you (knowing that they too one day will die).
When you do this: 2 things happen: You feel this strange sense of peace and stillness. But a sense of peace and stillness that is more fulfilling than any donut or movie will ever be. It’s the stillness of being on your edge as a man. It’s the stillness of making love to the present moment with your deep purposeful awareness of it. And the second thing that happens is that you become grateful and appreciative of the fact that you are alive and well enough to be able to be in this moment.
This is a way to milk life for all it’s worth. This is a way to double your lifespan because most people waste half their life unconscious making no use of their dead-time. Most people are completely lost in their own thoughts during periods of dead-time.
They are like zombies. The living dead. So when you use dead-time for either learning or practicing presence, you unlock a hidden dimension in your life that you previously would have never thought possible. It’s like walking into a room in your house that you’ve never been in before.
So that’s it. Just remember, dead-time doesn’t have to be dead. Use it for learning and/or practicing presence. Don’t just zone out into your mind. I recently said that meditation was dangerous because you might value bliss over strategy. The inferior man lives life trapped in mind-clutter and no awareness. When you are waiting in traffic and you have already done a lot of learning for that day, it might be time to practice presence for the moment. However, if you spent the entire day, walking around mindfully and working out (not using your brain too much) then it might be time to snap on some headphone and listen to an audiobook.
For me, there is no such thing as dead-time anymore. At least I’m working towards it being so. I still have periodic moments of unconsciousness throughout the day but they are becoming more and more far apart. Stay present and keep growing. Use strategy but couple it with awareness. That’s where mastery lies.
Best,
Maximillian Giamarco
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