The Grand Illusion: Are You Wasting Your Time, or Finally Living It?

We live in a world obsessed with achievement. From childhood, we are taught that a life well-lived is a life of accumulation: of wealth, property, status, and power. We structure our time, optimize our productivity, and chase the pinnacle of success, believing that this is what separates us—the enlightened, ambitious humans—from the "animalistic" existence of a grazing cow or a cat basking in the sun. We see their lives as wasted because they do not "use" their time. But, could it be a possibility that our entire paradigm is a magnificent, self-imposed trap? 

 To unravel this, we must return to the primordial question:

Why does anything exist at all? 

The answer, found across wisdom traditions, is deceptively simple: Experience. 

 In the beginning was a silent, unified Singularity— The "Brahman", the Divine. A sea of stillness, perfection, absolute knowledge and potential where nothing moved, for there was nowhere to move towards. Where there were no transactions, for there was none other to transact with or interact with. This was a universe of perfection, of a singularity so pervasive that it was all that was. Within this perfection stirred a desire: "I need to experience myself." And so, the divine instrument of Maya—illusion—was manifested. It projected multiplicity from the unity, creating the polarities of light and dark, high and low, good and bad. This was the genesis of the manifestation of the universe, not as a random accident, but as a deliberate act of creative expression. 

 Nature: The Pure Dance of Experience 

This projected multiplicity is Nature (Prakriti). Here, life is an unmediated experience. A leopard doesn't hunt to build a legacy; it hunts because it is hungry, fully immersed in the act. A bird doesn't sing to achieve fame; it sings as an expression of its being. Nature operates on absolute value—the value of life and the experience of living. There is no currency, no ego, no five-year plan. There is only the present moment, and in that presence, the Divine experiences itself with a purity we have forgotten. A purity that was meant to be forgotten so that life could be experienced with much greater intensity. To create this possibility of an enriched experience, it was necessary to move from the hardware level to the software- A layer that operated on top of the biological hardware and created an emergent illusion on top of the illusion that nature already was!

 The Creation of Man by embedding the "The Software of Lack"

So, why create humanity? Imagine the Divine as a connoisseur of experience. After eons of experiencing itself through nature's fixed rules and regulations -Dharma, a craving for a richer, more vibrant contrast emerged. The solution was not a better animal, but a new kind of entity equipped with a powerful software: the Mind with its different facets (Manas, Chitta, Buddhi, Ahankara). 

 This software did not make us superior; it made us capable of profound inferiority. It introduced the perception of lack. It allowed us to dwell on the past and project into the future, to feel not just need, but bottomless desire. It enabled us to plunge to depths of sorrow, anxiety, and greed unknown in the animal kingdom. It created an illusion of past and future, an illusion of value and a false sense of superiority that made man think that he was above nature.

 This was the masterstroke. By creating a being that could feel utterly separate and deprived, the Divine created the largest possible potential difference between itself (the highest high) and human consciousness (the lowest low). Just as a television with an extreme contrast ratio displays the most vibrant colors, this immense gap between the being trapped in Human perspective and the Divine limitless possibility makes our experience of life incredibly vivid, dramatic, and intense. We are God's best creation because we are the "worst"—we offer the most potent contrast for the divine experiment. 

 The Modern Trap: Achievement vs. Experience 

Yet, we have misinterpreted our own design. We took the mind—the instrument meant to amplify experience—and subcontracted it to a new goal: Achievement. 

We now live by the mantra: "Born for experience, but lived for achievement." 

We treat Time—which is the very flow of the Divine in manifestation— as a currency to be spent. We seek a "Return on Investment" from our days, measuring their value in tasks completed and goals advanced. If we were to spend a day simply watching the clouds drift across the sky, we would be haunted by the feeling that we are "wasting our life." 

But let us follow this logic to its end. If Time is God, then what would we do in God's presence? Would we present a business plan? Ask for a referral? Or would we simply, reverently, experience the awe of being in that proximity? Would we try to use God, or would we seek to be with God? 

The answer is obvious. Therefore, if Time is God, our purpose is not to use it, but to experience it. To be present with it. To spend our time experiencing 'Time' itself. 

The Path Home: Experiencing the Divine in the Mundane 

We have created conditional lives. We tell ourselves, "I will experience happiness when I become a millionaire. I will experience peace when I get that promotion." I will enjoy life post retirement. This is the carrot before the horse, ensuring the experience is always one step away, and we spend our entire lives running on a treadmill of achievement, only to arrive at the end realizing we never truly lived, we never truly retired from the trap of achieving enough to be ready to experience. 

 The truth is, experience is not a reward for achievement. It is the fundamental currency of existence. The cloud in the sky, the taste of food, the sensation of breath—these are not distractions from our goals. They are the very point of the whole endeavor. 

When we shift from seeking achievement to valuing experience itself—not its quality as "good" or "bad," but its raw fact—we break the cycle. We stop wasting our God-given time trying to optimize it, and we start living it. We fulfill the divine intent for our creation. 

 The great paradox is this: a life spent "using" time efficiently is a life wasted. A life spent "experiencing" time—even if it looks like "doing nothing"—is a life lived in profound alignment with the cosmos. It is a life where every moment is a homecoming, and every experience is a silent conversation with the Divine.