Usually, Outlook regulates my time through calendar invites and other obligation reminders. But the Covid-19 pandemic and its forced isolation means many are spending more time alone, without the external impositions of scheduled activities. And I am sure the rupturing of routine is a psychic unbalancing.
Personally, I am enjoying the shift. It has allowed me to divorce my schedule from the “needs” of others, and I get to focus more time on my family (stuck at home with me). A comfortable house-arrest.[1]
I recently reread a post from Master James Keating, a mentor and friend, whose reflections remind me of the difference between Nature’s time and Man’s time. His essay, The Magical Art of Losing Track, reads like an invocation of Taoist wu-wei: a rediscovery of the natural rhythm beneath the mechanical pulse of clocks. It also recalled Frank Herbert’s Soul Catcher (1972), where isolation becomes ordeal and self-reconciliation, atonement through dislocation.
Herbert’s protagonist, a disillusioned Native activist, takes a hostage and leads him into the wilderness in a forced rite of passage. What begins as vengeance becomes transfiguration. The journey strips away ego until only the archetype remains: man alone before nature, compelled to reconcile spirit and violence. Herbert’s wilderness is both physical and psychic.
Keating writes:
“Long ago when I spent six months out of each year alone in the mountains, I discovered a way to free my mind. The first rule: no watches, no clocks, no calendars. If you keep them, they will haunt you… Time will automatically see to the details for you.”
He describes the gradual detox from artificial order: the three weeks it takes to reach “the breakaway point,” when imposed schedules fade and self-regulation returns. Seasons become the new calendar; dawn and hunger replace alarms. For Keating, losing track is not confusion but clarity. It is the restoration of temporal integrity. Only the seasons will guide thee now.
This is a profound reversal. In ordinary life, we measure progress by efficiency, not harmony; by the tasks accomplished, not the rhythm sustained. In losing track, Keating regains what the ancients called kairos, the right time, not the clock time. His mountain hermitage becomes a sacrament of natural alignment, a quiet refutation of the industrial self.
I think of Thoreau’s warning in Walden: “As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.” During our collective imprisonment, most of us have tried precisely that, killing time. Critics are right that Thoreau was not as isolated as legend suggests, but the precision of his diagnosis endures. “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation,” he wrote, adding with surgical cruelty, “What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.”
Thoreau saw that industriousness, our ceaseless production and scheduling, was a pathology masquerading as virtue. Keating’s “losing track” is the antidote: an intentional unbinding from the tyranny of the clock, a return to lived time.
Modern psychology corroborates what these seekers intuited. Circadian rhythms govern not just sleep but cognition, mood, and immune function; when disrupted, anxiety and disassociation follow. The psychic unbalancing of lockdown was a collective initiation, a reminder that too much structure and too little rhythm are equally dehumanizing.
To lose track, in this sense, is not to drift but to recover flow: to synchronize with the natural oscillations of attention, hunger, sleep, and renewal. It is to remember that eternity is not duration but presence.
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THE MAGICAL ART OF LOSING TRACK
Most of the time we cannot really afford to lose track of time. The loss of tracking time means we are irresponsible and “out of it”. Many people are currently losing track due to the Virus lock down. No job equals no schedule, no school also equals no schedule. Not being able to really go about “normal” daily routines adds to the effect of losing track of things. For many people these accumulated effects can be disorienting and even frightening. Losing track of the flow of time is something most people never strive to attain. And if it does happen it is usually thought of as being a negative event. Yet, when this concept of “losing track” is viewed from a positive angle it can offer up some truly delightful discoveries that many of us need right now. Let’s explore the good side of “losing track” of things and find out some new & exciting things.
FREEDOM and THE LOST TRACK
Long ago when I spent six months out of each year alone in the mountains / real solitude (hermitage) I discovered a way to free my mind. It’s as easy as falling off a log. The circumstances must be right. Otherwise you will merely waste time and court failure. Let me explain more – I’d leave my digs in April and not return until early October. My goal was to forget time and all that goes with it. So the first rule is no watches, no clocks (or calendars). Stash all that shit away for when you return to the rat race. The very day I’d leave for the high country these items were immediately put away for six months. If you don’t ditch these things they will haunt you and destroy the purpose of your quest. From there just go on about your way. Time will automatically see to the details for you. Lead your life as it calls you to do, move from the heart, flow with the days – whether they be hard days or easy days makes no matter. Just flow and try to unwind from the scourge of the daily grind. No phones, no radios either. Modern life and all of its time manipulation has controlled you’re every action from childhood to this very moment. It takes the wu-wei sort of TIME to disconnect from the dominating OUTSIDE influences and to connect to your own inner workings.
The first few weeks of isolation are full of reminders of why you undertook this quest. Your mind will be constantly relating back to schedules of all kinds. It will dawn upon you just how much you are controlled each day through your job, through television, sleep habits and daily routines. Talk about being in a rut! This internal habit of time management will soon go away on its own. But on an average it takes about 3 weeks (21 days) for most people to reach the breakaway point. Then the schedules and habits you left behind begin to disappear and are replaced with your own more valuable personal rhythms and new directions in which you must go. Terra incognito! These new directions will seemingly come out of the blue. And they can guide you to the shores of even deeper self-realizations than you ever thought possible! Take heed – mindfulness is a plus in this quest. At some point, everything becomes rather “sacred”.
Finally you will reach a point (if you do this quest well) to where you will absolutely “lose track”. When you don’t know what day it is, you have quested well. When you lose track of what month you are in, you have quested wisely. Only the seasons will guide thee now, the elements too will speak to you. These things will become your new means of discerning time and also how you will use it. New necessities will crop up. New forms of happiness & pleasure will replace the old ones you once loved so much.
I can still remember the feeling: Upon achieving my goal of losing track (becoming lost) I could feel a distinct change within myself. A new calm, a truly refreshing-empowering feeling of leading life in a manner very few ever get to experience in today’s fast paced world. It gave me the edge I needed in order to be Myself. I’d think “This must be like it was long, long ago” – (and how did we ever lose such a valuable thing as this). It was a rush! Reminds me of the old saying: “Now that I have lost everything, I can do anything”.
CONCLUSION:
So from these valuable past experiences I am not uncomfortable being alone. And when I now lose track of time or of the days while enduring this Corona inspired lock down – I am not distraught. Because a hint of that old “lost” feeling comes rippling through my senses and I KNOW what to do, how I must deal w/ this non-linear time period and I smile brother, smile. I love being lost, I revel in losing track of time.
It’s an acquired taste for sure!
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Thanx for reading / God bless each and every one of ye! Much love // jak
Protective Arts 