When I was much younger and knew everything there was to know (Yeah! Right! Uh huh!), I often complained about my inability to multitask. “I can’t even walk and chew gum,” I’d say, usually with a laugh and a shrug. It sounded like harmless self-deprecation, a way to soften expectations or excuse limitation. Looking back, I can see something else at work. Self-deprecation is not humility. It is simply another costume the ego wears to protect its version of truth.
The ego does not mind being mocked. In fact, it often prefers it. If I convince myself I am incapable, distracted, or deficient, I never have to ask the deeper question: who, exactly, is doing the living here? The ego thrives on ownership, even when the ownership is of weakness. “I can’t” is just as ego-centered as “I can.”
Now, at 83, something curious has happened. I find myself capable of multitasking at a level I never imagined when I was younger. Conversations overlap with awareness. Writing flows while listening. Decisions arise without strain. Life moves forward without the frantic effort I once believed was required. The question is not how this happened, but why it feels so different.
The answer, I’ve come to see, is simple and unsettling to the ego: it isn’t me doing the multitasking.
What I once called multitasking was actually strain. It was the mind trying to manage time, control outcomes, and hold several fragile plates in the air at once. That version of multitasking was exhausting because it depended entirely on a small, anxious self that believed it was alone and responsible for everything.
What happens now feels nothing like that. There is no sense of juggling. There is no inner commentary applauding performance. Things simply happen, simultaneously and effortlessly, as if they always knew where to go. The doing feels secondary. Awareness comes first.
This is where the idea of the God within stops being poetic language and becomes practical experience. The Infinite does not multitask because multitasking implies division. The Infinite simply is, and within that beingness, everything unfolds at once. When I step out of the way, when I stop insisting on authorship, life organizes itself with a precision that no personal effort could match.
The younger version of me believed multitasking was a skill to be mastered. The older version sees it as a byproduct of alignment. When the mind is no longer crowded with self-judgment, fear of failure, or the need to prove competence, attention becomes spacious. In that space, many things can appear without conflict.
There is also a quiet irony here. I once used self-deprecating humor to lower expectations. Now, expectations have largely fallen away, and capacity has expanded. Not because the body is stronger or the brain faster, but because the need to be “the one in charge” has softened.
From a spiritual perspective, this shift is profound. When identity loosens its grip, function improves. When the personal self stops claiming credit or blame, intelligence flows more freely. The Course calls this listening to a different teacher. In everyday language, it feels like letting life live itself through you.
This does not mean passivity. It means participation without ownership. Words still come from my mouth (figuratively, of course). Actions still move through my hands. Choices still appear. But they arrive already formed, without the anxious rehearsal that once preceded everything.
So when I notice myself “multitasking” now, I smile. Not because I’ve finally learned how to walk and chew gum, but because I can see who is actually doing the walking. The Infinite Multitasker was never absent. I was just too busy narrating my limitations to notice.
Age did not grant this capacity. Surrender did. And the freedom that comes with it is not measured in how much I can do, but in how little effort it takes to let what needs doing be done.