Like most humans, I live a lot in the future and the past. The Now is often less than I would like it to be: frustrating, painful, and usually something to get away from as fast as possible. For a long time, the now has been the place that I do not want to be.
However, it struck me recently that the now is here to teach us what we need to know about the future and the past...
What is happening right now is essential for me to have what I need in the future...if I miss what is going on right now, because I am so focused on things being different in the now, I miss the lesson that is occurring in this moment, leaving myself unprepared for what is going to happen in an hour, a week or a month. Each block of time we call the now, provides us all we need for our future...whatever that may be.
The now is also a great explainer of the past. As my life unfolds, I am given a fresh perspective if I will allow it. I will be given what I need to move forward, releasing the past...if I am present for the now.
I am one of those people whose past, even though I didn’t think about it all that much, ruled me. Controlled all that I did, most especially my relationships. It was as if I was struck dumb in the now, never being able to really be present so much so that I just blindly walked my days, so consumed with the past or the future that there was no real present for me. Whatever I was doing, I was really doing to get away from something or get to something else. It was sleep walk living...if that can even be called living.
The now has changed for me. Now, I want to soak up all the lessons of the now, be present for them, own them, allow them to change me, move me forward into the next now.
Now, I know!
Now I know that I need everything that is happening to move me onto the next whatever. And I want to be prepared. I want to be learn all that I am supposed to right here, right now, so that I may become who I am supposed to be in the today and in the future. And even more than that, I want to be the person who lives her life so completely in the now that the future becomes almost immaterial.
I have lived most of my life wanting to lock it all down. Acquire, gather and possess things so that I can feel safe. That is really what the whole of my life has been about. Trying to find a feeling of safety. Trying to find a place that exists somewhere in the future where the past doesn’t own me, haunt me and control my conduct. And I have come to believe that the only place that can ever happen, is right now.
Now is where I learn all that I need for the future. Now is where I can make sense of the past. Now is the alchemist for my life. A great filter that allows me to be so present with myself that I am no longer running to or from the past or hoping or dreading the future. I am just here, accepting what is. Living one moment at at time so completely that I am so aware of the process that is happening that I glide through my days, easy, happy and free.
For me, the real purpose of now is to accept the lesson I am being provided and learn all that I can so that I am equipped to deal with what comes next. Sometimes what comes next is a quick trip to the past that can be healed if I will only do the work. And the only place I can ever, ever do the work, is in the right here, right now.
Now has become all that I need. I can be everything I have ever wanted to be now. Now is the place where I can be happy, joyous and free. Now is the place where all that is happening to me, happens for me. Now, I know...and so may you.
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