Embracing Now
It’s interesting that on New Year’s Day and birthdays we talk about a new start. Sort of like a clean slate beginning.
We wish people a happy, healthy year to come. Implying that what has past is now gone and can be let go.
But why only on those days? What not every day?
In fact, why not every moment?
Elie Wiesel and so many other great thinkers point to the power of the “now”.
This instant, this now, is all that exists. Everything else is past (gone) or future (not real).
Yet look how much time we spend rueing what has already gone by or anticipating what may come. If you ever spend time objectively watching your thoughts, you’d be amazed at what you find. All past and future. And no now.
Yet the experience of now is extraordinary. Consider these stirring words from A Course in Miracles:
There is no fear in the present when each instant stands clear and separated from the past, without its shadow reaching out into the future. Each instant is a clean, untarnished birth, in which [we] emerge from the past into the present. And the present extends forever. It is so beautiful and so clean and free of guilt that nothing but happiness is there. No darkness is remembered, and immortality and joy are now.
Each instant brings us a new now. Let’s embrace it and spend time dwelling in the present moment of wondrous joy.
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