Present Moment

Occasionally, for all of us, we accidentally enter into the flow of the Now. We could be skiing, skating, doing yoga, playing golf, and suddenly our activity aligns us with the flow of that moment. Emotionally we can enter accidentally into the Now when we look out and see the sun breaking through the clouds or we catch the evening light as it shades trees differently. Intellectually we can enter into the Now when we have an insight and an epiphany comes.

Before we can experience the truth of a higher state of consciousness, before we can stand on the ground of ourselves that is the secret stuff of Reality, we are asked to quietly be who and what we are in the Now.

What good is it to find a solution, some seeming strength, that doesn't really resolve your problem, but that is just another form of secret self-deception? Outside of its power to help you temporarily feel better about the weakness that just claimed you, what good is the "strength" of being able to endlessly explain yourself to yourself? Of being able to "intelligently" justify some deliberately hurtful act towards another?

When life falls apart, or threatens to come unglued, it seems almost natural to carry around some desperate, stressed, or depressed emotional state. But why cling to something that makes us ache? The answer is surprising, but evident, once we're aware of what's actually taking place within us.

Real success is a fearless state of being in a conscious relationship with an Intelligence that always achieves its ends despite ever-changing conditions. But, if we're honest, this order of spiritual success remains at a distance we've yet to traverse. At our present level of consciousness, our mind is always active, trying to figure out what we need to put together in our life to achieve its desired end.

Most of us don't understand the nature of time and our place within it, and so we know nothing of timelessness, save for those rare instances when we encounter transcendent beauty and are transported out of our usual train of thought in time, into the timeless.

Isn't it true in the moment when you look out and see a beautiful pink sky ablaze at sunset that it awakens the same beauty inside of you? When you see something timeless, when you see something beautiful, what you see is not outside of you. What you see outside of you is simply reminding you of something that you're asleep to in yourself. The beauty isn't out there in a pink moment. The intelligence isn't in a timeless thought or insight...

We are created and each of us is intended to discover the truth of ourselves within ourselves; no authorities are needed. Our lives -- and all of our relationships as revealed in the present moment -- are the ground we must plow. These soils, rendered receptive through conscious humiliation, are seeded with our intention to be kind and true to one another, to give up our selfish ways, and to willingly embrace whatever life lessons we need to further...

So many people today are bitter, broken-hearted, or just plain angry because of what happened to them while growing up. The reasons for their resentment or regret are as countless as are the number of unconscious people who unknowingly create such pain in the lives of those they hurt. But nothing that happened yesterday -- as horrendous as it may have been -- has authority over the present moment and its new possibilities...

The Presence moment can be thought of as a kind of "meeting" place of myriad invisible worlds. It is a timeless space of open-ended possibilities in which your created nature converges and interacts with all that constitutes your original Self. Call this all-encompassing Spirit what you will, but it is... and forever will be a compassionate intelligence whose living light creates, animates...

Looking at life through the eyes of resistance is not unlike looking at our own reflection in a pool of troubled waters; everything gets distorted. In fact, when seeing our lives through the narrow bars of some unwanted state, nothing is the way we see it.

Most of us hold the unquestioned belief that our hearts and minds are at peace before one of life's "waves" washes in to disturb us. But if we take away the prejudice of self-pleasing images -- and add the ease with which we are disturbed by unwanted moments -- we have good cause to suspect something entirely different about ourselves. Could a truer view of what takes place in such times of...