About Now and The Gift of the Present

 

“Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift of God, which is why we call it the present.”  ~ Bil Keane

“Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.”  ~ Mother Theresa

“Real generosity towards the future lies in giving all to the present.” ~ Albert Camus

“It’s being here now that’s important. There’s no past and there’s no future. Time is a very misleading thing. All there is, ever, is the now. We can gain experience from the past, but we can’t relive it; and we can hope for the future, but we don’t know if there is one.”  ~ George Harrison

“You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking how you’ll escape one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.”  ~ John Green

“I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.”  ~ Alan Wilson Watts

“The Future is, of all things, the thing least like eternity. It is the most temporal part of time–for the Past is frozen and no longer flows, and the Present is all lit up with eternal rays.”  ~ C.S. Lewis

“All that is important is this one moment in movement. Make the moment important, vital, and worth living. Do not let it slip away unnoticed and unused.”  ~ Martha Graham

from The Desk of MarDrag:

The Past, the Present, and the Future…the three time continuums that take up all our thought and energy on a daily basis. The time frames that fill up our experiences, our thoughts, emotions and souls. We rejoice or have regrets about the Past, we enjoy or worry about the Present, and we have hopes and plans for the Future. But, what about our energy and focus? Where do we put that stream, that flow and how does that affect our quality of life and our progress on the path of our Destiny and Life’s True Purpose? How much does the direction of that focus effect where the strands of our complex and gorgeous tapestries are placed and who/what/when they intertwine with?

We can spend so much time and energy agonizing over the Past and feeling remorse, shame or guilt over things that we did or did not do or goals we did not reach. Energy spent. We worry, struggle and suffer over the Present and which direction to take or what decision to make or try to force things to happen when really, we are confused about what it is that we truly want. Energy spent. And, we obsess about the Future, trying to plan, anticipate, control and guess about what will happen or what we think we want to happen. Energy spent.

So, think of this, what of this current moment? What of the immediate Present…that gift that we are given to experience and delight in? Or learn from and choose from. As John Green says above, we live in the Present lamenting the Past and imagining the Future will be so much better, but we do not see the Present for what it is. Today, this moment…there is nothing like it and never will be. This moment will never come again, and we must remind ourselves to become aware of that, to spend each gift of a moment as if there will never be another, because, in all truth, there will not. And how would we spend that moment in the Now…regretting the Past and looking for the Future? How insignificant and irrelevant that must make the Present feel!

What if we took all the energy we spent mourning the Past and looking to the Future…and spent that energy on the Present? How much more of our life might we know if we spent all that energy here…in the Now?  How better would we recognize our Destiny, discover our Life’s Purpose and gather the right Direction if we put that energy in the Now?

Consider this…all the moments of all our experiences of the Past and all the hopes of our Future collide in this one moment of the Present. It is ALL here Now! Because we have it so in our minds.

So, if we can accept everything in our lives that resides in the Present…that is, recognize that the sum of all we were and will be is what we are Now…then we can find some peace within ourselves and go quiet, and allow the Wiser Voices within us and of the Higher Powers to guide us in our next move. We must accept the Present in order to move away from the Past and into the Future. It is what it is for a reason…and we have made it so. Whatever is happening in our lives Now, good or bad, it is indeed happening and it is because we have chosen or allowed it. Once we truly accept responsibility for this, we can move on.

Think about where you would have your stream of energy and focus flow. Think about those strands of your tapestry and where you would have them placed. It would be a tangled skein to have them placed in the Past as they try to draw the picture of the Present while imagining what they will look like in the Future.

The Present is a gift and the potential and possibilities are endless, if we choose to spend our valued time there. Our Destinies require it, our Life’s Purpose is waiting for our attention, and the Direction is to the Now.

Blessings!