The Eternal Now

Here's a short little bit of a book I'm slowly accumulating as I write other books. I have different names for it, including "The Laws Of Perception":

Patience

The journey shall no doubt test your patience from time to time. We have become accustomed to the ticking of the clock, the whistle that summons us to work and tells us when it is time to go. We are constantly reminded of the passing of time, of the value of time and the evils of spending it frivolously. But in the marking out of our lives in grids and blocks of months, days, hours, and minutes, we lose track of the actual flow. We atomize time until the actual living, the actual essence of the flow is chopped up. And as we chop up time into smaller and smaller pieces we begin to feel like none of these little instants are big enough to accomplish anything at all. In all of the pieces, the seconds and the minute and the hours and the days we lose track of the now, which is where everything happens. So take the opportunity to experience the now. Do you feel it? You are alive, and life is a miracle. Can you feel it? Allow yourself to do so, because that is why you are here. This is the now, you are experiencing the now. You are alive now. You feel good in the now.

And in the time you have taken to read that last paragraph, you experienced many nows. It is a different “now” as you read this than the “now” I first mentioned. At least that is the way it appears to one who is concerned with the clock or the calendar. In fact, the now is ever constant and never changing. The now that you experience is the same now as you have always experienced. It is a place outside of time, a destination to which you can always return. It is where the aged you can discover the youthful you. While all the world changes, the now does not. It is a place within you of peace, faith, security, truth. It is a oneness. It is a spring that never runs dry.

You have time, my friend, it does not have you. You have time for all of the things you want to do, despite all the things you feel you need to do. It is a matter of perception, it is the difference between pursuing what you desire and fleeing from what you fear. The energy required for both is the same but the motivation makes the world of difference.

So please come with me on this journey inward. Together we will find the things that truly matter to us, beauty and truth and joy and purpose and a sense of being where we are meant to be. The path will not always be straight, direct, but no journey is. Sometimes it will feel as if you were lost or going in the wrong direction. Sometimes it will feel that the destination is not worth the journey. But more often you will find yourself distracted from the course. You will occasionally waken to the reality that you have somehow veered far from the path and wondered how you had forgotten about it. And finding it again you will realize the feeling it gives you is no different than the feeling it gave you forty years ago. The now is no different now than it was then. And finding it, you will realize you have returned home. When you are in the now, you are where you are meant to be. And despite what it may sometimes seem, you are always in the now.