Practicing the Power of Now

“The word enlightenment conjures up the idea of some superhuman accomplishment, and the ego likes to keep it that way, but it is simply your natural state of felt oneness with Being.”

To achieve enlightenment, you must feel a sense of connectedness with Being—the eternal, ever-present One Life beyond our lives. It’s the same as what some people call ‘God.’

Once you immerse yourself in the present moment, you will start to feel one with Being. When you do not feel this connectedness, you will begin to perceive yourself as isolated from yourself and the world around you.

Achieving enlightenment will allow you to rise above your thinking mind and use it in an effective and focused manner. You will feel the inner stillness and free yourself from the distracting inner dialogue within you.

However, to achieve this enlightenment and be totally present in the moment, you need to let go of your fear. This usually happens when you feel uneasy, worried, anxious, nervous, and tense about what might happen in the future. When you feel fear, your mind is in the future, not the present. This, in turn, makes you more anxious.

Once you disidentify from your mind and learn to live in the present moment, you will be able to derive your sense of self from a deep and true place within yourself and not from your mind. You will be able to clearly and firmly state your feelings and thoughts without getting aggressive or defensive.

“When you create a problem, you create pain.”

When you commit to creating no more problems, you also commit to creating no more pain for yourself. Then, you will also be creating no more pain for others. Remember that a situation needs to be dealt with or accepted; there is no need to make it into a problem.

Once you immerse yourself in the Now, you will be able to think clearly and come up with an effective way to deal with any situation since your decisions will no longer rely on the past conditioning of your mind. Instead, they will be based on the objective information you have right now.

“You find yourself by coming into the present.”

When you bring more consciousness into your life, you banish negative emotions and thought patterns from your mind while giving yourself the space to think clearly and rationally. The best way to bring more consciousness into your life is to immerse yourself in the Now and shine a light on your unconsciousness to dissolve it.

“The key is to be in a state of permanent connectedness with your inner body - to feel it at all times.”

When you stay rooted in the present moment, you will be able to become aware of and appreciate the beauty of your surroundings. To achieve this in everyday life, you will have to connect with your inner body and become deeply rooted within yourself. When you connect with your inner body, negativity can no longer affect you. You will also tend to attract new circumstances that reflect this higher frequency.

In contrast, if you do not connect with your inner body, your mind will absorb your consciousness, and you will be unable to stop thinking.

“Pain is inevitable as long as you are identified with your mind.”

Once you make an identity for yourself out of your pain, you cannot break free from it. When part of your sense of self is invested in your emotional pain, you will resist every attempt to heal it because it has now become an essential part of you. However, if you become conscious of this pain and stop identifying with it, you will be liberated from it.

“Love cannot flourish unless you are permanently free of mind identification.”

Many of us allow our pain to take over and become destructive of love. However, when you bring presence into the pain, you will be able to transmute it into love. Accusing, defending, attacking, or arguing with your partner will only feed your ego and destroy your relationship.

Instead, learn to create a loving relationship with your partner by not judging both you and them. This will end codependency and allow both of you to be in love without being drawn into each other’s unconscious patterns.

“All suffering is recognized as an illusion.”

In life, you will experience cycles of both success and failure. Whatever cycle you are in, you must let go of it for new things to arise. Most of us allow our happiness to depend on these cycles. However, when you simply accept life without resistance, you will feel true peace, regardless of external factors.

When you feel negative emotions arising within you, allow yourself to become transparent about the external causes of these feelings. With practice, this will allow you to destroy that wall of resistance inside of you that tells you that “this should not be happening.” Then, you will no longer feel those negative emotions.

However, if you feel things are going wrong often in your life and you can’t do anything about it, the best thing to do is surrender to the flow of it. Doing so will allow you to eliminate pain and sorrow from your life. Once you accept the present, you will be freed from your mind and not experience suffering.

“When there is no way out, there is still always a way through.”

When it comes to illness, the pain you’re experiencing must be felt, as there is no other way around it. However, this does not mean you have to suffer. Remember that your illness has nothing to do with who you are, so you must keep your illness from consuming you. Instead of giving your illness any past or future, accept and focus on the present fully.

Once you accept the present moment you are in, you free yourself from your mind. This will allow you to achieve inner peace regardless of your circumstances, and you will no longer suffer.