Let the following excerpt by Vernon Howard serve as a reminder of the beauty and practicality of awareness and presence. Nothing could be more inspiring and joyful. From my favorite book, “The Power of Your Supermind”.

“How would you feel if this were the very first day of your life? That’s the whole idea! You would enjoy it with freshness. Having no past conditioning to blur your feelings, you would respond perfectly to everything. You would and could not know dread or defensiveness.
Live from moment to moment, just as if every new moment is all there is.
This brings us to the mystical meaning of time.
When you enjoy the present moment, you do not worry about tomorrow’s enjoyment. True enjoyment is all-inclusive. It is only when you fail to enjoy the present that you seek escape into yesterday or tomorrow. But there is no escape into either, for neither exists. Because there is only now, enjoyment is now or never. Memorize these three words — Now is new.”

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Weekly Exercise

Smash the tyranny of the past and future by constantly tugging yourself back to the here and now. Be conscious of yourself at this very moment, even as you hold this book. In that state you are receptive to true inspiration. If your telephone rings, you need to be home to answer it.

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7 Comments

  1. I love this! Apparently, I can’t be reminded enough that the simple quality and beauty of the moment is all there really is! What a relief!

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  2. “Because there is only now, enjoyment is now or never.” I love this quote. It reminds me that any time I’m feeling frightened or nervous or angry, I can start over right now and cancel those negative feelings. What a beautiful way to live!

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  3. “Now is New” Yes, very True, but we have some terrible habits that make it old. When we add a self we make it old.
    The “self” is a thought that is born out of a thought that says something or anything referring to a “self” and because we are unaware of this mechanical process happening within us, we assume that this mere thought is real. So now, we go out in our day building a unreal life on an unreal mere thought. We start to have ‘happy self thoughts’ which at some point turns into the opposite, ‘unhappy self thoughts’. Because we believed in a happy self, we now must believe in an unhappy self. We wrongly think when unhappy, somehow we must find the happy self that was just there. We spend our whole day thinking we are thinking intelligently and that we are inches away from re-uniting with our happy self. We are sure and believe we are doing the right thing. This all happens in the dark, that is we are unaware of this whole process. Everyone who wants to really escape must slow down their thoughts and see this process take place within themselves so they know all about how crazy they have been to believe such madness. Catching the self thought and accompanied feeling before this mess starts down this bad habit pathway, inside us, is the real answer to a content existence.

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  4. We tenaciously hold on to the familiar thought-self, like a stubborn child refusing to give up his toy.

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  5. “Do not wait for life. Do not long for it. Be aware, always and at every moment, that the miracle is in the here and now.” Marcel Proust.

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  6. “In that state you are receptive to true inspiration.” This is key. If I am in mechanical thought, fantasy thought or just mixed up mess of thoughts there is no insight except what i make up and call insight. True insight only comes when I am out of all those false rolls and just being in the now. Only then does God see an opening to speak.

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  7. When we witness life as new, when we are free of the usual labeling and identifying, what was once hidden to us is revealed. What is seen then takes on a holy quality, pure and free of bias. We experience our first direct taste of true joy. All of Now is available to us in this way. We need only bring our conscious awareness to life’s inviting party!

    Reply

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