The end of the year is approaching, bringing reflections on how we’ve invested our time and considerations about how we’d like to invest it in the coming year. Is the New Year the time when we will finally commit ourselves to that project we’ve been putting off for years? Take time for ourselves? Find the courage to change jobs? Time plays an important role in our lives. Often, we don’t live up to our full potential because of something that happened in the past, or we feel unfulfilled because of something that has yet to happen. The truth is that there are two kinds of time: the objective flow of days, weeks, and years and a subjective time that exists only within us. The past and future exist only in our individual and collective perception, memories, and plans.
For many years, all my spiritual searches were focused on stopping reliving the past. At any moment, a sound, a color, a word, or a situation could reopen the door to past events, making them present and alive again, as if they had just happened. All my efforts were focused on stopping feeling that pain, shame, guilt, fear, and physical discomfort from my past. My present was constantly overshadowed by the past.
But the future can be just as ‘dangerous.’ It can be a constant promise that ‘someday it will get better.’ Hope and resilience are powerful inner resources, but the only real power we have is in the present. It’s in the now that our actions shape a different future or that we embrace acceptance, unlocking inner peace. The future, like the past, becomes a ‘now’—the only moment where everything exists.
When we wait for something to happen or change to be happy, satisfied, and serene, we condemn ourselves to a sad present unlikely to lead to a different future. In the now, we discover a gift within each of us—the ability to feel without judgment and the need to change what we are feeling. When we sit with our pain and listen to it, a sense of peace unfolds within us. To achieve it, we need to stop running toward the future, disconnect from ourselves, numb ourselves with alcohol, sugar, social media, or toxic relationships, and accept our experience and feelings as they are. Consciousness unfolds, the body relaxes, and the mind becomes quieter.
In the past, I believed there were exceptions, that sometimes it wasn’t my responsibility to take care of what I felt, and others had to apologize, change, or make a difference. But, how can anyone outside of me have power over what I feel? Emotions are accompanied by a physiological reaction lasting about ninety seconds. After that, it’s up to us to choose. Fear can lead to a sense of helplessness, anger to recklessness and after regret, and sadness to a veil that hides everything else, but all these emotions are also a key to feeling our bodies. When we take the time to listen to our bodies, we connect with the Life Force flowing within us. Each emotion brings this gift when we let it connect us with the now instead of with ‘the story’ of what happened or what we ‘wish would happen.’
Becoming conscious witnesses to our feelings anchors us in the now, the only time when joy and serenity unfold, opening the door to the fulfillment of dreams aligned with them. Now is the key to discovering and connecting with the power within you.
My wish for you is to connect with and tap into that power.
