We have all heard the words,  “BE HERE NOW”, or “BE IN THE NOW”, so many times that many people reveal through their words their spiritual immaturity when they quote these words.  Sorry to say it so directly but I feel compelled to confront this on this day in which we are celebrating freedom.  Most people, I fear do not understand truly what NOW means.  They often will say to someone whom they have  harmed in one way or another to just “let go of the past, be in the now”. They go on to say directly or imply that the one who seems to be holding on to a past harm or hurt that they are “less than enlightened”, for if they were enlightened they would simply “Let it go and be here now”.

I hope you understand what I am saying here because I am going to discuss what  NOW truly is and where NOW is.

I like talking about NOW by using the phrase, “this NOW moment”.  As a Unity Minister of nearly 30 years, I often refer to this NOW moment as a place of deep awareness within our consciousness. A wise professor, Ed Rabel in 1986 while I was in Unity Ministerial school once said:  The Kingdom of Heaven, within you, is the “realm of  Divine Ideas”, and again, within YOU.  NOW is a place in our consciousness where we connect fully to our own Truth. Our own Truth is the home of our authentic self, our true self, or if you are so inclined our Divine Self. However, you do not have to think of your authentic self as religious. It is simply the TRUTH of who you are. When we connect to this part of ourselves, we have access to our thoughts, our feelings, our history, our perceptions and the awareness of our dreams, our passions, our likes and our dislikes. Our True self is a place of wholeness.

We all have one choice at any given moment and if we make the correct choice, 1000s of other choices open up to us. The first choice is to either connect with our Truth or to not. This is our first choice. If we choose to make the only real choice and that is to choose to connect with our True, real, eternal self, then we will know what our path is at that moment. YES, in that now moment. When we connect with who we are and run into someone who has harmed us, we have access to our ability to forgive, we have access to our ability to set healthy boundaries and we have access to our voice which enables us to say  YES and NO.  So, when we face the person who has harmed us, we can know whether this is a safe person. We can know whether the harm they did was unintentional and if they have sorrow about what they did or if what they did is a continuous pattern in which they do not know how to keep from harming us.  We can  know by connecting with our  True self whether this is simply not a safe person for us to be around, or did they simply make an unconscious mistake for which they are sorry for and show they have no intention of harming us again.

Our truth will enable us to know what to do in this  NOW moment, that is if we choose to make that correct first choice and connect to our TRUE self. The other choice is one in which we dis-connect with our Truth, our inner voice, our inner knowing. When we make this wrong choice, we are truly at the whim of whomever is trying to take hold of our consciousness and then they are able  direct us the way they want us to go. This is a description of Codependency. I like saying Codependency is not having an identity except in relationship  to everything outside of us. When we choose  to not connect with our own truth, we are in a hell on earth, where we are subjected to whomever we may choose to connect with instead of connecting to our own Truth first. So, on this day in which we celebrate freedom, I invite you to be free from ever making the wrong choice again, I invite you to make connecting with your authentic self the most important choice you will ever make. It is by this decision that you will truly be free.

And one more point about this NOW moment. Remember NOW is within you. So, if you have been putting off making a decision thinking that right now is not a good time.  You are not understanding the power of NOW. NOW will always be with you and when we make  decision  to connect to NOW now, we are creating new neural pathways that will make it that much easier to connect to NOW the next time.

Happy Celebrations of WHO you are NOW, WHO you have always been, and WHO you will always be.