Quotes about Now

The past is gone. The future never arrives. In truth, there is no life outside of this moment.

The passing moment is all we can be sure of; it is only common sense to extract the most value from it.

The illusion
     that there will be some time in the future
           when all things will come together for us
                  interferes with our fully living today.
If we aren't living fully now,
      we never will.
The only time we ever have
      is the present.

You cannot be present in an abstract way. Presence is not about disappearing into nothingness. You can only be present with something that is actually here.

If you can see it, hear it, feel it, taste it, touch it, or smell it, you can be present with it. It is of the present moment, and so it brings to you the opportunity to be present with it.

You get lost because you think there is somewhere to go. If you give up believing in a goal or a destination, then you cannot get lost. In the present moment, there is no destination.

Let go of the idea that the path will lead you to your goal.  The truth is that with each step we take, we arrive.  Repeat that to yourself every morning: 'I've arrived.'  That way you'll find it much easier to stay in touch with each second of your day.

Listen – life is really going on, right now,
around us.  Do you see it?  Sometimes I lose it
but if I sit still and listen, it comes back,
and then I think, How funny, this is what being alive is.

Father Michael says Follow the God of abundance.
Says we hurry from the moment's wealth
for fear it will be taken.

Don't wait. Don't tell the story later.
Life is so short. This stretch of sea and sand, this walk on the shore, before the tide covers everything we have done.
I love you.
The three most difficult words in the world.
But what else can I say?

We pamper the present like a spoiled child, obeying its superficial demands but ignoring its real needs.

Nothing ever happened in the past; it happened in the Now. Nothing will ever happen in the future; it will happen in the Now.

Life is now. There was never a time when your life was not now, nor will there ever be.

The psychological condition of fear is divorced from any concrete and true immediate danger. It comes in many forms: unease, worry, anxiety, nervousness, tension, dread, phobia, and so on. This kind of psychological fear is always of something that might happen, not of something that is happening now.

Each moment is everything we have. And more than we can use.

Don't save your enormous creativity for "something better."  Give it to this.

This is a perfect moment.

It's a perfect moment for many reasons, but especially because you and I are waking up from our sleepwalking, thumb-sucking dumb-clucking collusion with the masters of illusion and destruction.

Thanks to them, from whom the painful blessings flow, we are waking up.

Their wars and tortures,
their crimes against nature,
extinctions of species
and brand new diseases.

Their spying and lying
in the name of the father,
sterilizing seeds and
trademarking water.

Molestations of God,
celebrations of shame,
stealing our dreams and
changing our names.

Their cunning commercials
and blood-sucking hustles,
their endless rehearsals
for the end of the world.

Thanks to them, from whom the awful teachings flow, we are waking up.

~~

Their painful blessings are cracking open more and more gashes in the shrunken and crippled mass hallucination that is mistakenly called "reality." And through the fractures, ripe eternity is flooding in; news of the soul's true home is pouring in; our allies from the other side of the veil are swarming in, inspiring us to become smarter and wilder and kinder and trickier.

We are waking up.

As heaven and earth come together, as the dreamtime and daytime merge, we register the shockingly exhilarating fact that we are in charge of creating a brand new world. Not in some distant time or faraway place, but right here and right now.

~~

As we stand on this brink, as we dance on this verge, we can't let the ruling fools of the dying world sustain their curses.... We can't afford to be consumed with our anger; we can't be obsessed and possessed by their danger. Our mysterious bodies crave delight and fertility. Our boisterous imaginations demand fresh tastes of infinity.

In the new world we're gestating, we need to be suffused with lusty compassion and ecstatic duty, ingenious love and insurrectionary beauty. We've got to be teeming with radical curiosity and reverent pranks, voracious listening and ferocious thanks.

~~

So I'm curious, my fellow creators. Since we are in charge of making a new world - not just breaking the old world - where do we begin?

...Here's what I say: We will ignore the cult of gloom and doom and embrace the cause of zoom and boom. We will laugh at the stupidity of evil and hate, and summon the brilliance to praise and create. No matter how upside-down it all may temporarily appear, we will have no fear, because we know this secret: Life is crazily in love with us - wildly and innocently in love with us....

Pronoia is our word of power, the spell we cast to shake ourselves awake again and again.... It's the brazen perception that all of creation is conspiring to shower us with blessings.

Pronoia means that even if we can't see and don't know, primal benefactors are plotting to emancipate us. The winds and tides are on our side, forever and ever, amen. The fire and rain are scheming to steal our pain. The sun and moon know our real names, and the animals pray for us while we're dreaming. Do you believe in guardian angels and divine helpers? Whether you do or not, they're always wangling to give you the gifts you don’t even realize you want....

~~

...Some people argue that life is strife and suffering is normal. Others swear we're born sinful and only heaven can provide us with the peace that passes understanding. But pronoia says that being alive on the rough green and brown earth is the highest honor and privilege. It's an invitation to work wonders and perform miracles that aren't possible in any nirvana, promised land, or afterlife.

I'm not exaggerating or indulging in poetic metaphor when I tell you that we are already living in paradise. Visualize it if you dare. The sweet stuff that quenches all of our longing is not far away in some other time and place. It's right here and right now.

Poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning knew the truth: "Earth's crammed with heaven."

YOU'RE ALIVE BECAUSE OF LOVE. YOU'RE *MADE* OF LOVE.

The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth in the present moment, to appreciate the peace and beauty that are available now.

Life exists only at this very moment, and in this moment it is infinite and eternal, for the present moment is infinitely small; before we can measure it, it has gone, and yet it exists forever....

Be here now.  Be someplace else later.
 Is that so complicated?" 

~~~Zen Judaism:  For You, A Little Enlightenment  - David M. Bader

Accepting means you allow yourself to feel whatever it is you are feeling at that moment. It is part of the is-ness of the NOW. You can't argue with what is. Well, you can, but if you do, you will suffer.

A man is a fool not to put everything he has, at any given moment, into what he is creating.

Here and now is our day of torment! Here and now is our day of joy! Here and now is our opportunity... Choose ye this day, this hour, for no Redeemer liveth!

We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.

"When are we going to get going?" Chris says.
"What's your hurry?" I ask.
"I just want to get going."
"There's nothing up ahead that's any better than it is right here."

There is nothing for you to go back and live over, or fix, or feel regret about now. Every part of your life has unfolded just right.  And so - now - knowing all that you know from where you now stand, now what do you want? The answers are now coming forth to you. Go forth in joy, and get on with it.

You are, you always have been and you will always be in this same place whether you are aware of it or not.

This place is this eternal now moment. Not as an idea of now, but simply right now.

You find when you stop fighting life that naturally relaxation, openness, loved and loving is all there is. Naturally.

You need to stop the fight. Stop creating that smoke. Only then can life flow without the confusion, frustration and suffering that it appears to be so full of.

The point of all this IS to stay here as our true nature. That is the goal, so to speak, of this eternal now moment.

He to whom time is the same as eternity
And eternity the same as time
Is free from  all contention

It is only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on earth and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up that we will begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it were the only one we had.