Hello Friends,

In A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle describes the difference between inner purpose and outer purpose.

Our outer purpose can take many different forms: raising a happy family, pursuing our career, volunteering with organizations whose mission we support, and so on.

Our inner purpose is always the same: to awaken to the present moment.

If you ask your mind, “is ‘now’ the best time of my life?” your mind will almost certainly say “no.” I can remember a time that felt happier. I can imagine having more fun in the future.

This is because our “thinking mind” can only find material to grasp onto by searching in the past or the future. Our thinking mind feels little at home in the now.

But here’s the thing: Now is the only real time.

Imagining that our happiness has already occurred in the past, and is now gone, will lead us straight to depression.

Fantasizing that our happiness will only be found in the future and that we need to hurry up and get there will only lead to frustration, anxiety, and stress.

Anything that takes us out of the NOW cuts us off from our power and our connection to what is real.

So you can see why so many of us feel disempowered, struggling with depression, anxiety, stress.

The belief that “now” isn’t good enough to be the best time is not only a function of our thinking mind, which seeks to flee from the present experience, but of the fast pace of our culture, which gives us little time to ground, breathe and be present. Our commodity culture depends on us believing that if we just buy something or do something different, we can get to a future time that is better than now.

Grounding, breathing, and being present help us feel at home in the now, the only time that actually exists.

It takes a conscious commitment to ourselves to do these things.

I’ve been making it a conscious practice lately to say to myself,

“My purpose is to be alive to this moment.”

Whether I am sitting in my chair, or driving, or reaching for my toothbrush, or talking with a friend, whatever I am doing right now, I can say,

“My purpose is to be alive to this moment. My purpose is what I am doing right now.”

It’s amazing how powerful a quality of awareness you can bring to what you’re doing, right now, when you choose to show up and “be” in this way.

Affirming the inner purpose – to be alive to this moment – makes any outer purpose we engage in much more rich and alive too.

Because every action we take, every great and complicated plan we get involved in, is made up of these tiny moments, “now,” each of them occurring as a succession of “now.”

Being alive to the present moment. This is what it means to make Now the Best Time.

Namaste,
Erin

p.s. I will be co-teaching a November retreat at Red Mountain Resort with Mary Johnston-Coursey. The topic? Awakening the Energy Body. We’ll experience the inner body using sensing awareness – a wonderful way to practice making NOW the best time. Consider joining us! Visit the Retreats page for details…