Every year I send an email about choosing your Guiding Word, Words or Phrase. This year, my Guiding Words are: BE HERE NOW. I couldn’t have imagined how pertinent they would be, how they would unfold, evolve and guide me through this year.

With all that has happened in this tumultuous year of 2020, the best way for me to attempt to remember and feel the Love and Peace that I am as my Higher Self, my True Self, is to try to stay present. That willingness is encapsulated with the words, BE HERE NOW. I say them to myself every day. When we are present, we are more able to be aligned with our Higher, True Self, part of Loving Source Energy, and more able to feel the Love and Peace that we are. Simple, not easy.

There’s a reason Eckhart Tolle and Byron Katie and so many others talk about being radically present. It’s a lifeline, back to what is true and real. And Love is true and real. Everything else is temporary.

Here’s another take on the value of acknowledging what is showing up in the present and still being at peace:

To be free comes from not changing or fixing the world, but from seeing the world as it is and opening the heart in the midst of it.

                                                                  —J Krishnamurti

Danna Faulds is a favorite of mine. I love this poem about being centered and present:

Centering

Here. Right here, right now,
bring your mind to this place and time.
Invite it, even if it resists, to sit and witness what it is to be alive.
Let there be no ulterior motive in this moment but to be.
Rest on the waves of breath and choose to experience all of it.
Let thoughts float through and leave again,
as the mind slowly settles like snow inside a shaken paperweight.
This is all there is.
Here. Right here and now.

―Danna Faulds

Who knew when those words chose me how important they would be as we went through a year like none other. When everything around us feels like it’s falling apart, when we are gripped by fear, anger, anxiety, dread, worry . . . we can breathe, we can remember everything changes, and we can bring ourselves back to the present. We can be willing to be here, right now. And in that moment, we are once again, in Love.