The Amazing Time of Change

The world is in a strange, frightening, challenging, and amazing time of change. We may yearn for things to be like they used to be, but in our hearts we know that’s not going to happen. We are in the middle of a tremendous cognitive shift for everyone on the planet. So how do we deal with it without giving into fear and anxiety or even hopelessness?

Some years ago a man named Ram Dass wrote a book titled Be Here Now. In it he wrote about how he had the realization that, at his truest, he was just his inner-self: a luminous being that he could trust indefinitely and love infinitely. His message was basically simple: there is only the present moment. There are tomorrow and yesterday but the only real power we have access to is the present one.

This message is especially powerful now as we watch what is going on all over the world. So how do we stay in tune with the moment and stop spending time worrying about the future or bewailing the past?

Just recently, I re-read a quote from Anne Frank’s diary of July 15, 1944:

“In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us too. I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again.”

So it just seems to me that the best way we can help that vision become a reality again is by holding to being peaceful within ourselves as much as we can every moment, holding the lamp inside ourselves so that others can see it and take courage.