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Exercise In Now
Affirmation Column
I Absolutely Affirm
Living in the Now is an experience which seems almost unreal to my human adventure in time and space here on Earth. And—naturally, the question lingers—just what does it mean to have no past, to be brand new in the present moment.
I got a good idea of that concept after watching the movie Regarding Henry. The movie is about a man who has amnesia after an accident and has to start from zero as his memory of the past is gone. It sparks my imagination—still it is hard for me not to imagine myself with a so-called "past" memory which somehow encompasses what I think I am.
Following the path of Henry I understand that he is like a child looking around in a new environment and opening his consciousness to new attitudes, sights and impressions—that now slowly become his reality in the here and now. Yet, observing Henry in gaining understanding of his new self, I see fragments of awareness that surface from his universal sense of allness and oneness. These aspects of universality are always present in everybody and as we are tuned to them they give us a sense of purpose and belonging.
What makes a story a story is a thought plus the interpretation of feelings that consciousness interprets from it. And any story seems to put me back in the frame of time and space. Still, as I look at it in my awareness of the moment it seems rather one introspective concept frozen into a still picture in the timelessness of this moment—and in its perfect conception this moment is unrelated to past or future. Timeless? Yes, as long as I do not compare, judge, or possess anything in that moment.
That is what I learn from the movie Regarding Henry. With his memory of the past he has also left behind his unbeneficial thought and behavioral patterns. He forgot how he had trained himself to be a cold and ruthless lawyer.
The beauty of rediscovering himself in this movie, is to watch how his intrinsic purity and integrity, his native goodness and caringness—his divine self emerge and express themselves in a "new" person. His divine nature was always there—but well hidden underneath a trained and habitual cold and cynical appearance. Now in the fertile ground of no comparison—the innocent NOW — the wonderful human / divine person he is comes to life.
Yes, that is what my experience of NOW is, a moment of no comparison and no judgment in the innocence and purity of this moment.
—Dr Sylvia M Enz