The Power of Now

It's weird that I haven't tried to live in the moment for the past 7 months or so; in fact, I had completely forgotten about the practice.  As I was sitting on the couch in Wojc's brother's house as they were loading the last of our suitcases in the car I started to stress.  Who am I kidding? Even the cat was nervously pacing as we packed all of our belongings.  I sat on the couch and my mind started to go to an anxious place where I began to worry about leaving for Portland tomorrow and looking for an apartment and what if I didn't like any of the places and so on and so forth.  All of a sudden it hit me: right now, right this very moment everything is fine and I'm happy.  If I could learn to live in the present moment then my life would be different.  If you truly live in the moment you really can't stress; all of my anxiety and stress stem from worrying about what will happen a day from now, a week from now, a year from now.  Because of all this stress I often let days pass without fully enjoying them.

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

Eckhart Tolle provides me with an excellent meditation that I really hope to incorporate in my life as often as possible.  I think it's like a muscle, the more you exercise it the stronger it becomes and the more I practice living in the moment the easier it will become.  When I had this epiphany it was like a cement block lifted from my shoulders.