Questing for signs of the sacred in the everyday, I find myself in the present moment. Beyond techniques of the sacred, like meditation and shamanic journeys, the here and now is the only portal to the awareness of Spirit that I have found.

So the sacred here and now is where I need to take myself. If I want to live a life of community and co-creation with the spirits that surround me, awareness of the moment is the way to go.

Trouble is, when I bring myself home to that place, Spirit is not the first thing I see. Reflected back to me in the here and now is my own image. And often, it doesn’t look pretty.

The person I see reflected in the mirror the present moment is often not the best version of me. In fact, often it is my shadow self, the part of me I’m reluctant to acknowledge.

She’s quite irritating, that shadow side of me. She hates beginning. She is a born procrastinator – would rather fritter away time browsing the internet than actually get up and do something.

When she is doing something, she becomes blind to the beauty of life and damages it unthinkingly. Or she has brought her reluctance with her and works with resentment.

No wonder I have trouble with the present moment. I don’t actually much like the person I find there. And for years I have tried to change her. By telling her just how frustrated I was with her and how much better she could do.

Which of course doesn’t work. Being harsh with myself and trying hard to be different only makes me more reluctant and more anxious. It makes me thicken to walls I have built to protect myself against the world.

The only way to soften those walls is to be kind and gentle to myself. Treating myself as my own best friend, or my own gentle moter, gives me a chance to relax. When I accept my own foibles with compassion, I have a chance to see beyond the walls I have made.

When those walls fall away, I find myself in the present moment. There I am light and transparent, a member of the Great Community of Being. There, I become the mirror and the here and now is reflected in me. There, I am at home.

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