Now, the immediate present, manifests the only Life there is or can ever be. Future moments of Now are, at best, predictions or expectations based on an individual perception of what's present, and the past lives only as a memory-the recall of a no longer existing perception. Disciplined alertness is required to fully savor being present Now. When you are fully present, the room you're in comes alive to you, the people on the street respond to your presence differently, and you experience freedom from the personal concept of yourself. There is a quality of owning the world you walk through that shifts the way life is occurring for you moment by moment.
Consciousness, infinite Mind, the source and condition of all existence, is whole, complete, satisfied, fulfilled and fully self-expressed in every instance of Now and that experience of completeness is available each moment you are present. Mrs. Eddy's term was "become conscious." She said to become conscious for a single moment-and the body would offer no complaints. Consciousness exists only at the level of perfection. "Wool-gathering" i.e. mentally tending to something other than the immediate moment, deprives you of the experience of aliveness now. The language, the mode consciousness assumes, shifts constantly since it is the reflective view of Reality showing up in/as the language of each moment?s conscious and/or unconscious perception.
Mary Baker Eddy said, "Now is the day of salvation." Salvation implies safety and freedom. Now is perfection present. Every moment of Now lived consciously as reflective God-Being produces an experience of well-being that is free from any suggestion of imperfection, limitation, or discomfort. The immediate presence lived as daily experience is shaped by perception. Your individual perception gives you the world of your experience, either consciously aware or unconsciously by human default. In the first edition of Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy stated, "Jesus held all that he was, God,
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"The immediate presence lived as daily
experience is shaped by perception."
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and wrought (all doingness) from the standpoint of his God-being, and this was the science of being." (p.305) Present to the possibility that living is, freedom and full self expression are available to anyone willing to impose the self-discipline required. Feelings of upset, concern, anxiety or depression yield to the conscious experience of calling one's self "present." Any negative is a "red flag" alerting you that the personal sense of yourself is over-riding your conscious acknowledgement of cause and your accurate recognition that language is purely a view, your own or one common to the human condition, reflective of Reality.
Neither circumstances nor environment, nor family, nor human heritage, nor any language phenomenon generate your experience of yourself. Your own divine Being is the generative principle that calls you forth in/as your language experience. Forgetting your source, you have humanly determined, over whatever span of time you care to examine, the laws you obey, disobey and live by. Only you can free yourself. You grow helpful language that has value along the way, but the "leg-work" is all yours. Only you can appreciate the value of every single instance of Now as essential to your well-being and self-discovering.
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Resistance to your experience of NOW will have that
experience persist, be it pleasing or displeasing.
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Resistance to your experience of Now will have that experience persist, be it pleasing or displeasing. Salvation rests in the willingness to have whatever is, be present just the way it is. This becomes less difficult when you identify what's present in appearance and the meaning added, as opposed to what's present as Being. When I look around me, taking in what appearances say is true, it is helpful to distinguish the facts from any meaning that has been added through assessment, feeling, judgement or consideration by me or others. Actually the facts are less alarming than the meaning that's been added. For example, a guest didn't show up for dinner. That's what occurred. I can have that mean, "they don't love me" or "I'm just not important" or any number of variations I can make up. The situation becomes even more complex when I see that the human condition has the guest also worrying about not showing up for dinner and adding a lot of other scenarios to the situation. Maybe the friendship is destroyed or damaged. A shift in how my world occurs for me is possible whenever I let go of the meaning added. Only through devoting my attention to what is actually present, can I free myself from the little ego and all its predictions and meanings. Then it is possible to stand in the perfection that Being is and experience daily life free from the effects of stress.
The immediacy of present perfection is indisputable in Metaphysical Science. The reception that constitutes human experience reflects directly the perception consciously being acknowledged as the ground of Being. Mrs. Eddy taught that "for right reasoning there should be but one fact before the thought, namely, spiritual existence." All existence is sourced by Mind, Consciousness, therefore all that exists, exists as Spirit present regardless of how it is viewed. The view may be flawed, the presence is perfect. Appearances are merely shifting views dependent upon individual perception for their staying power. Appearances or language or concepts have no power to perpetuate themselves. Our own perception of the facts, or lack of perception keeps language looking and acting the way it looks and acts. Any resistance, attempts to change the look of things, manage the appearance or fix it has it appear stuck and set in concrete just as your worst fears imagine. Loose it and let it go! It will return to its native nothingness as a view without a viewer, a belief without a believer. Every language view disappears when it no longer finds a home with you.
The human being functioning as an identity label for the individual is the reflected language mechanism depicting a point of view being consciously played out in/as daily experience. Mary Baker Eddy explained the immediacy of perfect Being when she said, "The physical healing results now?from the operation of divine Principle?" And, she went on to declare that these mighty works?are supremely natural. You might describe healing as redeeming your view or appearance to its original presence, the Nowness of perfection. Appearances cease to hold you captive once you identify their source and condition. When a mirage is pointed out and acknowledged as a visual aberration, it no longer troubles you even if it continues to have that appearance for a long time. In fact, the appearance of water on the road ahead when driving through the desert could continue for the duration of the trip without disturbing you.
In recognizing the need of the disciples for support and guidance, Mrs. Eddy wrote of Jesus that his bread (Truth of spiritual healing) was feeding and sustaining and comforting them all along the way. Right NOW the divine consciousness that sources and constitutes all existence, is present sustaining and supporting every individual the only way his current view will allow. Attention or focus on the facts of Being, allowing the appearance or language to be, do and have whatever shows up, is your surest pathway to health, wealth and wisdom. This is "taking no thought" for circumstances that recognizes source as the presence of perfect Being inside of which those appearances present themselves. Every incident of daily life is pure, perfect Being declaring itself to itself and showing up in the language of each one's discernment. Human beings assign meanings to appearances which then imprison, limit, frustrate and defeat them in their instinctive drive to live as the cause of the world they walk through.
All the ingredients for every answer or legitimate solution to all questions is present every single moment of Now. Further, these answers are available to you and me in the proportion that we recognize the divine Mind, universal Consciousness that constitutes our Being, as source. Whenever I consciously or unconsciously assign generative power to appearances or language in place of recognizing that every appearance is a view of the sustaining infinite, I deprive myself of the freedom present at the door of my own consciousness. The fact of perfection, just as the fact of mathmatics, is present and demonstrable at every moment of Now. "The belief that man has existence or mind separate from God is a dying error." (S&H p.42)
