“How is being present different than being? Are they not the same thing? Should they not be? And yet how seldom are you fully present for your own life, your own Self, your own being. If you were fully aware of your own being, you would be in oneness with Your Father.” (ACOL, C:30.1)
We have long heard the good advice: Live in the present. But how few times have we actually been able to do this! Our minds scurry ahead and behind, caught in fantasies of the future and the past, and we don’t realize how to live in the present.
This is tragic, for here, in this quotation for today, Jesus tells us that being in the present is actually “being.” If we knew our own selves, we would know the oneness that we actually enjoy with the Father. We would be in oneness with God.
How to accomplish this! First and most importantly, we don’t need to see this shift in perspective as something to be accomplished. If we do this, our egos will arise again, and we will surely fail. We need to see being present, and being, as one and the same. We need consciously to stop our idle fantasies from reaching ahead and reaching back, and we need to rest right where we are, being conscious of the sights and sounds of what life is giving is right now.
When we live in the present, we live in God, for the only time in eternity is the present. Only time, which is an illusion, separates into past, present, and future. Eternity is the ever-present now.
Ask our Christ Self to guide us to rest in the moment that is before us—right now, always and forever. If there are plans that need to be made, our guidance will reveal those to us, in the time and moment that action and thought are needed. Until then, we need be satisfied that living in the present is the best and only way to experience our being, the being that is a part of God Himself. And the Christ Self will lead the way for us, poised in the surroundings that engulf us in each segmented part of the present.
We can live our moments in the present. We don’t have to let our minds scurry ahead to the future or muse about the past. Give the Christ Self a chance to root us in being, to root us in the present.
Dear Father/Mother,
It seems so hard to live always in the present. I don’t really know how, and that is the problem. But the solution is always with the problem, and you have told me the solution. Focus on being, just being the Christ Self. How I long to do this consistently!
Help me to live through this day without making foolish mistakes. Help me to support my brothers and sisters in their endeavors. I can sometimes get too self-centered, and this is an invitation to the ego to rise again. And I would not have the ego rise again.
Help me to reach out and sense Your Presence in my life today. Today, all through the day, and every day.
Amen.
MIRACLES EACH DAY 
Celia, I am enjoying reading your posts every day. They speak to me and are helping me to remember, and I wanted you to know that you are serving as a spiritual teacher.
I love that prayer on the end. Helping us make choices in the moment, serving others, and being in His presence is what keeps us focused on what is important, and creates a heart of peace.
Thanks Celia. A helpful mind exercise from A Course of Love is: “I dedicate all thought to union”. In other words, to the Self, Being, the present moment. In wholeheartedness, resting in Being, the present moment, becomes more natural, as the mind is no longer allowed its false rule. With much love.