Now is the Great Time for Transformation
Many healers, gurus, teachers, and mystics talk about living in the present but fail to address how many of us humans on the ground don’t know how to drop the weight of our cycles to show up with the moment as it is.
The truth about being in the moment is that it isn’t an automatic newness. We don’t just show up and everything we knew prior dissipates.
We show up and try to be with the moment without past projections, without an idea of it from something else we carried here to this spot. We want to see its vastness as we release the old and stale, rightfully so. And we ask ourselves, “Do we really like what is here, right now, as it is today? And not how we once said it was long ago?”
We want to know that when we unveil and reveal ourselves to the new dawn, we will be met in our relationships, environments, circles, and projects at the same level of reciprocity and renewal that we have acquired in the timespan of yesteryear’s present moment and today’s.
In order to be in this space, however, we also inevitably carry remnants of the past with us. A part of showing up in the present is bearing witness to all of the unresolved, unprocessed, lingering traumas, cycles, or patterns of the past that we have never really given ourselves a chance to fully integrate. And even if it is a continuum in which we have worked diligently through, we are still pulling from our prior self, somewhere.
The past tells us of our stories, our lessons, our integration periods. It tells us of not only our wounds and traumas but of our forthcomings and our wisdoms. While we don’t necessarily need to cling onto those pivotal points anymore, we recognize the leaping pads as monumental steppingstones to our “now.” They make up the contents within our medicine bags as we navigate and serve the world today.
We must honor some of those rites of passages we have walked through that have birthed the world we are in today. Because today will inevitably be someday a piece of the past that will not and cannot go unaddressed. Because I know that when we don’t acknowledge those pieces, they subconsciously store in our cells and tell our being, “This is where we are today.”
And when we honor them, we celebrate them for all that they are. Celebration also brings closure. Knowing that the moment was ceased with gratitude as we graduate and transition into the new level of our lives inevitably heeds an opening. So we must celebrate. We must have ceremony. This level of recognition tells the being, “This is no longer, but this, this right here, will serve you moving forward.”
This acknowledgement supports the birth of gracefully welcoming the present.
So, in a sense, and in my experience, the moment isn’t always brand-new. It’s a product of what happened prior and what brought us here. The present is the opportunity to catch up, refresh, and change gears—but that involves facing our history. And even then, in this moment, we lube the gears to turn in the direction we need it to go—foreseeing the future. Time is never still: it is a fluid continuum.
And even the future doesn’t have to be a place we avoid or disconnect from. We are 100 percent allowed to value what is in our lives while at the same time dreaming an even bigger landscape for births to occur.
The future, too, draws us back to the present moment inviting us to be ever more diligent, devoted, intimate, and authentic as we move from what once was to what will be. It happens here and now.
And the magic of showing up in the present is opening the gift of the potentials untapped, the dreams awaiting, and the open spaces before us that have always and ever been beckoning us forth to lay bricks and pave a path.
But what has stopped us from veering down the path wielding no footprints, the grassy fields absent of track marks, the gravel lot yearning for bricks to be laid? I do not think it is fear. No. Because as much as we curbside kick and knock it down, fear is not the culprit of our inability to be restored. Fear often shows us where we must go, and trembling, we move. Even if flailing, unsure, unprepared, it does move us.
I think what hinders us from being with our present is not knowing how to integrate our past and our future into the atom that is the now, vibrating at the center of both. We think that we have to drop our stories, our children, our life, absolutely everything we knew prior in order to show up.
We also think that we have to detach from our calling—the part of us that has already overcome this hurdle, always whispering to us from the portal that is the future and absolutely everything we have foreseen, envisioned, and dreamt to someday reach in order to show up.
But that simply could not be less true. Being with the present is being with the flow of what was and what will be. We can certainly quantum leap, but many of us need an iron rod to hold onto and substance in between as we transition. We need a system for processing.
We need a pool for integrating our stories and, equally so, a pool for dipping our toe into the freshness. We need safe spaces to release and safe spaces to reawaken. Containers in which we can reflect and ask, “Is this how the story still goes?” and inquire, “How do we want the story to transform as we turn the pages?”
More importantly, we want the reprieve to pause for a moment and ask ourselves, “Who are we now that we have climbed that mountain or overcome that hurdle? And in which ways will this new self, from that old thing, serve the future of where we are going?”
So, for me, when I work with being present, I lovingly and delicately sit with whatever comes up from my past. What is this showing me about myself, my stance, my world, today? Where was I then, and how far have I come since? What did this experience show me in the moment as I was moving through it—and how does that differ from now, as I’ve integrated it?
And then when I’m feeling brave, I ask myself, “In which way can I utilize these personal stories, these breakthroughs, these revelations in ways that not only redeem my spirit from then to now, but move into my future and continue to carry me, shape me, or be of service to myself and others as I move forward?”
I am all for sudden death and rebirth.
But I am also all for witnessing, holding, honoring, and nurturing the heart of the present that is inevitably tied together by both the past and the future. The art of weaving the sacred tapestry and connecting all of the dots is my absolute sweet spot.
The transition is the tenderness that takes place when we are both magically conduits of spirit and vulnerable expressions of human beings.
I want to know how I will use my past to intentionally, devotedly, purposefully, and with passion, consciously create a better future for myself and those who inhabit my space.
I also want to know how my brothers and sisters will not only overcome the triumphs of their old ghosts but allow their forthcomings to be the platter that serves their gifts today.
I want to know how we can weave the tapestry that is our human birth right of evolution and expansion in a way that honors our past, not as a setback, but as a catalyst into our future. I want to know how we are able to access the medicine within what was once the wound and move from there.
And between the stories of my history and the dreams of my future is my now. The present. To enjoy.
As restoration, as magic, as a cauldron of redemption, integration, alchemy, and embodiment.
I think that we need more safe spaces, open arms, sacred covenants, containers, circles, platforms, networks, and rites of passage that honor the present. Not only as a magical, new quantum moment but as the product of the chemistry between our history and our destiny.
We need more tools to weave it all together in a way that redeems us from our past and catapults us into our “caught up” selves as we lovingly and gently nurture the delicate human being we are in the process: in the in-between.
I am lovingly working on creating these spaces myself and others—for all of us.
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