You can’t live at all unless you can live fully now.

Read that line, and then read it again, and again, until the meaning sinks fully into your consciousness!

The above command is me talking to me, telling my self the same old same thing and promising my self once again that I will remember and honour this truth. How many New Year dawns do we have to witness, I ask my sorry self, before it becomes manifest in my life? And the answer is . . . (always) maybe THIS year.

The present moment is obvious and easy to recognize when it is filled with beauty, as my moments have been these past few days. I am hanging out in one of the loveliest places on Earth. Glaciers and sea and rainforests. It doesn’t get much better. It demands one’s attention. And when one gives it her attention and stays in that moment, one becomes filled with grace and gratitude for the gift. I call it getting high on life. It brings me back to of the power of ‘now’ and I am pumped.

But what of the moments when the landscape is not this stimulating? When it is not blaring trumpets and crashing cymbals? Ah, there’s the rub.

I know that my consciousness in this moment shapes my future, but I continue to forget, and I allow my mind to go soaring off into future possibilities and anticipated pleasures, or pedaling backwards into past disasters.

Focus! (goes my self talk) Give this person who is speaking to you every particle of your attention. Listen with all your might. See with all your sight. Let not an inch of attention go into what you are going to say next. This is your precious gift . . . to not only what it is that you see or hear but to your very self. The energy of my awareness is perfection.

“As soon as you honor the present moment, all unhappiness and struggle dissolve, and life begins to flow with joy and ease. When you act out the present-moment awareness, whatever you do becomes imbued with a sense of quality, care, and love - even the most simple action.” So sayeth Eckhart Tolle.

Imagine if all of humanity suddenly woke up to this fact how it would change the world. Those few who do know and practice it are revered as enlightened ones.

If not now, when? I ask myself. As one closes in on her expiry date, the moments become more precious. However, no one really knows her or his expiry date, so we would all do well to consider each moment precious and to remain true to it. Loving it. Cherishing its gift.

Anyone looking to notch up the quality of life in the New Year could not do better than to take on this simple (but not easy, I warn you) practice for his or her own. Such a sweet gift it would be to the world. And I will do my very best to join you, here and now in 2016.

I leave you with a special gift: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfIYGaslVnA

Happy New Year, dear friends.  May it bring comfort and joy.