(Originally posted 27th April, 2004)
Very few of us live our lives in the current moment. Most of us a constantly dwelling on mistakes that we have made in the past, or worrying about what’s going to happen in the future. Because of this, we forget to look for the opportunities that come along that will take us to whatever it is in life that we are aiming for.
The problem with dwelling on something that isn’t right here and now is that it takes away our power. We tend to become fixated on something else and because of their first and third principles, will bring whatever it is we are dwelling on into being.
The thing is though, if you stop and actually take stock of where you are right now, it’s usually never as bad as you happen to think it is. But even if it is that bad, you’re at least aware of the situation as it really is. Once you understand that, you can start to take steps that will lead you to a better place,
That’s what the fourth principle is all about. If you live in the moment and you’re aware of what’s going on both inside and outside you at any given moment, you can make decisions that are going to lead you to whatever it is that you are trying to achieve.
There is a lot of power in making a decision and then following through on it. It builds confidence and faith, two things that are essential to changing the world as you perceive it. Your world isn’t going to change by itself and a fairy godmother isn’t going to wave a magic wand and everything’s going to be different.
Although the decision to do something is powerful in itself, the real power comes from following that decision up in the current moment by taking some form of action.
The strange thing that Serge Kahili King points out in one of his corollaries is that everything is relative. What is “now”? Basically, if you accept the first principle, “now” is whatever you happen to define it as. It might be only a fraction of second. It may be a minute, or a day, or the current week or the current month. For some people, it might even by the whole of their current lifetime. The thing is, the longer the period you define as “now”, the greater your focus is going to have to be. Most people have the attention span of a goldfish with ADD, so trying to deal with too big a span is going to render them powerless.
The key to using this principle is to realise that you need to have focus on what you’re doing. You need to pay attention to what your senses are telling you. You also need to start picking up on some of the more subtle things that your intuition and subconscious mind are picking up on, and to be able to act on that information at the appropriate time with the right amount of faith and confidence.