Shine On Me Now

I can remember memories. But I cannot remember myself.

My awareness may choose to clutter itself with impressions of the past. And I can project these images into the imaginary future. But past and future are not what is aware of them.

Time is the content of awareness, but awareness is outside of time. Otherwise, awareness would not be able to observe time passing.

Unbounded awareness, empty of all content, shines as eternal presence.  Free from memory, thought and opinion, awareness illuminates the world. That is our real work: to illuminate the world as awareness! There is some other creature who can do another task much better than we. Elephants are stronger, cheetahs are faster, birds are infallible navigators, trees circulate much greater quantities of water into the air. But we can be aware. On behalf of the whole creation, we are aware. Through us, the earth becomes fully alive.

If, instead of being aware in the present moment, I choose to spend my "time" stringing memories together into a painful little story called "me," this is my act of self-creation, but I am not required to carry the past.

We receive the gift of awareness not to remember the past, but to bathe creation in God's radiant presence. Out of this luminous presence, the information I need from the past will spontaneously arise the moment I need it. Then it dissolves again into eternal clarity. For the eternal clarity of awareness contains all information and all history, as the still desert air contains a mirage.

Friend, I don't care who you were yesterday, any more than I care who I was yesterday. I am not nourished by your memory. I am nourished by your light. Shine on me now.