Just internalizing the title of the book by Ram Das can empower many of us to begin the awakening process. If we could just Be Here Now most of our suffering would begin to recede. In the present moment we can’t experience the guilt, shame and regret of our past nor the anxiety we anticipate regarding the future. Nor would we regard any of our fellow human beings as the other. Belief in the other is the source of much of the violence in the human community today. “These reactions toward the other remove us from the compassion of the present moment and instead we experience regret, guilt and shame.”[i]
Living in the NOW will not only prevent individual pain and suffering but will also help tribes, clans, sects and nations begin the movement toward creating a sustainable Global Village. “The collective false self suffers shame, guilt and regret related to shadow projections and will try to repress, deny, keep secret and lie about what happened related to those behaviors it would like to forget. In modern times the German people and people in Eastern Europe occupied by the Germans during World War II have had a marked lapse of memory. We can only sympathize with them but at the same time it is better that we all face the truth of what happened during one of the darkest chapters in modern history.”[ii] Finding the courage to face the Truth is the only way we can transcend our self-destructive behaviors.
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Supplemental Reading: Guilt, The ABC’s of Simple Reality, Vol 1
#7 Lapse of Memory
[i] Henry, Roy Charles. Who Am I? Create Space. October 2013, p. 246.
[ii] Ibid., p. 184.
