Be Here Now

Finding Safety and Presence in the Present Moment - By Tina Hamilton

Reading time: 3 minutes

About a month ago, I started a 30-day yoga program, and as with most classes of this nature, you are instructed to set an intention before you start. In the past, I’ve never particularly enjoyed this part of yoga class. I usually had to battle myself to get on the mat that day.

Wasn’t my showing up on my mat enough of an intention?

The start of this particular program was no different for me. Just as I started to find myself on this familiar path of thinking, I heard a small voice that said:

Be here now.

In that moment, it was a command.

Like something a teacher says to a student when they aren’t paying attention.

Something inside of me was calling me out, telling me to stop trying to find excuses and to just be here now.

And so every morning, as I unrolled my yoga mat, I would remind myself, “Be here now.”

Over the last few weeks, I started noticing that same voice - that same message - pop up in moments when I was reaching for a distraction.

When I wanted to be anywhere but there.

Moments like my son fighting his naps and needing me to stay with him in the rocking chair, lulling him to sleep, when I really had a lot of work to do.

Moments like sitting in the waiting room of the hospital waiting for my daughter to come out of her first major medical procedure, when I really wanted to distract myself with a dive into the news or social media.

Moments when my own discomfort and unsatisfiability were taking over and I wanted to rush through the messy middle to arrive at whatever destination I thought I was heading toward.

In each of these moments, I would hear it:

Be here now.

And I would roll my eyes, take a deep breath, tuck my phone away, and sit in stillness, allowing the moment to wash over me and for emotions to surface.

While this intention became a mantra, it wasn’t until last weekend when I realized the deeper purpose and timing of this mantra.

Recently, my core wounds (safety and security) have been deeply triggered. I’ve had sleepless nights worrying about the future and how I was going to manage, how everything comes together, how I survive, how I care for two kids, and keep our family moving forward.

My body has been living in a “fight for your life” cycle for as a long as I can remember. It manifests as me controlling every aspect of my exterior.

Color-coding. Timed family schedules. Incessant routines. Obsessive financial management.

From the outside, I look like I have it together. In fact, I had breakfast with one of my closest friends recently, and she said to me, “I just wish more people could be like you - so together.”

And as she spoke and went on and on and on about how I just seem to flow through life and am wise beyond my years, I couldn’t help but feel like an imposter.

“I don’t have it all together,” I interjected. “In fact, just this morning as I was driving here, I was deep in thought trying to understand how to surrender to the flow without caving to the urge to control all the things, just so I feel safe.”

And that’s the truth.

Every spiritual guru says surrender. And when you think you’ve surrendered, surrender more.

Stop looking outside of yourself, they say. Everything you need is within.

You can’t find safety outside of yourself, if you aren’t safe within.

You can’t find abundance outside of yourself, if you don’t recognize the abundance within.

And none of it has made sense.

Try as I may to make it make sense, to sit on my meditation pillow and surrender, to sit under the light of the moon and turn it all over.

To burn all the things.

To release.

To let go.

To dance it out.

I’ve tried it all, and yet, day after day, moment after moment, that fear, that anxiety lay just beneath the surface. Scanning. Waiting for the threat to show itself. To jump up and down and point excitedly at every passing leaf, warning me of impending doom, much like a dog sits at the window scanning the neighborhood for that threatening delivery driver.

And this week was no different as I contemplated this idea of finding safety and security within when everything in my head is telling me I am not safe. I won’t be safe. That everything is going to come crashing down.

Every podcast I listened to and every book I read just made it all the more perplexing.

Almost like the more I try to understand it, the more elusive this idea becomes.

Stop looking for safety outside of yourself; find it within.

It all felt like class privilege. These gurus who have “made it,” sitting comfortably in their mansions saying, “focus not on the lack, lest that’s what you’ll attract. Focus instead on the abundance, and you’ll cultivate more of it.”

Sure. Easy to say when you’re not worried about the basic human needs.

But then, Saturday morning as I scribbled in my journal for the umteenth day in a row, “This doesn’t make sense, this idea of surrender and finding safety within,” spirit came through.

Look around, Tina, spirit wrote. What is true in this moment? You are safe. Right here, right now. In this moment, you are safe.

As the words poured onto the page, I felt a shift in my energy.

I am safe.

And then, Be here now.

When I am here, I am safe. My fear of lack of safety is not truth; it is my fear of not being safe in the future that makes me feel unsafe in the present.

Be here now.

In the now, all is okay.

In the now, I am safe.

And in the now, I can make decisions from a place of grounded intentionality that will extend this moment of safety forward.

I am safe.

I have found the safety within.

Today.

This doesn’t mean that tomorrow, I won’t have to revisit the idea, remind myself that I am still safe, that I can release the need to control the things that are uncontrollable.

But the idea remains the same.

Be here now. Because now is safe.