I see that I am changing again, in recent days I have learned a great deal in my meditation about my mind, and how it works for me and against me. Mostly, I have come to see the origins of the fear and anxiety that plague me and so many people.

I am onto something, seeing something more clearly than I have seen it before. I feel sometimes like the Engine that could, I just keep chugging along, I won’t quit.

I see most clearly in meditation lately the way my mind flees the now and turns to the past for regret and shame, and the future for fear and danger. It is only in the present that I find true peace, because it is only in the present that true peace really exists. As the heavy thinkers suggest, the now is eternal, time is a fantasy.

My meditation teacher has counseled me when my mind takes off in distraction, as it so frequently does, to pay attention to my breathing and return to the present. This may seem like a simple idea to many people, but it is a profound idea to me. It is working. I couldn’t have done it even a few years ago, but persistence does pay.

People often think that meditation itself is a cure-all, and it is a safe place instantly, but it also takes work and commitment, and that is the difficult part for some people. Nothing worth doing is easy, other than walking in the woods or rubbing a donkey’s ear.

Weekends offer the greatest opportunity for me to see this revelation and understand it. Distraction and fear are cousins, because no one worried about me, I worried about everyone, including me. Distraction has always haunted my search for peace and grounding.

As we go through the week, we accumulate so much in terms of experience, stress and obligation. As we move through the weekend, we begin to look ahead to the week – appointments, work, repairs and maintenance, issues with friends. Sunday for me is the perfect day to stop and bring myself into the now, the most peaceful place there is for people like me.

All that matters is today. My love, my time with Maria, my pictures, my blog, my dogs, my farm, my books. This afternoon, we are going to see  Captain Marvel and I want to play close attention to the  difference between a female superhero and the kind I always saw as a kid, and until lately, an adult. History in the making, Maria wants to come.

That’s all I need to think about today.

I see now that I can soften and organize this ruckus in my head, I’ve been doing it for years. But I am sure many of you know that is work, and when you do it, the reward can be great.

Weekends are the perfect time for me to focus on the present, as I have done with fear itself, and gain some measure of control over my mind, and thus some measure of control over my fear, anger and resentment.

I know  this can work, I know many people who have succeeded. I understand most people quit, it is not for everybody.

When my mind moves away from me, I am learning focus on my breath or my body. I bring myself back, over and over a gain.

Even in these past few days I’ve seen a change. To some extent, I can train my mind to do this, because I am my mind, and my mind is me. I just have to make sure we each know one another.

The idea of the Eternal Now is central to me and this work. We are thus free to live in the present.

This is a spiritual idea, it suggest that time is an illusion a man-created tool for measuring change in life and work and farming. The question about time is whether change comes from outside or inside of us. A challenging idea to get my head around.

Paul Tillich, the great philosopher and contemplative,  wrote that the Eternal Now beings by understanding that everything in our world must come to an end. We shall all come to and end.

There is, he says, no other way of judging time than to see it in the light of the eternal. I In order to judge something, one must be partly within it, partly out of it.

“If we were totally within time,” wrote Tillich in his famous essay, Eternal Now, “we would not be able to elevate ourselves in prayer, meditation and thought, to the eternal. We would be children of time like all other creatures and could not ask the question of the meaning of time. But as human beings we are aware of the eternal to which we belong and from which we are estranged by the bondage of time.”

This our idea of time is an illusion. The world beyond us doesn’t change. We do, constantly, and from within. If I were not changing, I wouldn’t be writing this.

This work on weekends is important, because I will see Sunday differently. I already do.

It’s not about fretting over my dental work tomorrow morning,  keeping up with messages, planning for my radio show, or my laser eye surgery in the coming week, it is about today, writing, reading, going to see a movie with Maria, perhaps writing about it tonight.

I feel nothing but love and peace for today, my dogs on this windy, stormy day, have joined with me in the Eternal Now, they are sprawled in a circle around me, a chorus of snoring and wheezing and sighing.

My mind has opened up to meditation. I am ready. I’ve done it for a long time, but I am just beginning to see things that I could not see before. And, as always, I will be happy to share.