We can experience our spiritual nature in one important way through our experience of time. Animals live completely in the present moment. They don't worry about the future or harbor grudges. As they go about responding to the circumstances of the moment, they develop a set of conditioned responses that they bring into the next moment, and the next, and so on. We, too, bring our conditioning into each moment, but we also possess the ability to consciously recall a past incident and to dream of future possibilities. Although we live in space and time, there is a dimension of our awareness capable of standing outside of space and time, from which vantage point we can regard past and future as though they were taking place in this moment.

REFLECTING ON THE SERENITY PRAYER   Philip St. Romain, D. Min.