While walking the first day to Gonzar, this graffiti message sprung up at a timely moment. After I departed from Portomarin and made my way to Gonzar, the way was lonely, desolate, longer than I anticipated, and between majones, I found myself fearing that I may have wandered off the path. Consumed with a gnawing anxiety about finding Casa Garcia up ahead, I ignored a small pebble that had somehow found its way into my right boot.
Fear and anxiety about what is up ahead so quickly disconnects me from my body and that of the present moment. As I rounded a bend on the path, “Be Here Now” met me and awakened me to my fretting thoughts. I took a few deep breaths, stopped to attend to the pain caused by the pebble in my boot, and thanked God and the Camino for this important reminder of presence that pulled me back into the NOW.
“To the ego, the present moment is, at best, only useful as a means to an end. It gets you to some future moment and is therefore never more than a thought in your head. In other words, you are never fully here because you are always busy trying to get elsewhere.” -Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth
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