Have you ever asked yourself why, despite all your efforts, true peace and clarity seem just beyond reach? What if I told you that the key to true spiritual awakening is not found in the past or the future, but in the present moment? The power of now holds the secret to enlightenment, freedom, and the highest potential of your soul. It is within the present that we discover the fullness of our being and connect to the divine.

In many ancient teachings, including those passed down through the Sacred Atlantean Brotherhood, the power of now is regarded as the gateway to spiritual awakening. We are told time and time again that the present moment is the only real moment, yet it seems so easy to slip into the distractions of the past and future. But this is where the true challenge and opportunity lie — to live fully in the now, to embrace this moment as the portal to higher consciousness.

As Grandmaster WaXhira of the Sacred Atlantean Brotherhood has often said, “Everything exists in the eternal now. To seek truth in time is to remain bound by illusion. The path to freedom is to embrace this very moment as the doorway to the divine.” These words speak to the heart of what it means to live in the present — to accept it, honor it, and recognize its sacredness.

The Bible offers us a similar reminder in Matthew 6:34, “Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” This verse brings us back to the essential truth that focusing on the now is the path to spiritual clarity. The past and the future, while important in their own right, should not rob us of our ability to fully experience the present.

So how do we learn to live in the now? The first step is to recognize that we are often caught in the mind’s constant chatter. The mind races toward tomorrow, regrets yesterday, and never allows us to fully experience the present moment. Yet, spiritual awakening happens not in some far-off destination but in the realization that the now is the only moment we truly have. In stillness, we reconnect to the eternal truth within.

The Sacred Atlantean Brotherhood teaches that to truly embody this awareness, we must first understand the tools that help us navigate the ocean of consciousness. Each of the Brotherhood's nine degrees offers a unique set of spiritual tools that guide us through the stages of awakening. In the first three degrees, under the title Initiate, we are introduced to the tools of the Ocean, Wave, and Ship. These tools are symbolic of the cosmic being, the power of thought, and the body that houses our consciousness.

The first degree, the Initiate, begins with the Ocean, representing the boundless nature of the divine consciousness. The ocean is vast, deep, and encompassing, just as the eternal now is vast and all-encompassing. In the present moment, we access this infinite depth, where there is no separation between self and the universe. In the second degree, the Wave teaches us how our thoughts shape our experience, and how we must learn to control the currents of the mind to fully embody the present moment. In the third degree, the Ship represents our physical vessel, the body, and the importance of aligning it with the divine flow of the present moment.