My wife is a good gift-giver. For my 50th, she surprised me with tickets to the Masters golf tournament in Augusta, Georgia. Tickets are notoriously hard to come by, but she found a way.

This year she came through again. Yes, I got some nice clothes and books and other cool knick-knacky items. But the best present I got was the license plate frame she got me.

As you can see from the photo above, the top reads:

“I’d Rather”

While the bottom reads:

“Be Here Now”

The phrase comes from Ram Dass’s iconic book Be Here Now which took America and the West by storm in the early 1970s. It heavily influenced the likes of Steve Jobs, Wayne Dyer and former Beatle George Harrison who went as far as titling a song Be Here Now.

A counter-culture phenomenon

The book served as a guide for millions of mostly younger, counter-culture hippies on the Hindu path to becoming a yogi. If you haven’t read it, get it and do so! It will blow your mind, in a good way. Here’s the Amazon link. Also, check out this article I wrote about the book.

Back to the license plate frames. I don’t know if you have these where you live but growing up and to this day I see license plates with frames that read “I’d Rather Be Fishing.” Or bowling. Or hunting. Or skiing. Or playing golf. Or any number of things.

Which is great. I love to fish. And play golf. And tennis. And read. And cook. And play Word Cookies. And ride my bike.

But the point of all those license frames is that they’d rather be doing something other than what they’re doing at the moment, which is driving.

Be here, now as a life mantra

Which is why I absolutely love my new license frame. Those five words could serve as the sole mantra for an entire lifetime.

And I’m not even being hyperbolic. If we literally did nothing but remind ourselves to ‘be here, now,’ every single day, we would reach the highest levels of consciousness.

Why? Because being here now, ‘in the moment,’ is the only portal through which consciousness can enter the world.

Is it any coincidence that two of the most influential spiritual books of the past fifty years, Be Here Now and The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, feature the word nowprominently in their titles?

Now is where everything happens. As you read this sentence, realize that each moment is all that exists. It’s always been that way and will always be that way.

The takeaway

So I hope by now that you’re not surprised by how thrilled I was to get this cheap piece of plastic that cost $12. Because every time I get in my car now I’m going to be reminded of the most important endeavor in spirituality: To be in the moment.

If you want to get one yourself, go to this link. They’re sold by the Hanuman Maui Sanctuary, a group that preserves the house in Maui that Ram Dass lived in the last fifteen years of his life.

Bye for now.