To open to the sense, to become really conscious, you have to drop out of the future and the past and remain for a time in what T. S. Eliot called "the still point of the turning world" — the present. The only true reality is the present.
my fears
those small ones that seemed so big
For all the vital things
I had to get and to reach
And yet there is only one great thing
the only thing
To live to see the great day that dawns
and the light that fills the world.