Our Lives Always Begin Now
by Dr. Richard Moss
To come to the
beginning of ourselves is to cease to be victims of circumstances, the actions
of others, or even our own mistakes. The true story of who we really are begins
now. We are no longer tossed willy-nilly from one desire, thought, or worry to
another in a futile process of trying to escape the nearly infinite forms of
"this isn't it" and especially "I am not sufficient as I am."
If we realize
that we are truly originating ourselves over and over, we have the power to
claim a relationship to ourselves that begins right now. Then we are capable of
responding to our own feelings or to our situations rather than reacting. When
we react, we contribute to the problem. Our judgments are quick, poorly
considered, and generally defensive or self-negating. We feel divided from
ourselves as well as from others. It becomes difficult to know what to do next.
When we are far from the beginning of ourselves, our reactions envelop us in
unhappiness and distrust, which follow us well beyond the moment. In contrast,
when we respond from the beginning of ourselves, our relationship to ourselves
and to others always begins anew. We can take the time to appreciate what we
are feeling and see our own states of being, and the behavior of others, in a
larger context of empathy and compassion. There is no lingering misery, and no
sense of being lost and afraid. Instead there is a growing space of trust.
But to have this
kind of personal authority, we must focus our attention directly on the
immediacy of ourselves. We have to learn to stay right here and wait with our
minds stilled until the waters calm and we sense the deeper current of our
lives once again. No one has described the subtlety of this conscious awareness
better than the poet T.S. Eliot, when he wrote:
I said to my soul,
be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be
hope for the wrong thing; wait without love
For love would be
love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and
the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without
thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness
shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
This waiting
without hope or love or thought is the essence of creating a conscious holding
environment, especially when we face the untamed feelings. It is the essential
process by which we depart from the awareness field of fear and survival and
enter the far larger field of love. Then we too can experience what all the
great souls understand: that human beings are truly the sons and daughters of
God. We are not and never have been inherently deficient. Despite endless
stories and feelings that can, when we identify with them, convince us that we
are unworthy or somehow not good enough, there is a deeper part of ourselves
that can hold all this self-doubt. To awaken to this deeper part of ourselves
and learn to let it hold our suffering selves is the fundamental relationship
that our souls are calling us toward.
This article was excerpted from the book:
 The
Mandala of Being: Discovering the Power of Awareness
by Richard Moss.
Reprinted with permission of New
World Library, Novato, CA. ©2007. www.newworldlibrary.com or 800-972-6657 ext. 52.
For More Info or to Order This Book (paperback) or Kindle Edition .
More books by this author.
About the Author
Dr. Richard Moss is an internationally respected spiritual teacher
and visionary thinker. He is the author of The
Mandala of Being: Discovering the Power of Awareness and other books
on conscious living and inner transformation. For thirty years he has guided
people of diverse backgrounds in the use of the power of awareness to realize
their intrinsic wholeness and reclaim the wisdom of their true self. His work
integrates spiritual practice, psychological self-inquiry, and body awareness.
You can visit him online at http://www.richardmoss.com.
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