Start From Now

When non-duality teaches that everything is a flow of consciousness and there is no personal control, that does not mean everything is pre-ordained. Each moment is a creative act. As the Buddhist sage Nichiren states, “It is as though we are in winter that never fails to turn into spring”. Each moment, in reality, we start completely afresh, starting from now, even if it does not feel like that! In this sense, the moment is either a path of love or fear, no matter what is happening. This means we do not have to carry the baggage of time with us. We may have thoughts about the biography of our lives that inspire a sense of feeling entrapped and that we can only be free once all such habits are resolved, but this would be like saying that the sun cannot shine until there are no clouds. In essence, we are free, and we can choose if we wish to live from this freedom rather than the past history of personal biography.

This is not to diminish the reality of having a physical mind and body that do have embodied habits, but equally not to make those the overriding factor. Therefore, freedom here means not the freedom to be anything or have anything but not to be defined by anything. Specifically, this means not defining ourselves and keeping open to understanding that we cannot know what we are, only that we are.? By living in the openness of not defining the consciousness we are, we can trust our creative potential. Every time we grant ourselves the grace of being in connection with our true nature of awareness through the simple understanding that is what we are, our free creative inspiration will afford us insights into how to behave in ways that reflect our love rather than our fear in any given situation.? What's more, we can and should test this out and see the effects for ourselves to confirm even more that this is true.

I have found this transformational, and it still always seems like a delightful surprise. There are so many examples. Life is comprised of a myriad of situations that can go one way or the other. In a recent group of friends, for example, someone said something that caused an upset with another. I didn’t know this until I was told later and was concerned. So often, these irritations can come between people and close relationships. How there might be a tendency to create drama from this, and how this can somehow infect the minds of those involved. However, maintaining a sense of oneness and feeling a loving, respectful intimacy with all and trust in the flow of life, I find, is enough to transform these situations. From it, the wisdom emerged to say the right things in a way that quickly rebuilt trust and harmony, resolving conflict based on respect, and that is precisely what happened.

What seemed most important was not what was said but simply the conscious understanding of the oneness of everything and seeing the situation as a situation of love rather than of fragmented fear. It is in these situations that, as they say, “the rubber hits the road”. Each of these situations is as if a beautiful, memorable jewel that adds up to an overall experience of living that makes it so clear that our understanding that we are one consciousness really is true. I have not found a better way to build a peaceful world than this.

Love

Freyja