"Love the moment. Flowers grow out of dark moments. Therefore, each moment is vital. It affects the whole. Life is a succession of such moments and to live each, is to succeed." - Corita Kent
As a student of the Science of Mind and pause and reflect back upon my spiritual journey, I realize that those thirty years represent more than half my life. It hardly seems possible to me but it is true. Upon even deeper pondering I found myself tracing my progress back through the years. The awareness I had was that years are nothing more than a collection of months, which are simply an accumulation of days, which of course are containers for hours, which are placeholders for minutes, which in true metaphysical form boil down to seconds. There is no need to go into the quantum physics of nanoseconds, (a nanosecond is one billionth of a second) because I trust you get my point: Every past moment is connected to the current moment, which likewise is connected to the next moment. In short, life is a continuum of now moments. Reviewing thirty years of my “now” moments was a powerful experience.
What I want to share with you is that as I traced my journey that has brought me to this present moment I reconnected with some past moments that were agonizingly unpleasant and fortunately more than a few once-in-a-lifetime stellar moments that were worth experiencing again. However, it’s the painful moments I want to emphasize. Not simply because they were painful and “ain’t that a shame”, but because they were purposefully powerful as well. It’s important to remember that one moment connects our lives to the next and so on, and if we dial out on the painful moments (or dark times) we also miss a portion of the journey that leads us to wholeness. We can’t go unconscious part of the time and expect to arrive at the end of our journey in one “peace” <Smile>. We need the collective whole of our experiences to obtain wholeness and it is through our sense of wholeness that we achieve the peace that passes all understanding. Wholeness comes as a reality when we can embrace all of who we are and what the moment brings, and perhaps more importantly, all of who we are not and what the moment doesn’t bring. Every day of our lives contains reminders of both.
This is why I treasure the quote by Corita Kent at the top of this missive. It is a reminder of how absolutely crucial it is to stay connected to the moment irrespective of what it looks like, and yes, even in spite of how it may feel. However, staying connected to the moment and liking what is contained within that moment may be two different things. We can and should love every moment because each one is another precious gift of life—but that doesn’t mean we necessarily have to enjoy the experience the moment brings. In other words, we don’t always have to like “what is” in any given moment in order to love the moment. As odd as it sounds we can love something without liking it. It’s our acceptance of and loving “what is” that becomes the bridge that will help us cross into the next moment.
If this day holds for you any dark moments I encourage you to stay engaged in life trusting that as certain as day follows night and night follows day, contained in the moment at hand are the seeds of something beautiful. Remember, seeds do indeed need a bit of darkness from which to grow. I know that in this sacred moment something profoundly meaningful is growing in the garden of your life. Stay connected and you’ll have an amazing life, one moment at a time.
Life is blessed and so are you.
Peace,
Dr. Dennis Merritt Jones
Dennis Merritt Jones Bio
Dennis is a columnist for the Huffington Post and for Science of Mind magazine. He is also a member of the Leadership Council for the Association for Global New Thought (AGNT), an organization whose mission is to consciously bring forth the evolving human and an awakened world through the practice of universal spiritual principles and the energy of unconditional love.
Bio Link: http://www.dennismerrittjones.com/
Throw back to Issue #4, January 2015