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Your Awareness of Now

 

You sit right on the edge of Soul awareness. It’s so close. It’s there each moment. Each moment gives you new opportunity to discover that awareness. -John-Roger

This article by John-Roger was originally published in the Movement Newspaper, September of 1977.


Do you know the difference between an optimist and a pessimist? Two little boys were put into two rooms, each filled with manure. A couple of hours went by, and someone checked on them. One was crying and complaining about the sight and the smell of the manure and his “horrible” fate at being shut up in the room. The other was joyfully smiling and shoveling manure just as fast as he could. When asked why he was so happy, he said, “With all this manure, there’s got to be a pony around here someplace.”

Those of us who are optimists recognize that the next thing coming our way is always the best thing. If you want to be an optimist, if you want your energies to be lifting, if you want to realize your highest potential for joy and fulfillment, then pledge to yourself from this moment, starting now, that you will become more and more aware of what you are doing now.

When you live in the now, you bring yourself into a fuller awareness of the moment. You bring yourself into awareness of your body. Should you be hanging up your clothes? If so, move your physical body and hang them up now. If you don’t, an hour later they will still be there waiting to be done now.

Perhaps you have prayed for a better job. But maybe you can’t have it because your sloppiness is blocking you. If you can’t adequately handle your responsibilities now, how can you hope to handle greater responsibilities? So be aware of the responsibilities you have physically, and fulfill those. Prepare yourself physically so that you can complete what you say you will complete.

As you increase your awareness of now, look at the level of your emotions and mind. You have little, if any, responsibility to past feelings and thoughts or probable future feelings and thoughts. Your responsibility is to now. Focus your awareness on your mind and emotions. What thoughts and feelings are you having now? Where are they leading you? All you need to do is accept them in the moment, work within that present structure, and continually let go and move freely to the next moment. It’s all now. There is no moment of awareness that is not now.

To achieve an action that is fulfilling, that leads to joy, there needs to be a match in thoughts, feelings, and physical response. When those three areas match, you act, and the result is success. Failure often results if you attempt to act when all three areas are not in harmony.

As part of your inner dialogue, your mind may say, “This seems right to do.” But if your action is based upon the thought alone, you may find yourself isolated in your ivory tower someplace, holding back the things you don’t want to handle and putting out intellectual statements to justify your position, while feeling very insecure about the validity of that position.

A thought without a feeling is dead. If a thought comes to you – “It would be a good idea to go back to school and get my degree” – check out the feeling level. It’s important to have a feeling to match that thought If you’re happy with your job and your present lifestyle, you might find that the thought of going back to school creates funny feelings – maybe a little doubt, maybe a great deal of “butterflies” in the stomach. You might change the thought a little. “It would be a good idea to take a leave of absence from my job in six months and go back to school.” Check to see how that feels. “That feels better!” In six months, you check with your boss about the leave of absence, check out the present feeling level, and you may find that you now feel very good about going back to school. So you have a thought and a feeling to match it. Then you check out the physical level. And if the body says, “I can handle that change in lifestyle; in fact, it might be fun,” then there is a match of thought, feeling, and physical response and the action will probably be a clear one. In addition to your thoughts, feelings, and physical body, you are also Spirit, but Spirit rarely gives an indication one way or another on something in this physical realm. Usually if all the other levels say “clear,” it’s clear with Spirit.

When you’ve checked all your levels and found them clear and then moved on your decision, you may still have people come to you and say, “You stupid idiot, do you know what you’ve done?!” Your answer can very clearly be, “Yes, I know what I’ve done. I thought about it for six months, felt about it for four weeks, moved on it physically, completed the new pattern, and I’m clear with the action.” If they say, “Do you know you’re causing concern for a lot of people?,” your response might be, “No, I didn’t know that. But if people have concern, I will handle that as they bring it to me.” That way you remain true to yourself and to your action, and you remain responsible to yourself and to your action.

Once you act thoughtfully and in your fullest awareness, you are clear. If there are repercussions, you take the responsibility for them and move on. That’s all you can do. There is no reason to feel uptight or upset or guilty about any action you undertake if you have checked it out first and moved into it in awareness. You do what you can do based upon what you know, based upon what you feel, based upon where you are. Then you forget it. If it’s right, it’s right; if it’s wrong, it’s wrong.

Living in the now means that you are involved in a continual process of receiving and integrating new information, of recognizing new and changing emotional states, of cooperating with shifting physical states, and of making new decisions based upon new responses. You work the new wisdoms. You modify your behavior. You bring your experience forward, make it functional, and then move forward into your success.

Let go of what has been. Focus on what is. Do not put your mind back there in negative thoughts; do not put your mind back there in success thoughts. Either way, if you’re back there, if you’re trying to live in the past, you are manifesting your lack of awareness of the present moment.

When you are building your dream one brick at a time, put each brick down and go get the next brick. Don’t stand still for twenty-four hours looking at the last brick you laid. In twenty-four hours, you might have built a whole wall.

The process of now is the process of Spirit, the process of Soul. Those who are traveling the spiritual path as taught by the Mystical Traveler, through MSIA, are going into Soul, into the greater, higher, more dignified, more ethical consciousness. The higher people go in this spiritual flow, the more ethical they become in their relationships with themselves and with others.

Sometimes people mistake the ethics of a spiritual person for weakness. They think, “I can do this and this because I can just stomp all over you.” They may find out that they’ve stomped on an atomic bomb. Then they walk around confused, hurt, disturbed, psychologically out of balance with themselves, socially out of balance with others, and personally out of balance with their families.

If you give up your awareness of now, if you act without having a match in your thoughts, emotions, and physical body, you throw yourself into great disturbance. If you berate others when you could have been quiet and held a Light consciousness for them, you bring disturbance to yourself.

When you feel like telling someone off, check all your levels. Is the response emotional? If it is, check to see if there is intellect behind it – a logical, valid reason for your upset (not a trumped-up reason to justify the emotions). If there is a valid reason along with the emotional response, check the results of a physical response. If that also reads “clear,” present your point of view – in the awareness that you will be responsible for the result. If you do all that, you’ll be clear.

When you do not maintain your awareness of and your responsibility to the now, the present moment, you separate yourself from your reality. And in that separation, you create your own hell. Then you know your Soul only by the reflection of those who know the Soul, rather than through your own direct experience of the Soul.

There is only one Soul and that is God. There is only one love and that is God. There is only one intellect and that is God. There is only One, which is God. We are manifestations of God, on whatever level we choose to express.

I’m called the Mystical Traveler, but I answer to every name and every form. The Traveler is a form that you cannot restrict. It’s totally free and totally of the moment. Because it is free and of the moment, it creates health, wealth, and happiness in the physical world. The Mystical Traveler is health, wealth, and happiness; it needs nothing more than what it is. But the Traveler shares all that with you – freely from Spirit. The Traveler gives to you the keys to unlock your own health, wealth, and happiness. You must receive the keys each moment, for they may be different from time to time.

The presence of God is inside of you, manifesting newly every moment. It is not your emotions, your mind, or your physical body. It is Spirit expressing through those levels, but always more than those levels. You sit right on the edge of Soul awareness. It’s so close. It’s there each moment. Each moment gives you new opportunity to discover that awareness.

When you live freely in the moment, you’re living in Soul. Let go of each moment as it passes. Free yourself from this earth – from memories of the past, from expectations of the future. Do those things that bring you health, wealth, and happiness, and let all the rest go.

Baruch Bashan
WATCH A MOMENT OF PEACE WITH JOHN-ROGER

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