How did we get here? This question sometimes hits us hard. When we look around at our living space, the checkbook balance, the fact that it is Sunday and yesterday feels like it was Thursday evening… how the heck did things get so messy, disconnected, fast forwarded?
The light & gentle answer is ~ one moment at a time. That is how we get any result.
One moment at a time.
There is a story about 2 men that I recently heard. One man was an elder and the other was young. The young man visited the old man to ask him the secrets to how to become rich. The old man reached in his pouch and pulled out a coin, then gave it to the young man. “There, now are you rich?” said the old man. The young man replies “Of course I am not rich; this is only one coin.” The old man reaches in and gives him another coin. “Now are you rich?” he asks. The young man says “Not yet, sir, this is only 2 coins.” The old man then says “If I give you 100 coins or 500 coins, when will you be rich?” The young man thinks and then says “One thousand coins, after one thousand coins I will be rich.” The old man smiles and says “Ah… just one more than 999 coins than! That last coin, just one coin is the one that makes you rich?”
If we imagine these coins representing moments of our lives, we gather them one at a time, over and over, we get the richness of right now. And we will only ever have one moment at time to gather. Looking at each moment like it is part of our treasure, part of our value, part of our everything, it can easily change the attention that we put on each moment. We can ask ourself, do I really want to spend this precious moment arguing about this event? It could be the last moments I have with this person, it could be time better spent laughing, or even crying to process out the feelings from the event.
That moment is part of the treasure of your life.
How you spend each moment matters and is as important as the 999th coin and the 1001st coin. Moments flood by and when we find ourselves looking around at the mess, the disconnect, confusion, whirlwind of time gone by... it is our chance to catch the present moment and reel it all in. We got here to this moment by being distracted by something that probably was an event in the past or maybe even something in the future.
We got to the moment where we noticed the mess or disarray because our subconscious mind had had enough. We were over the threshold of tolerable. Over the level of mess, we resonate with. So, then we notice. Once we hit the place above our threshold of acceptance, with anything, we will start to notice. We are then offered the magical gift of the present moment, with an added piece of awareness, and we have the choice to continue on the same path or change the path. The change will offer its treasured opportunity in each moment that we are in.
We notice the mess, decided we do not want the mess anymore, clean up the mess then we will always have the choice going forward to allow a mess or not allow a mess. We must decide each time we get dressed for a new part of the day/night, where will I put these clothes, where will I lay this book, this trash, this item that I carried in from the living room, the dogs toy, the water bottle? Every moment you will still have the choice to make on how you want to invest that moment. Consciously engaged in cleanliness, or disengaged in the commitment of cleanliness. I am talking about this "value in moments" in this month's Reflection because I have been thinking of the “value of the moment of now” and the true connection to the hard fact that it really is the only thing that we have. Cars, houses, people, anything can be gone and out of our lives in the next moment and we do not have control of the fate of anything. In the book, The New Earth, by Eckart Tole, he uses the example of death to harden the reality of “now” and offers that death is actually a gift that we have to experience. It comes with or without notice. It is permanent like no other thing humans deal with. It gives us a chance to live and love each moment like it is a true treasure, a true present, because at the end of the whole experience death will someday be there. In the last year and a half my local community has lost a lot of members to death. Recently, the death of a friend, really connected me to the story of the 2 men. Do you value this day? Will I wait until tomorrow to value the day? Why am I waiting to value my one thousandth day? It might not come. It might be exactly like today. It might be a very difficult day. So how about today!? How about I make today the day that makes me “rich” in spirit and in love and in gratitude. I invite you to take one moment and feel like it might be the last moment you have. Hug your kids, call your mom, make love to your special someone, walk the dogs, create a success story for the next moment that you might just be lucky enough to have.
As Always ~ sending you Endless Love & Gratitude!
~ Sarah
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