The Time is NOW
As you walk on this imaginary road you will reach a house. It is beautiful, a palace almost. You know they call it the House of Time and inside you will discover amazing secrets of your past and future. But in order to enter, you need to reach past the gate-keeper. And he has one question for you, requiring only one right answer that only you can know:
- What is the time?
- The time is "NOW" - you reply, and the door opens.
Robert Moss, the well known history professor, best-selling author and dream teacher, has changed my life in more ways than one over the past six months. Reading his books opened up a whole new world for me - a world where our dreams are much more than random electric discharges of our brain during sleep, they are a source of self-knowledge and guidance. Attending his workshops gave me amazing insights into my own inner universe while talking and sharing my thoughts with this wonderfully warm, open, intelligent, life-loving and definitely unconventional man has opened a whole new door for me professionally. I have started using his core technique, Active Dreaming, in my coaching and training and I can't wait to go to Seattle this summer to start my "official" training as a dream teacher.
The above fragment is a short part of what Robert calls a "dream journey" - a trip into the world of imagination, the world where our subconscious speaks to us, often in symbolic terms, and our possibilities and resources are unlimited. Sitting on a comfortable chair or right down on the floor, listening to the sound of drumming, one can easily journey into fantastic landscapes such as this. You can find the full journey to the House of Time in Robert's book "DREAMGATES: Exploring the Worlds of Soul, Imagination and Life Beyond Death".
In the "House of Time" you can find clues from your past and insights into your future. It's is a wonderful visualisation exercise - one of my favourite. But what fascinates me the most about it is the symbolic password the gatekeeper is asking for. "What is the time?" - this simple question we ask of each other several times a day - has very deep meanings in this self-exploration context. And the answer is equally profound: "The time is NOW"
This question and answer came back to my mind after a few days of inner turmoil and worries about the future. What I realised is that, despite my talking about living in the present, sharing inspirational quotes on Facebook, urging people to stop worrying about what lies ahead and start living in the moment, despite meditating regularly and constantly reminding myself that the only real time is NOW, I still have a lot of trouble actually following my own advice.
I am writing this post as a reminder to myself and a reminder to you too.
The time is NOW! The time to live your dreams, make choices which could change your life, be yourself, live from your deepest truths, honour your values, love, laugh, play, follow your passion. There is no other time. Just NOW. "I don't have time" or "this is not the right time" are just excuses. When it comes to living from your heart there is NEVER a wrong time. There is just NOW.
Sometimes even delays and setbacks can be a lesson in living in the moment. Patience is such a hard lesson to learn for so many people. So many, myself included, just want to fast-forward our lives up to the time when all our problems will have been solved and all our dreams will have come true. What we forget is that sometimes waiting is sprinkled with moments of joy, moments to be cherished, moments you would never consciously want to lose by fast-forwarding to the final outcome. Waiting has its charm.
I am writing this to honour a very important person in my life who taught me that my fight with time, my obsession of always keeping busy and "productive", my constant worry about the future, my fear of not being able to control what the future will bring - all these are just products of my upbringing and life experiences and can be overcome with a lot of patience with myself and others and a little bit of wisdom. This person taught me the concept of "waiting without waiting" - having a clear intention about what I want in my life, doing whatever lies in my power to turn it into reality, but not making any rigid plans and obsessing about controlling the details of how that intention will come into being. The Universe has its wisdom and sometimes we just need to be patient and have a little bit of faith.
"Enjoy the waiting, so that you can then deeply enjoy the outcome you have dreamed of" - was one of the wisest pieces of advice I have received lately - and I am now sharing with you.
So what is the time for you and your own dreams? What do you want to bring into the NOW?