The Power of Beginning

Often in therapeutic sessions I hear clients share their concern and fears about the transitional times they are going through and are exasperated about "starting over", having "lost time" or worse yet,"wasted time" and now experience an urgent need to "catch up". In each of these conversations, we are always brought back ,through circuitous conversation, to the same place. NOW

No matter how you look at it, each time your awareness awakens to your current situation and you decide that you must create a change , you are entering an experience that feels new and is better known as beginning again. Each time you wipe the tears away, shake the cobwebs from your mind, take a deep breath, dare to step forward, say the unthinkable, risk being vulnerable and loveable, ask for what you need, claim your inherited right to be, drop an addiction or the fear of it, start a new relationship, walk away from a bad one, you are beginning anew.

Each Autumn, for over a decade now, I attend a retreat with a group of people, better known as the Logos Group, in New England.  We come together with an intention to stretch our capacities to think and feel more deeply into the sacred experience and meaning of the Logos.  Our guiding mentor for more than two decades was Georg Kuhlewind, a Hungarian philosopher of Esoteric Christianity, a professor, scientist, meditation teacher and prolific author of over fifty books.

On one of those special weekends, when Georg was still with us, he brought to our attention that many of the nuances of meaning are lost in translations. He made a point of demonstrating this when he referenced the first verse in the Prologue to the Bible. Reading from six different bibles the same verse, he revealed that the omittance or addition of a single word could changed the deeper meaning of the verse. In this case, he brought to our attention how many of the translations  begin with "IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE ...... Georg identified that other older translations in Aramaic, Greek and Hebrew omit  "the". Thus the meaning shifts dramatically from a specific beginning to an eternal now. It became clear to us that there can be no such thing as "The Beginning" or in other words an  "absolute beginning" . That is like saying Eternity starts here. 

What this nuance in language speaks to, is the lost ability for humans to comprehend and therefore translate the concept of an "eternal beginning". How beginning is a timeless experience, not relegated to our concept of a when. In our mortal thinking, if everything becomes past, or future, then we are aways suffering from the illusions that we are  'too late" or "too early" for living at all in the present. If we accept for a single moment that we are also immortal in our spirit, then it allows one to imagine accepting another reality.... BEGINNINGS ALWAYS ARE. I have come to cherish this teaching from Georg and the revelation of understanding that it brings to mind. Dare one live with eternal springs of beginnings.

When our experiences lose the felt sense of beginningness, there is a clear sign that we are living too much in our head. We are forgetting to engage all of our self and our senses.  The freshness of a moment becomes separate from our fuller embodied consciousness. Try consciously to enter each moment and stand in your own presence. Take another step into the next moment. This is the secret of walking meditation. There is no where to go.  Bring all of you with you; When you cannot, then it is a good opportunity to ask yourself what part of myself am I leaving behind? What is back there that I need to resolve so I may come forward into this moment of my life?

Such questions are essential if you want to practice mindfulness. Becoming sensitive to your own comfort level of living in the present as  "beginning experiences" requires you to find and gather all of yourself so you are vital. When your mind creates illusionary time sequences that stop you from seizing the moment, you are taken out of the present and the energetic charge that always exist is reduced to a duller reality. How often have you read about people who decide at a ripe age in life to take up a new hobbie or athletic feat? They defy their age, logic etc. because they have freed themselves of the confines of limited thinking. Whenever you limit yourself with a  mental scenario you begin to feel depressed and experience a resignation that it is too late to be anew.

So, in the spirit of my dear beloved mentor Georg Kuhlewind, who always posed a question or statement to contemplate on, I will do the same to you.  Who creates Beginnings? 

Blessings