The Mandala of Being
Discovering the Power of Awareness
By Richard Moss, MD
Review by Angela Hutchinson
Spirit-Works.net
Do you ever feel you aren’t the true self you were born to be? Are you sick of reacting to life around you, always dependent on your environment without a stable center? Author and teacher of conscious living, Dr. Richard Moss, has developed a new method to aid in maintaining greater awareness while living in the Now, changing the way we respond and perceive our world. In this intellectual and soul nourishing book, the reader is given the foundation of living a life consciously and creatively without dragging along all the stories that keep us stuck.
The Mandala of Being is a system of consistently checking our attention and noting where it may wander. Dr. Moss reports that it is the stories we create in our minds and attach to our experiences that muddy our sense of clarity and cause needless suffering. These stories can begin as early as the womb with the anxiety of our mother. A “survival personality” results when we feel it is necessary to change who we are for security reasons. “We falsify who we are in order to maintain some level of connection to those whom we require in order to meet our needs for attention, nurturance, approval, and security.” We bring about a new, yet fearful identity for our parents, educational institutions, religious instruction, and culture. Life is not about thriving while we are in survival identity; it is about getting what we need through manipulating our environment, sometimes feeling desperation. We drag outworn beliefs of living into our present moments and somehow expect to find happiness in a survivor mentality, living with outdated and unneeded identities. We must eventually come to the question that begs to be addressed…”who are we really?”
“What we are aware of depends on where we place our attention.” We cannot know who we are or connect with others authentically unless we are living in the Now and focused on the moment, remaining an objective observer. When we are living in the moment we open ourselves to Universal energy and wisdom…life begins to unfold in a way that was somehow blocked before when we were living our stories. When fearful or threatened, we revert to survival identity and become lost in “holding environments” that Moss describes. We are no longer present, and our energy is diminished as we get lost in ourselves. “When you realize that you are inherently larger than any feeling that enters your awareness, this very awareness will change the feeling, and it will release its grip on you.” The author conveys to the reader that while aware of feelings and thoughts that pass through consciousness, we are already larger than the feeling or thought. It is remaining unaware to emotion that leaves us living in another existence that is not our true identity. “If we never free ourselves from our survival personalities, we can never simply be ourselves; can never really accept ourselves as we are. We cannot be ordinary in the true sense of objectively appreciating our bodies, our appearance, or our intellectual or athletic abilities with out feelings of superiority or inferiority.” As we begin to “resist fear”, love, compassion, empathy, forgiveness, and clarity arise from the well of authenticity. We are liberated to live as we choose and the need to react diminishes.
The Mandala of Being consists of four basic areas where our attention is drawn when not in the Now, while at the center of this circle is the present where our true essence can be realized.
1-Past- Living with our attention in the past disconnects us from living fully in the moment. “These stories are quite often about regret, blame, feel guilty about, feel ashamed of, feel nostalgic about, or are proud of.”
2-Future-“This position of the Mandala is all our hopes and dreams, plans, fear, and worries about the future, and the emotional atmosphere these create in us.”
3-Subject/Me- “This position contains our fantasies and daydreams in which we imagine ourselves in different ways.”
4-Object/You- This area “represents all our beliefs and stories about what we could term the other, or simply you.”
Moss states the Now is actually the beginning of you. We must start at the beginning of ourselves to connect to our true essence and the true essence of others. When we encounter an emotion that is difficult to be with and we begin to drift to an area outside of the present, the author directs the reader to turn” our inner gaze directly toward the emotion and steadily brushing it with feather-light attention allow the energy of the emotion to release into the spaciousness of our beings.” We experience the emotion without attaching our past, future, and other stories to it. We let it be…after all, in our awareness, we are larger. We begin to see each moment, each person, each experience for what it is. We take of the lens of our false identities and live from a new foundation. As you connect to your true essence through the power of living in the Now, you begin to see that you are all that you need. You are what you seek. We are no longer dependent on luck or the fortune of our environment. Today is all we need and we no longer need specific conditions to be at peace.
Dr. Moss is indeed an amazing intellect as well as guide into the human soul. There is a question I’ve always asked myself and others…if you could have lunch with any three people, living or dead, who would they be?
Mine have always been Albert Einstein, Joseph Campbell, and now I have my third lunch invitation, Dr. Moss. This book offers excellent insight into the human mind, heart and soul.
-“As we live closer to the beginning, we gradually drink more deeply from the fullness of our souls, and the world and everyone in it changes before our eyes. Then we notice that we have less fear, less anxiety, and less urgency: life is good right now.” -Dr. Richard Moss