Candice Wu 0:06

Richard has dedicated his life to loving Love with a capital L. And in this episode, received the invitation to connect with the wildness of the soul, the part that wants to dance with love and die into love.

Candice Wu 0:21

He shares about experiencing life challenges as the deeper opportunity of our lives to love, the experience of intimacy, how relationships are a way to accelerate, loving Love, embodiment as a beginning and endless journey, planting a tree in fear and sitting there until their shelter, and that there are no guarantees of security or identity in life, even if we borrow it from the past or future.

Candice Wu 0:46

Hello and welcome. You’re listening to the Embody Podcast, a show about remembering and embodying your true nature, inner wisdom, embodied healing, and self-love.

Candice Wu 1:00

My name is Candice Wu and I’m a holistic healing facilitator, intuitive coach, and artist sharing my personal journey of vulnerability, offering meditations and guided healing support, and having co-creative conversations with healers and wellness practitioners from all over the world.

Candice Wu 1:22

This episode is supported by the monthly group call that provides Embodied Healing and spiritual support. In each call, you’ll receive loving support in moving through your emotions, tuning into your intuition, developing your empowerment and body wisdom, as well as clearing limiting beliefs through your entire being, and looking at any ancestral pieces that may be inherited.

Candice Wu 1:46

Each group is limited to four people to keep it in a small group. And the call happens typically once a month on Sunday, the second Sunday or Tuesday of the month at 10 am, Central. You can find this at my Patreon page at CandiceWu.com/patreon.

Candice Wu 2:04

It’s really with great honor that I introduce Richard Moss today. I admired his work as soon as I saw it, when I saw him speaking on YouTube. And, as I looked at his website and his books, I already felt a transmission of energy, this sense of living life the soul, through the heart, and viewing all of our experiences with a loving presence, with witness, this very embodied way to be while also seeing the spiritual development of our consciousness in everything.

Candice Wu 2:44

You might even hear it in this conversation that at some point we talk about why is this called the Embody Podcast and something in me happened where the energy and the conversation of what we’d already been talking about, it just kind of ruffled up my whole being. And you’ll hear what I say. And I’m not sure that I would say that in any other day. But here it is, and what wanted to come through I trust. But I felt so much of warmth in me. And a shift into being as a more fluid experience. And shifting out of this mentality of production, or this outcome of life that my ego, my mind, wants things to be, which has been a life journey. So it’s not this profound moment that just happened here. But it was another level of that, and shedding another layer of that ego drive that can push me at times and moving into more loving.

Candice Wu 3:53

In 1977, Richard was a practicing physician in the ER when he experienced a spontaneous state of illumination. And he describes this as this moment where he sensed that all he could give this patient was love.

Candice Wu 4:10

I love this story. And also appreciate how he experiences this as an ongoing journey, not just this moment of awakening, but something that he’s been deepening in for years and years.

Candice Wu 4:25

Richard’s work is about catalyzing you to live as fully and creatively as you were born to live. And his goal is that you don’t just follow his or her work, but that you learn to become your own teacher. And I love that that’s everything of what the Embody Podcast is about. So I hope that you enjoy this episode with Richard. And I give him a very warm welcome here. Without further ado, here’s Richard.

Candice Wu 4:52

I’m very excited to have you here today, Richard, it’s such an honor, I, my first interaction or connection with your work was actually seeing you on YouTube. And the first sentence I heard, I was just like, oh, and you’d said something at a piece, convention or conversation about, there’s really nothing that we can be grateful for. And it was so much about how you said it and the energy you brought to that, the presence you brought to that moment that really spoke to me. So I want to welcome you here to the show today.

Richard Moss 5:33

Thank you, Candice, thank you very much. Always, it’s always an honor. And it’s so in alignment with my life to speak with someone who wants to help others. And for all of us, who help others really understand the opportunity of our deeper nature and potential. And to share with that and to inspire them to share about that, and to inspire that is the whole purpose of my life.

Candice Wu 6:03

That’s so beautiful. And, I feel that too, although you say it more eloquently than I do. But I also have read a little bit about or maybe heard more, from you about love, choosing to love Love, is —

Richard Moss 6:20

Exactly.

Candice Wu 6:22

Yeah. Can you say more about that now and where you are in on your journey?

Richard Moss 6:27

You’re right. I mean, it’s where I am at my journey now. And I can look back at my life and see how quite literally love was calling me. And that I understood that it only partially, at each time, the call was so clear and profound. And by love in that sense, I don’t mean or I mean a good deal more than but I certainly do mean the love that we can learn to share with another person, the personal love, the love in particular that I’ve created now for 30 something years with my stepson. And that love that we know, with people that were deeply connected to, but there was a different level, a much deeper level, call it a capital L lover.

Richard Moss 7:21

And it was calling to me in an emergency room. I was an ER doc a long time ago because I left medicine a long time ago, but it was a very important training, a different grounding, particularly as to the mind and a particular vision of what we are. But I was in the emergency room and very briefly all that happened was I was about to sedate him and for observation had been quite violent. He was actually a policeman there. And just as I was about to sedate him, this voice in my head, which was not a thought type of voice, it just said, “you have nothing to share this man except love.”

Richard Moss 8:02

Now put this in perspective, I think I was 28 years old. And what I did was I handed this syringe, I was going to inject this man with it back to the nurse and I just said to him, “I’m going to just put my hands on you the way I would want to be touched if I was in tremendous pain and fear.”

Richard Moss 8:31

And I just put one hand at the very top of his head just a kind of — the way you would touch a child’s head in, a baby’s head, just to comfort them, just to create that — to renew that ever always connection and the other hand was just softly over his belly and I got just blindingly hot. And I had been in a meditation group and I’ve met a teacher that showed me how to sense energy. So it was not like it was completely foreign to put my hands that way. But it was the voice that said you have nothing to share with this man that loved.

Richard Moss 9:13

Except for bringing my hands near him and just telling you just hardly touching him, just the softest touch. And this heat, this tremendous heat in the man went completely to sleep. The nurse sat down on a chair, the room got so hot. The security guard actually went to open a window and then he sat down in the chair. And I just was transfixed in a level of energy I never knew existed before. It was just pure love. And, because, I don’t know what else to call it.

Richard Moss 9:49

And then it was over, after, I would see, you know, things always seem longer in memory. But certainly a minute or two I just stood there, which was bizarre. I mean, I even, there was a part of my mind was saying, “oh my god, this nurse must think I’m gone nuts.” I mean, she knew me for a few years.

Richard Moss 10:10

So it was, that was one of the first times I was called. And I was called many other times, to that love that is really literally the backbone of the universe is what Walt Whitman calls it. I mean, the mystic poets and the mystics, and the great spiritual sages all talk about the very essence of creation is love. If you want to attribute something we know is an embodied feeling to the absolute unknowable mystery of God, then probably love is what brings us as close to source and God as anything can and we all taste it in our personal love, we all taste it in our relationships.

Richard Moss 10:52

But that calling of love finally became the realization that it wasn’t about loving another person, it was about loving Love with others. And loving Love with my wife, Katherine, is very different than saying, “I’m in love with you, do you love me?”

Richard Moss 11:12

We have a deep understanding, both of us, through very different paths. That intuitive said it was obeying and celebrating. It was listening to and celebrating the higher self with another. But she, too, has joined me in the language of loving Love itself.

Richard Moss 11:32

And the other one of the other ways that I was called to this love was back in the early 90s, when I found a beautiful piece of artisan paper that was embossed with a series of concentric circles and around the outside or across it in French, it was in French, and I was with a good friend who’s also, at this point, I was many years into being a consciousness or spiritual if we want to call it that teacher, which means a constant student of everything. And then, so he translated for me and the words were from St. Bernard and it goes like this, “Who loves, loves Love. And loving Love forms a circle. So complete, there is no end to love.”

Richard Moss 12:31

And so in the 90s that became a mantra, the emergency room situation happened maybe in 1975, early 76.

Richard Moss 12:43

And those are just examples of what so loving Love is like having a third consciousness. Because you and I are speaking, we’re in a relationship. It’s dedicated to much the same thing it is bringing the opportunity, the incredible invitation of deepening and consciousness and deepening in heart and embodying heart.

Richard Moss 13:11

And then I’d love to know why you ended up calling this the Embody Podcast that to me is really significant. And so that became a mantra that St. Bernard quote, that’s been 26, 27 years with me. And then in the last number of years, I began to realize that it was truly about loving Love, not about being loved or loving someone else, which is all-important and essential and fundamental as well. But that kind of love can come or go, especially personal love, you know, you can love someone and then hate them, if they don’t love you. When transactional love is there, you know.

Candice Wu 13:53

Yeah.

Richard Moss 13:53

I think for the vast majority of us, there’s no transaction between us and our children. The vast majority, it’s, it just is love. But for most of us, you know you love someone and then they stop behaving the way you want them to. And you start having to deal with your own inner stuff and projected on them and vice versa. And pretty soon we’re in conflict. And pretty soon we’re telling ourselves the stories that destroy that love. And it’s gone and is replaced by indifference or defensiveness, or anger or even hate, which is so sad and so basic, to an awakened human consciousness. So that’s what I mean by loving Love. It’s a third consciousness, it’s mediating between Cathy and myself. It’s watching, it’s listening. It’s not just an abstraction for me, it’s a living presence.

Candice Wu 14:52

It’s beautiful. I really feel connected to that loop. From that quote of loving Love. And I feel that experience of what you’re speaking to that there’s this third, living, breathing witness to the experience of relating, and the consciousness that we each are, who we are in it. And seeing it from that place, it holds everything, feels like it holds everything.

Richard Moss 15:28

It does. And that doesn’t mean that it’s easy. It does not mean that all of the work, we must, actually we have to learn to do this. And then we have to become passionate about practicing it but all of the work to understand how we poison love, with our thinking, with our disembodied obstructions, our beliefs, our belief systems, our judgments are unprocessed pain from the past and wounding from childhood, of various degrees, you know, and what we’ve inherited from our ancestral lineage, and then what ultimately all of us are bathing in terms of enormous collective patterns, such as the dominance of patriarchy in the world for thousands and thousands of years.

Richard Moss 16:26

And what that’s meant to men in terms of their identity and how they are even, how they’re blinded, or very limited in their ability to perceive woman, women, the feminine, in themselves, and certainly outside in others, and vice versa. Because patriarchy also has a very limiting narrowing effect on how women see themselves, believe in themselves and behave.

Richard Moss 16:53

And we’re breaking free now. There’s a wildness of a soul that’s coming forth now. And it’s liberating us from that. But it’s a hard work daily, moment by moment often.

Candice Wu 17:04

Yeah, I think you’re really touching on exactly why this is called the Embody Podcast. It’s all of those aspects that you mentioned, ancestry, our beliefs that have been, if one believes it, you know, through many lives, or what we came in with, what we started to think about, through our whole experience, especially from childhood, all the judgments, all of that living in the body. And how do we come to presence now, and align with presence now, but give a rooted healing to those parts that are coming up?

Candice Wu 17:47

And with patriarchy, with the collective ideas and belief, to talk about them as one thing. But I have found that it doesn’t quite shift what’s actually happening when we do relate at unconscious levels and conscious until it gets to the level of the body and the heart, in this human body, in this form. And I think it’s just such a beautiful gift to be able to have this body to be in, to let it all transform and experience what’s really here now.

Richard Moss 18:28

Yes, you know, and what’s so fascinating, which is just coming to me a number of different things as I listened to you just came into consciousness. One is that as we get older, and I’m 72, and I just was on holiday with my wife and visited one of my dearest friends, he’s been a mentor for me, he and his wife although she passed five and a half years ago, for relationship in particularly the profound richness of what they explored, has been such an influence on me. And he’s 88 or just about 88. And his name is Jack Zimmerman.

Richard Moss 19:16

And people can find him, his book, Flesh, and Spirit. And then he wrote a memoir about the last use of the exploration with his wife. Now he’s currently writing a book about the relationship, these five and a half years since she passed, and how vital and alive and profound their third consciousness has grown, even after the transition.

Richard Moss 19:40

And so that came into my mind that the body, is it ages, and I already do experience this, it becomes more and more sensitive. And it becomes wiser and wiser to really what is essential. We know that and we feel it, the skin gets, literally, the skin gets thinner, the defenses, the armor goes down. And since we can’t use the body, as so many people do, so many people use the body.

Richard Moss 20:14

In a way, I would say, sometimes it’s escape, but it’s also the portal. It’s just a portal into flow. It’s a portal into, you know, through surfing and swimming, and running and rock climbing, which was a big one for me, and mountaineering, also a big one, when I was younger, the body sports out in nature, really getting someplace through your own effort, and learning to go deeper and deeper into determination and effort and the adventure of living like that in your body. And I never got very good at surfing, just not enough time to do it. But rock climbing I did learn profoundly, more deeply into the body.

Richard Moss 20:58

I ran for many years. And just to stay fit in between my travels and so forth. And some of that was escape, some of that. And I think for many people that kind of routine of exercises, not only at one level, healthy, good at another level, it’s what they use to tone their emotional body.

Richard Moss 21:18

And as such, if you were suddenly to become ill, or disabled, or like in my case where a disc went bad. And I had years of pain and then eventually had to have a hip replaced and eventually had to have some back surgery. And in those periods of time, if you were dependent on being in nature, the way you were being active in the way you knew how to be, you could really have a tremendous opportunity to accelerate in consciousness because you would have to deal with the emotions that were being sedated, consciously or unconsciously through the physical activity, through the —

Richard Moss 21:57

Because we are a culture now and I live in Boulder, Colorado, which is going to be one of the world’s Apex, is for Superathletes, is that level of fitness in this town. I go to the gym. Oh my goodness, compared to what I saw on the beach in Hawaii recently. Though, that was the one thing I saw on the beach in Hawaii, you know, and people who really have neglected their bodies. And at the same time going by in a zillion miles an hour, people swimming, and preparing for the, you know, the triathlete contests like the Ironman, which takes place in Hawaii and maybe the most famous will be the Ironman things.

Richard Moss 22:34

My wife, in fact, did a half Ironman when she was 50, which is nine years ago, and that’s pretty remarkable.

Candice Wu 22:43

Wow.

Richard Moss 22:44

So these are the two things that came up for me, which is embodiment is going toward love. But we always have to visit fear, there’s always fear there in everyone. And until we make the determination, we’re not going to sedate fear, with exercise or alcohol or any other way. I don’t mean there’s a time for escape, there’s a time for relaxing with a drink, there’s a time for everything like that. But there are times when you just have to learn to go to the place of fear, which always comes up in relationship, always.

Richard Moss 23:21

And plant a tree there and sit down for as long as it takes till the tree grows, and you begin to have a place of shelter in the midst of these very deep fears. Because we don’t leave behind patriarchy without a profound change of identity. We don’t leave behind the wounds of childhood. And I sure you could speak about this just as well as I could.

Richard Moss 23:50

Whether it’s, you know, because some of us had a wonderful childhood. But still there’s always an inherited trauma and ancestral trauma, of lack of real marrying and inability of our parents who are already formed in their own personality, psychological structure, and that coming into the ego is not coming into the me that we become as we go from birth or conception to, I guess, the ego solidly in place by 6, 7, 8 years old for most people.

Richard Moss 24:25

And then it’s going to continue to differentiate and most of us get lost in our heads. And we forget the body, we forget to feel, we forget to listen with our hearts in our bodies, moment by moment. And then we don’t have any foundation in anything that we really know. It’s, we don’t have a foundation of what’s really true. And that’s part of the challenge with what’s going on politically now.

Richard Moss 24:56

Trump, President Trump, he’s an exaggeration in such a high office of the challenge to embodied wisdom and the challenge even to reason. So those are the things that get stimulated in me, tell me something, you know for you, what is embodiment?

Candice Wu 25:24

It means to experience what is here in this present moment, and what comes from inside and out. And that, as you said, We must visit fear, it’s to experience all the different emotions that are coming up, all of the thoughts and sensations and images that come up and to see and sort out what’s an incomplete movement or experience from the past.

Richard Moss 26:06

Oh, well put, well put “in-complete”, that’s well put.

Candice Wu 26:11

Right. And to allow it to be here now, because it’s wanting completion. And so that fear of trauma on the past or what’s still stuck in so many places of patriarchy, as it lives in us, as it lives in society, and in each individual, it’s all that opportunity to look at and feel through what’s been incomplete.

Candice Wu 26:37

And I find that when it completes, we, that is a process of loving, to allow the completion to be with it, to sit with it. And then we also arrive back at love. Because what was before the trauma or the hurt or the wound, was a desire for love or connection or presence, that got disrupted by something else. But gives us the opportunity to love both what was underneath and what came to be. And so, yeah, I find embodiment is being with all of that. And allowing that sorting process of what is not me, what is ego? What is something that just was created meaning from an experience that just didn’t get completed?

Richard Moss 27:30

Okay, yeah.

Candice Wu 27:31

Yeah. And what is the presence of my being without that? What’s underneath that? What is the mark? The full experience of my being, which I believe is love.

Richard Moss 27:48

Yes.

Richard Moss 27:53

Some indigenous native people, when they hear something spoken, truth spoke, hard truth spoken, they go, “Oh, I used to lead sweat lodges, many sweat lodges years ago. And so I never trained with Native Americans. I sweated with one, high medicine man many times.

Richard Moss 28:15

So I didn’t ever try to pretend that I was Native American. My sweat lodges were rituals of grounding in the body, grounding in the heart. And we say things like, “Aho” and when I’m in a circle with people as it so often in small circles or large circles, I don’t necessarily ask people to say, “Aho”, but in my mind, sometimes I’m going, “Aho”, and just that we acknowledge each other, that we really hear something that spoke to us, and just to let someone know when you hear that.

Richard Moss 28:51

And two things came up when you’re speaking in particular, the word complete. And I agree with you, I think when we really dive into certain kinds of experiences, that we’ve lived but didn’t let come to completion or we left, let’s say, a residue of anger, or dissatisfaction or unhappiness, there is a moment, there is a work where you go back in and look and begin to look through different eyes, look through a different depth of consciousness, look through your heart, put your ears in your heart, your eyes in your heart, your memory, to be relived at the level of the heart.

Richard Moss 29:34

Again, the heart is a metaphor certainly not what a cardiologist is thinking about. And thoracic surgeon, cardio surgeon, the heart’s not a metaphor for them. Though, I think the great physicians and the great doctors and physician needs energy, life force energy. So, you know, the word doctor is I don’t know, that its origins take us really into what physic means which to be a physician, the great physicians are also poetic, they’re also mystic, they also have a heart.

Richard Moss 30:11

So, complete is relative, some things do get complete, but the journey to know ourselves is a beginningless and endless journey. And, you know, each stage of completion is just the portal to the next opportunity, the next invitation, I should say, to the wildness of the soul, to something, I don’t mean acting out wild, you know, like the wild child image, I mean, like the wildness of the soul, that wants to dance with love and is willing to risk, hurt, and fear, and mistakes and abandonment.

Richard Moss 30:48

And as one part gets completed, it gets complete because of a process of forgiveness, which means that you, you see through new eyes, and therefore the past becomes renewed, it becomes forgiven. And it’s endless. Forgiveness is truly endless.

Richard Moss 31:06

And not one thing at all, but a grace of virtue. And it’s you know, you never go to school and learn about forgiveness, because it’s not a curriculum, everyone can learn it, but it has to be transmitted. The things you can learn, that can be trained, and can be given to you at school are all for the left brain. They’re not for the heart, the things of a heart, forgiveness, and trust, and humility and compassion, and love. They have to be transmitted by people as we live deeper and deeper in each stage of life brings different capacities, different opportunities. So it’s an ongoing thing. It’s –

Candice Wu 31:47

Yeah, I appreciate that.

Richard Moss 31:50

It’s wonderful.

Candice Wu 31:52

I love the beginning with aspect to an endless, and it gives me the feeling. You know, we’ve been so trained to the left brain, we’ve been so trained to the mind, and conditioned to see our lives to that pathway. And that linear path of here’s where we begin. And this is where we want to end up. And this just opens it up completely, the beginningless and endless.

Candice Wu 32:20

It touches on the feeling that I had when I was an art teacher, that this is our unfolding artwork of our lives. That is who we are, and we’re with the beginning or end to be, there isn’t one. And this transmission you’re speaking of also flows in line with that feeling of it can go in any direction. And it’s in any moment. And as you’re speaking to this, Richard, I’m wondering, what’s the opening that you’re having now in your life? What’s the opportunity at this moment or the struggle or the piece of deepening that is emerging for you?

Richard Moss 33:05

Oh, wow. Well, very practical, we’ve been very concrete things. I do, we all do, at some level don’t realize how much we imagine a future and then borrow a sense of security from that future.

Richard Moss 33:23

And right now in my life, something’s happened. It’s taken what I thought was a padding of financial security, for example, specifically, and it’s gone. And with that, anything that I imagined that would mean, and what’s so amazing is that I understand that the part of me that would not have been ready for that without all these years of learning to come to this moment, this beginning, and not borrow identity and security from the future.

Richard Moss 34:01

So it’s very challenging, because it’s caused us to have to make very important decisions about where to live, sell a house, and the house we’re in was the family home for my wife for the past 11 years, she raised her three children, and she took over the parenting time of her ex-husband and raised his three children. She by herself, single-handedly, for every two weeks of the month had six children and the rest of the time her three children. And this is their family home. And so now we’re, we’ve had this house on the market recently and for Kathy, it’s wave after wave of letting go and surrendering and giving away attachment to the memories, not the reverence in the deliciousness of the memories. And for me, it’s watching her struggle with that, for me, it’s recognizing that what I thought was going to be a buffer for security that would take me into old age, we’re 13 years apart, an agent would give her something to rest in.

Richard Moss 35:08

The debt disappeared literally from one day to the next, the whole imagined future went away. And, it’s okay. It actually gives us a second acceleration in our loving of Love with each other, of our landing and third consciousness with each other. The third consciousness of our relationship, which is consecrated to love Love, which is that third is listening to us, it’s teaching me more about her. It’s teaching her about me. And as we listen to that intelligence of love, which is not a left-brain form of a rational, linear conceptual intelligence at all. But deeper and deeper moments of knowing and self-surrender.

Richard Moss 35:56

You know, we reach times where we’re looking at the practicalities and then forget the deeper vision and mission in our lives, the adjustment to things like that, the moving we’ve already done so much to prepare for a move.

Richard Moss 36:13

And the decisions we’re having to make now that are a radical change from what we thought would — we’d have to live just even a few months ago. And it was from one day to the next it was just a bad investment that someone did. And, but it was, you know, that’s where our vulnerability is.

Richard Moss 36:35

Now, fortunately, she’s healthy, I’m healthy, but you never know. You know, whatever imagined future any of us are unconsciously borrowing security from or a sense of continuity of identity in many ways, death can take it, loss can take it, illness can take it, financial ruin can take it. And so we do have to learn, to really rest and to source in ourselves, to feel the ground of our being, which is not just personal, but it is more, it’s transpersonal and personal simultaneously.

Richard Moss 37:16

And the living in the world and being not of the world as the Sufi says, “to live in the world, but not be of it”, is not a dichotomy or a splitting, or it’s not the old break between spirit and flesh, between personal and secular and religious. There actually an indivisible — the beginning of ourselves, which is always this present moment in our bodies aware, those two fundamental things that are divided so profoundly in human consciousness almost the way the brain is divided between the presence right-brain and the presenting through words and concepts left-brain.

Richard Moss 38:04

And the heart, as a metaphor for knowing, to our whole being in the body, very much inseparable from — the language then, if we use modern metaphors, the right brain, the heart, the body, that’s 95% of our intelligence. What we can Twitter and write on Facebook and write in books, other than poetic books, or you know, deep philosophical prose, we can do in music, which is so much the language of heart and mind, or can be profound.

Richard Moss 38:43

We are in a time of bridging, of having to bridge. We must bridge between these seemingly irreconcilable dichotomies and so that is the edge of where I am now. To know death is going to come, we all know that intellectually. But to die into love, in this moment, to just give away an identity from one moment to next. And a sense of hope, and a fantasy of who you are and how you live, that was there for me and for her and it’s just gone. Then it’s, you know, no one’s particular business how it happened, it’s just simply gone. And that, I don’t want to say it’s wonderful, but I would not be deepening as rapidly into heart and loving Love without that sudden surprise.

Richard Moss 39:47

But of course, living that it also makes me see how much climate change, the warming of our climate, the poisoning of our soil and air and waters that with all the diseases that are now, you know, escalating tremendously. Cancers, more and more of it and more and more rare forms of it.

Richard Moss 40:12

Even though our ability to treat cancer in some ways is improving. We’re not winning the war on cancer because we — to do that we have to clean up our environment, and our environments just getting more polluted with global warming. We are in a way, a sense of living in an imaginary future, and that global warming and climate change and pollution is going to take away from, not you and me, but all of us as it is already taken life away from, literally more creatures that become extinct in the last hundred years than it ever, before happened in history.

Richard Moss 40:49

I think this is called the sixth great extinction, only six previous times in those except for the big asteroid 66 million years ago, those other extinctions took tens of millions of years. Now it’s happening in hundreds of years and decades.

Richard Moss 41:08

So, we are robbing the future without realizing it, to protect the economic identities, not just of the wealthy. Everyone lives in some form of many layers of identity. And none of which is real, none of which is going to sustain us as we age or when these profound surprises come. Like, know, everybody that we think we understand what — this is happening every day.

Richard Moss 41:43

Think about the refugees, think about suddenly from having to — think about the people with the courage to get out of Honduras, and places that were, there are such criminality and violence, that this fear for their lives, they fear for their families, their children, and then they come to this country with hope, but they can’t get in, you know, because — and it’s not just our government or its particular policies, or one political party, or this president that makes it difficult. It’s all of us. Because we’re not creating a global identity. We’re not creating a society that can integrate people who — it’s not easy for them to be integrated, it’s not easy for us to integrate them. And yet, if you love Love, what else is there to do?

Richard Moss 42:30

And when someone says something stupid, like one of our, I think it was our secretary of state that said, “Well, with this global warming and people will move.”

Richard Moss 42:39

It’s ridiculous. Sure, if you could afford to move, you’ll move. But then people that can afford to move or move to the places that everyone needs to be. And those places will get so expensive that only the wealthy could be there, too. I mean, it’s so stupid. And you think of something like Chernobyl. Think about how, what really happened in Chernobyl.

Richard Moss 43:00

It was not just that a nuclear reactor broke down. It was that people stood on the bridge watching it happen. And every one of them died, the children, the mothers and fathers thinking the light was beautiful, the light show is beautiful, and that the snow of radioactive ash was like benign snow. And the rest of them that were further away, but still within a dangerous zone. They had a knock on their door, military people and they had to pack a bag in five minutes and walk out of their lives and they never went back. The future was taken.

Richard Moss 43:36

So you were talking much earlier about what happens when we start to clear the past. But when we clear the past, when we start to heal the past and forgive the past, we have to understand that by lending in our hearts, we’re creating a new future. And that future needs to be translated into behavior. And it needs to be translated into not being dependency, not having dependency on what we imagined will be the future. But creating a present moment that truly is obedient to nature.

Richard Moss 44:09

We are the first creatures that we know of, on this planet, and perhaps in the universe, with the capacity to consciously love Love. But our science is not about dominating nature, which of course, it has been about, not true science, but Applied Science, technologies at any level forever, have always been about control and dominance.

Richard Moss 44:34

We are now, though, capable with our science of understanding the enormous and measurable intricacy of nature and starting to consciously be obedient to nature. And if we don’t do that, nature will just slap us as if we were flea and it wouldn’t make it — doesn’t care.

Richard Moss 44:54

You know, this planet earth will continue in some form for billions of years, with life on it. And we’re at an incredible turning point. Everything we’ve done to make ourselves secure.

Richard Moss 45:09

I know I’m talking a long thing now. But this is what you know, I’ve known this before, but suddenly my future was taken away at a financial level. And then just like that, from one day to the next, and not my future to earn money, though I’m 72. And you know, maybe I have another 10 or 15 years of being able to share deeply with people and there’ll be some remuneration for that. But what I saved, received, what I gradually saved over, over a lifetime is gone. And that’s amazing. And it’s not a tragedy, not the least, it’s just the most amazing acceleration. Does that mean I have a bit apprehension? Very little, I’ve had very little fear. What tires me out is all the things that change requires then doing day to day, moment by moment. Very, that can get really tiring. It’s moving and organizing for moves and things like that are stressful. So there you go.

Candice Wu 46:22

Wow, I really appreciate you sharing this. And it’s really refreshing. When you said it’s amazing. Even though everything you’ve been saying is been about this deepening and your journey deepening in love, and this opportunity of what you thought would be there, the security you thought would be there. And how you’re receiving that as this grand experience. Not grand but very deep experience and opportunity to surrender in.

Richard Moss 46:56

Oh, yeah, on one level, really it sucks to be.

Candice Wu 47:00

Yeah.

Richard Moss 47:01

Use it, kind of colloquialism. But on another level, that doesn’t what which it sucks is really trivial. And the level in which the door is opening to love Love is even more so. But there is no security.

Richard Moss 47:20

It’s much you know, the teaching, the Buddhist teaching of Impermanence is so easy to roll off the tongue. But it is only impermanence. And whatever transitory security we have, by borrowing from a savings account, or the notion that I’m healthy, or I eat well, or, you know, I do all the right things or, you know. Yes. The only sure security is when you land deep in yourself. And you can land there with another and live that incredible vulnerability with others.

Richard Moss 48:04

The security is really the shared heart. The shared heart of humankind, the shared earthling nature of all of us. Look at our insanity, the resources under a foot belong to whoever lives above it, how insane? You know, it’s the level of insanity that we just take for granted.

Richard Moss 48:30

These massive cities that have grown up in, Qatar and Dubai, and so I cut, all based on energy dug up from the ground in a time in society and culture where we’re burning fossil fuels is what we need to make ourselves safe, comfortable, and so forth. And we’re really still just in a profound spiritual poverty, not that we’re less evolved than we used to be. I mean, in many ways we’re growing, but our population and our Applied Technology has so accelerated, the mistakes we were always making, there was always a price for security. And there always will be. The only true security is deep in your heart. And in your shared heart.

Candice Wu 49:28

That’s really touching me. There’s always a price for full security. And would that be the only security is deep in the heart and in the shared heart? Would that be how you describe intimacy?

Richard Moss 49:48

What a good question.

Richard Moss 49:55

A wonderful question. It’s a question that a woman would ask on a podcast called Embody.

Richard Moss 50:04

Well, yes. To love Love with another is profoundly intimate.

Richard Moss 50:11

In my particular character, it’s that level of intimacy is also profoundly sensual. If we take the word erotic and the word Eros, which is the larger word, the Greek word for love, it’s Erosic. It’s not you know, it’s not just erotic, but it is all that.

Richard Moss 50:33

It is making, literally, hear the words, “making love.” It’s like making bread, growing the grains, growing the plant, harvesting the grains, grinding the grains, making the dough, baking the dough, making bread. It’s making love.

Richard Moss 51:02

When your user in your heart, with your beloved with your eyes, in your heart, or in your heart with your beloved, she’s not just a woman. She’s all woman, she’s a mystery that has no beginning and end. Likewise, the man in the eyes of the woman.

Richard Moss 51:20

And though I can’t get inside Kathy’s eyes or any woman’s eyes, and whatever the truth of multiple lives, I don’t remember being a woman. I just for me, intimacy is all of that. It’s paying the bills. It’s raising the family. It’s understanding that the other is always truly other. And that deep inside of each of us is that which brings us together in the most profound way. And finding that togetherness with our bodies is the greatest joy. Oh my goodness! What a way to thank God for being born into human form with this consciousness.

Candice Wu 52:16

I just took a couple of deep breaths. Just, I agree with everything you said. And just in my whole body and my whole being. And it’s beautiful. Thank you for describing it through the way you feel it.

Richard Moss 52:30

Exactly. And the joy of it, to just absolute wonderment. I couldn’t have dreamed this life. I couldn’t have dreamed Kathy. I’ve told her that. I couldn’t have dreamed you. And whatever dream I had, I keep waking up into a more profound fullness, emptiness, mystery, richness that really beggar’s words, except baby and poetry.

Candice Wu 53:09

Thank you. Wow, there are so many things coming up in me. I just, I feel so much love at the moment. And how you’re describing your wonderment for life. And it’s really beautiful. I’m really grateful. I’m like, tears are almost here.

Richard Moss 53:30

It’s a direct proportion to the dark.

Candice Wu 53:36

Yeah. And just the way you’ve been talking about paying the bills. There’s such a sweetness to it. And I also feel the embracing of the dark of sometimes it’s not fun at all, or it sucks, or it’s hard.

Candice Wu 53:53

And it’s reminding me of being with horses lately. I love being with horses, and they’re just calling me and this indivisible world of spirit and heart and body is something that really shows itself to me through the horses. And I get that chance to be with the poop. The poop and the breathing there, you know, when they’re just next to me and breathing or when they walk away from me or when I desire something and notice it in me, you know, the pressure I’m putting on the situation. There’s just so much there that is right in front of me. And it helps me bring that into the rest of life.

Richard Moss 54:45

Yeah. And I close my eyes, try to imagine it.

Richard Moss 54:49

I’ve had only minimal contact with horses, but enough to know, intuitive intuitively, that the relationship you can have with the horse is profound, but it’s not cerebral. It’s not. It’s whatever is deeply grounded in us, in the moment.

Richard Moss 55:13

I, you know, and in our bodies at a felt level they can mirror and yes, of course, they require being cared for, now in nature, they required being cared for. But nature as it is, you know, our nature has enclosed nature and fence to nature. And it does it all the time, not just in the metaphor of the planes, and the fences and so forth.

Richard Moss 55:45

But yeah, I can see that the horse can teach us to rest in our bodies in the now. And in so doing, come into communion with the horse. And then our bodies become extended to the horse. And certainly to be. I mean, I’ve ridden horses, but never with the knowledge that I really knew what I was doing. It was always the utility to get into a remote place, to bring the packs in, for my soul in space, wilderness trips that I used to do, year after year in just different wildernesses, just taking people there to do consciousness work completely alone, you know, relatively unreachable. And those were my small experiences with horses. But I stood next to them. I’ve watched when a horse just notices you, when you’re looking, and when it really pays attention to you and when it walks over or doesn’t.

Richard Moss 57:01

So I have that intuition of what you’re speaking up.

Candice Wu 57:07

And some other things you were saying, Richard, I was thinking about what’s going on in Hongkong right now. With the extradition bill that China, well, that Hongkong, that the leader of Hong Kong wants to put in place, which and what I’m seeing with all the protests and the amount of love that I see in that, where so many Hongkongers may not be affected by this bill, or what happened five years ago, with the previous protest, but they’re being called to come out and speak up and say no, and —

Richard Moss 57:51

Say no to another offense.

Candice Wu 57:54

Yes, say no to another offense. Another idea that could create hurt –

Richard Moss 58:03

And repression –

Candice Wu 58:04

or someone that –

Richard Moss 58:05

Repression —

Candice Wu 58:05

Yeah.

Richard Moss 58:06

-of the souls urge to liberation.

Candice Wu 58:13

Yes. And you ask, what else is there to do about love Love.

Candice Wu 58:18

And I have, for myself, I’ve arrived at this place of, well, when I see something happening, when I feel something happening, allow myself to feel it and see what’s there for me, see what I’m compelled to do about it. But to really feel the power of my own awareness in myself as something that is doing something, not that that’s the point, but deepening in myself, has that impact.

Candice Wu 58:57

And there’s also the other part of me that’s like, ’Well, why do you do with that?”

Candice Wu 59:01

And there are a few ideas I have. But, I wonder if you have any thoughts about all these things that are happening in the world, in our country, and in the world. And you’ve spoken about the global community that we are and what do you do when you see something that really pains you in the world?

Richard Moss 59:28

Well, you feel it, you know, I feel it. I feel the sadness, the tears of pain, because I can make an argument through — an argument that is respectful of the soul, for why a law would be passed, in terms of creating order and boundary, which might then allow for a general movement of large populations toward something like less poverty, or, you know, certainly China has elevated so many people out of poverty, but the price we pay is always repression. And so the people, the action you have to take is to be unrepressed in your loving, but not, I don’t — what I mean by that is not — Oh. –

Richard Moss 1:00:39

The essence of non-violence in protest is love. It’s not — non-violence is a strategy it took. And it’s a result of an understanding, to become nonviolent inside of ourselves is the real work. So you have to do that. You have to learn to be nonviolent inside of yourself. And that’s so easy to say, but just watch your thoughts, and how violent they can be toward you. How violent they can be toward others, into a mild violence, you know, it doesn’t have to be insanely violent. But to just watch, and you get to know that part of you, that’s ugly. And, then you have to love that part of you that’s ugly. Because deep down, it’s trying to protect you deep down. It was a way of separating you from others. Because separating differentiation is endless. It can’t stop. And yet the one that we emerged from and the one we’re always in, is also endless and does not stop.

Richard Moss 1:01:39

So what do you do, is you listen to your heart, and then you act in the ways you can act right now.

Richard Moss 1:01:48

Does that mean that you, because you were born in Hongkong would fly to Hongkong and join the group? It could mean that. But wouldn’t it be wonderful if you decided to join that group just from an impulse that you felt in your heart, and then you noticed, “wow, it’s amazing!” There was a special sale, and I got this really low price ticket. And you know, and I went over there, and I was with people and all that happened was my heart open more and there was no enemy.

Richard Moss 1:02:19

And then, “wow!”

Richard Moss 1:02:22

That’s irresistible.

Richard Moss 1:02:25

It’s irresistible. It’s like a solvent. It’s like water, and the sugar cubes of even though they look like bricks that will you know, can’t dissolve, but the sugar cubes of identity, of political belief systems, of ideologies, of cultures themselves, because a culture beliberated a group of people, but it makes distrust and distance from a different group of people, and society overall, which is an attempt to assimilate many cultures. Can only do that by having deep principles that are very hard for anybody to really know.

Richard Moss 1:03:08

I mean to dream of democracy is just that. It is a dream. And it’s only as good as the consciousness of the people who live it. And right now, and it’s always been the case, always from the very beginning of this democracy or any experiment in democracy, we elect people according to our consciousness, and they run to seduce our consciousness at the level they believe we can be seduced with maybe fear or distrust. And the ones that are too ideal have told the ideal so high, are important, but they can’t truly, they can’t lead us politically.

Richard Moss 1:03:50

And the ones that are cynical in some ways, as many of the political leaders we have now, and so fear-based in the manipulation, they are successful because we want to be manipulated by fear, yet we haven’t planted a tree and fear. We haven’t sat down inside our fear, we haven’t sat down inside our own ugliness, and wait and silenced ourselves enough to allow the seed of love to grow in the vast fields of fear, and grow a new tree and then gradually nourish us. And so we transmute that fear. But that takes everything we’re talking about. And it takes a practice, a journey, it takes meditation, it takes every practice, it gets your energy flowing, it takes such tremendous honesty and transparency and vulnerability, and hard work. Like any composer, like anyone that becomes a neurosurgeon, like anyone that writes a book that took every ounce of their gifts and genius determination. It takes that kind of work on the part of every single human being to the best of their ability, every day.

Richard Moss 1:05:10

And it starts with listening to our conversations and the things we listen to that inspire us. And the action you take, then, is the one that’s right in front of you. And you take that, embodied, and in your heart, without hope, because it will always be hope for the wrong thing.

Richard Moss 1:05:27

The only hope is in your own commitment to love Love in yourself and with others. And, that’s the only hope. And to love Love, that’s transactional, that’s I love you if you love me even though we deny it often, you know, but in fact, is if you make me feel good, and then I’ll make you feel good. If you start to threaten now I feel well then, it’s your fault. I won’t look at why I feel threatened. I won’t go into my fears.

Richard Moss 1:05:57

And you can see the picture I’m painting, the picture that I think all awakened people have been painting forever, is that, you know, why it’s so, you know, it’s easier to pass a businessman through the eye of a needle or a camel through the eye of a needle than it is to enter the kingdom of heaven, by whatever name you want to call it.

Richard Moss 1:06:23

And all deep spiritual movements are radical, in the most positive sense of the words, they go to the root of who we really are. And, I can’t tell anyone what to do. I know what I’m doing right now in the phase of my life. I know what I, the minimal that I can do in terms of things like recycling or how I purchase and what I give my money to and things like that. That matter a little but collectively can matter a great deal.

Richard Moss 1:06:58

And unfortunately, the political movement doesn’t, no political movement gives us much choice. And right now maybe, in terms of air pollution and cutting back carbon production, a government such as China’s given the population of China, maybe actually more effective than a government like ours in the United States, because we are still per capita the number one or number two polluter and we are way, you know, China’s behind us, per capita.

Richard Moss 1:07:27

But we are no longer giving an example to the world at least at the level of the kind of the loudest noise that the media tends to attune to.

Richard Moss 1:07:42

There are millions of people working along the lines of what you and I are talking about, and in very practical and grounded ways, in so many ways. And there were millions of people who want to learn and are learning in the fields of science to revere this planet. And, that’s going on also.

Richard Moss 1:08:04

So the most important thing is if it hurts, feel the pain, don’t try to numb it. And if it’s saddening, feel the sadness, don’t try to numb it. Don’t make yourself special, don’t become self-involved, because you’re angry, or you’re sad, or you’re disillusioned. That’s all self-indulgence.

Candice Wu 1:08:31

Thank you.

Richard Moss 1:08:33

Well, I don’t know how long our listener would want to sit and listen. And I’m aware of the time, and it’s not because I have, you know, limited time now. It’s just simply in respect of a listener, maybe we should try to wind up.

Candice Wu 1:08:52

I think so. I think this is a perfect place.

Candice Wu 1:08:57

Richard, it’s been such an honor to have you here and to hear you speak and bring your transmission of who you are and what you’re interested in. And that’s really touched me and I feel a shift in me. Even with just this hour of conversation with you and such a gift.

Richard Moss 1:09:20

Thank you. I mean, truly, thank you.

Candice Wu 1:09:23

Truly.

Richard Moss 1:09:25

It’s what we’re here for.

Candice Wu 1:09:27

Yeah.

Richard Moss 1:09:28

My wife says, “Is there a better game in town? Is there anything you’d rather?

Candice Wu 1:09:35

Not for me.

Richard Moss 1:09:36

And not for me?”

Candice Wu 1:09:39

Thank you so much. Is there anything else you’d like to say or leave things with here?

Richard Moss 1:09:45

Well, just in terms of, perhaps you can say but just in terms of, you know, I’m 72 as many people as I can reach in my work, which is very experiential, and really teaches people that is it, there’s a transmission and a teaching that is about what we’ve been talking about and how to live it.

Richard Moss 1:10:06

And so I have my YouTube channel, you know, these just short videos I put up every month, and I have a Facebook, beginning to post on Instagram, but also I have my retreats, which people can find at my website which is, www.richardmoss.com.

Richard Moss 1:10:29

And I work with people individually through Zoom or Skype, or they come to visit me and I work with them with my wife. And we work with couples, a tremendous opportunity for couples because I think when two people live this, it’s a much faster path than when one person lives it.

Richard Moss 1:10:50

And there’s always third consciousness, whether you live in a monastery, there’s still God in whatever form you imagine. God becomes your third and there’s always community of some kind. But when two people, really, side by side want to live this, it’s profound.

Richard Moss 1:11:11

So you know, I know just a tiny bit about you from what we said before we recorded so I just say, I hope you get to share this in your life with someone, anyone.

Candice Wu 1:11:25

Thank you, I believe I do, with a couple of people actually. And this couples experience sounds right up our alley. All of it does. And also Richard, you have, is it eight books now?

Richard Moss 1:11:44

Seven, but they’ll be an eighth sooner or later. I think I’ve had a little more time with, I know there will be a book about third consciousness in relationship, probably a short book. And something about really, what it means to stop borrowing from the past or the future. Stop. No. Outgrow that and land here because that’s where we have a truly new future. So that’ll come —

Candice Wu 1:12:22

The word borrow.

Candice Wu 1:12:24

Yeah, that’s great. I can’t wait to read both of those.

Richard Moss 1:12:30

I don’t know that.

Candice Wu 1:12:30

It’s like so poignant.

Richard Moss 1:12:32

Yeah, I don’t know, I wrote a book that I think is good a book about the weaving of psychology and spirituality together called them on our being that was my next to the last book. And then I realized, it could make the methodology of that book a little simpler, and speak about a few things in briefly.

Richard Moss 1:12:53

In my last book, Inside-Out Healing, and those books are both in print and not hard to find on Amazon. Our online through — basically online. The other books, there’s, you know, people find them, The Black Butterfly, The I That Is We, meaning the capital “I” that is we, which was my very first book, which was published, I guess, in 81, or 82, something like that. And, when I was a little younger than you are now. So it’s been a long journey. And –

Candice Wu 1:13:33

Wow!

Richard Moss 1:13:33

Thanks for mentioning the books.

Candice Wu 1:13:35

Absolutely.

Richard Moss 1:13:36

But there’s also, there’s this, for in terms of a simple methodology for mindfulness, for really deepening and meditation and presence, there’s free e-courses on my website.

Richard Moss 1:13:48

And in fact, I’m talking to someone from the Netherlands soon, whose husband, for her birthday present, give her a session with me and she’d been practicing these, the free e-course, it’s based from the Mandala of what I call, the Mandala of Being. It’s based on that methodology of recognizing thoughts coming back to the present moment.

Candice Wu 1:14:16

So beautiful, the connections that you’re having with it.

Richard Moss 1:14:22

Yeah, it is so beautiful.

Candice Wu 1:14:24

Thank you.

Richard Moss 1:14:25

It is so beautiful.

Candice Wu 1:14:26

Yeah, it really is.

Richard Moss 1:14:29

But you know, I’m gradually, you know, the complainer inside of me is got a comfortable position nearby, but doesn’t take the microphone of my heart and soul, a voice for feeling very much and all these different parts have come to understand. They’re all welcome inside of me, every one of them. And, they all serve me, and they’ll serve all of us. It just as you say, we just outgrow and we come to completion in terms of not the end of those voices, but the end of their power in us.

Candice Wu 1:15:12

A harmony within all the parts within.

Richard Moss 1:15:14

Yes.

Candice Wu 1:15:15

And a love that holds them all.

Richard Moss 1:15:16

Yes. And everything I’m saying comes from thousands of hours of wanting to go deeper, gradually, slowly, intermittently in the early years, and then deeper. And because I’ve been a teacher, it was a perfect way, retrospect, to create an environment for learning for me, as well as for the others.

Candice Wu 1:15:46

We’re alike in that, in me being a teacher as well and also supporting people in their healing or in their journey the same way. I read something where you said that it’s about finding the teacher within and the chance that I got to get as well, that sounds like you’ve gone very deep and it’s bringing this joyful conversation here.

Candice Wu 1:16:16

Thank you so much, Richard. And I wishing you the best.

Candice Wu 1:16:19

You’re very welcome, Candice. Thank you.

Candice Wu 1:16:22

Thank you, blessings to you on your journey of loving and may that continue in all its forms.

Richard Moss 1:16:30

I received that. Thank you. And I know that what you’re saying is also back to you.

Candice Wu 1:16:41

Thank you.

Candice Wu 1:16:46

This conversation was expansive for me. And I deeply appreciate Richard the way that you speak so vulnerably and eloquently. And it feels that you are living in your experience of what you say and what you offer.

Candice Wu 1:17:04

If you’re listening and you enjoyed this, be sure to check out in the next couple of days, the meditation that Richard is offering. I was delighted with the softness that he offers and brings forward in the meditation and the ways that he described the quality of our awareness and giving space to notice parts of ourselves and what we might name those parts of ourselves.

Candice Wu 1:17:29

It’s a lovely healing experience and meditation. So check that out at CandiceWu.com/richardmoss or subscribe to the podcast and it will drop into you in a couple of days.

Candice Wu 1:17:43

It hasn’t left me yet that I want to visit him and his wife and just spend time with them, and see how they live, experience what comes up. Sounds fascinating and like a lovely experience. So, if that compels you as well, feel free to check his work out at richardmoss.com.

Candice Wu 1:18:02

Everything’s linked in the show notes as usual. So you can find that on my website. And also be sure to check out other healing experientials, meditations, topics on the podcast around self-love, awareness, healing, and embodiment all CandiceWu.com/podcast.

Candice Wu 1:18:23

Also, if you feel inspired to stay updated with upcoming retreats, events, stuff about Horse Constellations and meditation, also the updates on my travels and other podcasts, you can sign up for my monthly newsletter at CandiceWu.com/embody.

Candice Wu 1:18:42

It has been lovely to have you here today. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you very much, Richard, for all of your insight and the years of connecting in with loving for yourself and those around you. And with that, I’ll leave you with a quote by Richard, “That love brings us as close to source as we can be.”

Candice Wu 1:19:04

See you next time on the Embody Podcast.

Introduction

Candice Wu 0:00

Today’s meditation is brought to you by Richard Moss, who is a teacher of consciousness and love.

In this meditation, touch into the quality of your awareness, your presence, and your being.

Hello and welcome. You’re listening to the Embody Podcast, a show about remembering and embodying your true nature, inner wisdom, Embodied Healing, and self-love.

My name is Candice Wu, and I’m a holistic healing facilitator, intuitive coach, and artist sharing my personal journey of vulnerability, offering meditations and guided healing support, and having co-creative conversations with healers and wellness practitioners from all over the world.

If you haven’t already listened to the introductory podcast with Richard Moss, it’s a beautiful episode around intimacy, planting a tree and fear, relationships as a way to accelerate loving Love, that embodiment is a beginningless and endless journey. And the question if you love Love, what else is there to do? Find all that at CandiceWu.com/richardmoss.

It’s with great pleasure and delight that Richard has offered to share this beautiful meditation here today, and here it is.

Beginning With Richard

Richard Moss 1:35

I’m Richard Moss, and I’m very honored to be making this contribution of a guided meditation to Candice Wu’s really very excellent Embody Podcast.

Before going any further, let me just caution you that the best way to listen to this is to be seated or lying down comfortably. And it would really be a mistake, and you shouldn’t try to be doing anything athletic or driving a car, anything where your attention really doesn’t need to be, on what I’m about to share with you.

So the meditation I’m about to guide you in is really at the very heart of what it means to be present. And what the practice of meditation actually is, as you begin to deepen into it more and more.

There are just several simple and yet very profound foundations for what I’m about to share with you.

Foundations of our Aware Self: There’s Only Now

The first is, to our aware self, to our presencing self, there is only the present moment, there is only now.

And without going into all the ways in which we are taken from the now and why that’s important, but also why it’s the source of, pretty much all mind-made suffering, let us simply say that, when we’re talking about being in the now, we’re talking about actually deepening into a part of you, which we can call by many names, the aware self is what I call it, and it’s not a thing, so it’s more a process.

It can also be called the witnessing self, the witnessing process. And there are levels and depth to which we become not only the witnesses, but at one with the experience that we’re witnessing as we deepen.

So the first premise, there’s only now.

The Law of the Present Moment

The second premise is that in this moment, the way that you touch or experience anything depends on the way you are touching it, that is the way you are bringing your awareness to it.

So for example, if there’s fear or fearful sensations, if you bring awareness to it, that is a more basic kind of ego awareness, it’s about survival and feeling good. And you’re going to want a sensation, like fear or feeling like fear to go away. So you’re touching it with rejection. And so the fear, in essence, rejects you and it gets more intense, becomes more distressing. And if you bury it with activity or any way in which you can displace fear, without actually getting to know fear, all it does is it works in your subconscious mind and it comes back always, again and again.

So the second premise, how you touch is how you’re touched. This is the law, I call it the Law of the Present Moment.

So if you touch with a soft awareness, fear will become softer. If you touch a sensation of unsafety softly, it will get softer. If you touch anger softly, it will melt and become aliveness, potentially even stillness.

As you touch the present moment with your awareness, with the quality, and the purity, the clarity of your attention, so you experienced that present moment, and it’s true of every aspect, everything that happens in the present moment. And of course, it presupposes that you’ve developed enough of an aware self, that you’re choosing a relationship in the moment that is new, with every feeling, every emotion, and with your thinking process itself.

So those two basic foundational premises, it’s only now how you touch this moment with the quality of your attention is how you experience this moment emotionally, at the level of sensation in your body and in every other way in terms of what kind of thoughts it generates or whether you move into stillness and spaciousness.

Who You Are

In that sense, the third premise, and it could have been in a different sequence, is that who you really are, who any of us really are, is beginning again, over and over in this moment, who we are, who you are, begins right now and is determined by how much awareness you have, and the quality with which you bring that awareness to the immediacy of your experience.

Let’s Begin

So, I suggest you sit comfortably or lie down. Close your eyes. If you’re lying down, you need to know that you’re a person who can stay awake through a guided meditation. In fact, from my point of view, even if you fall asleep, that may be exactly what you need, if you drift off into another space between waking and sleeping.

So the first thing is, the body is always in the now, even in the depth of sleep, your breathing, body’s functioning even though there’s no remembered consciousness, there’s just a kind of absence of any kind of experience that we would usually call conscious awareness.

So the body is always in the now and breathing. It’s like a sine wave. It’s like a wave from the first inhalation at birth to the final exhalation at death, the breathing never stops. It just changes according to the demand we place on ourselves for oxygen or emotional state, where our breathing can get very shallow and very fast.

There are many centering practices are about learning to slow your breathing down. Of course, if you’re going to slow your breathing down, you also have to have awareness of your breathing.

Breath Awareness

And in this meditation, we’re not going to control breathing in any way. All that you’re going to do is bring your conscious, witnessing self and bring it, enjoy it with your breathing.

The breathing’s been with you all your life, it’s accompanied you through anguish and joy, every moment of your life, you could think of it as a friend that’s never abandoned you and never will all your life.

And then you can think of your aware self, which is the liberating power of your consciousness. And I’m actually going to try to show you how it liberates in this meditation. That aware self now, just let it rest with your breathing, like a friendship who, timeless, wonderful friends are meeting.

So we now have what we can call breath awareness. Just feel that, feel that friendship, don’t manipulate yourself to feel something special. But I often say for me, it’s just like a soft smile, resting my aware self process with the breathing in my body.

Let’s begin to bring that breath awareness to a place where there is an obvious sensation. So, assuming that you’re breathing through your nose. Bring your breath awareness into your nose, into the last half-inch or centimeter or two of your nose, experience the sensation, not just a spectator looking at it but moving into the sensation with your breath awareness.

Now, just to create a contrast, let’s do the same thing. Bring your worst self resting with your breathing into what we mean when we use the word feet, into your feet. A baby doesn’t have feet as a place of sensation without a name, that’s why babies are so close to the depths of, what in some contexts could be called the kingdom of heaven, but by whatever name, the babies in an awakened state and doesn’t know it but right now and bring your aware breathing process into the sensation in your feet.

Now come back to your nose. They are going in. Notice how it feels cooler. The tide of the air coming out, it’s warmer.

Notice

Let’s begin to notice something. Because what I’m inviting you to do, which is the foundation of many starting points for meditation. But this activity of witnessing in your body with your breath, with your awareness and breath is no real interest to the ego-self unless he thinks he can do something with it, unless he turns it into a competition and things, I’ll be really good at this. I make myself good at this. Or, unless he judges it as nothing worthwhile and people just stop, they quit.

In fact, this is a really no interest to your ego and so the mind will wander, and rather than what is often said to you, just bring your mind back to the breathing.

First, just appreciate the genius of the ego, in itself preservation, it’s going to take you to something that interests it, like worrying about something, or planning something or revisiting some situation and thinking about how you could have done it differently, on and on. But that’s what’s really interesting to that part of you and all of our ego minds.

So when you see that, just appreciate that’s the genius of the ego-mind and then choose, come back to the breath awareness and your nose purposeless from the point of view “the ego”.

Now bring the awareness to your lower legs, from your knees to lower legs, your ankles, into your feet. Just bring that witnessing consciousness there.

Let’s begin to give some qualities to this witnessing consciousness and this is the essence of the practice of how you touch.

Just imagine, sense that as you breathe presencing with your breath awareness in your lower legs, you’re doing so with gentleness, breathing innocence of gentleness and curiosity.

What’s here?

So you start to feel sensation and feel molten swirling clouds tingling. It’s like colors with different tones or music with swirling sounds. It doesn’t mean anything to the ego so it will lose interest pretty quickly. But you’re building a muscle now, the most important one of all, which is the muscle of your aware self.

Let’s come back and bring the attention, this gentle, curious, witnessing, presencing back into your nose.

How precise can you notice the sensations without forcing, with gentleness, with curiosity?

And as if you’ve never done this before, as if it’s the first time ever. That’s like a thought experiment to bring gentle receptivity to the sensation and your nose, as if for the first time.

And of course, there’s a part of you that remembers doing this even a few minutes ago as I’ve been guiding you.

Remembering and Evaluation

In fact, all the time, there’s a part of us that’s remembering what was just a little before, long before, days, months, years before. And the ego can only make something have meaning by comparing it to something else. So a basic function of the ego-mind, of the little mind is to create a contrast of what the what is of the moment, actual sensation in your nose right now with something remembered. And as soon as there’s remembering this evaluation and that evaluation says this is good or this is not good, this is positive or not so positive. This is pleasing or not pleasing. This is satisfying, this is dissatisfied, that’s inherent in the minute there’s the past and comparison.

So now bring your breathing awareness to your hips and your bottom, and your upper legs. Curious, gentle, relaxing, comparing, relaxing, keeping this some sort of meaning to any kind of memory swifts as if for the first time.

All the way from your hips and bottom, your upper legs, your lower legs to your feet, breathing into that part of the body, Those words are representations of gentle, curious as if for the first time.

So we were in the basic level of mind, not only do we have to make meaning by some form of comparing, by remembering something from the past, which means that nothing is ever really new, or now. But there’s also a movement into the future. We want to do this well, for example, now, maybe want to not have to do it or not do it at all, want to get better at it.

But understand, there’s always a quality of anticipation of the future, wanting an outcome, wanting a result. So what is this experience now, breath awareness. Your bottom and lower legs already your feet if you released wanting.

But no one can do it. Because you’re not really meant to, you have to be able to see the wanting self which is always there and turning everything you do into concern with whether it will get you to where you want to go or whether it will take you a place you don’t want to go.

Choosing a space for your wanting self always leaning toward the future, off to one side, not the other side, as if for the first time, curious, gentle, wanting to be left to one side comparing off to the other side, in your big mind.

And your worse self just getting stronger, softer. Now you have the idea. Whatever we mean when we use the word body, means breath awareness is witnessing consciousness that’s resting with your breath.

Bring it into your whole body. Sensing in your whole body. Noticing where there is brighter colors or sharper sensations, duller colors, or no sensation with the music seems off, caustic or the music is soothing in different parts of the body, different, subtlety different sensations or obviously different sensations.

If there’s a pain, that’s a strong sensation. Bring this aware self breath awareness witnessing consciousness with curiosity and gentleness without wanting. Nobody heals because they want to heal and they have set an intention for healing. But healing comes as to deeper consciousness when all forms of comparing and all forms of wanting just gone away.

And suddenly there is a new, deeper connection to yourself and sometimes that brings a new frame for understanding. We call that forgiveness. What brings us sensation, unpleasant sensation, or an opening of a door into a new perspective that you couldn’t have asked for.

In your whole body just breathing, aware, presencing, and practicing sitting, wanting to one side, your big mind comparing to another place off to the side in your big mind.

Bringing to Closure

This is a wonderful starting point and I’m going to suggest we stop now. Take a really deep breath, full-body breath, stretch the belly in the lungs to full capacity and then let the air out much further out than you normally would.

Big sensation comes into the body and you open your eyes.

If I have a chance to journey with you again, the next step will be to start to visit in this way, sensations like fear, sensations like dissatisfaction and unsafety.

Because the whole work of love and learning to love is to learn to sit down in those dimensions, those places of fear and dissatisfaction and instead of believing what your mind tells you about them, get to know them in the immediacy of your worse self presencing and you’ll drop deeper and deeper gradually, slowly, freeing yourself of what the mind creates when there’s fear or pain or need.

By need, I mean mind-made needs, not the deeper need.

It’s been a pleasure to be with you. Thank you.

Closing

Candice Wu 27:40

And as you shift from this meditation that Richard has offered, feel free to tune into anything your body needs here as you transition, connect with what resonated for you, perhaps which you’d like to carry with you throughout the day.

And we’ll leave you with a little bit of music here today as you continue to shift.

Again, feel free to check out the podcast with Richard Moss is fantastic and just as good as the meditation or better. That’s at CandiceWu.com/richardmoss and also feel free to check out other podcasts, meditations and healing experience at CandiceWu.com/meditations as well as other podcasts at CandiceWu.com/podcast. See you next time on the Embody Podcast.

Candice Wu 0:00

Hi, this is Candice Wu on the Embody Podcast, and you are listening to the a{Live} now mini-series within the Embody Podcast.

Candice Wu 0:09

This mini-series is all about what’s alive now within me, as I found that what’s going on for me is often going on for my friends, my clients, people around me, people across the world, I find it fascinating.

Candice Wu 0:25

a{Live} now is also important to me, because I found that if I’m sharing what’s most alive within me, within my heart or soul, now, that it is bringing me to feel the most embodied, and the most in myself, and the most connected.

Candice Wu 0:43

So after I recorded the last podcast, which was the part two of the spiritual and existential crisis episode, I woke up feeling lots of fear, it was like a vague anxiety and fear, not too big, something I could ignore. But all the while I’m not one to ignore my feelings at this point in my life. And I’d rather learn more about myself and resolve that fear, or whatever it is, so that I can feel an organic at ease.

Candice Wu 1:16

And so I woke up feeling this fear. And all I knew was that it was as if I could see a whole forest to my right, and this forest had died. And all of these dead leaves and trees were old beliefs of mine. And these beliefs, I just needed to clear them out, clear the way. And so I was like swinging my right arm and moving this. And I just felt that this could move some of that fear.

Candice Wu 1:43

But I also wanted to know what it was, know what those fears were, because then if I spot those same dead roots, or this new sprout of a tree comes up, then I know what it is so that I don’t have to relive it.

Candice Wu 2:00

I’m not sure if what I experienced was a vulnerability hangover, per se, it was more that my perfectionist and inner critic came up. So we want to talk about perfectionism today.

Candice Wu 2:13

My partner, this morning, and I talked about it. And he said something like, “Perfectionism just doesn’t work for me.” Which is funny, because both of us fight perfectionism all the time. But what struck me about that statement was that perfectionism can be a choice. And I, of course, know this, it just was a really great reminder. And it’s, in fact, what I’ve been doing with myself, especially with the podcasts, especially with, sometimes with my writing, is that I know it’s not going to satisfy my inner perfectionism, my inner perfect part. But I will leave it as is.

Candice Wu 2:55

And as an artist too, there’s this saying that an artist work is never done. And it’s just a given that you are never complete with your artwork, you will always find something else to update or edit or change or redo, refine, and that can go on forever.

Candice Wu 3:16

Perfectionism as a choice, for me, means that I’m going to choose to not be perfect, I’m going to choose to be myself and let the more natural, imperfect, messier, raw, and unpolished parts of me have some breathing room. And I’m going to say things that are wrong, or that don’t really truly reflect who I fully am. Maybe they reflect parts of me or maybe tomorrow, I decide and realize that what I said yesterday isn’t going to be exactly what I’d say today.

Candice Wu 3:51

And I think that as humans, we need to give ourselves that leeway. We need to let ourselves feel that we can be confident in what we’re saying today, or at least assert something, and not feel that we have to make a statement for a lifetime.

Candice Wu 4:07

That what we say today, we can change tomorrow. And we can always repair something that we’ve done wrong, or that we’ve said incorrectly. Or, perhaps it just takes a little humility and humbleness to just say, “Yep, what I said yesterday wasn’t the right thing.” Or, “That’s not exactly what I see today. And I’d like to update what I said or revise it now.”

Candice Wu 4:32

But that gives us a space to be who we are today and be it fully and to feel alive in what we’re saying to assert ourselves in whatever way we feel is ourselves today. And I don’t necessarily mean to be impulsive, and just say whatever’s on your mind or do whatever is there, it is not that. It’s just that whatever it does feel right to you today, to feel that you can be totally behind yourself and say it or do it in a full way, where you allow yourself to accept that maybe it’s a mistake, or it’s something you’d want to do differently later. But that, this is what you are choosing now.

Candice Wu 5:13

I want to support and stand behind my more natural and authentic voice. Because it’s important, it’s important that I feel like myself, and that it’s organic. And I think that that’s a really good investment in myself that I’m letting this part of me have a chance to mess up and have a chance to find its way. And that later it will become a more refined aspect of myself over time that just feels natural.

Candice Wu 5:51

My inner perfectionist, my inner critic, I think you all know what I’m talking about. I want to offer this moment for you as a check in with your inner perfectionist or inner critic. For me, those two pair up. So when my inner perfectionist flares up and says, “You should have said this,” or “You should have done it like this.” And, “You should do it this way.” So that it’s completely perfect and seamless. And that you look perfect to the outside world.

Candice Wu 6:18

I know that my inner critic chimes in and starts to make me feel bad for not having done it that way. Or that I should have been better, or that I’m not good enough. And so, when my perfectionist comes up, I also keep an eye out for my inner critic.

Candice Wu 6:36

The most important part of the inner perfectionist and inner critic, for me, is that there’s a lurking fear behind what they’re saying, that causes them to want to say it and to protect me in that way. Their purpose is to protect me and to make sure that I have my highest potential out there in the forefront.

Candice Wu 7:01

But my inner perfectionist can get a little out of hand because it learned very early on, that if I wasn’t perfect in my speech, if I wasn’t saying the exact right thing, that later I might be called out on it. And even it could be held against me, then my inner critic chimes in and says you’re not good enough, you really have to be that perfect, you really have to be impeccable.

Candice Wu 7:28

At a very young age, I knew this. And what I always need to do with my inner perfectionist and critic is send a lot of love, a lot of assurance that the past is now gone. And that way of being that it learned early on, is not the way things are anymore.

Candice Wu 7:48

I don’t have a parental figure that is speeding me with that sort of information and harshness and criticism that I once have experienced before. And so it’s not that way anymore. And it’s safe to be imperfect, it’s safe to be human. It’s safe to say things and redeem yourself later if it was the wrong thing. It’s safe to say something and it doesn’t even make sense and you get to explore it. And it’s safe to feel enough.

Candice Wu 8:27

So if you resonate with me at all about your inner perfectionist or inner critic, do a little check in with yourself with these parts of you and just see how they’re doing. See if they need any support, love, assurance, or even a memo that times are different now. And that it’s safe to feel that they’ve got some breathing room to be themselves without having to be this signed up version that nobody is.

Candice Wu 8:58

You can check in with how young or old these parts of you appear to you how young or old they seem. And this is all an exploration. It’s not like you have to pinpoint it. But you can see if this part of you is younger. And if they are, then, they certainly may need a little extra love and gentleness and speaking from the heart, not from your logic.

Candice Wu 9:21

If you’d like to give these parts of you some extra love, see what kind of love these parts of you would want. Do they need you to hold their hand? Would they like you to play with them? Or, just give them assuring words that you love them, it’s safe to be themselves. And it’s safe to feel any emotions around being perfect, having to be perfect, or the amount of years you’ve been suffering in this way, at least if you’re anything like me.

Candice Wu 9:53

I check in regularly with my inner perfectionist and inner critic, especially when I feel fears about something that I have stepped into, or some fears that I have broken through to take a step farther. If something I’ve accomplished is something that my community, my tribe, or my family has not seen as possible or even in their periphery, I can usually count on the next day or even later, after I’ve done it that I have this sort of tidal wave of fear come back at me. It’s like the backlash of what I’ve broken through, the limits that I had broken through, the boundary that was there. If I had broken through it, then a wave of that emotion, that fear that was there and its place holding this boundary in place, has to be felt through.

Candice Wu 10:52

So if you’re into exploring that for you, be gentle and curious with yourself so that you can really give the love to yourself that these parts of you have needed.

Candice Wu 11:02

I want to share one more thing before I go today. And it’s that this morning, I heard from Gary Vaynerchuk one of his videos, how Madonna had reinvented herself 14 times. And that it’s healthy to reinvent yourself all the time.

Candice Wu 11:19

And it’s something I’ve been thinking about as the feelings and symptoms of what I’ve been calling the spiritual flu or sometimes spiritual crisis, an existential crisis, have moved through me.

Candice Wu 11:33

I have experienced more expansiveness in me, freedom, spaciousness, a sense of really being in my body, and grounded, comfortable with myself. And interestingly, drawing upon past parts of myself that have been sitting there latent or waiting for me to just bring them back into the fold.

Candice Wu 11:59

And I think that in this time and age, that bringing all of ourselves is so important, all the things that we’ve learned in the past, if we embrace them, and bring them forward with us, we are going to be well equipped for whatever it is that we desire, or what we want to come our way, and what we encounter.

Candice Wu 12:21

And, so I see myself bringing back the artist in me, I just created a little artwork on this app on my iPad, that lets me collage and look like I’m water coloring, and painting and drawing. And I didn’t even think that was possible for me to enjoy it. Because I’m so interested in taking real materials, like paint and lace and pictures and collaging them and touching these materials. But this app was so fun. And it just brought me joy to move the paint around, even though I was on my iPad and not real.

Candice Wu 12:59

The good thing is I don’t really have to wash my hands or wash paint brushes. But, I am bringing this artist part of me back in. And it’s something that I’ve wanted to do, it brings me a feeling of joy and inner beauty shining outwards. And so I think of all of you out there that are having multiple gifts in their lives, multiple aspects of themselves that they’ve shifted through, moved out of, and I call upon you to not reject the past parts of you for something different as you move forward. But to embrace and bring all those parts of you into the circle of who you are, as you walk in your life.

Candice Wu 13:47

This also means you don’t necessarily have to pick one thing to do in your life. You don’t have to be just an accountant or just a writer. Not that it’s not okay. But if you are someone who has many passions, and don’t want to lock yourself into one thing, you don’t have to feel that way. You can bring in many parts of you to whatever it is you do in your life.

Candice Wu 14:14

And, as I’ve allowed that leeway in myself, it’s given me the gusto and the confidence and strength to speak more personally in these podcasts and in my writing, and even sometimes with my clients, if it seems like it would support them.

Candice Wu 14:33

So I want to thank you for listening today to what’s a{Live} now. And just send you on your way with lots of love to your inner perfectionist and inner critic, and to all the parts of you that may be lit up by this conversation.

Candice Wu 14:50

And I encourage you to explore those parts of you if that interested you at all.

Candice Wu 14:56

I want to just mention that the way of speaking with the many parts of you, there are so many modalities that teach that. And the method that I use is, I’m really fluid with it, but it’s called Voice Dialogue. And I use it along with Family Constellations, so that we’re working with the different parts of you in an embodied way, that each part of you actually has a whole feeling sense and way of moving in the body and emotion set.

Candice Wu 15:26

There are other modalities like Internal Family Systems and other types of soul and spiritual work that do this work too. Also working with Parts work.

Candice Wu 15:37

So, I wanted to mention that in case you would like further exploration and you can feel free to reach out to me or any practitioner that works with those aspects, for that deeper work.

Candice Wu 15:50

As always, I’m open, welcoming, and grateful for your feedback, your thoughts, your questions, so feel free to email me. You can contact me through my website at CandiceWu.com and you can join the community of Embodied Healing tips, my newsletter, guided meditations, and information about workshops and retreats through the Embody Community. And you can find that at CandiceWu.com/embody.

Candice Wu 16:21

And I’ll leave you today with the question of what’s alive for you now? Thank you so much for listening and I will see you next time on the Embody Podcast.