Mynda Mansfield – All Roads Lead to Now

 Read more from Mynda here.

Can you look back at your life’s path and trace the pattern of events that occurred to bring you to the present moment? Can you reflect and see, retrospectively, that regardless of whether things happened according to pre-planned intention or whether they were seemingly random, they all led you to the here and now.

And how do you like the here and now? Do you wish it were different? Well even where you are in your life right now is transitory and you never know what will happen next!

Things are never what they seem to be. For everything that happens, however profound or mundane, there is a greater reason. Dealing with disappointment when things don’t work out the way we wanted them is a reminder that we do not yet see the whole picture; we do not yet know how the cosmic threads of wisdom conspire to create exactly the circumstances that we need right now. Whether the situation brings peace and plenty or challenge and change, the strands that weave the fabric of the mantel that we now wear are specific.

I find myself at so many crossroads and I find myself wishing that they would come one at a time. But this feels a bit like Five Crossroads! Sometimes I feel as though I am simply going round and round the roundabout, because I cannot decide where to exit – and I recognise that the indecision is based in fear. So I deal with that and I head off along one of the five exits, find that the road does not lead to where I thought it would and that I have lost my way and the map! Sometimes I am tempted to stop the car and park myself, and it, under the tree in the little garden in the centre of the roundabout, amongst the pansies and marigolds, and wait, like Buddha, for enlightenment. But I reckon someone would come along book me for loitering!

So, having taken time to reflect, and knowing that I do not yet see the bigger picture, I make a decision. I will go this way. And almost dreamlike, I observe how things unfold and bring the people and events that create the next step. And it is always just the next step. Now and now and now.

Sometimes the insecurity of uncertainty clouds the vision and sends me plummeting into yet another ‘dark night of the soul’. And it is at these times that I say to myself, just as Moses said to his people, “Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord.”  And in that stillness I remember that as I endured the dark times of the past, I have never, not once, not ever, been forsaken.