Jean-Claude Gerard Koven – Shooting Dead Horses

Rancho Mirage, California

rsfc-07/03/07-perfect-koven

A perfect moment
Commentary: Shooting Dead Horses

Every perfect moment is an expression of love. They used to happen rarely until I
discovered how to break through my own fears.
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Every once in a while, the universe blesses us with perfect moments. Looking back, I find
many of them scattered through my lifetime. One that has stayed with me over the years
happened when I was a young man navigating the hormonal rapids that course through a
seventeen-year-old body. While walking down a side street in New York City, I came
upon a magnificent looking woman who was waiting for her car in front of a parking
garage. Our eyes met, and she gave me a beatific smile that still radiates through me
nearly a half century later. I never stopped or turned; no part of me sought any
continuation of our singular connection. It was complete, and I was forever transformed
by it.

There have been many perfect moments since then, some shared with other humans,
others involving animals, soulful art or music, an exquisite event in nature, or the solitude
of meditation. Every single one was a gift. The lords of karma (or whoever else is in
charge of such things) hit the pause button and time stops dead in its tracks. We are
ecstatically lost in the infinite instant. The best way to say it in words is perhaps: “I
suddenly found myself utterly in love.”

So what makes a moment perfect?

Yesterday I was a speaker at the Body, Mind, Spirit Expo in Santa Monica, California.
As always in my presentations, I was exploring the nature of the Oneness, likening it to a
cosmic hologram fed and informed by every point of consciousness spread across the
universe. I like to bring my audience to a place of perceiving that each of us is a point
through which the Oneness experiences itself. Every thought, word, and deed flows into
the collective heart mind of All That Is.

During my talk, the following allegory suddenly popped into my mind as an example:
There is only one apple left on the planet. You are selected as the one to eat it on behalf
of the entire creation, aware that everything you taste, feel, think, and experience in the
process will be forever recorded in the holographic matrix of creation. Imagine how
present and mindful you would be, how you would savor every morsel, knowing this
experience could never again be repeated.

What if we lived every single moment of our lives in that state of reverence? What if we
could hold this thought at the forefront of our minds as we go about the mundane and
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exalted tasks of daily life?

I had apparently stumbled across a perspective that the universe wanted me to understand
more completely – for as we all know, saying the words and living the experience are
very different matters. As I was walking to my car to begin the three-hour journey home,
I received a call from a dear friend, asking me to come to her store to meet an
extraordinary young lady. I immediately agreed for a host of irrelevant reasons: the store
was in the general direction of my drive home; I was hungry and lunch sounded like a
good idea – especially since one of my favorite restaurants in West Hollywood is less
than two blocks from the store; I was intrigued by the impeccable timing of the call and
had long ago decided to say yes to whatever the universe offered me.

It turned out to be one of the more fruitful decisions of my life. The young lady and I
ended up eating alone, as my friend’s shop suddenly became busy and she couldn’t tear
herself away. From the moment we met, it seemed we had already known each other for
several lifetimes. There was none of the polite spiral conversation demanded by social
protocol – star signs, favorite music, or what we thought about global warming. We dove
into each other’s heart within the first five minutes. In fact, words just seemed to get in
the way.

I sat across the table from her and found myself transported as if I were once again back
on a New York City street, bathed by the warmth of that magnificent smile. I looked into
her soul and knew that I was in the presence of a goddess and that however much I might
protest or deny it, I had fallen utterly in love. It was another perfect moment.

I believe there is an instant in every meeting when this opportunity for divine connection
happens, but for it to persist beyond its customary nanosecond, both parties need to be
willing to risk total exposure to the radiance of pure, unconditional love. I looked into her
young eyes and voiced the question my heart was asking: “How many times a day do you
find yourself in love?”

“Every moment,” she answered.

I have met the one who loves countless times before, as she (an aspect of our divine
feminine) exists in every single one of us. But in most of us she lies buried under multiple
layers of protection, deposited even before birth to shield us from the slings and arrows of
a largely unconscious world. How can we dare love with reckless abandon when our
minds too quickly recall the painful consequences of allowing ourselves to become swept
up in the moment?

The young woman I had lunch with, like the New York woman with the haunting smile,
unreservedly allow themselves to emerge fully into the moment. Such expressions of love
without condition or agenda are invitations to emerge from the privacy of our imagined
fears and share the ecstasy of the apple. We are suddenly in the presence of Eve inviting
us to reenter the Garden we so foolishly abandoned long, long ago. If we follow her, we
step into a divinely perfect moment.
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Given the choice between love and fear, why do we reject love almost every time? I
suspect it is our egos deciding for us. The lower realms of our nature thrive on drama and
pain. Our ego shuns the light like a psychic vampire retreating from the rising sun. But
when we learn to love unconditionally in every moment of our lives, our egos no longer
have a stage upon which to perform their mischief. I, for one, would love to live in such a
world, one which knows only perfect moments. Perhaps we could share it together.

{emdash} {emdash} {emdash}

{italic}{bold}Jean-Claude Gerard Koven{/bold} is a writer and speaker based in Rancho

Mirage, CA. He is a featured weekly columnist for UPI’s (United Press International)
ReligionAndSpirituality.com and the author of “Going Deeper: How to Make Sense of
Your Life When Your Life Makes No Sense,” recipient of both the Allbooks Reviews
editor’s choice award and the USABookNews.com award for the best metaphysical book
of the year. For more information, please visit: {url
http://www.goingdeeper.org}www.goingdeeper.org{/url}. © copyright 2007 Jean-Claude
Gerard Koven{/italic}

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