The Seven Pillars of Essential Relationship

At the heart of Richard Moss’ work is that emotional and spiritual maturity is always an expression of the depth of our embrace of ourselves, other people, and the ineffable mystery that is called God or the transcendental Source. These three are indivisible; at whichever one we start, we eventually must address the other two.

For example, if we dive into ourselves in genuine pursuit of self-realization, we cannot grasp who we really are without, at some point, encountering the irreducible mystery at the ground of conscious experience. Then we will also meet and have to challenge all the dogmatic beliefs that we hold about God or Source that block us from true self-knowledge. Equally true is that to know oneself is also to be capable of deep connection with another. We discover that the distance we may feel from any other person is actually the distance we are living, in that moment, from ourselves. To mature spiritually we will have to meet and overcome the obstacles within us to empathy and compassion for others. Finally, if our nature is more contemplative, we find that the effort to know God is always a mirror of how we honor ourselves and others. Ultimately, there is only one Consciousness, and we realize it and mature ourselves in it through these three facets.

The great opportunity and ultimately the real legacy of our lives is the degree to which we have realized this essential relationship in our hearts and fully lived into all the joy and suffering that is a human life. To develop this capacity for a truly original life, the work rests on seven pillars, or foundational elements. Each of these seven elements is itself a profound path, and in truth, none can be followed deeply without crossing over into others. They are: