There is no guarantee that next year will be better than this year.
Yikes!
I know it’s unpleasant to hear, but it is true. Our world is going through a mighty shake up–you could say a transformation–and likely it’s just getting started.
When so much change happens that we are powerless to control, we can spiral into feelings of helplessness, even depression. Systems that we have long leaned on to support our well-being are cracking and crumbling. We are bombarded with manipulative, fearful messaging. There is pervasive desperation and suffering. It’s a lot to process and make sense of, and many people mentally and emotionally collapse under the burden.
The Gift and Power of Choice
What I relish about the path of spiritual growth is that I am learning just how much power I really do have to affect my inner experience. And that my inner experience really is everything .
I have been tremendously fortunate to have been born in the family, body, and circumstances that I have. Not everyone by far is so fortunate. Life has dealt me, by any standard, a fair and generous hand. I do not take this for granted, and sit in gratitude each day for all that has been gifted to me.
However, I also realize that circumstances dictate our inner experience in varying degrees, and that we have influence over what that degree is. This is what transformation as a process does–it takes us inward to examine the choices that we are making consciously and unconsciously around patterns of thought and routine behavior so that we elucidate what is giving rise to our experience each day. The questions for 2022 may be: What will my choices be? What is the inner experience I am deeply desiring to have?
Attuning to Essence
Each of us has been gifted a magnificent mind, one capable of learning, imagining, creating, and so much more. Yet I see how easily my choices are influenced, even polluted, by messages which seek to teach me that my external world–the world of form–is so very, very important to my sense of value and worth. How I look, what I wear, where I live, what I eat, what I drive, how much I earn, what I’ve accomplished…oh how it matters. So when that value system is threatened it can seem like the end of the value of my existence.
It’s not the end though, is it? It’s the end of the world of form. Beyond that world there is a world of ‘essence,’ the immutable truth of everyone and everything. Who I AM, the essence of me, is a beautiful, immutable truth. Who you ARE, is a beautiful, immutable truth. So is the essence of each person and of nature.
If we would like to guarantee that next year is better than this year, it is vital that we learn to shift our gaze from the world of form and all its risings and fallings, its rights and wrongs, its good and bad, its winning and losing, and spend much more time attuned to the essence of life. It is you, and it’s in you. Light beyond measure, whole and complete as it is.
Fall in love with essence.
Fall in love with seeking essence.
Fall in love with the life force that flows through you and everyone else.
Fall in love with the essence of each person you meet…and notice how your life changes when you do.
All things, events and circumstances will take on a new appearance. You will literally perceive the world differently. There will be a splendid shimmering in your vision field as you look upon all things and see not only form, but essence.
Create Your Own Experience
The world needs more people, leaders and visionaries who can transcend the dramas of our time, and the pull of egoic thought and behavior. How do we do that if we are caught up in it all, believing the world of form is what ultimately matters, our minds churning with fear against its demise or with anger against those who perpetuate it?
Please understand, being free from it doesn’t mean “bad” things won’t happen to you, or that the rug won’t be pulled out from under your feet. It means your mind is free to create your own experience, the inner experience you desire to have in each moment.
You are not at the whim of life, you are life, creating each day as you wish it to be experienced. But you do have to work at it and commit to it, because the pull of current patterns and paradigms is strong.
What is the experience that you wish to have each day, regardless of what the world is up to? And what, within you, is a barrier to the sustaining of that experience?
Ask yourself these questions each day, for a year. They will lead you on a profound inner journey of awakening that will have you explore the edges of your existence, where new fields of possibility lie. It’s never too late to begin, and your soul will flourish for it.
Love and light to you!