1/1/11
Happy New Year! Here in Golden Bay at the top of the South Island of New Zealand, we watched the fireworks go off, heard the crowds on the beach cheering and marveled at this human capacity for hopefulness and celebration. A new year, a new start, a time of new beginnings; maybe now we can turn our lives around and make it all work the way we’d really like it?
Even in the darkest of times the human spirit glows with hopefulness and optimism, a desire to live life to the fullest and be all we can be. I love this about us as a species. Yet there’s a big gap between this hope and desire and what we actually create. Have you noticed this? You set out with an intention to be peaceful and loving and before you know it you’re growling at your partner or your kid. Or you start out feeling grateful and abundant then a bill drops into the mailbox and you fall into fear and worry. How do we close this gap between what we want and intend and what we actually do and create?
We can pull together to create extraordinary things when we put our minds to it. We see this particularly when a community is faced with disaster. Right now, the people of Christchurch here in the South Island are rebuilding their lives and city after three months of earthquakes, and I’m sure the people in Queensland, Pakistan, Haiti, the Gulf of Mexico, and every other place that has been stricken with disaster, will be finding ways to move forward with their lives. I watched a documentary a while ago about the city of Coventry in England, near where I was born. In World War 2, Coventry was completely razed to the ground one night when hundreds of megatons of bombs were dropped from the air until there was nothing left but rubble. They called it “the blitz”. The next morning the dazed survivors surfaced from their underground shelters and wandered like lost souls amongst the debris. Their whole world and any meaning had been destroyed. Yet, within days those people had started to work together to help each other and to rebuild their city. The courage and tenacity of the human spirit in the face of adversity is truly amazing. But do we have to wait for tragedy to strike to mobilize our best efforts?
Now it’s 2011, and amidst all the chaos and confusion of natural and cultural global change, we have another chance to begin again. We can choose to use our brilliant human minds, our compassionate human hearts, our strong creative wills. We can choose to heal what has been wounded, to forgive what cannot be mended and manifest into physical form what previously did not exist. We can literally make something out of nothing. Potentially, we are nothing short of fabulous magicians.
The key to unlocking our full human creative potential is to live a conscious life. Will you join me in this inquiry of how we can live more consciously and make a difference?
I’ve heard people saying recently, “There’s something I want to contribute but I don’t know what it is.” Or “I really want to make a difference but I don’t know how.”
Now, more than ever, the best way any of us can contribute is to live a conscious life. Hope is not enough, nor are good resolutions. What makes a difference is a day by day, moment to moment choice to live consciously. What do I mean by that? I mean knowing what is most important to us, what we value, and then bringing our thoughts, words and behavior in line with those values, at all times.
Easily said but not so easily done, right? Changing old patterns, letting go of the old, living more spaciously, and creating the new, is a process which takes time and commitment. And it’s very helpful to have the support of others who are on a similar path.
My own calling, over the years and even more so now, is to create spaces where we can come together to have this inquiry and support each other to live more consciously. To explore and discover and process together can be very empowering . These circles are like watering-holes for the soul, where you can step into a different sense of time, remember, be renewed, reset your compass and then take off in the breeze of the brilliant human spirit across the ocean of your life.
Will you join me, and together we can make that difference?
Go here to discover some options: http://magnificentbeing.net/events/events-3/
Rose Diamond, A Whole New World
Website: www.awholenewworld.net
The artwork is a detail from “A Whole New World” by Mary Ryan www.chrysalisfarmstudiogallery.com
Each one of us makes a difference and together we can do what seems impossible.