Yesterday I wrote a blog posting about sadness I was feeling about a particular event in my life – and the need to honour those feelings. At the time I was in that experience and didn’t realize what today was – the 10th anniversary of 9/11. I realize that message is especially relevant for something of the magnitude of 9/11.
It’’s important to honour those feelings of shock, anger, sadness – not wallow in them, but honour them – and also what comes from those feelings.
I remember 10 years ago, after 9/11, I and so many others pulled closer to family, to friends. That closeness, those bonds became so much more important than the busyness we creating in the 80s and 90s.
And those are some of the feelings we also need to remember – and cherish.
I’m coming to the end of my term as president of a professional assocation. I’ve really enjoyed my term – and I’m also looking forward to being past president (it’s been a full year). Tonight, though, for the first time, I’m feeling great sadness at the relationships and connections with people that I will no longer have – and I’m grateful for feeling this way.
This weekend is a leadership summit that brings together my national board with the presidents and president-elects from all the chapters across the country. It’s the final major event before I step down.
Up until now, I’ve both fully enjoyed the experience and honour of this role, and lately have been looking forward to stepping down because of the intensity of this role. Tonight, for the first time, I feel melancholy because I realize that I have only a little over a year before I won’t be at these events and interacting with these amazing people any more.
While I look forward to the time that will give back to my life, I realize I’m now starting to grieve the loss of these wonderful relationships and the great work we do together. And I remember again that all change, including positive change, is a loss experience as well as gaining something.
Even as this is happening, on a different, meta, level, I realize how important it is to feel these emotions and fully be with them and allow them to run their course (not to wallow in them). Too often when we transition, we don’t allow ourselves to feel sad or hurt or angry. We busy ourselves or distract ourselves or tell ourselves we shouldn’t feel that way, when it’s how we feel. And we need to honour that. It’s part of the journey.
It’s what lets us heal and move on, and if we don’t honour those feelings, we never really move on, whatever the change.
Before you can set your goals and focus for the new year you have to reflect on the past year and all you’ve learned an accomplished (part 1 of this series), and let go of the ’stuff’ that no longer serves you (part 2 of this series). Now you’re ready to invest the time you need to focus on your vision for the new year for each part of your life.
To do this, you can follow a series of steps I laid out, starting with this article. These steps are:
Identifying what you want in all aspects of your life
Prioritizing these wants in balance, in all aspects of your life
In the last post I spoke of the first step in creating focus for the new year – appreciating all that came from this year and reflecting on it first. Now, not everything in the year was neccessarily positive – there are times of ka-ka that test us and allow us to grow. We have to be able to let those go once they’re done, and that’s what this is about.
There’s a very simple, very powerful Native American ceremony called the Burning Bowl that is ideal for letting go of all that ’stuff’. I detailed how to use it in an earlier post here.
Once you’ve invested the time to reflect on and appreciate this year, and have let go of the ’stuff’ that you need to let go of, then you can set your goals and vision for the new year. That’s what the final post of this series will show you.
You have 11 days until the new year. Have you shaped your focus for the new year? Have you invested the time to reflect on all that you have accomplished this past year? If not, you may have just enough time to do all of that, and my next 3 posts will help you do just that.
Before creating a vision or BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) for the new year, it’s important to invest time to reflect on all that you’ve gained and accomplished over the past year. With all the hubbub of the holiday season, can you invest some time for yourself where you can do this? This is time where you reflect on things such as:
What you’ve accomplished
What you’re most grateful for, both now and throughout the year
How you’ve grown
What you’ve gained
Those moments that really touched you
What you’ve learned (about yourself, about life, about…)
What is emerging from all of this to express in the new year and beyond
If you journal, that’s a great way to reflect on this. If not, a walk in nature or a solitary latte at your favourite cafe are a couple of the other alternatives. Some people need someone to bounce this off, and sharing this conversation with a friend can help.
Whatever your approach, why not invest a little into yourself to appreciate yourself and the year before you get caught in the busyness of the new year.
Now I know that everything in the year isn’t necessarily positive. In the next post I’ll give you a simple way of letting go of the ka-ka in your life from the past year, and beyond. For now, make time to appreciate before the old year is chased away.
Yesterday I wrote about how the reaction of fans to the TV show Lost shows the choice we make in living life. The fans’ reaction to the storylines also shows why it’s hard for people to grasp how both the new science and the new spirituality say we create our reality.
While Lost’s plot line over its six years is one of the most complicated I’ve seen (if not the most complicated), I want to focus on one aspect. Supposedly an ‘incident’ took place 30 years before the plane crashed in the pilot episode of the show, and the fallout from that incident led to the plan crash that was the start of this series. At one point, some of the characters in the show travel back in time 30 years and do something to change that incident. Their hope is that they will prevent the plane from crashing and so prevent the suffering all the survivors went through in subsequent years.
The thing is, when they do this, they don’t ‘reset’ the timeline. They create a second, alternate timeline. The first timeline with the plane crash continues on with these characters, and there is now also another alternate timeline where the plane doesn’t crash and the same people go on with their lives in the ‘real’ world.
This has caused great consternation and debate among fans as to which is the ‘real’ timeline. There’s huge debate over this on the internet.
In truth, there is no ‘real’ timeline. Both are equally real, and this is what the fans have difficulty understanding – and the difficulty most people have with our everyday reality.
The fact is, in a quantum world, every time we make a decision, there is another quantum reality that is created where we made a different decision. There are an infinite number of alternate quantum realities in existence, all in parallel, where different choices have been made, one after another. No choice is right or wrong. No choice is better or worse. They are just different.
And the truth in the above paragraph is incredibly tough for most people to grasp. Truth to tell, it makes my head hurt trying to grasp the infinite number of realities that have come into existence over time. And yet, this is what the latest science is showing us. It’s not just when big things are done like in Lost to change the ‘incident’. It’s everyday choices that manifest new alternate realities every day.
The reason people have difficulty getting this is that we are in a transition from classical, Newtonian-type thinking to quantum-mechanical thinking, and also from moralistic ‘right-wrong’ thinking to seeing each choice as just a choice, not right or wrong.
Hollywood has also trained us to think there is only ‘one’ reality with movies like Back to the Future and innumerable episodes/movies of Star Trek and much more. In Back to the Future 2, Biff (the ‘bad guy’) went back in time and gave his younger self information that let him change the world. Marty (the ‘good guy’) had to go back, straighten out what Biff did, and make things right, as if there was only one timeline.
The reality is, the first two movies of this trilogy would have created at least 4 timelines. There was the original timeline before anyone time traveled. Then there was the one after the first movie, where Marty made some changes. Then there was the one where Biff corrupted the ‘present’. And finally, the one where Marty ‘corrected’ the present. All 4 of these timelines would continue in parallel, and all are equally ‘real’. You can’t go back and ‘reset’ the past. You can only create a new reality.
So what does this mean for day-to-day life? Well, we often struggle with choices – what’s the ‘right’ choice in a situation? We can think and anal-yze until the cows come home and still be troubled for years afterwards, if not our whole lives.
To me, this says that, once I make a choice, live it fully. There’s another reality where I made another choice, and that experience will happen there. Here, I have to commit to the choice I make, and double-guessing doesn’t do any good. It also is another aspect of how we create and manifest our reality every day in every choice we make. We literally do create a new reality based on how we act and how we think every single day. What reality do I most want to live? What feels most right for me? I’m not living some other reality. I’m living the one I create each and every day. How can I live that to the fullest? That’s my choice. What’s yours?
After six years, the television show, Lost is coming to an end. It is an amazingly complicated show, with a devout fan base, and the reactions of that fan base, especially as it comes to an end, show us the two choices we have to living life.
Those who haven’t watched Lost for six years generally just shake their heads and are totally, well, lost. It started as a plane crash on a deserted island. Then it incorporated flashbacks into the lives of the passengers before the crash, then flash-forwards into their lives after some of them escaped the island, time travel, flash-sideways into an alternate timeline and a deep pseudo-science/mythology that’s slowly being revealed after many mysteries and hints over six years. If you haven’t followed it for most of its run, it’s a tough show to get into. Kind of like life (although we only time travel in one direction).
At the same time, Lost is a powerful character story, delving into the lives and personalities of the core characters who you really come to care for and about. It’s amazingly well-written.
Over the six years, the show has created mystery after mystery, and much of the fan base is looking for answers as the show ends. AndI think that’s totally the wrong way to look at this show, as it is the wrong way to look at life. The show is not about the answers to all the mysteries – it’s about the journey. How did you feel over the six years of the show? Did you get excited? Did you get angry? Were you sad? Lost has created some incredible hours of drama (many of them in this last season – episode after episode blew fans away). That’s the value of this journey – not the answers to all the riddles, but rather the ride itself.
Just like life – it’s not the goal that matters. We never will end life with all the answers. It’s how we lived each moment. Did we live each moment sucking it to the marrow for everything it gave us, or were we focused on some undefined future that we may or may not achieve – and if we do achieve it, that passes in moments?
The value of Lost is in the amazing journey it afforded us, and kudos to Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof (known to Lost fandom as ‘Darlton’) for creating such a landmark series that has already left television changed for all time. I’ve enjoyed the journey and am delighted to live these final few hours out for all they offer. Hats off to you, gentlemen!
Yesterday I wrote a blog post about how scarcity is all around us – our choice is to allow it in or not. Some people, I realized aren’t clear what I mean by scarcity, so I thought I should define it here.
Scarcity thinking is fear-based and assumes there isn’t enough for everyone. For me to win, you have to lose. Abundance thinking, in contrast, assumes there is more than enough for everyone – we can all win – and allows you to find win-win-win solutions for all.
In yesterday’s post, I spoke of how our house sold in a day. Scarcity thinking says we under-priced it and lost money. Abundance thinking says we put a fair price on our house, we got what we wanted and the buyer got what he wanted, all due to clarity of intention.
It’s strange that another example of scarcity just popped into my e-mail box – a letter from the community association for the community we’re leaving. The kids from this community will be going to a new school in September. In this letter, someone from the association suggested that the residents boycott the (old) school’s Spring Fair, and its requests for donations since the kids will be going to a different school this year. “Why should we help a school we won’t be benefiting from?” is this person’s argument.
This, to me, is such blatant scarcity thinking. Why help this school when we won’t get any further benefit from it? There’s not enough to help this one now and the other school next year.
What about all the years kids from our community have been going to the (old) school and getting benefit from it? My son and my two stepsons went to this school and it’s been wonderful for them. Why would I want to take away from that school when it has given such wonderful gifts to our kids?
And what are we talking about? A few items? A few dollars? Do we really have that little that a few dollars will hurt us?
A boycott of a Spring Fair. I just shake my head at this type of thinking. Is this what we really want to teach our kids?
Two weeks ago we put our house up for sale and it sold the next day for just shy of our asking price. Several people I mentioned this to said we priced it too low (which, given the market, we didn’t). This reaction shows fear-based scarcity thinking – suggesting that we lost money – rather than understanding flow.
In our marketplace, there were several houses in our price range that had been on the market for several months. We were actually advised by our realtor that our price might be too high, so we weren’t priced too low.
One way of looking at the quick sale is that we could have earned more for the house. That’s not my way.
The way I see it is that there was strong and clear intention for the house to sell for this amount, and that attracted the right buyer who valued what we had to offer and was willing to pay that amount. I give full credit for that intention to my ex. I honestly didn’t expect it to sell. Iwasn’t putting any energy into it ‘not selling’ – just not putting any energy into it at all. I was focused on my new home. However, she had a clear and strong intention, and that’s all it took.
Once that happened, the flow continued. Within a week I had closed on my house which I obtained at a great price and which has most of what I had envisioned. It just flowed.
Could we have charged more? Maybe. I think we charged the right price to get fair value for what we wanted. And I paid within $1000 of what I was willing to pay for my house. It’s all about clear intention.
Just as there are gravitational and electromagnetic fields permeating the universe, so to there is an information field, called the Akashic Field, that we can tap into, and that we can influence. Stepping into a deep state of presence allows us to not only access information from that field more clearly – it also allows us to influence it deeply. These are the doorways that open from living more authentically in our lives.
Evidence is growing in fields from quantum physics to cosmology to the social sciences about a vast informational field that fills the universe, a field that has been called the Akashic Field. Just a few of the many observations of the Akashic Field that are being recorded include:
The Global Consciousness Project at Princeton has 38 Random Number Generators (called ‘eggs’) around the world. On September 11, 2001, just before the first jet crashed into the WTCC, the data from these eggs became non-random and stayed that way for 2 days
Incidences where large numbers of people are gathered to pray for peace show a significant reduction in the crime rate in those cities for some days following the gathering
Double-blind studies clearly show that prayer has a measurable impact on health, even when the person being prayed for didn’t know that (s)he was being prayed for, and even when the person doing the praying didn’t personally know the person for whom they were praying
Scientific experiments with the same apparatus, and participants selected randomly from the same pool produce different results based on the beliefs of the experimenter
Simply put, this Akashic Field connects all of us, and as quantum mechanical and cosmological evidence of this field shows, distance is not an issue. This information is transmitted instantaneously, even across the universe.
What we are discovering is that stepping into deeper states of presence allows you to attune more deeply to the information available in this Akashic Field. What’s more, stepping into deeper states of Presence impacts not only people around you, but potentially people all over the world.
Something else that is being discovered is that one plus one equals far more than two. If two or more people enter a certain state or entrench in a certain belief, their influence is far greater than the sum of the two. The studies on praying for peace also showed that you don’t need everyone to focus on a given intention. There were only a limited number of people in each case, and yet the impact was felt across the whole city. Only a small critical mass is required to influence the broader world.
This is the philosophy behind Presence Hour, on May 8, 2010. The intent is to have a number of people in each time zone simultaneously stepping into deeper states of presence, amplifying the impact of each individual who participates through the Akashic Field. What we are hoping for is to have a ‘wave’ of deepening presence sweeping around the globe, impacting the broader consciousness.
Won’t you join us at 2pm (your local time), to engage in your practice of deepening presence? What it is – nature, yoga, walking, meditation, running or whatever you choose – doesn’t matter. What does matter is investing that hour for yourself and the world to step into deeper presence with the world. Go to www.PresenceHour.com for more information – and please pass the word on.
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