The New Year of Ruthless Love
We have just exited a year in which desperation and fear may have reached their zenith. It's over, now time for further awakening.
Until recently, I was of the mind, the mind that told me that there must be a violent cleansing, a catastophic wake-up because we have been so asleep, so stubbornly asleep. Now I think that it serves us better to believe that we can save ourselves from an apocolyptic cleansing. And we can do that by amping up our love for each other. It is the only solution we have yet to try concertedly. And it is the only thing that will save us. Our awakening is at hand if we will but see all that is in front of us as opportunities to respond with Love. The accelerating vibrational frequency of the Earth and the increasing amount of light exposed to the Earth as she nears the center of our galaxy will assist us, but we must make the choice.
To make the choice---the choice to live from the courageous heart rather than the hypnotized, fearful mind---we are collectively faced with coming to three realizations.
First, that it is wise to be aware of what is in front of us. That means waking up to the nature of that which is asking us to wake up: corrupt government, destructive and divisive religion, dark corporate forces and mercenary media. Our love cannot overwhelm these forces if we do not have the courage to admit that we have been foolish enough to let them control us, to drain us of our innate powers of love, unity and trust. Until we peacefully, powerfully demand more of those who pretend to guide us, we will appear to decline. It is time to right the ship.
Second, once we are willing to see clearly that we have misplaced our trust, the challenge is to then place deeper trust in our unified power. Call it a platitude, if you wish, but the power of Love is more powerful than any other force anywhere. And a unified Love of those willing to be led by the powerful will of the heart cannot be defeated. So the time has come for us to trust ourselves, our lovingly powerful selves. The time has come to surrender to this Love. It is a powerful surrender.
In making this surrender, we are redefining what power truly is. This is the third, and maybe the most powerful of the realizations: True power is only that which is based in unconditional love for everyone and every thing, even "the bad guys."
As we choose awareness and trust, we are also served to no longer respond to the corrupt institutions with anger, violence, hoplessness or fear. Such responses may seem natural, but they drain us of our true power. Marching in the streets, angrily calling your congressman or having damning thoughts about religious fools doesn't serve the collective good. The corrrupt forces are ingorant. Rather than battle them, we are being challenged to love them ruthlessly. Decades ago, Carlos Castenada clarified what is now in front of us collectively. He said, "For a sorcerer, ruthlessness is not cruelty. Ruthlessness is the opposite of self-pity or self-importance. Ruthlessness is sobriety." We are being called to realize that we are all, at depth, sorcerers. We have hidden this power from ourselves. It is awakening time.
Sobriety is consistently responding to life with true and loving Power. It takes the courage to identify with the will of the heart and it takes the deep trust of the heart as one's most trusted guide. As more and more of us realize this power, we are birthing the era of loving harmony. Any suffering that comes about as part of the birthing process comes from our resistance to the integration and the exercise of this great Power called Love.
Each time you make the choice to respond to the experiences of life with Love, you charge up the collective power, our unified Love. You make a difference. And it is especially important now to send love to all those who have been ignorant enough to abuse humanity: those who make war, those whose acts impoverish or weaken, those who place financial profit over the health and abundance of the people. It is time to send love to these people more and more often now as a powerful prayer, a way of creating the vision of a loving world.
You have the power to do it. We all do. Let's make this new year all about being more loving more of the time. Collectively, as a solution to the challenges of the world, we have yet to fully turn to love as the ultimate solution. In 2011, let's come to realize that Love is truly the only solution. I
t's wake up time.
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The logo shown above is a reminder that we have the power to access the loving will of the heart. Through this connection with our deeper selves, something we can do by pausing in silence to contemplate that which is loving in us, we smooth the path to our loving destiny. In my new book, "The Wake Up Book", I offer tools designed to help deepen one's understanding of the heart's capacity for love, calm, happiness and a sense of conneciton.
Questions to Consider When Looking for a Loving Partner or Friend
Whether you are looking for a new friend or a more intimate relationship with a new partner, you will tend to approach possibilities differently than when there was no emphasis on consciousness. For those caught up in ego, the basic question when considering a new friendship or romantic relationship is, “Can I have fun with this person?”
We tend to have standards by which we decide whether to bring someone into our lives on a regular basis. If you are stuck in the old school way, then the most influential criteria might be how much the other person lets you control them, or it may be about how they look or how well-connected they are to others you would like to spend time with.
As you evolve spiritually, your values change. You learn that certain standards you may have had before are not as important as you had thought they were. You learn that perfectly-formed body parts—your own or your potential partner’s ---are not as important as you had thought. You learn that prioritizing spending time with someone based upon how much money they have is not something that feeds your higher self or theirs.
As we learn how to trust, we tend to look for friendships and partners who help push us along the spiritual path, and those who can learn to trust us to push them without control or attachment. We also tend to learn how to let the other person be as they are, to not make the relationship about fixing them or about it being about them fixing you!
Ego-based relationships tend to be based in supporting what I call false power, the "power" that is experienced through control, attachment, and possession. True power is that which is based in love. Loving power is the only real power.
When deciding how much time you want to spend with any friend or lover, here are some questions that you might find worthy of your consideration:
- Do I trust this person or do I think I can develop trust with them?
- Am I willing to accept them as they are right now?
- Can I see our connection developing to a point where we are both strong enough to call each other on our “stuff”?
- Can I see our connection with each other growing to a point where we will both be OK with having the other challenge us on our “stuff”?
- Am I attracted to this person because I think I can control them?
- Are they attracted to me because they want to be controlled?
- What can I learn from this person?
- What might this person be asking me to teach them?
What other questions can you come up with here that might be worth asking yourself as you consider a new friendship or romantic relationship?
If you are single, or if you are just intending to increase your circle of friendships, you may find great value in journaling about this, writing your thoughts down about these questions as a way of more clearly understanding what you really want. Push your "pause button" now, if you will, and tune into what your heart has to express about these questions.
Enjoy the process!
The Loving Power of Seeing Your Life As Teacher
With all the changes going on in our world, often it seems that our natural choice is to respond with fear, anger, sadness or the feeling of powerlessness.
From catastrophic world events such as the current oil spilling into waters in the
Life is seen as an ongoing hurricane of emotions, financial pressures, and what may appear to be endless evidence of our inability to find peace with our own selves and each other. Escalating pressures seem to face us more forcefully. Many turn to addictive distractions in a vain attempt to deal with daily life: drugs, alcohol, tobacco, sugar and carb addictions, reading escapist fiction, and numbing ourselves with mindless television.
Collectively, we are in the process of discovering that these distractions are not worth the price we pay for indulging in them. After the hangover wears off, the bills still need to be paid. When the high wears off, the pressure is felt again to either deal with life as it is or to get high again. Life can become a seemingly endless cycle from anxiety to addictive indulgence to higher levels of anxiety.
For some, dealing with life may not be about addictive distractions as most people think of addiction. We can let off emotional steam by regularly treating our loved ones in a mean-spirited way, stealing from a neighbor or employer, or finding some other way to artificially feel better about ourselves at the expense of others.
Just living from day to day can become a crushing weight upon your shoulders, a kind of living hell. You may not feel that you have either the time or the energy to take the steps necessary to pull out of your cycle of pain, to deal with life positively and proactively.
Collectively, we are a society of avoidance addicts. As we identify ourselves with our ego, the frequency with which we indulge this addiction expands in scope. It can be seen as a way to self-medicate, a way to deal with the pain so we can feel better. Whether it is shoveling excess food into yourself, sticking a needle in your veins or getting drunk, the satisfaction of avoiding the life that is yours is always short-lived if you are self-medicating in a way that hurts yourself or others.
What if for just one day you chose to see life in a completely different context. For the next 24 hours, what if you chose to see everything that occurred in your life as your teacher? If you look at everything that happens to you for this one day as an opportunity to become a better person rather than as a monstrous weight upon your shoulders, life takes on an entirely new meaning.
For one day, you can choose to respond to the challenges in your life by asking yourself three quick questions when you experience a tough time emotionally.
- What is happening right now?
- What emotions am I experiencing?
- Can I allow these emotions? (Then take three deep and long breaths.)
- What can I learn from this to enhance my life and to be of service?
By seeing your life as a teacher, you open up new possibilities for yourself. If you see life as an endless series of burdens, you just create more burdens for yourself.
Viewed from the spiritual perspective---the only perspective that really matters in the long run---we might come to understand after a while that the only reason we are all here is to learn how to love more effectively and consistently.
For just one day, consider carrying these questions with you, giving yourself a little time out just as you would to a misbehaving young son or daughter. What can we learn about ourselves in claiming this quiet time with ourselves when we ponder life’s challenging moments from the perspective of learning rather than feeling victimized by life? We learn how to love. This learning is the process of spiritual empowerment.
Notice how it works when you carry these questions as shown above with you for a day. You might just find that it serves you to keep them with you beyond just this one day. As you become more and more willing to be with what is, as you treat yourself more kindly, and as you learn to trust your life as your greatest teacher, you may also find that the world becomes more of a friend than a bully.
