The Age of Wisdom

As we approach the end of 2012 we are reminded about the ending and beginning of cycles.

On one level we celebrate the end of another year and get to reflect on the year that has been and what the year ahead of us may bring. On another level we have all, notwithstanding prophetic claims about the end of the world on 21 December 2012 coinciding with the end of the 25,000 year Mayan calendar, survived to live another day.

It is important to remember that everything in our known universe operates through a cyclical process of expansion and contraction much like flowers that open in the morning and close at night and the process of life from birth to death. On a larger scale our planet earth travels on a voyage of its own within our solar system which exposes its inhabitants to different energy phases caused by different planetary alignments and our proximity to the heart of our solar system. It is these energy phases that some have labelled as different ages of the Zodiac. Continue reading

A Big Heart Can Be a Pain

This is part of an ongoing series of articles on business and life coaching by Hutt Valley lawyer and coach, John Gray. You can find his first book, “Who’s Following This Conversation?” on amazon.com.

 

There is a saying that goes something like this:

“It is better to have been pricked by the thorn than to have never experienced the Rose.”

What this means is that if we want to experience love and joy in our lives then we also need to be prepared to experience hate and pain. Where we experience the strongest feelings of love and joy in our lives is also where we experience some of our most intense feelings of hate and pain.

All of us have “back stories” which are testament to this truth and it is these stories that we wear as badges of honour and courage. Usually these stories involve those closest to us such as family, spouses or friends, or the loss of our health or peace of mind. It is these very areas which hold the potential for extreme emotions. It is true to say that the bigger the feeling of joy the bigger the potential for feeling pain.

While life in this physical realm offers each and every one of us the potential to experience intense feelings of love and joy it is also because we live in the realm of duality that life seeks to balance these good feelings with intense feelings of hate and pain. This is just the way it works – there is no bias or judgement about what our preferences may be. One cannot exist without the other. It is the tension between opposites that allows anything to manifest on the physical plane. Without “bad” we cannot experience “good”. Without the oppositional counterpoint there can be no point of reference. How would we know what “love” felt like unless we also knew what “hate” felt like. How would we know what “joy” felt like if we hadn’t experienced “pain”, “peace” if we hadn’t experienced “war” and so on.

So for those of us who seek to create lives unaffected by bad stuff, we seek in vain. While being more consciously aware of how we create our own personal realities through where we place our focus assists us in producing the states and things we want from life we will never be able to rid ourselves completely from experiencing the “prick of the thorn.” If by some small chance this were to happen the world as we know it would cease to exist.

When we live our lives in fear of being hurt we become contracted and our lives close in around us. We create our own prisons in which we pretend that we will be safe from the “slings and arrows” that life can throw at us. Consequently while we may live our lives in an illusion of safety, what is the point of this if we are not fully expressing ourselves and living life to the fullest? Wouldn’t it be better to have lived one day passionately and fully doing everything you had ever wanted to do rather than living 50 dull and boring years not doing what you really wanted to do because you were scared of what may happen if you did let go?

Why would you want to prolong a life in which you are not really living at all?

The news is that this is what most of us are doing right now. We convince ourselves that we cannot do what we want to do because if we did we would lose everything including our small lives. So we continue to work in uninspiring jobs with people we cannot stand all because we are afraid that we will lose everything we have strived for and eventually die. Well guess what – we will all die eventually and we can take nothing with us! We are born with nothing except ourselves and we will die the same way.

Isn’t it more important how we live our lives than how long we live?

The central message then is that we should not hold back from experiencing the life we have always dreamed of for fear of pain or death. If we do we will miss out on the best that life has to offer. We must remain “open hearted” and “vulnerable” if we are to smell the rose of life in full bloom. The world is full of pricks anyway so it’s only a matter of time before you get scratched. When you feel hurt be open enough to experience that feeling fully and then move on. It is only when we resist these feelings that we create a lifetime of problems for ourselves.

Remember that it is through the experience of the bad stuff that we learn and evolve. Our purpose is to evolve as spiritual beings and our short stay here on planet earth is part of the process of personal and collective evolution. It is through our “Big Hearts” that we remain connected to our spiritual DNA and unlimited consciousness which manifests in our lives as intuition. When we are open to intuitive guidance our lives become easier and we feel at ease with what we experience in our daily lives whether good or bad.

Wake up ,take Heart and smell the roses!

The Game of Life

Whether we choose to acknowledge it or not life is a game and like all games has objectives and rules. However, unlike our usual man made games the rules for the game of life are hardwired against change.

There are however similarities – there is a playing field in the game of life and that is our mind. The primary purpose however is not to win at the cost of other people but to increase our own conscious awareness. Secondary to this overarching purpose is the objective of fulfilling our desires and achieving our goals. Continue reading

As Dictators Fall…New Beginnings

“CHANGE is inevitable.. when systems and structures break down.. when ‘things’ are valued more than people.. it’s time for change. We can choose to just dismiss what is happening all around us, be in resignation about it.. i.e. ‘nothing ever changes’, or view it as an OPPORTUNITY.. The energy field of PEACE is so powerful.. it transforms the unimaginable into existence.. Begin with the end in mind.. What do you want to see.. CONNECT..ENVISION.. BELIEVE..” Marilise Karlin

What do Saddam Hussein and Gadaffi have in common?  That’s a rhetorical question of course.

The use of external force cannot subdue an idea whose time has come. We are now witnessing on the world stage a massive shift in power. Those people who have for so long borne the brunt of deprivation, abuse, torture, genocide and poverty while their so-called self-appointed leaders have enjoyed the fruits of their misdeeds are rising up from their enforced slumber.

Dictatorship and the maintenance of power through force have outlived their day. Continue reading

Your Wishes Fulfilled

“As the world was plastic and fluid in the hands of God, so it is ever to so much of his attributes as we bring to it. To ignorance and sin, it is flint. They adapt themselves to it as they may but in proportion as a man has anything in him divine, the firmament flows before him and takes his signet and form.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Your assumption is the hand of God moulding the firmament into the image of that which you assume. The assumption of the wish fulfilled is the high tide which lifts you easily off the bar of the senses where you have so long lain stranded.”
Neville Goddard

“What seems to be, is, to those whom it seems to be.”
William Blake

Celebrity or Celebration

Hero worship. Celebrity worship. Idolatory. These are all words that celebrate the central theme of greatness in other people or things. Main stream and social media feed our insatiable desire for vicarious fame, fortune and success through other people’s lives.

Why then the need for celebrating greatness in others?

The simple answer is that we don’t recognise it in ourselves. We have developed beliefs that keep us living small lives. We are unable to embrace our inherent power as the creators of our own lives. We instead observe and experience our own lives through our five senses and cannot imagine them any different than they already are.  Our extenal feedback mechanism thus becomes the predicator for our repeated habit of living life the way we always have. We then seek and get some short lived relief from the monotony and desperation that living our lives this way has on us through vicariously embracing the lives of others who seem to us to have made it. Continue reading

Have a Little Faith

 The title to the beautiful song by John Hiatt : “Have a little faith in me” also contains the key to manifesting our greatest desires. Listen here  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aYxMuLb3h8

Often we do not see what we want manifest in our lives even though we can visualise want we want and we support it affirmatively by positive statements of intent. These things alone are not enough. They are not enough because we all have firmly held beliefs which prevent us from developing the conviction needed to make our dreams come true. It is that conviction or faith which is the missing ingredient in the manifestation formula. Continue reading

The Olympian Spirit

I must admit that I have really enjoyed watching the fantastic televised coverage of the Olympics over the last couple of weeks. This event which takes to the world stage every four years is a tribute to the determination of the human spirit. When you think about the hours of training that each athlete has undergone in order to get to the level required to compete at the Games it is mind boggling to most of us.

The Olympics is really representative of the rich diversity of humanity – culture, ethnicity, religion, patriotism, creativity and spirit. Yet it is also indicative of the boundaries that also separate us. It is interesting to see the dynamic contrast between individual athletes competing in the spirit of friendly competition on the one hand and the unbridled nationalist fervour shown by their supporters and home countries on the other. It is the latter which has the effect of distancing us from our global human family. It has been and is also the cause of much continued suffering in the world. Continue reading

Unmasking the Phantom

Most of us will have either seen the movie or the stage show called the “Phantom of the Opera”.

This production and the central character in it are appropriately symbolic of the masks that we all wear during our daily lives which cover up our authentically true selves. Much like the Phantom we wear these masks to hide those parts of ourselves that make us recoil in disgust.

Allied to the masking process we develop addictions to many external things such as food, drugs, sex, gambling, alcohol, shopping and the like which given us short-term relief from the deep seated painful emotions we feel as a consequence of the insecurities generated by our lack of self-acceptance. However, this relief is only short-lived and our addictions can have signifcant negative impacts on our lives either through causing physical disease to our bodies, psychological dysfunction or the destruction families and other important relationships. Continue reading

Living Life to the Fullest

How often do we miss or ignore opportunities that may well give us exactly what we want because we are focussed on protecting the status quo or because we are just fast asleep at the wheel?

Shouldn’t life be lived fully! Isn’t it better to burn out rather than to fade away?

Yet most of us seem to live quiet desperate little lives trying vainly to hang on to all that we have fought so hard and long for and  go to any lengths to live long boring work orientated lives. But is there any real point in living long lives if the quality of those lives is so poor? Are we working hard just to survive and pay the man? Continue reading