Image by Marabu from Pixabay
It’s a new year, a new month, a new day, and a new moment. It doesn’t get any newer than that! Maya Angelou wrote, This is a wonderful day, I have never seen this one before. We could say that about 2023, it’s a wonderful year, we’ve never seen this one before! And, the wonder of it all is that we are here, right in the middle of it, alive in the boundless potential of the yet to be known, breathing in the unlimited possibilities of the yet to be asked for.
As the lyrics to the song, “We Are Free,” by Harold Payne so beautifully express: “We are free, we are righteous, we are worthy, we are free. We are boundless, we are joyous, we are free. There’s a new day dawning, our souls have been longing, we are free.” Our souls have not only been longing for freedom, our souls have been burning with desire to share that freedom together on Earth. We get to choose to be free, and express our spiritual freedom in this human experience. It’s up to us. We’re the decider of our life. We’re the chooser of our choices, and we always have a choice. We are free to choose to be a victor or a victim. We are free to choose to be a Master of how we experience our life, or to be subordinate to the appearances of this world and to circumstances that may come our way.
In The Way of Transformation we read, “How will I decide to use my time? Finding myself here in this moment, can I remember that I am free to see things differently? I am free to look lovingly upon the world.” Can we remember that’s true? Not if we keep reacting in the same old way to the same old things. Can we remember that’s true when those around us, and those we hear about and read about in the media, continue to say and do those things we don’t want them to? We can if we choose to, and as we remember that’s true, we free our self to see things differently. If it’s our intention, and we pay attention to our thoughts and feelings, this year will be truly new.
A loving view of the world comes into our view through eyes that look upon it with a mind that desires to be clear of judgment, and a heart that desires to offer only Love. We’ve heard it said, “We see world not as it is, but as we are.” We see things differently when our mind and heart have been opened first by self-love, self forgiveness and self maintenance that inspire and uplift our view. Rumi wrote, “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” If we experience barriers to Love, we alone built them with reasons, opinions and judgements, and only our burning desire to see things differently can remove them. If in retrospect we’re feeling like 2022 could use a demolition crew, we’re the only one we can hire for the job.
When our mind is free of barriers to Love, when our heart is open to Love, we can’t fail but to realize that we truly are righteous and worthy, boundless and joyous, because we realize we are Love and nothing else. Leonardo da Vinci wrote, “Life without love is no life at all.” Without Love there could be no life at all because God is Love, the Creator that is Life and the Creator of all Life. The only thing that can keep us from that realization are all the stories we keep telling our self about who we are (that we’re not). Someone said the only day, “I’d like to be a shake-it-off kind of person, but I’m more of a cling-to-it-and-focus-on-it-until-it’s-irrevocably-woven-into-my-psyche sort of person.”
Does that sound even vaguely familiar? Maybe we don’t feel that way all the time. But how often when something unpleasant occurs, and we feel a reaction silently, do we shake it off as quickly as possible? How often when something is said or done that we feel momentarily angry, resentful or defensive about, and verbally express our emotions, do we choose to get off it? On the other hand, how often do we cling to whatever it was, focus on it, talk about it, and make it part of the story of our life? The longer we think about something, the longer we feel bad about something, the more weaving power we give it to become woven into our psyche. Our focus becomes the warp and weft that turns the thread of our thoughts into the fabric of our life.
It doesn’t matter how tightly we’ve woven the barriers to Love in our mind, it’s how willing we are to loosen the weave of resistance that is holding them there, and how patient we are with the process of undoing the weave so the barriers can fall away, so that Love weaves a whole new design for us to experience as our life. A mild interest in who we might be won’t loosen a thing. A casual curiosity about what we could create if we put our mind to it isn’t going to do it. And an uninspired suspicion that there may be more to us and the world around us than we see won’t get us there. We must be burning with desire to know the reality of our Self and Life in order to stay the course that will get us there.
Mooji wrote, “ Step into the fire of self-discovery. This fire will not burn you, it will only burn what you are not.” Our desires burn within us as the Holy Flame of our True Self. We are that fire and fire doesn’t burn fire. All we’ve ever wanted throughout our many lifetimes, all we want to experience in this lifetime, and all we want to take with us when leave this human experience burns within us right now, stoked by our soul’s passion. We can’t help but feel it, but so often when we do we fear it. We try to extinguish It with reasons why we need to play it safe in life, to appease and please, and to withhold and withdraw.
Often our arguments about why we can’t have what we want and live as we desire to live are based on the fear that the familiar will disappear and the Unknown may be full of things we’d rather not know. But we’ll never know what that holy Flame of Divine Creative Energy in us can do unless we let It, unless we stop ignoring or resisting the burning desire for freedom that Flame creates and step into the fire of self-discovery. We must truly desire to seek and find where we have placed barriers of resistance to Love within us, so that we can let them fall away and experience a clearer view of our true Self that eternally looks lovingly upon the world. We read in Book of 2 Corinthians, “From now on my brethren rejoice; be perfected and be comforted, and harmony and peace shall be in you, and The God of love and of peace shall be with you.”
Happy New Year! Happy True You!
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