Anyone that knows me knows that one of my favorite quotes is from Marianne Williamson's book "A Return to Love" when she speaks about our "deepest fear." This is a quote that has been used in at least two movies, in Nelsen Mandela's inauguration speech and in previous blog posts here.

Here is what she says:

Marianne Williamson

As we prepare to head into 2009, we must consider how we are going to let our individual and collective light shine.

There are many in this country and around the world who continue to wait for the return of the messiah...to seek a savior to come and save us from the "evil" that is in the world today.

But if we consider the possibility that the Messiah is already here...that the Christ Spirit exists already within each of us and if we allow ourselves to first consider that and then to awaken to that Spirit within us, then how we will "save" our world becomes clear.

I believe that collectively, we are the Savior that we seek. We are the solutions to all of the problems we have. But we have to start creating those solutions collectively and give up our fears about asking for help from others.

We are at a point in history where we must do something drastically different in every area of our lives if life on this planet is to continue...period.

But we have a greater opportunity than that. We have an opportunity to create the heaven on earth that we have yet to even dream of.

Heaven isn't a place we go when we die. Heaven is HERE...now. We just have to wake up to who and what we are. Because when we do so, we understand what our individual roles are and the resistance, the doubts, the fears about fulfilling those roles...leave us.

We need leaders to step up in every area of our society...business, government, education, financial, etc.

Some of us will need to peel away the layers of what we are not...in order to live more fully from the perspective of what we are.

Many people I talk to feel more pressured and more frustrated than they ever have in their lives. They wonder why their lives are becoming so stressful.

The answer I give them is that in order to realize Spirit within them, their foundations have to be shook a little...and for some people a lot. In order to realize our Selves and live from the perspective of the God-self, the Christ Spirit, the inner Buddha, etc; we must let go of what we are not.

None of us seeks change voluntarily. Most of us go into it kicking and screaming. But if we are to create our heaven on earth, we must let go of "life as we know it." We must detach ourselves from everything we have thought our lives were. We must learn to think completely "outside the box" and ask ourselves how we would create our lives and our world if we could set it up in a way that worked for everyone.

As the walls of our society crumble around us, we can either figure out how to band-aid them back into place...or let them shatter so that we can build anew and build a solid foundation that works.

It will require that we all work together though. This will not work if we continue to just look our for our individual interests. We must think about the good of the whole.

So I have three questions to consider here:

1. What are the top three issues that you are committed to working on to change your individual and our collective reality in 2009?

2. What are the key obstacles that you perceive?

3. What are you going to do to work through those obstacles?

Remember, we can only give away to others that which we have. So in order to give away Love, you must first know yourselves as Love. In order to give away Peace, you must first realize Peace within you. In order to give away Joy, you must first awaken to the Joy within you.

How will you let go of who you "think" you are in order to realize your Self?

Once you do, you will no longer have to think about how to let your light shine. It will shine because that is simply who you are.

But to get there, you have to start considering it now.

Namaste

Jeff

© 2008. All rights reserved.

Learning To Flow

www.learningtoflow.com

I teach what I most need to heal. While I am a Spiritual Life Coach and I teach Self-Mastery, I am still teaching what I most need to heal.

I have days where all day long I feel completely at peace with who I am and what is happening in my life. Some days it requires me to really let go and choose to feel good in the face of all the things I could allow my ego to freak out about.

And some days, the ego wins. I still have days where I feel worried that things will not work out, where I seek to control how others are showing up in my reality. I get lost in the illusion that is happening before me. I get lost in the drama of it all.

And then because that way of living feels intolerable to me, I pull back out of it and re-identify with my Self...and find peace again.

This is my path to Mastery.

My forays into the fears, worries, pain and angers of the ego are still there, but they are shorter detours than they used to be.

My plateaus of feeling at peace get longer. I do notice that if I start feeling a little too cocky about being on that plateau that God tends to throw me a curve ball as if to say, "ok, you feel good now...but how about this?"

And sometimes that curve really throws me. So for example, I could have chosen to get really upset about all of these earth-moving machines that have been about 8 feet from the side of my house. I could be upset that they tore up half my front yard, have rattled my walls and windows for the past two days and the fact that no one let me know this was coming.

But I chose to use this as the opportunity that it was...to allow any non-peace to surface and let it go. In the face of my walls rattling yesterday, I meditated for an hour. And while the noise continues out there today, my mind is at peace.

Namaste

Jeff