The Growing Edge

A CONSCIOUS LIFE

2010-01-03T11:35:00.000-08:00

WHAT IS A CONSCIOUS LIFE?
Since you are reading this it’s likely you are intentionally living a conscious life. But what does that mean and does it mean the same thing to each of us? I’ve been struck recently how, even among “like-minded people”, there are so many different ways of looking at things.

Diversity, uniqueness and individuality are what make a culture rich; finding points of connection, recognition and shared understanding give a feeling of belonging to something bigger than “me”; taking the time to acknowledge and embrace our differences is the compost which enables growth.

We may experience instant recognition when we meet someone new or have beautiful feelings of belonging when we join a new group, only to become disillusioned when we discover differences. Many of us have such a longing to find others who see like us, think like us, talk like us. Living a conscious life can feel quite lonely at times because it’s about being true to our inner being and that can involve breaking allegiances with any form of outer authority or restrictive rules and expectations. At times on the journey to authenticity we may need to separate from family, partners, friends and colleagues, simply to find out who we are as “myself alone”. To live a conscious life is to become a discoverer, an adventurer, an inventor, a pioneer. It means stepping out of the familiarity of consensus reality and into a present in which we’re guided only by the compass of our inner truth. It means becoming separated from the mainstream and finding ourselves in uncharted waters; exchanging certainty for navigation and invention.

Inquiry is a process of discovery
I’ve become more and more interested in the process of inquiry over the last few years. Inquiry is a wonderful tool for exploring. It allows and welcomes differences and starts from an attitude of curiosity. When I start from a place where I don’t know, there is room for expansion. I’m not trying to be right or prove a point but I’m wanting to discover something new. Asking questions requires openness and a willingness to listen and discover the answers. When we ask questions life becomes a process of revelation as the answers pop up everywhere and in anyone who crosses our path. We may start to feel there is an intelligence “out there” eager to answer and co-operate with us. Or is the intelligence “in here” and with intention we programme ourselves to notice and magnetise the information we need to take our next steps? Maybe both are true and revelation happens at the meeting place between inner and outer?

I’ve just finished reading “Broken Open” by Elizabeth Lesser, co-founder of the Omega Institute, and she says:
“ Everywhere we look we find accurate information and useful statistics about our most personal behavior. In fact there exists a brilliant feedback system that is working at all times, offering free information about how to – and how not to – function in our world. For every action we take reality leaves little messages about its wisdom or folly.

Chogyam Trungpa describes the message system like this: If you take steps to accomplish something that action will have a result – either failure or success... Trust is knowing that there will be a message. When you trust in those messages, the reflections of the phenomenal world, the world begins to seem like a bank, or reservoir , of richness. You feel that you are living in a rich world, one that never runs out of messages. Those messages are regarded neither as punishment nor as congratulations. You trust not in success, but in reality.”

Led by a bigger vision
To live a conscious life means to be led by a bigger vision for humanity; a healthier, whole, more compassionate and humane uniting vision for the way we can live together on Planet Earth. It means caring enough to be informed, being courageous enough to stay open to the complex mixed emotions which living at this time engenders, and being committed enough to take action for positive change.
When I was living in New Zealand I was fascinated by the early migrations, when people travelled great distances in their canoes, guided by the stars and carried by the tidal currents, until they came upon new lands. Perhaps that is what is happening now in this transitional time for humanity as we pioneers set out to invent a Whole New World?

For me, living a conscious life means being challenged by my human limitations as I fall short every day of my aspirations and fail to fully embody my values, then pick myself up, reset the intention and try again. It’s not about being perfect but learning to drop the judgements and turn on the loving kindness for self and others as we experiment and fumble and at times sparkle with magnificence.

It means giving priority to my state of conscious being, my state of presence, even when, particularly when, there is so much to do.

For me, it means knowing that whatever my circumstances I am one of the most privileged people in the world. I am free to choose. I am free to express myself. I am free to create the future.

Living consciously doesn’t make life easier; in some ways life becomes simpler, in others more complex. There are so many choices to be made, so many factors to consider - even in the simple act of choosing what to eat. To become more conscious is to become more responsible; to drop illusions is to see more clearly; to know is to move beyond the idea that there are individual solutions or places to escape, and to be obliged to act.

There are millions of us in the world awakening to this freedom and responsibility of becoming more conscious, and everywhere I go I meet people who are reaching out to connect with others who feel the same way. We are all looking for and creating our communities and joining our little lights into One Big Light that will circle the world and send out its healing empowering, visionary radiance.

The A CONSCIOUS LIFE PROGRAMME is starting NOW with an online community. For those who want to go deeper, Soul Cells will form in the UK at the end of January, in the US in February and in NZ in March. Based around the themes of the Consciousness Series e-books, we will explore:
Being Peace-in-Action
Living in Harmony with Nature
Exploring the New Consciousness and bringing it down to Earth
Creative Empowerment
A Soulful Life
Conscious Relationship as a Path to Wholeness

The series will:
Support you to connect with your own meaning, purpose, passion and inspired action as you face the challenges of living in our changing world.
Encourage you to commit to regular consciousness practices of your choice to maintain yourself in peaceful and creative states.
See www.awholenewworld.net/ebooksbuy.htm and www.awholenewworld.net/learning.htm

I am working with convenors in England to set up local groups and there are places available in a Women’s Soul Cell, to meet once a month on a teleconference call with me, Rose. If you are interested in convening a local group, joining the Women’s Soul Cell or receiving more information about UK, US or NZ programme please contact me NOW: rose@awholenewworld.net

TRANSFORMATION

2010-01-03T11:30:00.000-08:00

polar bear on an ice floe
no tracks, no direction home
standing on the edge
certainty melting away

you can stand and wait
for reality to melt
or dive in
to the ocean of being
and swim
until you die

die to who you thought you were
die to limitation and separation
die to doubt and fear

swim into the One Being
melt into the One Love
surrender to the ocean
NOW
∞
I am the new born, without a shall

so soft and sensitive I can hardly bear to breathe.

I do not want to place a footprint on the virgin snow

nor flow into form to become fixed, held in, held down

I am the as yet to be, the coming solution

I am the next word you’ll hear, the next breath you’ll take

I am pointing to the future.

Yet I am soft, formless, so subtle, I am easily missed

you may mistake me for sadness, for loss, even for death

I seem like an absence

everything all emptied out, gone

I am a clear space for the breath of life

before words and thought

soft as a rose petal

formless as breath

Pure Love

I wrote this poem on New Year’s morning and it marks the end of three months in which I’ve been feeling the death of the old in me. The poem was inspired by a wonderful community brought together by Adela Rubio, 30 Days of Conscious Energy Shifts. http://selfcaremastery.com

THE CREATIVE PROCESS: CHAOS

2010-01-03T11:18:00.000-08:00

How was your 2009? For most people I know it was a year in which there was a lot going on. For me it was a year of dedicated hard work, slow ox-like gains, opportunities disguised as sudden losses, and oases of soulful creative joy.

I started writing this a few days before the end of a six month visit to England, my birth country. Sometimes during those six months I lost touch with the human being I had become and regressed to human doingness. This was my own personal form of chaos and a reflection of the collective chaos and driven-ness I see all around me. As our planetary crisis becomes more evident I see several trends of behavior: some go deeper into denial and run themselves ragged trying to avoid their feelings, some work harder and harder trying to maintain the status quo and keep their lives functioning, and some work harder and harder in an attempt to avert disaster and create something new. I’m sure there are other options but whatever choice we make the result is stress. The Earth herself is stressed and we are all connected with the energy of the Earth, so to be anything other than stressed right now would be superhuman or out of touch. The best we can do is learn to manage stress and not take it too personally.

Back in the late ‘80’s and early 90’s when I was practicing as a Gestalt therapist and leading lots of workshops and trainings, I discovered Gabrielle Roth’s Five Rhythms, a dance practice which explores the rhythms of the creative process or the rhythms of life: flowing, staccato, chaos, lyrical and stillness. A 30 minute dance work-out moving through the rhythms gets the creative flow going and brings awareness into any resistances and stuck energy.

I used to love the point of abandonment and ecstasy when the rhythm of the dance raced ahead of the mind and the life force danced me. I became the dance rather than doing the dance. The root of ecstasy is ex-stasis, to be beside oneself, to get out of yourself, or over yourself. This is chaos. In chaos we let go of the fragments we’re holding together and trust that when they settle they will fall in an orderly way, maybe even in a higher order. Chaos destroys in order to remake and there is always an opportunity to remake consciously in a new way once the dust has settled.

As I was driving in my hired car from middle England to Northern England I listened to a cd by Caroline Myss, called Spiritual Madness (published by Sounds True). She talks of chaos as the bringer of change and how necessary it is to live with chaos and not resist it. Oftentimes when we find our spiritual path we hope our spiritual practice will help us to control life. Maybe, if I meditate every day I will become calmer, sweeter, more loving; that’s what happens to spiritual people isn’t it? Doesn’t spirituality make us nicer?

The way of the mystics is not to seek to control life but to allow oneself to be broken open by it. It is the way of surrender. We have to be prepared to let go and surrender to the bigger energy that is pulsing and dancing us: the energy of chaos.
The value of chaos is that it cannot be controlled; it is a bigger energy than us. When we try to resist or fight it, chaos bends and ultimately breaks us. It is the energy of Kali, of Shiva, destroying in order to rebuild. Chaos carries the opportunity within the crisis; the gift of transformation.

Nature is an energy bigger than us. Scientists, industrialists, capitalists and politicians have done their best to dominate and control nature. I hope they never succeed. I value wildness and being part of a world in which I know there are forces outside my control. I don’t want to live in a controlled and sanitized world in which every apple is the same size, every fish has been farmed by humans and even the trees are cloned.

I was listening to Caroline Myss speaking about spiritual madness as I was driving up to Cockermouth, the small town on the edge of the Lake District, which was recently badly flooded when rain fell in a deluge and the Rivers Cocker and Derwent burst their banks and poured through the streets, blasting through doors and windows, destroying homes and livelihoods, devastating farmland; altogether a catastrophe. Where’s the opportunity here?

There is an opportunity in loss. We humans are comfort loving creatures. We define ourselves by our comforts: our things and we use our comforts to separate ourselves from others and mark out our own little private space. We all need comfort at times; life can be tough and demanding. Yet comfort can be the compensation we take in exchange for giving up our freedom. We identify with our comforts and become bound by them.

When life rips away who and what we love and comfort ourselves with, there is an opening; what Eckhart Tolle calls a portal. Whether the door is ripped off its hinges or gently and silently swings open, we have the chance to walk through into a bigger space, a more expansive and inclusive identity. Whether we lose a loved one, a job, a fortune or a cherished belief or illusion, we are rendered vulnerable, and in our vulnerability we are more open for change. I saw this openness and vulnerability in my father after my mother’s death, in my best friend Woods when he was preparing for major heart surgery earlier this year, in my community in Nelson NZ when we received the news of 9:11. There is an opening, a portal, an opportunity for transformation but the door always closes again and, if we don’t choose the transformation, habit and comfort move back in, the old order is restored and life goes on “as normal.” We have to be ready and willing to walk through the door without any thoughts, plans or expectations but with a willingness to invent and discover in the now.

In David Attenborough’s stunningly beautiful “Life” series, (published on DVD by BBC Earth)there is a scene of thousands of crabs scuttling across the seabed, shedding their shells. Having outgrown their shell they have no choice but to risk for a while being soft and vulnerable to predators, until they grow a new one. We humans are the same aren’t we?. We build shells around us to protect ourselves from the chaos of life. Some of these shells are habits like smoking cigarettes, drinking wine, watching tv, playing computer games, shopping, over working, whatever keeps other people at bay. We try to make our homes havens of order; we make rules or live alone, whatever it takes to escape from the chaos of life. But if we are lucky the flood of life finds us in the end and the world spins, like the world of the dancing dervish, and we are left disoriented and pointed in a new direction.

This is chaos

The purpose of the spiritual path is not to avoid chaos but to allow ourselves to be moulded by the movement of this bigger-than-us river of life. The flood strips away outworn illusions, carries away chunks of ego, dissolves who we thought we were and where we thought we were going. It stops us in our tracks and suspends us, like the Hanged Man or Inanna hung on her peg, we are forced to question anew and more deeply: Who am I? What is the most important thing for me to do here and now? What are my priorities? What is trying to emerge here? How can I best serve this emergency?

And when the river of chaos flows through a community what happens to those who are dispossessed? Who is responsible for them? Who takes them in? Who turns a blind eye and clings more tightly to order? Where are the boundaries of our communities? Are those people and animals now starving in Africa and Bangladesh and Peru and Russia and Alaska as a result of climate change, part of our community? Are we responsible for them and if so, how?

Collectively we are in the chaos of global crisis now. It is a portal to a larger identity, to recognizing the essential interconnectedness of life and becoming One Global Family. Chaos is the Great Leveler. Life is bigger than us, it breaks us open, teaches us to surrender and how to serve and co-create.

After the chaos, comes the sweetness of the lyrical and the profound simplicity of stillness. I hope your Holy days are bringing you some of these fruits.

Finally, at the starting line

2009-11-11T12:30:00.001-08:00

Finally, at the starting line

Finally, we’re ready to launch A Whole New World. It’s been a long journey and, after three and a half years focused work, here we are at the starting line. Anyone who’s been involved in developing a similar project, transitioning from the old values to the new, will know how long it takes to bring a vision into manifestation and how much it’s a process of experimentation and feeling ones way step by intuitive step into the unknown.

But here we are: we have our website ready, our first series of six conscious e-books, three full-length soulful books and an exciting pilot programme poised to be a catalyst for developing Soul Cells or small local learning communities, linked up nationally and globally.

I’ve become very interested in grass roots community empowerment and how people change the world from the inside out, with shifts of consciousness happening alongside inspired action and heaps of experiential learning. Through the process of writing, Living your Passion: How love-in-action is seeding a Whole New World, I realized the innovative people I was interviewing in New Zealand represent the new emerging global culture of peace and unity. I became convinced that providing inspiring role models and linking up all the little lights into one big light, is an important part of my mission and Woods Elliott and other soul friends, were right alongside me encouraging me on.

For those of you who are interested in how life themes and passions develop into soul work, or our life’s mission, on the About Us page of the website, Woods and I have identified some of the life threads that have woven into the fabric of A Whole New World: www.awholenewworld.net/aboutus.htm In the free sampler, 8=1, HOW THE PILLARS OF TRANSFORMATION CREATE UNITY IN A WHOLE NEW WORLD, I identify more than thirty conscious decisions and actions that contribute to living a life with passion, purpose and meaning.

Here are some of them:
Open new dimensions of being.
It’s always difficult to know where and when a story starts but one starting place for me was in 1983 when I left a full time job in adult education to give myself time to write. I had fallen in love with poetry and was working on a long poem which was coming from very deep inside me. I was experiencing tension between the educational work I loved and the intense excitement of discovering the inner life for the first time. A whole new dimension of my being had opened up and it was very compelling. Later I came to understand this as the emergence of the spiritual dimension within me but at the time I didn’t have this understanding and writing poetry was the only way I was able to access and express these new experiences and contain the intense energy of this spiritual opening.

Leap into the unknown
Although I left my job in order to write, it didn’t turn out as I’d expected. I soon realized I needed to eat and keep a roof over my head and poetry couldn’t support me in that way. So I started working freelance as a personal and professional development trainer and went on to create my own business, which included being paid to write training materials in group leadership. When I took the leap from the security of the monthly pay check, I had to learn how to steer my own course according to my own creative rhythms and support myself financially at the same time. I had a lot to learn! It’s been a challenging, evolving process ever since and I love the freedom of it.

Follow your creative process
In 1992, I took a second leap when I made the conscious decision to follow my creative process wherever it led me. Despite everything I had achieved I felt empty, so I left my business, my psychotherapy practice, and my home and set off first to the North West Highlands of Scotland, and then to New Zealand on a soul journey adventure which has lasted for fourteen years and is ongoing. I soon realized following my passion, or my creative process, means allowing my unique path to unfold and being willing to go with it, even when it seems totally irrational or doesn’t make any sense in terms of material security. This has led to much learning and strengthening of my spirit as I’ve had to face the challenges of living such an uncompromising life. Over the years as my purpose here on earth has become more and more clear to me, I have found I am unwilling and unable to compromise this purpose; life seems far too short and the urge to evolve is compelling.

Find a consciousness practice to support you
The inspirational phase of the creative process calls us to flow with it, either as an inner journey from the safety of home, or as a physical life adventure. This can feel risky at times, whether the risk is leaving physical comfort behind, or dropping a belief system and entering the unknown. I’ve had to learn how to support myself through the fear and resistances which are a normal part of creative unfolding. Adopting various forms of consciousness practice such as meditation and journal writing has been an essential support for this.

Fall in love with your destiny and embrace it wholeheartedly.
When I left Scotland I intended to stay in New Zealand for four months, then return to join a new business but I fell in love with the beauty of the South Island, with the people, and with the way of life, and stayed for twelve years. New Zealand is a natural soul sanctuary and during my time there my spiritual journey deepened. After some adventures, including a Peace Walk around the South Island, and an experience of living in intentional community, I settled in Nelson and took a job teaching counselling theory and practice. This was perfect for me at the time; it enabled me to consolidate my psychotherapeutic experience, extend my teaching skills and make a contribution to the community. It supported me to get residency in New Zealand as well. Later on a friend came along and helped me to buy a house, so I became quite settled for a few years.

To find out more,if you haven’t downloaded your free sampler yet go to: http://www.awholenewworld.net/books.htm and you will find a download box under Living your Passion.

Conscious Eating 2

2009-11-11T12:16:00.000-08:00

It was all over the Times that we should “Give up eating meat to save the planet”. Who knows maybe in twenty years it will be as socially unacceptable to eat meat as it is now to smoke cigarettes.

A few years ago I followed a “blood type” diet for a while. (see www.dadamo.com). I’m an A: a natural vegetarian and prefer to graze on fruit and nuts; meat feels heavy and hard to digest to me. For others, I know it is different. A few years ago I was running a soul retreat in an out of the way beauty spot and we had neglected to tell people we would be having a very simple vegetarian diet. After two days one of the men was desperate and drove a 50 mile round trip on unmade roads to forage for meat, he felt starved without it. So I acknowledge there are some people whose bodies need meat more than others.

But before I go further into meat production and the real cost of eating meat I’m going to report a little of my shopping adventures following my awareness being raised about the parlous state of fish. Right now, I’m staying with my father, the nearest shops are a mile and a half away and neither of us has a car. This makes sourcing local food difficult and the easiest way to shop is a once a week visit to the supermarket via community transport. Recently I visited a couple of small towns in the north of England and I noticed how refreshing it was to find small local food shops in the main street. It’s so unusual these days. Shopping in most towns in the UK or North America you’d think people really do live on air or the occasional vitamin pill. There’s no food in sight. The supermarket is convenient if you have a car.

So I decided to look at the fish and see where and how they had been caught before purchasing. I fancied a kipper. If they had been caught on line I would have bought a couple of kippers because at least line fishing seems to give the fish a chance. But it said: line fishing, seine fishing and trawling. Did trawling mean deep sea trawling, the kind where they destroy the sea bed? I didn’t know so I gave up on the kipper and went to look at the meat for my carnivorous father. I can’t bring myself to cook beef or pork, these big animals seem so close to us it’s almost like cannibalism, so I chose some lamb shanks to make a nice warming lamb stew. After all, I reasoned, sheep don’t generate as much methane as cows do they? Wrong. Here’s some facts, hot and steamy from the Times:

With the highest carbon footprint of all UK foods, lamb creates 17kg of Co2 for every kilo of product as compared to potatoes which creates 450gms of CO2 per 1 kilo. Flatulent farm animals create 14% of global emissions of methane.
The biggest meat eaters in the world – you’re right, the Americans, consume on average 123 kg of meat a year, as compared to Indians who eat an average of 3kg, or Japanese who tend to use meat as a flavor enhancer treat and eat only, 40kg a year average.

67% of the world’s agricultural land is given over to raising livestock. Direct emissions of methane from cows and pigs is a significant source of greenhouse gas. Methane is 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide as a global warming gas.
Meat production is also responsible for the destruction of forest land for cattle raising and for animal feeds such as soy. It takes 7lbs of grain to produce 1kg of beef.

A typical UK diet including animal products providing 38%of calories requires 0.195 hectares of land and 535,000 litres of water. A vegan diet requires 0.065 hectares and 140,000 litres of water.

So what to do?

Becoming more conscious about the way we eat does require more effort. Fast foods and convenience foods are not called that for nothing. Barbara Kingsolver in a wonderful book called, “Animal, vegetable, miracle”, about how she and her family learned to eat consciously tells how big agri-business turns convenience foods into profit with obesity a by-product:
“...70% of all our Midwestern agricultural land shifted gradually into single crop or soybean farms, each one of them now, on average, the size of Manhattan. Owing to synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, genetic modification, and a conversion of farming from a naturally based to a highly mechanized production system, us farmers now produce 3900 calories per us citizen today. That is twice what we need and 700 calories a day more than we grew in 1980......Most of those calories enter our mouths in forms hardly recognizable as corn and soybeans... if every product containing corn or soybeans were removed from your grocery store, it would look more like a hardware store...”

The more I delve into the machinations of the food industry, the more it starts to make a lot of sense to:

Eat less meat and animal products.
Buy local and in season.
Cut down on air freighted food and packaging.

I’d love to hear about your experiences with conscious eating. Please leave a message on the blog.
Rose

Conscious Eating

2009-10-21T01:31:00.000-07:00

I watched a film last night called “The End of the Line” about the so-called fishing industry. Industry is much too noble a term for the mass slaughter that is happening in our seas.

I actually watched half the movie and at the end of the first hour I turned it off and went to bed, partly because I was tired but also to escape from the unrelenting distress of watching wild creatures such as the magnificent bluefin tuna being brutally predated and massacred to the point of near extinction. Grieving as I am now I wish I had been brave enough to watch the whole movie. I’d rather know the horrible truth, at least then I can make conscious choices.

I awoke early this morning with a mixture of emotions. Grief is the over-riding feeling but I also feel shame. I am ashamed to be part of a species that can behave with such unlimited cruelty motivated only by greed, and I am ashamed at my own unconsciousness in relation to the food I take into my body and make part of me. When people ask me if I am a vegetarian I say, “more or less, I eat a little fish and chicken”, Now I realize that’s like saying I’m more or less conscious. It won’t do any more. I need to know where every item of food I buy and eat has come from and who and what has been exploited by bringing this food to my table. For of course it is not only the animals that suffer. The hi-tech fishing fleets in which the fish literally don’t have a chance and are scooped up by the ton and thrown dead overboard if they are not the “right” ones, also destroy the livelihoods of the traditional fishermen such as those in western Africa, whose communities depend on the fish for survival. This is another story of the multi-national corporations such as Mitsubishi destroying both the eco-system and indigenous culture for the sake of their own fat profits.

If the fishing continues in this way they say the seas will be dead within thirty years. After seeing what I saw last night I think that is a conservative estimate and it will be sooner.

What does it mean the seas will be dead?

I feel sick in my stomach as I contemplate this. The cod which once were abundant in Nova Scotia are now all but gone. Even though the fishing was stopped in the 1980’s the cod have not replenished. The movie spoke of this as being a “soul loss” for the fishermen whose livelihoods have gone. That’s’ how it feels to me too. The mass wiping out of bio-diversity; the destruction of sustainable eco-systems; the slaughter of wild life; the vanishing of all the beauty and mystery that other species bring, is sacrilege; an offence against the sacred; against life.

All I want to say is, I am so, so sorry. But this is not enough. It is not enough to break and destroy and rape and pillage and then to be sorry.

I know I must change my habits regarding food and I know this is going to take effort because I will have to do some research. There’s a certain sacrifice involved because now I’m aware I don’t think I can eat fish again and I’ve always loved to eat fish; it has been one of the great pleasures of life for me. And it means I’m going to have to stop being in denial and pretending that eating one battery hen here and there doesn’t really matter. And I will have to pay more for my food because organic, locally sourced, sustainably farmed, fair trade food is often more expensive, yet still doesn’t reflect anywhere near the real price of food which in so many cases, like the killing of the seas, doesn’t have a dollar value.

In short I will have to make more effort, take less for granted and sacrifice my own little wants and appetites.

But even this effort seems a pitifully small contribution in the face of the catastrophes we’re facing. This is one occasion where I am tempted to think, well what difference will it make if I eat haddock or wild salmon or tuna once a week? I am brought up against one of my key beliefs, that one individual making conscious choices can make a difference. I have never been a lobbyist; I have little faith in the political system and have not seen that as my work. My only hope as a writer is to touch your heart and to remind you to keep feeling. I know if you are reading this it is because your heart has already been touched by the plight of the natural world. But I want to remind us all not to forget, not to numb ourselves from the pain and turn away because it is too much and we would rather have fun and be positive. This is happening to our world, this is real, the seas are part of us as we are part of the seas. If the seas are being killed off, we are being killed off. If our brothers and sisters in Senegal are losing their livelihoods, then so too will we.

What can we do?

Go to: www.endoftheline.com for information about sustainable fishing, campaigning and the movie.
www.fairtrade.org.uk is a Uk based foundation for protecting fair trade. Is there an equivalent in your country outside the UK?
www.peopleandplanet.org is a UK based student action site for world poverty, human rights and the environment.

What will happen tomorrow?

2009-06-06T13:28:00.000-07:00

June 6th 2009

I’m here in Yorkshire at the Oasis School of Human Relations for three months, where I’m going to be participating in an inquiry into the workplace of tomorrow.

This week I was at Oasis everyday; the first time for several years I have been in any workplace for a full week. I felt very welcomed and in many ways at home with the directors and staff as we worked together as a team to prepare everything needed for the first groups to begin the inquiry next week.

At the same time it was quite a jolt to go from my inner oriented life as a writer studying consciousness to this outward orientation; and from practicing presence to contemplating the future.

How do you feel when you think about the future? Do you think about it? And if so, do you think about it in any detail? Over the week as we talked about how the half day sessions are going to be structured, and practiced some of the processes, I was struck by how much our individual projections into the future are coloured by our subjective perceptions and how ill prepared most of us are for what may come.

A personal example of this unpreparedness is how aging has suddenly caught up with me. Until six months ago when I injured my knee I didn’t feel old and I never gave getting older a thought, now here it is creeping up on me and I am totally unprepared. When considering the life of an organization, although there was a lot of recognition that the implications of climate change and planetary responsibility should be top of the priorities list, in actual fact short term goals and survival occupied the majority of people’s efforts. When we multiply these two admissions of short sightedness by several billion, we start to get the picture of just how many heads are being buried in the sand in our world. And how few concessions are being made in the face of the collective problems we face.

I know if some of my more positive friends were here right now they would be telling me it’s all perfect and we just have to open our hearts and trust. Hm. That place of trust is a very beautiful place to be and I love to be there, yet trust without action isn’t enough. “Trust in Allah, but tether your camel” the old saying goes. But where is my camel and where should I tether it?

I don’t think I am the only one confused. In the workplace the bits of paper fly around and everyone keeps super busy and I bury my head in the next e-book about consciousness and wish that the future would go away….

One good piece of news though. I’ve been watching some nature programs on tv. (British tv still has two channels without advertising, so it’s actually bearable to watch.) And the rivers here, which were badly polluted, have been regenerated, so much so that wild otters and beavers have been re-introduced and are now swimming with grace and joy amidst all the other wildlife enjoying the spring. This is good news and it makes me happy.

As I reflect on this week I realize I have two wishes for my own future, one is to be able to sink my roots deep into community and lasting relationship, and the other is to know that I’ve made a difference. Making a difference doesn’t have to be a big thing or heroic, it can be noticing when someone does a good job, or doing any of those hundred little things that make another person feel valued. I think that’s where I’m going to set my sights this week. Have a good one!

Rose

Spiritual Gypsy

2009-05-31T03:58:00.000-07:00

May 29, 2009
My goal was to travel with only one bag but much to my chagrin I arrived here in England with two big heavy bags which even two people could barely carry. Since I expect to be here for three months, I have that much time to streamline down. In the interests of travelling light I’m going to keep a weekly journal and post on the blog; I no longer want to carry heavy books and papers around, so this is a way to archive my experience and also keep in touch with friends as I transform into a global traveler.

One of the qualities a global traveler has to have is a trust that whatever we need will be provided, so we don’t have to take everything with us. When I feel into this it feels like a great relief, although I still have an edge of fear: Really? Does that mean I no longer have to worry about having enough money? I hear a caution that we must be careful not to take more than we need nor build debt. This is radical trust in the limitless abundance of the Universe, in the flow, and in my own worthiness. I know it’s me who limits what I can have by my fear-based thoughts and beliefs in imperfection. To travel light means to travel in love, trust and openness.

Along with this goes an attitude of non attachment or non clinging. As I look up I see three beautiful scarves hanging from the wardrobe door, I carried them all the way from Golden Bay New Zealand, to Virginia, USA, and now to Yorkshire, England, many thousand miles. I rarely wear them but I like them, they connect me with Nelson and Golden Bay, my spiritual home, two of them were gifts, and they fit a certain image of myself I’m obviously attached to. But since I don’t wear them is that image really an accurate reflection of who I am? Are the inner and outer aligned? Am I ready to leave them behind?

If it’s so hard to let go of things how much harder is it to let go of people. I’ve just left people I love in Virginia and I feel I’ve been torn out of an organism I was embedded in, where I felt comfortable and at home in the end. I remember a poem by the poet, David Whyte in which he talks about how, just when you’ve hung the last picture in your home and got everything perfect, it’s time to leave. That’s hard! Are we not allowed to be too comfortable on the quest? I like a bit of comfort. It’s true I did resist Williamsburg, Virginia in all sorts of ways, but in the last weeks I was there we had such a delicious spring, so lush, with such bright sunshine and such abundant rain and so much colour and so many birds, it was difficult to tear myself away. Not to mention I didn’t want to leave my little family of Woods, Cheyenne the hound, Sam the moustachiod parakeet, and Edith, Woods’ sweet and generous Mother, as well as the friends I had made and love and want in my life. Yes, leaving is hard. As Beth said, we will always be connected; and as Woods said, there’s always email. But it’s not the same is it? As soon as we’re apart from people we start to idealize them, we lose that edge of learning which a real and unpredictable person always brings. We lose the energetic connection too, not entirely for sure, but nothing beats being in the presence of a person you love.

When there’s a physical journey it’s all more obvious but what I am writing about is not just happening to me. We’re all in a process of lightening up so we can move forward to something new, it’s part of our collective evolution, and it doesn’t always feels good. My challenge this week arriving in Yorkshire and settling into yet another cottage on my own, has been to find inside myself all that love and lushness I appear to have left on the other side of the Atlantic; to gather in all my energies and BE HERE NOW. On my fifth day I feel more peaceful. Two other writers have helped me to get centred and grounded. The first is Karen Bishop, who has a website called www.emergingearthangels.com I recommend a visit. Her regular writings which she calls, WINGS, explore what is happening on Planet Earth from the point of view of the Ascension process, and I found what she’s said about the last six months very reassuring. For example,

While almost fully removed from our old realities in so many ways, feeling homeless is perhaps now our only option, even if we may not know why. Perhaps wandering around with no clear sense of “home” quite yet, we might not know where we belong, or even what we will be doing next…even though at some level we know very well that something very new is on the very near horizon.

Right now, I don’t have a home in the sense we commonly know it, four walls and roof, a door key, a space labeled MINE. I’m here in England which is my birthplace, I’m a permanent resident of New Zealand, and I have heart ties in Virginia. Yet none of these is actually home right now. From the point of view of mainstream society I am viewed with suspicion, some kind of feckless drop out or ne’er do well, or at best a hopeless idealist. But Karen Bishop reminded me of the bigger picture and she made me feel quite normal. Go check out her archives, it’s a great read!

The other author who’s helped me this week is Caroline Myss. I’ve been listening to her cd, Spiritual Madness, after finishing my latest e-book on the Soul Journey. If Karen Bishop’s message is like sinking into a warm bath, Caroline Myss is more like an invigorating wake-up shower. For her, having a relationship with God is a serious business requiring complete self honesty. A cold shower is helpful sometimes especially when you’re feeling like a wimp, as I was for a day or two. Hey, come on, remember why you’re here, remember who you are, remember the journey! You’ve got tools, use them, whatever you do don’t sit around and feel sorry for yourself! Ok Caroline, I’d just been writing about the crazy-making nature of the soul journey, the need to be present, to be the eyes of the universe, but whenever I finish a piece of writing I always feel a bit lost, at least for a little while. It comes with the territory. Caroline reminded me that on the spiritual journey loneliness is normal; essential even. And she also reminded me how easy it is to deceive ourselves and how we need to stay aware and alert to our motivation in everything we do; its’ so easy to deceive ourselves and that’s why times of change can be so confusing because its sometimes quite difficult to discern what is true and what is delusion: are we on the spiritual path because we think it’s leading to an easy life, lolling in a hammock in heaven? Think again! The spiritual path is here to temper us, to show us where we’re unfinished, to knock off our sharp edges and render us fluent. It’s not always comfortable and it’s not always cosy, and it’s not always in the form we want, but it is the most amazing journey on Earth and once we’re on there’s no getting off. So I’m reminding myself to relax and enjoy the ride.

I’m looking forward to sorting out my stuff so I can get down to one bag I can easily carry. Woods’ mother Edith gave me some wonderful advice as I was leaving Williamsburg, “Keep your heart open so you can receive all the love that’s there for you, and keep your eyes open so you can see how beautiful the world is.” Yes, Edith, thank you! To that I would add, “if you’re bag’s too full you can’t receive anything new” If it’s time to strip down to the essential self, what do we really need? Who are we really? What and who are we ready to let go of and what do we want to hold onto?

The latest edition of New Moon Magic, A Soulful Life, is available for the give-away price of $11 Us, or $11 NZ, or £10, if you’re in England. If you’d like a copy write to me at rose@awholenewworld.net
Namaste
Rose

How to stay creatively empowered in troubled times

2009-03-03T20:56:00.000-08:00

Step into a bigger sense of self.
By Rose Diamond

The economic recession is turning the lives of people all over the country inside out. It’s a great leveler, because apart from the ultra rich, we’re all affected. It’s traumatic to lose your home, your job or your savings, and when this happens the first step has to be to find some firm physical base from which to survive. We humans are creative and resourceful beings and from a very young age we are capable of making creative adaptations to our life situation in order to survive.

This is a prime time for creative problem solving on a practical level. Many people are finding solutions to their changed circumstances by sharing living space with others, using one vehicle instead of two, cutting inessential spending and avoiding credit card debt, passing on whatever things they no longer need, planting vegetable gardens, conserving resources like power, water and gas, joining with others to create communities for mutual support.

Once we have our physical base covered we are free to move on to the next level of reconstruction: our emotions. When we suffer a loss: whether it’s the loss of a loved one through death or relationship break up, the loss of livelihood, home or possessions, we also lose our sense of identity and we enter what is called an existential crisis, or a crisis about the meaning and purpose of life. This leads to confusion, depression, anger, hopelessness and despair; all difficult states to sustain ourselves through. In existential crisis we are disillusioned, literally stripped of our illusions. We thought we were somebody but who are we now? We thought we understood the way the world works but now we’re lost.

However, this very state of confusion and disillusionment can be a doorway to something new: a more authentic life; a life lived by deeper and more sustaining values. Unless we acknowledge, attend to, and process these difficult emotions, they go underground and wreak havoc with our health, relationships, and plans for the future. This time of crisis is an opportunity to strip down to essentials and build again on a more sustainable foundation.

Any time of major loss involves a grieving process and psychologists have identified stages of this process, these are the ones that make sense to me: shock, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, release and acceptance. Only when we have moved through all the stages can we start to build anew on a more solid foundation.

Most people are less skilled with emotional work than at sorting out the practicalities of life. A symptom of the denial stage is when we try to lose ourselves or distract ourselves with activity rather than facing our underlying emotions. We tend to be scared of our unpredictable emotions and self exploration because we fear ending up in a bottomless pit which we are then helpless to climb out of.

I worked as a psychotherapist for many years and this kind of deep self exploration with someone trained in the territory of the inner world and with the skills to be an empathic yet objective listener can be very helpful. Now I prefer to work as a coach because my main interest is to help people move through blocks to their creativity, become empowered, and build lives around their deepest passion and purpose. A coach will help you to accept, contain and clear your emotions within the framework of building a meaningful life.

There are three great questions in life: Who am I? What am I doing here? What do I want? These questions can be answered on many different levels and form the basis for a spiritual practice that will take you deeper into yourself. The more deeply we know ourselves, and the more authentic we are, the more we connect with the meaning and purpose of our individual and collective life. This is the most powerful support we can have in a time of crisis.

When you first answer the question: Who am I? It might go something like this: “My name is Rose Diamond. I was born in England and now I’m living in Virginia, USA. I’m a lifelong educator and I’m passionate about writing….” The emphasis is on family personal history and roles, all things which give us our sense of identity.

If you dig a little deeper and come into the present, it might go something like this: “ Right now I’m hurting, angry and frustrated because……” Once you’re present and in touch with your emotions, you can start cleaning out the old in preparation for building the new. When you’ve taken ownership of your emotions and become more aware of the old conditioned mental patterns that rule your life, you are in a better position to answer the second and third questions.

“What am I doing here?” is a question about purpose. What is your purpose in being here on Earth at this time? What unique gifts and skills do you have to offer? How do you make sense of what’s going on in the world and your role in it?

I would answer this question something like this:” I’m in America right now because there are things I can learn only here which will help me to become more of who I can be. I also have skills and experience to help people through this crisis and transition.“

When we answer the question: “What do I really want?” it’s always a good idea to find the values behind what we think we want. For example, I asked a midlife client to make her “bucket list” of all the things she wants to do, have, or be in the second half of life and before she dies. She came back to me the following week and said she’s had an image of floating in an air balloon above a European city. When she dug a little deeper she discovered the values hidden in this image were freedom and transcendence. She wants to be free to have a bigger perspective on life and on history and to transcend the limitations of her present reality.

This is exciting because she may not be able to take off tomorrow to Europe and an air balloon, but she can start right now to realize freedom and transcendence. These are the qualities we develop when we commit to a spiritual practice, whether the practice is meditation or any of the other myriad tools and vehicles for developing awareness.

The master key to conscious choice and creating the lives we really want is awareness. With awareness we step into a bigger, freer, higher part of the mind. We become a witness of our experience, and as Einstein said: “We can’t solve a problem from the level at which that problem was created, we can only solve it by moving to a higher level”.

I’m convinced the only way we can solve our individual and collective problems in the face of this current economic and environmental crisis, is to move up the mountain of self discovery and gain a bigger, freer perspective.

Rose and Woods offer coaching to help you to Breakthrough to your Creative Power, go to: www.awholenewworldcoaching.com As part of the Whole New World community we offer monthly e-books on aspects of conscious living. The first two: Being Peace in Action and Living in Harmony with Nature are available now; the third, Exploring the New Consciousness and bringing it down to Earth, will be published on March 26th.
Go to: www.awholenewworld.net or http://livingyourpassion.info//nmm

The key to staying sane in troubled times: managing fear.

2009-02-09T09:29:00.000-08:00

By Rose Diamond

Fear is one of the most difficult emotions to manage. But if we don’t learn how to manage our own fear and help those around us to manage theirs, we are going to turn crisis into disaster. As a former psychotherapist I have spent many years witnessing people’s reactions to their own fear (and this includes observing fear in myself). Most of us are afraid of our own fear and will do just about anything to avoid feeling it: alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, anti-depressants, over work, over eating and compulsive shopping, are some of the ways we avoid, or try to numb our fear.

Right now we are all facing a massive fear of the unknown. The world as we have known it is crumbling and none of us knows what is going to replace it. Personally, I believe this global crisis is an opportunity to create a more sustainable, humane society; yet in this present climate of crisis fear, at times it is difficult to maintain this trust that something better will emerge. I am no stranger to fear, having consciously chosen for many years a lifestyle in which I uncompromisingly live my passion, or do what I believe I am here to do, I know what it means to live on the edge financially and not know where the next dollar is coming from. Many people are being pushed into this same dilemma not through conscious choice but through external events over which they have no control. The opportunity and challenge in this is we can learn to live simple, sustainable, authentic, and community based lives which offer an inner fulfillment.

But people are not in a position to make conscious choices nor to think rationally about what needs to be done when they are gripped by fear. Fear creates stress and stress limits our sense of what is possible. If it is not attended to, fear goes underground and can manifest as anger, despair or ill health; fear literally grips the heart and squeezes the life force out of us. It cuts us off from the source of our creativity and empowerment. When we are afraid we tend to disassociate from the body and from the present moment and lose ourselves in worry, anxiety and doubt; all products of the mind. The kind of fear I am speaking of is a basic fear for survival, a root chakra fear which is connected to the oldest part of the brain, the reptilian brain, which as its name suggests is primitive, reactive and potentially aggressive. Such fear makes us feel more isolated, cuts us off from each other and causes people to become self protective, to look after their own and close their doors to “strangers”.

An important aspect of the Western psyche and sense of identity, particularly so in North America, is the belief that success means being independent, going it alone and competing with others for life’s goodies. These attitudes are being challenged by the current economic crisis, which is throwing many people into a situation where they literally can’t support themselves in the ways to which they have become accustomed, nor derive their identity from external sources such as status, money and material goods. This identity crisis comes on the heels of the economic crash and a shift of identity has to happen before anything new can be built. If we are going to survive as a species we have to learn to work together, to recognize we are all in the same boat, find ways to support each other and think creatively together.

So what can we do when fear comes knocking at the door of the heart? When people are gripped by fear, the first thing they need to know is they are not alone. Helping a frightened or distressed person to become more present is a good first step. Helping someone to become more grounded literally means getting them to put their feet on the ground and reminding them to breathe. The earth beneath us and the air we breathe are forms of support that are there for each one of us, always. By breathing into our fear, we enable the body, and thus the heart and mind, to expand, and we get back in touch with our own power and resourcefulness to effect change.

The skills of empathic, compassionate listening are very helpful. Giving someone you love or care about the space to vent their feelings is a good first step. But this can be challenging especially when their emotions are raw and put you in touch with your own fear. When we feel uncomfortable with another’s expression of feeling we tend to shut them down by interrupting, trying to “fix” them, or moving away. If we really want to help, the trick is to know when people need to express their feelings, when they need to be present and find inner calm, and when they need to look for solutions. People seldom find healthy solutions when they are afraid, and if you move into “fixing” them they are likely to become more reactive and frustrated, or to withdraw into depression.

Much of our fear is created by the mind. When we don’t know what is going to happen we tend to fill the empty space with fear. The insights and practical wisdom of spiritual teacher, Eckhart Tolle, have helped me to learn how to drop my negative fear based thoughts. Learning the laws of manifestation and the creative process has helped me to replace the negative thoughts with positive, creative thoughts. To focus on what I can do, to stay present, take my next step, and be relatively unattached to the outcome of my actions, keeps me sane and enables me to go with the flow of my creative process. Maintaining this kind of focus in this current climate of fear is a spiritual practice requiring daily, moment to moment intent. When I fall off the wave, I have to summon all my strength, haul myself back on the surfboard and start again. Of course this is very challenging, and the bottom line is, we all need each other. Many people who are focusing on maintaining a positive attitude in this way, seek out or create communities of like-minded people for mutual support, comfort and encouragement.

I hear many people these days talking about how “things are only going to get worse”. I don’t think this helps anybody; our thoughts create the situation we fear. Whilst the global economy in its current state is certainly bankrupt, the flow of commerce freezes in local communities when people hold onto their money. Abundance and prosperity can only come from staying open, trusting and sharing what we have. I also read even in “progressive” internet news groups criticisms of President Obama and how he isn’t living up to expectations after two weeks. As if there’s some great magician in the sky who’s going to wave a magic wand and make everything better. The reason people love Obama is he sows seeds of hope and encourages grassroots action and involvement. Hope alone is not enough. Life will only get better if we each choose to create it better, and that means connecting with our own power as creative beings and not passing the buck to any politician, guru, hero, or demi-god of our imagination; nor giving our power away to an invisible oligarchy of robber barons.

We all need hope, and positive models of people who are creating more peaceful sustainable lives, and the skills to build our lives anew. I agree with Obama, it’s not going to be easy, the path is strewn with challenges, the process of changing deeply ingrained attitudes doesn’t happen overnight. But it is possible, and it is worth working for, and we are the only ones who can do it.
Rose Diamond offers Coaching for Positive Change for people who need a helping hand in troubled times. Go to: www.awholenewworldcoaching.com

"The ONE LAW" of Universal Expansion

2009-02-01T16:50:00.000-08:00

By Woods Elliott

One of my favorite subjects of thought is what I call cosmopsychology, or the study of how staggering it is to the human being to have such an ungraspably infinite setting for one’s home. I mean our location here in the universe is breath-taking, even crazy making. Is this not the most awe inspiring universe on hand as could ever be imagined? For most of my life I haven’t really felt at home in this vast cosmos. I was never sure what little me had to do with big IT. What meaning could there be behind such an unspeakable enormity? While finite, we’re at the same time in conjunction with, well, infinity! Bewildering. You get the picture?

In my book, Dazzlephrenia, I try to feel more at home in the cosmos. This is not an easy achievement as my title implies. Surely how we look upon the infinite cosmos, and ourselves in relation to it, deeply impacts us emotionally and psychologically and will, into the future, influence our way of being in the world and living our lives. There is more identical connection between pinprick stars and us than appears at first glance. That’s the thing. There must be a plausible correlation. It behooves us to perceive ourselves as more cosmic beings, integrating the cosmos, its central themes, patterns, and features, into our view of ourselves.

The cosmos is now generally regarded to be in an extravagant act of some kind of ever-evolving energy; this is its evolutionary property. I had a thinking buddy in Colorado, when I was organizing a small local philosopher’s club, one of many intriguing thinkers who were drawn in. His single, nearly obsessional contention was what he called The One Law of Universal Expansion. He believed everything in reality was subject to this primary cosmic law. And he believed that the human condition needed to be primarily understood in relation to this one basic driving principle. I recall he objected fiercely to deism, because it had stopped expansion beyond the concept of God. He thought the invention of God had put a cap on our imagination. I was immediately attracted to the novelty of his viewpoint. I had never heard anyone before him posit such an obvious notation, and at the same time, had never heard anyone bridge astrophysics to human psychology so uniquely. Why don’t people more readily see themselves as needing to expand like their cosmos? Why do people seem to go out of their way not to make such an obvious connection? This got me thinking about universal expansion and what that had to do with me and my life.

It seems to me that people have gone out of their way to not think of themselves as needing to expand like the universe and I’m not sure why this is so. Despite this, when I try to get down to my own deepest needs and strivings, what grabs at me the most, what I come away with most, is my unstoppable need to delve more deeply into what existence is: to learn more. Now, when you think of it, isn’t learning just a subtle way to self expand? So when I’ve achieved something in life, I’ve moved on to something new. Kept growing, extending, deepening. Are we not mostly evolution or expansion-in-action? One way to look at expansion is visual.

When I ponder the tie between cosmic expansion and love of freedom, I find myself remembering my first adventures out west, my first airplane flight from sea level Long Island to Salt Lake City, Utah in 1965, when I awoke after a night flight to see snow-capped mountains outside the hotel window as if they were on a big billboard of some kind. Wow! My eyes delighted by all the “extra” space the distant mountains created.

Then I keenly remember a euphoria of perception when first to Denver, in the mid 70’s. Mountains have a powerful presence on people. There’s a geospiritual correlation between mountains and humans, a literal uplifting of some kind you can directly experience. I went around smiling for months just because I had daily visual beauty and depth of field all about me. My eyes drank in expansive views in an almost sensual manner. There was a sense of being visually grateful, even privileged, just to be there. The setting had enhanced the quality of my life in some unclear but real way. My dear geologist friend, Hal Proska coined the phrase “geospiritual”, he too was a great believer in the energetic nature of unknown forces at work beneath the surface nature of the ordinary world.

I lived below majestic Pikes Peak in Manitou Springs and in other wonderful sites in Colorado for nearly twenty years. Felt free as a bird. So much room to move around in! You can even find actual remote places where there are no other people around for miles. That can be very relaxing. I felt more fully alive there than I do now in visually-hemmed in Williamsburg, VA, where a large nearby highway intersection opens up enough clearance to take in the sky. That’s sad and sorrowful to say, but true. Are my eyes less free than they were in Manitou? Can our eyes be confined?

We need to see how the law of expansion bears on us and the lives we lead. Is it possible that what people refer to when they use this familiar word, freedom, is simply referring to that cosmic aspect in people which corresponds to the need to be free to expand like the cosmos?

This is why I sometimes feel a quick fury at the slow driver holding me up, getting in my way, not letting me be on my way! But the truth of this is really driven home if you remind yourself how we punish people for wrong-doing. We put them in jails, restrict their movements, imprison them. Don’t we mostly prize freedom very highly? Is there anything else that grieves us more than to be caught in a traffic jam, or in some other way be restricted, trapped, crowded, confined, overpowered, or held against our will?

You can see how easily the cosmic and human need to expand conforms with one of Eckhart Tolle’s teachings about “space consciousness”, relearning a more spacious recognition of the larger “container” of awareness out of which all else arises. He teaches the importance of bringing more space and stillness into our experiences and relationships with others. It does seem that consciousness wants to keep expanding and enlarging, doesn’t it? Don’t we feel more present, peaceful, and relaxed when we feel expanded, enlarged, and freed? Eckhart urges us to remember the deep ground of awareness that underpins and enables the world of forms.

I’ve been doing some expansive work with my equally reflective soul friend, Rose Diamond, during the past two years. We refer to it as our Consciousness Practice. It represents our joint wish to experiment with bringing more conscious awareness into our relationships. In this practice, we set aside a regular time to be very present and transparent, co-create a sacred space, and enter into a very strong witness-centered form of awakening more completely into the present moment. This practice came quite naturally to us; both introspective types, trained psychotherapists, analytical and intuitive, and prone to self reflection and deeper types of exchanges than most people seem comfortable with. She and I will be talking more about our practice over time, but for now I just wanted to make a point about the importance of us learning how to expand into more open states of receptivity than we usually do, and what gifts and blessings this gives rise to. Most people would agree that there is a very special energy, intense higher forms of consciousness have. Surely this unnamed enlivening power is of an energetic nature; you can feel it as an entraining vibration moving throughout the whole body, in every cell so to speak.

Many days I feel like an expanding cosmic being. Other times like a lead balloon, as we say. :-)

Some Thoughts on the New Presidency from an Alien

2009-02-01T16:43:00.000-08:00

By Rose Diamond

I’m an English woman living for a while in America, and according to the authorities that makes me “an alien”. I have to say, I frequently feel I’ve flown in from another planet and I’m witnessing a bizarre culture, but I felt like that in my birth country too.

After England, I lived in Scotland for twenty years, and that has a culture quite distinct from England; it’s own separate legal and education system, tradition of song, poetry, music, interpretations of religion, and so on. From Scotland I moved to New Zealand where I lived for twelve years, and now I’ve been here in Virginia for the last two years. Whilst these countries are all Western and English speaking, they’re all quite different. New Zealand and America are like the yin and yang, at different poles in the personality spectrum.

Living in different cultures in this way means I’m always an “outsider” and I have to be diplomatic when making social commentary. One of the things I like about the Brits is we do social commentary very well, anyone who watched David Frost back in the ‘60’s or Monty Python, knows that the Brits love to laugh at themselves, at each other, and at their politicians. I think that’s a healthy release of tension.
Another aspect of living in different cultures, or being a “spiritual gypsy”, is it makes me trans-national. I don’t have any allegiance to any particular nation. I really do feel like a global citizen, and from that perspective I find blatant expressions of nationalism disturbing, even when they’re positive expressions.
So here I am living in America in the worst economic meltdown for 80 years, observing, suffering, rejoicing, and attempting to build community. Along with millions of others, in this country and elsewhere, I felt a huge relief and joy when Barack Obama was elected. Of course I understand the significance of him being a black man, the first black president, and that seems so hopeful for this country and for the world at this point in history, a triumph of justice. For me, the joy at his election comes because he is clearly a conscious person; he moves and acts with grace and beauty; he thinks before he speaks; he doesn’t stoop to the same ole, same ole negative politics of dirt throwing; he stands for something. He’s smart; he’s articulate; he’s inspiring. This is all very refreshing in a politician, especially a politician as central on the world stage as the American President.

I was very moved on election night and on inauguration day to see so many Americans overcome with joy at the election of their new president. To me this shows there is a real longing in oh so many people in this country, for something new, for change, for a politics with heart maybe? A politics to remake America as a more humane society.

What concerns me is the huge gap between the joy, the longing, the hero worship, on the one hand, and the stark reality of people’s lives on the other. I live near Williamsburg, and this is not a poor town by any stretch of the imagination. Yet, every day I hear reports that commerce is frozen. Nobody is spending on anything but the bare necessities. Even people who have money aren’t spending it. So there’s one level of recession created from national debt and inflation, and another level created from fear. When money isn’t circulating everyone suffers, everyone is stuck, people become more contracted. It’s a difficult time to be living through. I hear every day of more people losing their homes, not in this area, but elsewhere. Where is the humanity in a society that turns people out of their homes? Isn’t having a home and the wherewithal to keep it running, a basic foundation for any humane society? Isn’t accessible healthcare for everyone another basic of a humane society? How have we, with all our technological prowess, creativity and invention, got so far from what really matters?

I see a huge and deep longing for change in so many of the American people but I don’t know how many people really know how to manifest positive change. Days after the Obamas moved into the Whitehouse I read in the alternative press lots of bitching and moaning about the new president: “Well, he’s been in office for five days and he hasn’t changed the world yet, he can’t be any good, he’s just gonna be another big disappointment like all the rest.” Come on guys! How about taking a bit of responsibility for the change you want to see?

I was at a Martin Luther King breakfast on Monday, and black community activist, Mrs Bobbye Alexander, stood at the end and said, “If Obama fails, it’s because each one of us has failed.” The time is well past for believing that any one hero is going to make it right; we’re moving from the age where we put authority outside ourselves and either hero worship that authority or crucify it. And we’re moving into a time when we realize the authority is in each one of us. If there has to be a hero then you’re it, and I’m it too. If we want positive change then we have to be the change and create the change, and join with others who want it too. We have to change our thinking and learn new skills. If there’s going to be any evolution in this country, it’s going to come from the people, and from each person making the commitment to raise his or her consciousness, and to live from that higher state of consciousness on a daily basis. When enough people raise their consciousness, the politicians have to follow suit. Obama knows that. Fear is the biggest barrier to higher consciousness; it’s the way people have always been controlled. Feeling disempowered and handing over your authority to a hero or an anti-hero, is an expression of fear, or not knowing what else to do.

Living at this time requires a big courage. It’s the courage to stay awake and be clear eyed. It’s the courage to hold the vision, the longing, the dream in one hand, and at the same time not flinch from reality, not avoid or deny the suffering which is caused by the present deprivation. We need people to keep the hope alive. Obama is such a person.

I have no idea what kind of politician he’ll turn out to be, or how much he’ll be able to restore from the former president’s legacy of ruination and constitution breaking. But I do see him as a new kind of politician: a conscious politician, a bridge builder, a man who listens and wants to hear all sides, someone who has understood the new paradigm of unity we are moving in to. None of this is easy. I would venture to say that the individual work of restoring our own consciousness to a clear, peaceful, creative state is almost as heroic as being a President. We all have our unique contribution to make. We are each responsible for the collective good. There is an enormous amount of work to be done. This is no time for bitching, moaning, complacency, or passing the buck. The time is now, and we are the people. The opportunity for real radical change to a more humane, united society and world, won’t ever come again in this way.

Disillusionment,Growth and Surrender

2009-01-05T08:49:00.000-08:00

To be ready for wholeness, first be fragmented. To be ready for rightness, first be wronged. To be ready for fullness, first be empty. To be ready for renewal, first be worn out. To be ready for success, first fail. To be ready for doubt, first be certain.
Tao Te Ching

Happy New Year! If you’re like most of the people I’ve spoken to in the last few days you may be saying,” I’m glad 2008 is over, that was a tough year.” We’re all hoping for something better but hope is not enough. We have to choose, intend and consciously create the new.

Yes, the latter part of last year was tough here in the States. It was a time of disillusionment, loss, stress and chaos for many. Seeing the winter trees as I drove home the other day reminded me how disillusionment is a state of being stripped of comfort, stripped to the bone, down to the place of bare necessity, to the vulnerable self with no place to hide.

To lose one’s illusions about anything is ultimately a good thing because it means we can get real, and once we know what’s real we can become empowered to make conscious choices and create our reality anew.

But disillusionment is also uncomfortable and confusing because it creates a shift in identity – in our sense of who we are. Do you know those moments when you suddenly see yourself, your relationship or your situation differently? You may feel shocked, betrayed or tricked. You wonder if you have been blinded or bewitched. And of course most of us do walk around blind to parts of ourselves. These are the parts we have hidden or disassociated from, way back in the past when it wasn’t safe to experience ourselves fully. Many people disassociate from their vulnerability for instance, or from their need to be in control, or from their anger or spite. We can usually see these aspects of self very clearly in others, especially our nearest and dearest, and we try to get the other person to change because we can’t stand to see that part of us we’re hiding from. When we’re in a conscious relationship this is what we call shadow work or mirror work: seeing our friend, partner or family member as a mirror revealing to us our own blind spots. It’s a good idea when making a judgment of another to check and see if that quality or behavior we’re judging is also in us. But we’re all very good at fooling ourselves so we may not even see it when we look! Notice what you become most reactive to in others, reactivity is a very good warning system that there’s part of your self you are defending against which may be getting ready to come out of the closet.

But it’s all good! Dis-illusionment strips away old limiting patterns of thought and perception and shakes up our sense of who we are. It can be like the playground game, Blind Man’s Buff, where you blindfold someone and turn them around and around, then when they’re totally giddy, you point them in a new direction and they stumble off in blind faith.

We could see illusions rather like the chrysalis stage of the butterfly, in which we need the outer casing to keep us safe while we grow and then at a certain time the innate patterning to transform into the butterfly becomes so strong we have to shed the outer protection. Was the chrysalis in a state of illusion about itself and the nature of reality or was it simply living out a natural phase of its development?

Illusions usually crack apart when we’ve played them to the limit. As creative beings we all do the best we can to adapt to the situations of our lives, especially when we are young and vulnerable and have no choice but to stay in the difficult situation. At a certain point our creative adaptations start to hurt us more than they comfort us because they are preventing us from being whole and authentic. The growing self is like a plant that’s ready to be re-potted. It’s uncontainable life force pushes against the limitations of its pot, its roots ache to stretch out and draw more sustenance from the earth, it can’t breathe. It is like this for the fetus too as it nears the moment of birthing.

As we reach the point where the old identity cracks and strains, we may feel restless, trapped, we may play out some old dramas one last time, just so we get to see them clearly.

There is terror in breaking out of one’s cosy pot, the warm womb, one’s chrysalis shell, and entering into the unknown, the void, the blank slate. We are not conditioned to deal easily with emptiness and not knowing, especially here in America where identity is built on doing, achieving, being super-independent, being the best, the expert, the knower, the success story.

At the point where limitation is hurting most, if we’re lucky, we surrender, let go and free fall into emptiness.
More next week…..
Namaste
Rose

MESSAGE FROM THE HOPI ELDERS
You have been telling the people that this is the Eleventh Hour.
Now you must go back and tell the people that this is the Hour.
And there are things to be considered:

Where are you living?
What are you doing?
What are your relationships? Are you in right relation?
Where is your water? Know your garden.
It is time to speak your Truth.
Create your community. Be good to each other.
And do not look outside yourself for the leader.
This could be a good time!

There is a river flowing now very fast.
It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid.
They will try to hold on to the shore.
They will feel they are being torn apart, and they will suffer greatly.

Know the river has its destination.
The elders say we must let go of the shore, push off into the middle of the river
Keep our eyes open and our heads above the water.
See who is in there with you
And celebrate.

At this time in history we are to take nothing personally.
Least of all, ourselves.
For the moment that we do, our spiritual growth and journey comes to a halt.

The time of the lone wolf is over. Gather yourselves!
Banish the word "struggle" from your attitude and your vocabulary.
All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration.

We are the ones we've been waiting for.

(Contributed by Vivienne Wright, Founding Member, Auckland)
— THE ELDERS / ORAIBI, ARIZONA / HOPI NATION

New Moon Magic

2008-12-29T18:12:00.000-08:00

Rose Diamond

On Saturday 27^th December, we held our first local meeting of A Whole New World. It was New Moon in Capricorn, a potent time for planting seeds, and we met to create New Moon Magic.

Sitting in our heart sharing circle, we talked of many things. Most of the people in the group defined themselves as creative. An important aspect of my vision is to build a world in which everyone is free to develop and express their creativity and to live their passion. I’m convinced when each of us is free to be authentic and to offer our unique gifts, the whole will work perfectly together. Each of us carries a fragment of a Grand Design, and when we bring our fragments together we reveal the whole picture. The fragmented picture is full of stresses and strains; when the whole comes together there is a beautiful flow and luminosity.

We are a long way from achieving this vision. Most of us who have chosen to follow our creativity get by on a wing and a prayer. A creative state is open, expansive and focused, it is the realm of possibility and it demands all one’s attention. It is easy to get lost in this state and forget that the bills need to be paid. Then suddenly, yikes, it’s rent day, and we contract into survival mode, a state of fear and lack.

I know both of these states very well, since the evolution of A Whole New World has involved three years of mostly unpaid work. The creative benefits are huge yet the economic hardship is stressful at times. I know the majority of people in the world live in economic stress far worse than anything I will ever experience and my own financial limitation brings me a little bit closer to understanding them and being compassionate towards the struggles of others. It is very hard to be creative from survival mode. Fear is a contraction on the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual levels. It creates physical disease and keeps us trapped in limiting emotional and mental patterns. Fear cuts us off from Source energy, it creates the illusion we are separate and struggling alone, it is the great controller of the human spirit.

As the economic meltdown deepens more and more people are being pitched into survival mode. Yet we are resourceful. We can learn how to live a different way. We can learn to share more, to be more compassionate to each other’s struggles, to live without material luxuries, to find our satisfaction from within and through building community together. We can learn to drop the prideful egoic beliefs that have been instilled in us as part of our western conditioning: that we have to do it alone, that we can’t show each other our vulnerability, that success comes dressed in a corporate suit. We can learn to live more simply, more sustainably, more deeply, more authentically. We can learn to build co-creative businesses with heart to sustain many people.

We are in the transition right now, from the old to the new. We are standing on the edge of a crumbling cliff and the new is on the other side of the chasm. How will we build a bridge to take us across? Perhaps we will be like the spider spinning the silken threads from her own body to build a web which is strong and mostly invisible, creating something out of nothing, just because it is in her nature to do so.

One of the prime intentions of A Whole New World is to bring together people who are awakening to the new consciousness, to the realization of our essential interconnectedness, and our collective need to start living in a different way. We are building a local, national and global community of people who want to support each other through this transitional time, to share or experiences, to learn new skills, and to co-create. As an educator one of my passions is to live the experience and then to pass on the fruits of that experience to support others: this is one of the purposes of our monthly New Moon Magic publications and local/global sharing circles.

On Saturday we joined our energies through a meditation and visualization and we sent out New Moon seeds of vision, love, and intent. New Moon in Capricorn is the moon of Christ Consciousness, or Love-in-action. Together we can create more of that expansive, creative, loving energy, latent with possibility. We can support each other to be Love-in-action; to walk the talk.

Each one us makes a difference

and together we can do what seems impossible.

To join us in creating A Whole New World, go to http://livingyourpassion.info/nmm/

Happy New Year and a Whole New World

2008-12-29T17:24:00.000-08:00

Love and peace, Woods

I confess to much difficulty getting excited about and into the upbeat expectancies of the holiday season. This is true partly because generally, I really don’t get in the swing of a nationalist calendar as a rule. Beyond, say, Thanksgiving, my favorite national day of celebration, I really don’t relate to the rest of what we call holidays, which are seldom holy for me.

In my soon to be published long e book with photos I call Dazzlephrenia, I have, near the end, a few works of thought, which capture my longing for some new holidays (when we can feel our lives as sacred), and when people from around the world, can gather en masse, for spiritual growth, human betterment, and evolutionary advancement.. They have the flavor of a whole new world I dream of.

my new pledge of allegiance

I have a new pledge of allegiance hanging very visibly in my studio. I bet many of my readers would take this new pledge also:

I PLEDGE

ALLEGIANCE

to the

EARTH

and all the

LIFE

which it supports,

ONE PLANET

in our care, irreplaceable

with sustenance and respect

for all.

(1992, byJanine Lamb, Lamb & Lion Studio, New Hampshire)

new holidays for transformation

One of the important things it took forever for me to learn and seems so fully obvious once said, is how important human willpower is to set our intention for attaining something we want. The power generated by devout prayer, the miracle a healer performs, the blossoming splendor of purple morning glories bathing in the morning light, the thumping of hearts and liveliness in every living being, and all the rest of the magnificence dancing around us in our daily lives are all part of the cosmic splendor and radiance of being alive. And remarkably, we humans in particular, seem increasingly more able to access and make use of this primal life-giving, flowering, nourishing, creative, intuitive, manifesting and miraculous power. Because so many more people are awakening to higher consciousness, we are witnessing what Eckhart Tolle is calling the “Flowering of Human Consciousness”. (We’re the “early flowers”) and the beginning, in history, when new collective powers are coalescing for good. We will be able to do even more remarkable and brilliant things, as we learn how to harness the stupendous potentials of our Einsteinian collective mind and soul.

When a flowering is underway it is as unstoppable as a healthy fetus determined to develop fully according to its inherent plan or built-in design. I used to enjoy calling it the bloom force. In those days, I used to think of the very sky and atmosphere turgid and pregnant with a new world in the making. This is the manifesting force I wrote about near the beginning of Dazzle; how is it we can truly wield an incomprehensible power when we want something so fully we can taste it, and become determined to do everything possible for attainment? Aligned with this cosmic fecundity, creative humans can make things happen, become virtual creators. When come-to-life conditions are favorably ripe for unfoldment, all that’s needed are the space-time coordinates to materialize and come to life. When we set a sincere and sufficient intention, we create a virtual garden for flowering, and surely some kind of life ushers forth.

One way we could easily contribute to human flowering is to adopt a few new special holidays on a worldwide calendar. My suggestion would be to use the Solstices and Equinoxes as perfect coordinates already globally in place for a few new global holidays I have in mind. We need actual times set aside, when we can power gather for good (add the power of our own personal strivings, capacity to fiercely love, and live soulfully, to that same power in everyone else, and let the best of ourselves and the others rub shoulders at one time, and see what miraculous events can be alchemized and galvanized as we learn to power gather en masse.

So four times a year, all humanity would agree to congregate together with an agreed upon emphasis or common theme for the common good, in a mood of romantic idealism, and dream and stretch ourselves into a better world. This would give humanity a means by which we can sprout and grow by rallying for the good stuff: peace, justice, the new consciousness, love, collective healing, the soul journey, celebration of the mysteries, end of suffering, whatever else is good for everybody, all life, and all those special beings of all kinds who will come alive after us. Another way of putting it is the world needs to be willing to put four days a year on the same global calendar. Is it not appropriate in the transition to more global citizenship, that we begin the new global calendar in the high spirit of accordance with basic human decency, celebrating our diversity, the sacredness of all life, harmony with nature, and the unbelievable blessing it is just to be alive?

I was grappling with the idea of the importance of getting life’s finest, most joyful, and exhilarating experiences on the calendar, so they can happen to us and we can experience them. If we had special days set aside for these sorts of ultimate things, then there would be a better chance of attaining them. We need time set aside for finding solutions; times for the joys and pains of learning and growing, tasting higher states of awareness potential in us, taking the giant leaps each life requires of us, living our passion, feeling more unitive with others, feeling One with them, being love itself at the same time, and celebrating the wonderment of having life. By some yet unknown energy and dynamic mechanism, the creative force, we can embody what we are and manifest material things from desire and will. It is all very magical, mysterious, and divine.

If the world agreed on this, it could become a passageway to a more humane world. In this sense, there need to be Days to Manifest. Call the first of these holidays: a Day to Grow, on the Vernal Equinox, a time to plant what we want to manifest, to become more than we are. The 2000 leap together. You got the idea?

The second might be a Day for Discovery, a holiday for personal exploration and creative discovery.

A third one might be a Day for Love, one day to be more giving and expressive of feelings and love’s importance in daily life, beside Valentine’s Day!

How about a Day for Justice, to concentrate our collective powers on matters of social justice and equality?

Many, many other very worthwhile themes are possible. The important part about this is to get days and times set aside on our calendars for worthwhile experience, and what is exceptional and unordinary. The unique goals, activities, rituals, traditions, rites, and observances could evolve with repetition and have all the pageantry and originality folks want to bring to them. I’m hoping people will really get off on the opportunity to begin a new rite of passage from scratch. This would make us myth makers.

What would happen if we decided to evolve in unison on a particular day? In concentrating our great human powers to love, expand beyond ourselves, to be highly sensitive, kind, and generous, and to evolve into a riper state of maturity and wisdom, to discover and embody more of what lies within our infinite potentials, could we discover a new societal means of transforming ourselves, improving our overall quality of life, enriching our moment to moment experiences of being alive, cultivating more of a Golden Age on Earth? I’d like to see what huge love fests and healing meditations and spiritual gatherings could co-create, for example. I dream of us evolving beyond ourselves, waking more, being more grateful for our amazing and mysterious lives, being more compassionate with all who live and each and every one becoming just a little bit more than we are now.

It’s time to evolve more. It’s time for humanity to learn how to evolve more consciousness and in so doing find its way to a greater savoring of life and more joyful states of gratitude for life. All that’s needed for this, is to simply let the enormity, beauty, and mystery of existence sink into awareness and shine through all else. There is a terrible shortage of gratitude for life in our human, especially Western, fast paced world. That’s what joy is all about: a heartfelt appreciation for our lives. Well, how about some new holidays which can help us to flower more of this sentiment?

The evolution sought takes nary a fraction of a second to go into effect, probably at the speed of light.

Please just commit yourself to this one single thing: go up a notch.

Resolve to evolve a little in the new millennium, go up a notch, and ask those you love to do the same. Use the power house of the new year as a gateway, as a power jump to a loftier, kinder world. Help make Earth ripple with new consciousness and the promise of a whole new world.

The New Consciousness

2008-12-23T05:01:00.000-08:00

Rose Diamond

Someone asked me the other day to explain the “new consciousness”. I think the term was coined by one of my favorite spiritual teachers, Eckhart Tolle, to describe the shift in values he perceives to be happening amongst growing numbers of people on the planet right now. As I understand it, the new consciousness is a fundamental realization of the interconnectedness of all Life. It’s an understanding that we are all part of One Life, one energy, one consciousness; we are all connected in spirit with each other, and with all other life forms on our planet.

The new consciousness is not a religion; there is no church, no creed, no bible, no hierarchy. The truth is discovered within each soul, through learning to listen to the inner self and to trust subjective experience. From the point of view of the new consciousness, the Christ or the Buddha, or Mohammed, or Allah, or Krishna, were all embodiments of higher stages of enlightened consciousness, of which we are all potentially capable. They were models of our highest potential, great spiritual teachers and inspirers; all way showers rather than the One and Only Way and Truth.

Historically, the realization each of us carries a spark of the divine and is capable of direct knowledge of God was deeply disturbing to the religious authorities, who wanted to maintain political control and keep knowledge, power and wealth in the hands of the ruling elite (themselves). Disempowerment and colonization of one group of people by another has always taken place through repression and destruction of the spiritual beliefs, rituals and sacred practices that provide meaning and collective identity, in conjunction with theft of land. When we look back through history we can see many examples of this: the destruction of the Goddess religions for example, which were essentially religions of the people and of the sacredness of the Earth, culminated in the persecution and murder of millions of people during the Reformation. The genocide of the Jews during World War 11; the destruction of Native American Indian culture and of the Australian aborigines were similar crimes against the spirit by Europeans, as is the current desecration of the Tibetan Buddhist culture by the Chinese.

When our sense of connection to spiritual reality, and to inner truth, is broken, as it has been through the industrial and post industrial eras, life is rendered sadly soul-less. This disconnection from soul and spirit accounts for much of present day psychological malaise, a kind of emptiness which leads to compensatory addictions, eating disorders, and grabbing for material toys and image enhancers which can never fill up the hole inside.

As I write this I do not feel very optimistic about the human condition. It seems there has always been a senseless and unbridled cruelty in humans, alongside our brilliance. I think it is always important to remember these stark truths because they prevent us from becoming complacent and keep in focus the challenge that lies ahead of us if we are to raise the consciousness on the planet to a level where such atrocities of humans against humans and humans against animals cease to exist.

My hope for a Whole New World lies in the “new consciousness” which is a journey of reconnection. I call it the soul journey. It is a peeling away of the outer layers of conditioning, all the rules and beliefs we have swallowed whole from family, school, religion and the media, so that we can hear the still small voice within: our own authentic truth, which paradoxically, when we listen deeply and well, turns out to be universal truth too. The deeper we go into self, the more we find each other, in a shared universal humanity. There are many different tools and practices to help us unfold the authentic self: the regular practice of meditation not only helps to clear and focus the mind but also, over time, dissolves the layers of ego which separate us from our deeper self and from each other.

Those of us who follow a non-denominational spiritual path, led from the inside, find our sense of belonging with other similar seekers. We learn to recognize each other and delight in finding each other. We create communities together, although these are not necessarily located in one physical place. Communities come together for a time in groups or gatherings and then disperse and regroup elsewhere. We are a global community. We are of all ages, all colors of skin, all ethnicities, all economic backgrounds and walks of life. When we can’t find each other we feel alienated and different, for from the point of view of more mainstream or materially focused thinking, we appear to be a little crazy, or idealistic dreamers. Connecting with others of like mind and similar energetic vibration is comforting, it feels like home. It’s empowering because we enable each other to be more of who we truly are. Separation from each other is painful and isolating. It takes a lot more effort to keep the flame going alone. Together we spark each other, we create rivers of fire, into which we can launch the survival ark of a Whole New World.

Although I’ve always lived in Western, English speaking countries, the experience of making a new life in four different countries: England, Scotland, New Zealand and now the USA, or actually five including Wales, has made me into a global citizen. I don’t have a permanent home anywhere so, like the turtle, I take my home with me. My friend, Green Willow, calls me a spiritual gypsy. Because I don’t have strong ties with my birth family or a lifelong partner, I’ve learned to love the ones I’m with and experience them as my family. Because it gets silly after a while lugging things across the world, I’ve learned to be mostly unattached to material possessions and to release egoic attachments too. There is freedom in this. Following my soul’s purpose in this way has built a sense of trust in my inner knowing and resources. At times I feel lost and abandoned too and I have had to work at trusting my inner calling and valuing myself without many of the external supports considered normal. All of this is teaching me not to judge other people too much, for we all have our own unique path to walk, and we each have different life lessons to learn at different phases of life. It’s never a good thing to judge another person because we cannot walk in their shoes, or hear the unique song of their soul. Yet we are deeply conditioned to judge ourselves, each other, other nations, other ethnicities, other spiritual beliefs. Recently, I discovered that judging others is an old, unconscious defense against feeling my own pain. It is easier to judge and blame others than to feel the pain of my own sense of failure, inadequacy, disappointment or loneliness. It is easier to judge, an attribute of the isolating ego, than to open deeper to the healing power of self compassion. The cost of judging is we remain fragmented: wholeness is born from deep acceptance of what is.

As the launching of our project, A Whole New World, gets closer (January 26^th) I have been experiencing an almighty stress. My understanding of the act of creating is, it is necessary to hold a clear vision on the one hand, and on the other to have one’s feet firmly planted on the ground in current reality. The closer one approaches the vision, the greater the stretch and tension between this and the as yet untransformed present. I have been feeling the expansion and contraction of the birthing process on a daily basis, one day flung wide into a loving universal embrace, the next day shivering on a cold ledge above a chasm of impossibility. At the same time I have felt like the neonate forcing my terrified way through the birth canal. I would love to be part of a learning community in which I could say this and someone would reply, “Yes, Rose I know exactly what you mean”, or “I experience something like that too, tell me more”. For me, a purpose of a Whole New World learning community is to develop a common language for our subjective experiences as we make our soul journey through the landscape of global transition. Such a common language and shared mythology reduces our isolation and gives us courage for being here now and for the work ahead.

Even amongst people of like mind, it is frequently challenging to get along and to accept our differences and idiosyncrasies. It is very challenging to create new ways of being and doing together, in which everyone feels free and everyone is responsible. It’s necessary to value the challenging times as much as the river of fire; to love and nurture our imperfect human-ness as much as our sparks of divine intelligence.

With this in mind, I humbly invite you to join us in creating A Whole New World. It’s a co-creative dance; an experimental dance; a dance at our Growing Edge, which we will learn one step at a time, as we cheer each other on to greater acts of bold love and death defying creativity.

Namaste,

Rose Diamond

Winter Solstice, December 22, 2008

To learn more about A Whole New World go to: http://livingyourpassion.info/nmm/

Building the new culture for a whole new world

2008-12-14T10:45:00.000-08:00

Woods Elliott: A Planetary Culture of Presence
I see The Growing Edge blog as a huge empty creative canvas upon which we can write our social art and commentary, have it displayed, and invite reaction and further elaboration of the collective process. Ideas arise, people express themselves in relation to those ideas. New ideas germinate from the transactions and interactions. The makings for a whole new world are identified, agreed upon, values are rearranged and priorities are reconstructed accordingly.

As we approach the launch of A Whole New World in January, Rose and I have begun to look at what culture-building could be: are there key elements that alchemize in the fields of collective consciousness; how is collective consensus arrived at; is a new master list of cultural priorities conceivable; and how would new accords and agreements be implemented and enforced even if miraculously arrived at, lol? The future is co-created when we can consciously envision and manifest it out of the latency of what is in the present moment. How do we manifest what happens? How can we evolve more by knowing we evolve and directly influence the evolutionary process?

We see the monthly teleconferences we will be starting in February as part of New Moon Magic as an exciting opportunity to interface with one another as human planetarians for deepened relationships, cooperativeness, interdependence, and to feel human unity.

It was not fortuitous that Rosy and I linked up from opposite sides of the planet. Perhaps we are transcultural, transreligious, transnational enough to contribute to the seeding work of social reconstruction. Here's a few foundational ideas for a whole new world for this week:

1 We'd like to help build a whole new world by envisioning what it might look like, what its primary facets are, how it will be different from the current culture we have, and inviting evolutionary people from around the globe to join us in building the new. People are, in certain ways, trapped and limited by their isness and daily membership in their society. Becoming more transcultural means going beyond the boundaries of one's culture of origin. There will be resistance to this because, in seeking a more inclusive identification with all people, many people will feel disloyal to their own nations. In a sense, participation in our monthly New Moon Magic calls and The Growing Edge will be a first transcultural step for some.

2 We'd like to provide self declared global citizens with a means by which we can make a shift to more international identity, not by moving somewhere else, but by redefining who we are, in which important ways we're One with all life, and to embody that shift locally and globally on the web altogether. To participate in AWNW is to be open to new cultural viewpoints and allegiances, to learn about becoming a world citizen, and feel new infusions of hope from an expanded sense of personal identity.

3 So this website could be looked upon as a collective experiment for this whole new world in the making. Can we be the stem cells the body of humanity needs? Can we continue to go to work during the day, but in the evenings, secure in front of our communicative computers, can we take the rite of passage and quietly get the new world off the ground? This is one of our centermost beliefs: that a whole new world can be and is already being designed and quietly built beside the dying old one, and people can make their major transitions to the new one, in their own time, and when it feels right for them. Major transitions can still be gradual and not traumatic.

4 What we see as critical if we are to navigate major changes, is to stay calm, sane, and not panic. This is key to survival. We need to stay cool, relaxed, and go with the flow. Eckhart Tolle's teachings about achieving "presence" can be very helpful in combating stress. He exudes "presence" from his pores. He's a living spiritual tranquilizer and his teachings are so relevant. Collective human madness is unmistakably all around us, but that madness is not us. It's the "pain body", it's unconsciousness. We need to awaken more. Spreading the collective awakening is a primary goal for Rose and me. Awakening people need to find each other and join up together. Humanity does need to shift from mind to awareness. AWNW will be committed, no, devoted to augmenting this query on how awareness differs from mind?

5 Another important focus at AWNW is about all of us learning how to provide for each other what we most need to get through these major transitions, and be stronger than ever on the other side. There are now mammoth paradigm shifts in the making. Our old familiar, taken for granted, same old-same old, declining world is coming apart. We know this because we see the thieves and bandits out there making a big killing, while we watch on helplessly, bailing out the thieves. A primary goal for AWNW is to create a giant Heart Circle for sharing our experiences and a safe haven where people can look to each other in new ways, make new choices, and cope with the hardships.

6 The good news in all the societal collapse underway, is afterwards, we'll be a more interdependent, community-centered species, freed from the increasing economic entrapment, serfdom, and penal colony-like lifestyles of the old empire, and freed to co-create a whole different way of living far more sustainably, responsibly, cooperatively, brilliantly, and healthfully.

7 So AWNW is about the new paradigm, "The Shift", the new consciousness, time to "upgrade" the old system and help people into lifeboats, setting up survival arks for the human spirit, encourage development of local mutual aid communities to spearhead survival on a local level, and increasingly, nonlocal, less national, and more global communities on the web, like we're doing here. People's lives will begin to revolve more around their immediate neighborhoods and their virtual web communities where they will meet, form new work and play relationships, barter, innovate, be highly creative, and enter collective forms of intelligence which will kick evolution into high gear.

My regrets to those readers who had difficulty signing on to the blog and posting comments from last week. Yikes, is this like asking people to knock, but not letting them in! Remember people in a whole new world need to be very patient and present (I couldn't resist). I swear we'll figure out how to answer your knock.
Much love and peace, Woods

Rose Diamond: From Grit to Beauty

Woods and I were having a conversation last week about how a new culture is created. If a whole new world is to be made it will arise out of a new culture, the way the culture of the pearl transforms grit into beauty. One of the dictionary definitions of grit is: firmness of mind or spirit; unyielding courage in the face of hardship or danger. Like the process of alchemy the new culture will grow and develop as we transform what isn’t working in our lives into something special, by becoming more conscious.

The new culture exists and is growing alongside the old. Many people I know who are part of this new culture call themselves spiritual warriors, or peaceful warriors. The warrior is someone who does battle with the darkness within the self. I’m holding a vision for a world free of war, a totally new world. This is such a radical departure from the world we currently inhabit, it’s almost impossible to conceive or envision. Yet I can envision it, can you?

To me it seems the old outgoing culture of the Piscean Age, is based on duality, war, the industry of war which lines the pockets of the mega wealthy, and the politics of domination and control, including the domination of nature. Isn’t it these values that are morally and actually bankrupting the western world and bringing the global crisis to a head? In contrast, the values of the new culture are peace, cooperation and co-creation, respect for differences and a higher, more inclusive consciousness which respects the sacredness of all life.

Even amongst the people of like mind who are weaving the new culture from their state of being it isn’t always easy to find a common ground and we all have a lot more work to do, especially in communication and finding ways to work together so we can all really fly. As we learn to drop our ego attachments, it becomes easier to co-operate in the creation of a bigger vision for the larger whole of which we are all part. I see this as a path of service and I’m learning to walk this path with all the daily challenges it brings. I certainly don’t always get it right and at times it stretches me to my limits, yet I have no doubts this is what I’m here to do. I’ve learned about culture building through being a group leader all my life and through participating in many different learning communities. I like the idea of a learning community: a group of people coming together to learn. That is how we see A Whole New World: people connecting from all around the world to share our experiences, develop skills, and support each other.

All the learning communities I’ve been involved with have focused on sharing and exploring our inner, subjective worlds and creating a space in which we can let go of the old conditioning that keeps us bound to the old culture of war, domination, and bankruptcy and instead develop more enlightened ways of thinking, being, doing and living together.

Through participating in these circles and pursuing my own passionate interest in the process of transformation, I identified 8 Pillars of Transformation, or sets of skills, attitudes, values, goals and practices, we need to attend to and explore in order to create the whole new world. These are:
1. Our relationship with Nature (and this includes our understanding of human nature.)
I put this one first because unless we redress the balance in our relationship with Nature, and stop wantonly destroying our natural habitat and killing other species, what remains of life on Earth will be stripped of sacredness and life supporting qualities, so our very survival depends upon it.
2. Inner work: raising consciousness, becoming authentic and being the change we want to see.
3. The creative process: understanding how to create and bring more awareness into the process so that we can be conscious creators of our lives rather than victims of circumstances.
4. Living our passion: following our true calling, being of service, and prospering through it.
5. Conscious relationship: seeing relationships as mirrors through which we can learn about ourselves, release dysfunctional patterns, and develop more compassionate, loving communication.
6. Co-creative community: recognizing solutions to our collective problems can only be solved if we learn how to work together and create something better than any of us can do alone.
7. Global responsibility: knowing we are global citizens, part of One Global Family, and that the parts can only truly prosper when we act local and think global.
8. Our relationship with Cosmos: remembering the bigger picture and the mystery of who we are, where we come from, and why we are here.
All of these together create Unity, or the realization that all life is interconnected and the only sane choice is to be in service to this interconnection.

Forgive me if this all sounds a little abstract. I’m presenting the skeleton or structure around which the work of A Whole New World will develop. Over the coming year we’ll be bringing these concepts to life on the blog by sharing our own experiences of each pillar, and what we’ve learned, and by encouraging you to inquire, reflect, share and participate in dialogue with us, as we build our global learning community.

To find out more about the 8 Pillars of Transformation go to: http://livingyourpassion.info and download the free e-book. The longer e-book will be part of our first pre-launch publication for New Moon Magic on December 27th, free to you when you become a Founding Member of A Whole New World: http://livingyourpassion.info/nmm/

We’ve heard some people had trouble posting comments to last week’s blog entries. Please bear with us while we evolve a simpler system. We really want to hear from you and make this blog a participatory event. If you’d like to post something but you can’t work out how, please send your thoughts to rose@awholenewworld.net or woods@awholenewworld.net and we’ll post them for you. Include a photo of yourself , your environment or whatever, if you like.

Namaste,
Rose

WELCOME TO THE GROWING EDGE OF A WHOLE NEW WORLD

2008-12-07T06:48:00.001-08:00

Are you creating a whole new world? Do you want to? Is a whole new world really possible?

For many people the idea that we can positively transform our social arrangements will seem fanciful, especially when we are in the throes of profound economic and environmental crisis; but what better time to envision and invoke the new?

I worked for quite a few years as a psychotherapist and that experience made clear to me the most opportune time for people to make real changes is when our lives aren’t working and we’re hurting. We almost have to get to a point where we have nothing left to lose before we’ll take the risk to shift out of the comfort zone of our mental and emotional habits, move through our fear of the new, and step up to a new level of functioning.

In that sense the current economic crash is a great leveler; apart from the ultra rich, everyone is affected. Right now I know people who have lost their jobs, who are losing their homes, who have seen their life savings dwindle away over night. Others are losing friends, relatives and partners to untimely death. It seems to be a time of loss, of people being stripped of external forms of security. And when we’re stripped of our external supports and comforts, our illusions of independence and separation are torn from us too. We become vulnerable, and this is a beautiful and somewhat rare opportunity to find strength and sustenance within ourselves and with each other, in community.

So, it seems to me that a whole new world can start from the stripping away of illusions and rise from the ashes of the old ways. We invite you to join us on this blog to share our experiences of living through, what one of my teachers, Joanna Macy calls The Great Turning. We hope this blog will become a chronicle of what it is like to be living through this time and what our challenges and triumphs are as we work to raise the phoenix of a new way of living together on the planet from the ashes of the old.

It has been very interesting for me living here in the USA for the past two years. I came here from New Zealand, where I lived for twelve years, and before that from Scotland and England, where I was born. I came to Virginia to explore a relationship with soul friend Woods Elliott, whom I met on the Internet. The relationship itself has been a huge journey of learning, and beyond that I’ve had mixed feelings about being in North America. On one hand I tend to like Americans, and all my life I’ve been influenced by leading edge, forward thinking American writers: poets, novelists, psychologists, feminists, deep ecologists, futurists, have all shaken and awakened me. This morning I went back to take another look at Marilyn Ferguson’s classic work, The Aquarian Conspiracy: Personal and Social Transformation in Our Time. I can vividly remember the moment this book was placed in my hands for the first time, back in 1981, and how my whole being thrilled with excitement as I knew without a doubt there are people like me all over the world, who know something better is possible and who are working to change the world from the inside out.

Living here in Virginia USA, against the backdrop of an administration that has espoused a hard-line military/industrial ideology, which from the point of view of my values has appeared life denying, socially unjust and downright scary, I wrote my book Living your Passion: How Love-in-Action is Seeding a Whole New World. As I was transcribing the interviews with 24 ordinary, extraordinary people, it became clear to me they are representatives of the same culture emerging around the world that Marilyn Ferguson was writing about in 1980. It’s a culture based on the values of peace, living in harmony with nature, co-creation, and being in service to something bigger than the little ego-isolated self. In other words, it’s a culture that points to the possibility that humanity can evolve into a more united, more just, more responsible, more authentic whole new world: One Global Family.

This is the Whole New World I’m envisioning and I know it starts inside each one of us and in all our relationships.

And I know it’s not easy.

It’s easy enough to talk about love and compassion, peace and sharing, and living our passion but it takes a conscious choice and focused intention to live these values everyday and in every aspect of our lives. It’s the hero’s journey the great mythologist, Joseph Campbell wrote about, which transforms us as we live it.

We invite you to join us at The Growing Edge, and through our monthly publication and global teleconference, New Moon Magic, to journey together and to grow a global learning community, where we can share our experiences of living through this auspicious time of transition; to share what we are learning and what we are creating and to support each other to live more abundant and fulfilled lives.

To learn more about Living your Passion, and to download your free e-book introducing the 8 Pillars of Transformation, go to http://livingyourpassion.info

To learn more about New Moon Magic and to become a Founding Member of a Whole New World, go to http://livingyourpassion.info/nmm/

Namaste, Rose Diamond

I confess to a hardly containable excitement at the launching of The Growing Edge blog for our soon to be launched awholenewworld.net website. Let me give a thumbnail sketch of how the co-creative partnership between Rose Diamond and I got started in April 2006 when we met on the Internet and began an immediate, intimate email dialogue which led us both to believe we were destined to become extraordinary soul friends. I found the means to visit her that same August for five weeks in enchanting New Zealand, shortly afterwards she visited me in the States, and after a year of non-working visas and completion of her second book while living with my family, she now has a 3 year working visa for someone extraordinary in her field, and we are off and running.

The soul journey we’ve been on together has deeply changed both our lives and swept us up in a creative-spiritual adventure beyond our reckoning! We are learning how to harness creative, evolutionary energy, employ it in tandem acts of creative congress, and be powered by that extra dimension that’s larger than anybody; truly a transformational experience.

Rose and I have a very special blog in mind for A Whole New World. I’m attracted to the amazing opportunity to share and learn with a larger global audience. I would like to find a more universal language which helps people to feel more unified, and to cultivate a viewpoint that can hold everyone else’s view in it. I began a letter to humanity many years ago and this blog feels like a perfect way to continue that kind of deep conversation and consensus-seeking. I also imagine how exciting it could be to exchange ideas which stimulate and resonate with others and catalyze a deepening progression of exchanges between people.

Until recently, intelligence and creativity have been largely an individual effort, achievement, or undertaking. For me, blogging is about experimenting with collective intelligence, group mind, and potentially, how to circulate the new consciousness. Perhaps wise blogging needs to come from the new consciousness, so competitiveness and mere showboating can be marginalized. I see this blog as representing an opportunity to see if we can co-create a new Olympic or UN forum in which compassionate, supportive connection, mutual aid, and elaboration of human brilliance, rather than competition, are the primary aims and purpose.

A few thoughts about the name of the blog are apropos at the beginning. Rose and I share the conviction that a blog worth its salt needs to stay very immediate, in the living moment, and what’s written needs to have the taste and flavor of what Eckhart Tolle and many other spiritual teachers have called “presence”. Presence entails the activation of a deepened awareness and heart-tempered wisdom, which begins to become more prominent, as over against merely brilliant intelligence without awareness. We believe people who begin to cultivate presenceful experience, can become capable of greater sentience, integral viewpoints, transpersonal convictions, and general wisdom. And these fine qualities enable them to potentially have more intimate, honorable, respectful, tolerant interactions, deeper discussions, spiritual connections, nurturing relationships, and compassion-centered spiritual alliances. The growing edge is that part which is most alive and present; the bud, the manifesting tip of a whole new world, a creative, organic hologram.

I feel something in myself, and in the collective field we share, which resonates loudly as an impending liberation or emancipation of some kind. In myself, I’ve been experiencing it as a rebirth of personal hopefulness and trust; that people will move from terror and victimization in the current economic crises, and seize the moment to revolutionize and transform their lives and create a new mythology for a Golden Age to come: rise in orbit to a whole new world. We’re capable of that.

Staying attached and subservient to the old world drains away people’s vital energy and inner power. It’s time for us to forge a new, more sacred morality, redefine our most important convictions about living and being human; build more meaningful community and compassionate service to others into our lives; build new global relationships which can help us all to climb above our local, national, religious, and ethnic identities and add to those, our warm membership in the whole family of the species on Earth, and with all life on Earth, which is sacred.

I feel very optimistic and expanded and freed from the old dying cultural forms, and all the stressful and deadening negativity associated, so I can tap into my evolutionary potential and play a more transformative role in assisting in the social remodeling facing us. We need people to stretch into their evolutionary power and strength, if humanity is going to survive the present peril, and allow the past culture no longer serving us, to be fertilizer for the new. We can be free from a world that’s no longer working for us. How can we give rise to, give birth to, the new alongside the crumbling old? And even if we don’t know how, can we do it anyway?! In our growing edge, is where we all need to anchor ourselves.

Rose and I will post individual entries each week, scattering seeds for the whole new world on the growing edge. From now, until the launch of our new website, www.awholenewworld.net, and our local/global learning community, New Moon Magic, we will, in the blog, encourage thought about how a new culture is created, and the kind of values and qualities we all consider essential.

We invite you to enter the blog

as if you are entering the whole

new world. We welcome your

wisdom, experiences, stories,

triumphs, challenges, questions

and insights, and we'd love to

hear what's evolving on your

growing edge.

Woods Elliott