Today, New Year’s Day, a repeat of the entry we placed here yesterday, for those of you who may have been (ahem) a little “busy” on New Year’s Eve…
And so, we move into yet another year. Another cycle in the Grand Cycle that is Life Itself.
They go so fast, these cycles. They go so fast. Have you noticed? Barely has one begun than it seems over. It was only yesterday, wasn’t it, that we celebrated the New Millennium on New Year’s Eve 2000? Now we celebrate New Year’s Eve 2007, and the new era is old hat.
What happened to these last seven years?
At the end of our lives, we will ask the same question about the whole of our existence. My wonderful friend Dennis Weaver, in his book All the World’s a Stage, talks about the death of his father, when he was at bedside, and one of the last things his dad ever said to him. Frail and dying, the older man whispered to his son…
“…it all goes so fast…”
Dennis said those words never left him. His father’s last lesson had an enormous impact on his life. He chose from that point on to live it to the fullest, to never step back from risk, to take the chances it was necessary to take to create a rich and full experience. Now Dennis, too, is gone from his physical expression. But his memory lingers on, and all the wonderful lessons he taught all of us who knew him.
Perhaps the greatest risk, the biggest chance, any of us will ever take is the risk of recreating ourselves anew in the next grandest version of the greatest vision ever we held about Who We Are. This, of course, is the purpose of all of life, if Conversations with God is to be believed. And yet, this is the very thing that most people never do.
For years — for decades — I was stuck in my Old Self, and I had no thought about moving to a new place or creating a New Me. I may not have liked everything there was to experience about the Old Me, but I knew who that was, I’d become comfortable with it, and I was not going to change.
Yet we are not our yesterdays, we are not our mistakes of the past, we are not our so-called failures and limitations. We are born again in every moment, and it is at times like the present moment — when we begin yet another year, another life cycle — that we can be especially empowered to step away from our old ideas, our old concepts, and our own experience of ourselves, and produce new ones. This is achieved simply though a decision to do so.
Yet that decision takes courage. It takes an enormous willingness to shed our Old Selves and to reveal the New.
Every time I think, yes, well, I’ll get to that tomorrow, I’m reminded of the words of Dennis’ father.
“…it all goes so fast…”
Happy New Year everyone. And let us all make 2008 the year that we rise to our highest self so far…a living, breathing representation of the Divine, an Individuation of Divinity in human form, as Aspect of Godliness, walking upon the earth and blessing it with every word, with every thought, with everything that we do.
If we want a healed planet we must heal ourselves. Yet this need not be an arduous task. This need not be a difficult undertaking. This can be an experience of joy and of wonder, a moment, and a whole series of moments, in which we delight in ourselves…and in each other.
God bless you all today, whoever and wherever you are. Let us move forward together into this New Year, happily creating a new day for humanity.