Thoughts for the New Year - Opening to Change
Here it is 2008, and a whole new year to experience all that life, in this beautiful world, has to offer us! Passing into the new year stirs thoughts and feelings about new possibilities. Many of us take time at the beginning to consider what we want to give our energy and attention to in the coming year. In doing this reflective exercise, we evoke the desire for change, the change that is an innate aspect of our inner being and of life. Our spiritual self knows that our destiny is to embrace life and to activate and express all the latent potentials that live in each of us.
And while a part of us desires and moves towards change we also have a part that holds back and is resistant. In The Pathwork Guide Lecture # 230 ~ The Universality of Change ~ the Guide speaks to us about this universal desire for change and the equally present holding back from change. The Guide offers that this phenomenon is based on a collective image that all change is to be feared, as change by its nature requires that we venture into the unknown, the unfamiliar.
Collectively we have a false belief that safety and security can only be found in the known. And even if this familiar state limits us, is less than totally satisfying, or maybe even downright miserable, we cling to this known, because we believe it to be safer than the unknown of change. We also frequently underestimate the degree to which we believe that "the unknown is viewed exclusively as something negative and fearsome," as often these thoughts and feeling processes go on below our conscious awareness.
The lecture goes on to point out some additional interrelated fears - those being the passage of time, the fear of change, and the fear of death. Somehow we think that by slowing down the passage of time, and the change inherent in it, we can forestall the advent of aging and death. Throughout the lectures we are reminded how the fear of death and the fear of life are one and the same thing.
We are offered that: "Time is an illusion... Time is also a product of the belief that the future must be avoided and the past held onto in order not to cease to exist." This fear of "non-existence" is our ego's greatest fear, but when we consider the truth that there is a self that lives beyond death, that the real self is eternal and immutable, we find the courage and faith to open to life, movement, and our full self-realization. The Guide offers that "It always requires courage, the taking of an apparent risk, to have faith to believe in something new, something positive."
Whether we are consciously aware of this process or not, fear is a potent energy. We are reminded of the reality of life, that what we believe is what we will create. If we fear that the future will be dangerous and unpleasant, it will be, but it's not in the inherent nature of the unknown to be so. The future will be as the present ~ a reflection of our inner state, our inner beliefs, and our sincere willingness to change and embrace life.
The lecture also reminds us that often we give so much more attention to thoughts of the negative and feared outcomes and less to nurturing a positive belief in the joy, pleasure, and the fulfilment that exists in growth, movement and change. We are encouraged to use our positive will to "begin deliberately and intentionally and consciously to conceive of change as a desirable and joyful movement in which you claim further realizations of joyous experience." and additionally to engage in a "very active meditation and visualization in which you trust change as the most desirable, positive, brilliant and joyful phenomenon that you want to go with and not stem against."
I encourage you to read the lecture in its entirety and I hope that these thoughts support and encourage you towards embracing life and courageously giving yourself to growth, movement and change in 2008.
Warm regards and many blessings on your New Year,
Madeline
The quotes in this paper are taken from Pathwork Lecture 230. To read the lecture visit: www.pathwork.org
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