New Year – REDEFINING REALITY

“All Beginnings are hard. . . . Especially a beginning that you make for yourself. That’s the hardest beginning of all.” ~Chiam Potok

It is not unusual at this time of the year to see dozens of posts touting an individual’s New Year’s Resolutions; posts about losing weight, finding love, getting their dream job. The list is endless. And while I know plenty of people who scoff at the idea; people who say that making New Year’s Resolutions is pointless and meaningless, the concept behind it is really quite lovely; you are promising yourself a new beginning; choosing the turning of the New Year as a convenient marking point for tracking their progress.

The sad part of course is that most people renege on their promise to themselves fairly quickly. In fact, the same people who will move heaven and earth to keep a promise to a spouse or a child; a parent, an employer or a friend will dismiss their promise to themselves with no more than a shrug and an amused chuckle.

Do we really have so little respect for ourselves that we can shrug away our chance to finally create the life we have always imagined? Because when we fail to keep our promises to ourselves that is exactly what we are doing. We are trading in those things we desire most in the whole world in exchange for convenience, or security or acceptance by those who don’t understand what achieving our goals would mean for our authentic selves.

I have no room to judge the person who gives in to those around them; who gives in to the demands of convention or of society and gives up their dream, for I am guilty of the same thing. In fact, I am more guilty than most. I gave up my dream. I gave up my dreams willingly in the hopes that by doing so I could forget who I was; that I could bury my true self in normality and create a life for myself where I would not only not be hurt any more, but one where I would no longer hurt anyone else.

For a few precious years it seemed to work. I was happy, or at the very least I was content. But it didn’t last.

It was inevitable that one day I would wake up to the fact that burying my authentic self was the biggest mistake that I ever made.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t regret the life I lived; it gave me two beautiful daughters and hundreds of lovely memories that I will cherish forever. What I do regret is that I gave up my true self for the illusion of security and belonging.

It has taken me a quarter of a century to come around to acknowledging my mistake and in taking steps to rectify it; to unearth the true me that has been buried for so very long. Unfortunately she has been kept under wraps for so long that no one recognizes her. Well, no one except those who knew me before I buried her alive. Her resurrection has resulted in any number of problems as I try to explain to those around me that this is who I am. That the person they thought I was all this time was nothing more than a façade; a mask worn to prevent those around me from see who and what I truly am; a choice I made because I was afraid of hurting or being hurt ever again.

Some have supported me in this excavation. Others have fought it at every turn, trying their hardest to convince me that going back to the self they always knew is in everyone’s best interest; especially their own since that person was the one they were comfortable with. But going back to the person I was pretending to be is something I will not do. And if becoming myself means turning their world upside down, well then, so be it. I have kept myself buried for far too long. It is time.

And so it is that I make my own New Year’s Resolution. This year I make a new beginning for myself – for my true self. I will take the steps necessary to free myself from those people and situations that would keep me from being who and what I truly am.

Of course this means that there will be some tough decisions to be made over the next 12 months; some very difficult choices and overall upheaval for myself and those closest to me. But like childbirth, once the process has begun, there really is no turning back. I have made myself the promise of a new beginning, and it is a promise that I intend to keep.

Welcome to 2012!

Did you stay up to welcome in the New Year? Did you celebrate with champagne and kisses? Did you throw confetti and drink toasts to everyone’s good health? Did you stay up creating your New Year’s Resolutions? My guess is that no matter who you are and no matter how you choose to celebrate the New Year, it probably crossed your mind to wonder if there is something to all the hoopla about 2012; you know, about 2012 being the end of the Mayan great count calendar and the rumors that the world could possibly come to an end on the winter solstice.

I’m not here to speculate as to the accuracy of the claims made by others or to address the metaphysical symbolism behind the calendar itself. I’m here to ask a question.

While there is plenty of speculation as to whether or not this year will mark the end of the world (or at least the end of the world as we know it) I have a question for you; if it DOES mark the end of the world, what are you afraid of?

I don’t care if you believe in a Christian God or in reincarnation or in the Great Flying Spaghetti Monster, there should be no fear involved in contemplating the end of physical existence. In fact, the ONLY reasons that you should be afraid of the end of the world (if this IS the end of the world) would be either if you don’t believe in anything outside of the here and now, or if you are not living up to the expectations of your belief system and are afraid of being punished by your god or belief system.

If it is the first – then there is nothing I can do for you, I’m sorry. By choosing to believe that there is nothing bigger than yourself– nothing more than this life – you have chosen to live a life of quiet desperation; a life where you have to get all your living in now because there is nothing more than this life so you may as well enjoy yourself in the time that you have, and I understand your frustration, for what is the point of enjoying yourself; getting all of those experiences in if, when you die, they are all gone and there is nothing left?

If it is the second, then there is a question that you need to ask yourself, and it is this; what is keeping you from living up to the expectations of your belief system? If you are afraid that the world will end and that you are not “ready” then there must be something that is keeping you from following through; something preventing you from giving yourself over fully to what is required of you, and if your belief system is important to you, this would definitely be a good time to work through your blocks in that particular area.

Then there are those who believe in a third way of being; one that does not involve the hopelessness and pointlessness of a chance existence or of living up to the expectations imposed on you by an outside deity or belief system. Those who adhere to this particular perspective see their life not as a chance product of evolution, nor as something controlled by and under the influence of an outside deity, but who see themselves as manifestations the divine itself; life as the reflection of the creator; who see themselves, indeed who see every living thing as containing a soul, and the soul as being a direct spark of that eternal oneness that IS divinity; who see each and every living thing as having a direct connection to the divine Source.

For those that adhere to this way of being, the end of the world holds no fear, for they understand that this physical existence is NOT all that there is, that they are a part of something far bigger. As aspects of the divine, they accept responsibility for their actions instead of trying to claim that they are victims of circumstance or cosmic design. They also accept responsibility for creating the life that they are living and realize that if something about it is not living up to their expectations that they are perfectly free to re-create it by choosing to focus on those things that they want to bring into their life.

It may not be a comforting life, for there is no one and nothing who you can blame for any of the bad decisions that you have made and no miracle quick fix that will make everything perfect for you; you have to accept the responsibility for those but there is always the option of being able to change your life by changing the focus of your thoughts.

There is also the knowledge that as an aspect – a manifestation of the divine – that you are here for a specific purpose; to live in a specific way in order to accomplish that which you came here to do, and that by choosing to live an authentic life; a genuine life – one that is not false, not copied, not the life that someone else wants from you or expects from you, but a life where your physical life and your soul purpose are in alignment; a life in which you can reach a state of enlightened purposefulness; a state of being where you are LIVING your purpose 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

What does it mean to live an authentic life? That, my friends, is something that we will work on discovering over the next few days so that as we begin the New Year by destroying the world that we have accepted or created for ourselves; the world that is based on others fears, beliefs or expectations. That we can begin 2012 by living an authentic life; our original life; the life that we were meant to live.