Birthing a brave new world.

 How many of us long for the world to be different? How many of us long for an end to war and terror and hatred and revenge? These longings are born from the heart, from the place of feeling within us that informs us of how life should be.

Birthing a brave new world needs courage. The word courage has its roots in the Latin word cor which means heart. Literally courage means the age of the heart. A brave new world will be born when we have the courage then to live from the heart, when we let the heart inform our thinking and not the other way around. We have created a topsy turvy world where rational and logical thinking have replaced heart knowledge. We worship intellect over intuition; thought over feeling; mind over body.

                                               But this is not as it is meant to be.

The energy of life is essentially good. It is bold, vibrant, passionate, full of life, creative, powerful, supportive and pleasing. The energy of life is full of intent to create, to give life, to birth life, to expand and grow. It is generous in nature. When we feel truly alive we feel all these things, in fact we are all these things and precisely because of this we experience the world as beautiful. At times like this life appears to be perfect and we wouldn’t change a thing! If you doubt this think back to a time when you were in love and life felt wonderful – for a time.  

However times like these can be few and far between. Mostly we live with, at best, a low level of dismay at the way the world is and more often than not with a full blown irritation/anger at the evil we see and have reported to us on a daily basis.

It’s interesting to note that the word ‘live’ when spelt backwards is ‘evil’.

It’s my belief that when we align ourselves with the true energy of life then we get to experience life as it should be. We thrive and we 'live' in harmony and at peace with the world. However when we refuse to be in harmony with the principles of life then we engage in 'evil 'and ‘wrongdoing’. In other words we become sinners! I hesitate to use words like sin and evil knowing that they are full of religious overtones and can fuel shame, blame, judgement and guilt.

                                                                  Yet they are fitting words.

The word sin is misunderstood. It owes its origins to an archery term where to sin meant to miss the mark. In other words to sin means to miss the point of life. We sin when we no longer live our lives in tune with our own aliveness and our feelings of being 'alive' choosing instead to be governed by our thoughts and thinking. We sin when we no longer 'live' but think about living instead. We do 'evil' when we no longer sing the tune in our heart; the faithful tune of life, when we no longer allow ourselves to feel the full extent of our common humanity.

What is needed is for the human race to choose to sing a new song; to revert back to the original tune of life that birthed us. To do this we need to repent. To repent doesn’t mean to say we’re sorry and then go our own merry way without changing anything. No! To repent is a verb. It is a doing word. To repent means that we actively start to live differently. To repent means to turn around and backtrack towards that which is true and life giving, refusing to live any longer with that which is  false. Literally when we repent we turn 'evil 'around so that the letters in the word ‘evil’ begin to spell 'live' again! To repent means to begin to 'live' again rather than to merely exist. To repent means to experience a new birth.

But how do we do this?

Well, logically if we are to sing a new song then we need to listen to a new tune.

Before we can listen to a new tune we need to make sure that we can truly identify the tune that we are currently listening to. If we don’t do this then how will we be able to distinguish it from any other tune? If we are not fully conscious of the tune we are currently hearing then it may just reappear disguised as a new tune when all the while it is the same old tune just sung in a different key!

In trying to identify the tune that plays incessantly in the background of your life and which unconsciously shapes your days try asking yourself some questions.

Ask yourself.

Do I hold any entrenched views on life?

Do I have any habitual ways of behaving?

What are my habitual thought patterns?

What do I spend most of my days thinking about?

What are my reading habits/eating habits/TV habits?

What, if anything, has a hold on me?

What drives me?

How am I stuck in my ways?

Where am I most resistant to change?

Life is what we make it....if we don’t like what we have made then we have the power to change it.

It’s that simple BUT it’s not easy because our habits have an energy and a life all of their own and they will hang onto that life with all their might, not submitting readily to change. We’ve all heard the old saying ‘Old habits die hard!’ and it’s true. Our habits have a hold on us and even if this hold is at times stifling and restrictive it at least feels secure and safe; it is the devil we know and often we would rather stay with it than reach for the uncomfortable realms of new possibilities. But that will not birth a brave new world – only the energy of change can do this.

The vibrant energy of life is within u,  always faithful to its intent to birth new life. However to be fully effective this energy needs room to move. When we stay stuck in old patterns of thinking, being and doing we stifle the life giving energy and hinder its effectiveness.

Staying stuck keeps ‘evil’ firmly in the place where ‘live’ should be. It keeps judgement where compassion should be; it keeps fear where love should be; it keeps separation where connection should be; it keeps our hearts longing for life when they should be experiencing it; it fuels the chase for more rather than the feeling of being fulfilled and it keeps us striving and not thriving.

Learning to rearrange our lives in accordance with the energy that allows us to 'live' asks us to be brave and bold, to feel, to give, to be willing to change, to accept everything with a courageous heart and to believe that it is our birthright to 'live' free from the stranglehold of 'evil'.

We already have within us all we need to make the necessary switch. the ability to 'live' is hard wired into our DNA. The letters/code is already there - in fact we do not have to change anything about ourselves only be willing to begin the process of rearranging the letters, unscrambling the code and reordering our lives in accordance with what we know at the deepest level of our heart to be true.

This is the pathway to a brave new world. It is the road less travelled but it is all the more beautiful because of this. Others have gone before us and laid a trail all we have to do now is to decide if we are willing to follow them?