We live in our thinking
We feel our thinking in the moment
In any moment new thought can arrive
When our thinking changes our experience changes
When our experience changes our world changes.

’ ‘Its very hard to be always looking forewords into Eternity’

‘Jacob Boehme.

“He was so charismatic and such a visionary and so good with words that, when we were together I hardly said a thing”

Does that sound familiar?

People will not shine in the glow & radiance of your charisma.

But they will shine in the light of your focused attention as you listen carefully and respectfully to what they have to say.

It is through the undiluted power of your listening and attention that others will be able see not only their own worth but also their brilliance. They will shine when you remind them that their life and thoughts truly matter.

True leadership is about bringing others home to themselves, home to their own minds & hearts and showing them how good they can be at solving problems and generating new insights and thus significantly contributing to the tasks at hand.

At the end of the day it will not be what you have said to others that will be remembered but, rather, how you made them feel. It is within the context of the memory of those feelings that others will remember what you said.

What specific actions will take you one important step closer to your new year goals?

Conversely, what actions (or failure to act) will insure that 2012 is just ‘more of the same’ and an irksome repetition of not only 2011 but of a past you have found most difficult and would like to overcome and move beyond?

It is an undisputed fact that we ourselves must first become the change we want to see in the world or in others…before any kind of significant change can happen…

So what personal, spiritual or circumstantial ‘breakthrough’ are you looking forward to having in 2012?

Be specific.

Imagine what it would be like to have that and to move on positively from that point of positive irreversible breakthrough into a significantly different future.

Blessedness and happiness (Psalm 1) shine and radiate outward with great power and conviction from the inside out… bringing light, blessing to yourself and others as well as meaningful success & new dreams worthy of dreaming and pursuing within the limited time-span of your life.

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” [John 12:24]

“ We do not see Jesus aright”, says Peter Sterry (1634).. “if we do not see ourselves in Him; while we we see not ourselves aright unless we see our Saviour in ourselves…for Christ makes a Christian one mystical person with himself…”

Sterry knows…” that the heavenly image in the soul that has been reborn (in Christ) is subject to various clouds and storms while in the body, for it is always in conjunction with the fleshy image.

This seldom suffers it to shine forth clearly and purely; often, indeed, it is so clouded and captivated [ by this world] that it can send forth neither sweet beam nor spark to enlighten the soul.. to any sensible discovery of it, or warm thee with any reasonable comfort in it”.

The soul has to pass through “a night of eternal darkness upon all earthly contents”, ere it is brought “out of the light of this world into the Day of Christ.”

But by resignation, consecration and prayer it wins its way. He who dwells in the Spirit, is as a priest in the Temple, in purity, spirituality, with a holy reverence and a sacred awe. He offers up perpetually his life as a sacrifice to the life of Christ. This is his constant prayer:

“Come thou north wind, thou living power of my Saviour’s death, blow upon me; come thou south wind, thou glorious power of my Saviour’s Resurrection, breathe on me”

A return to chaos and old night becomes necessary before any new & significant beginning can begin… and a new reality open up in the place of what has been. (Genesis 1:1-3)

It is never the end of the world, only the end of the world as we have known it.

A degree of chaos rages like a fire at the centre of existence and is at the core of the energy and creativity which empowers all of creation and all that lives and moves and has its being in God. Sooner or later chaos must rise to the surface of our lives, first nudging us gently then compelling us more severely outside our present limits.

We will then either rise to this challenge, wake up and start growing spiritually again or we will begin to disintegrate and choose, rather, to die.

A personal, or circumstantial crisis (in our youth, middle years, or later in life) always presents us with a golden opportunity to undertake a life-transition and transformation by challenging us to grow beyond our old ways of thinking and being.

Such a crisis calls into question all our limiting ideas and forces us beyond them. But we resist and fight back with horrific consequences. The resulting alchemical process involves a painful exposure to the primordial elemental fires.

If we seize the day and are ready and willing to grow through the crisis we we will not only survive it but we will prosper and grow wiser & happier through it. Be that as it may, our destiny requires that the pure be separated from the impure and the dross or slag from all that is best and most god-like in us.

Within chaos, between sanity and insanity we can experience a regeneration of our identity, beliefs and behaviour and discover a new life where death has no dominion. This is the point.

So how can we suffer through this and obtain the best possible outcome, an outcome which could be called obtaining the Pearl of Great Price? ( Matthew 13:45-46 )

How can we remain true to our own spiritual quest in the midst of painful change & the onslaught chaos? We can, with the help of God, by:

- Recognising our goal and our present crisis for what it is and what it is demanding of us

- Re-evaluating our old ‘model of the world’ when we meet the new situation

- Defining exactly what we want and what we do not want through the process of change

- Experiencing our feelings and accepting them, rather than rejecting them

- Undertaking a searching and fearless examination of our limits and values

- Re-experiencing our old sense of identity as context dependent and thus open to radical change

- Willingness to bravely enter the terrors and disorientation of paradox and confusion
Experiencing the depths of complexity and chaos therein

- Letting go of our old self and identity and allowing a renewed identity and sense of self emerge through the process

- Enjoying and celebrating our renewed- transformed consciousness & sense of self

- Discerning a new sense of calling and destiny as part of the process

- Experiencing more powerfully the gift of the Spirit supporting us to continue to grow at the level of vision, living day by day at our growing edge, never looking back, always noticing new vistas forever opening up before us.

Just how much (love, grace, goodness, beauty,truth, well-being,forgiveness, success) can you stand?

This question suggests that the good we desire is often limited and restricted not from the supply side but from our side by our wounded incapacity to receive it.

So the question “ Just how much________can you stand?…. suggests our need to s-t-r-e-t-c-h our boundaries & move outside our limiting beliefs about who we are but also about life itself, the universe and everything.

When we do that a new world begins to disclose itself to us, and new opportunities begin to open up as we become aware of different kinds of things. According to Oliver Wendell Holmes: “ The mind, once expanded to the dimensions of larger ideas, never returns to its original size”, And, says Hamlet (Act 1, Scene 4), There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

So how much happiness can you stand?
How much success?
How much conscious contact with God and His will for your life can you stand?
How well have your basic assumptions about life and the philosophy of life you have constructed around those assumptions been serving you?

If we assume we live and move and have our being within a divine milieu (Acts 17:28) and that the ultimate context of our life is divine love, good-will & cosmic abundance rather than cosmic scarcity, doom and gloom & the absence of God our whole way of thinking, living & relating to others begins to change radically.

Today think of all those who are falling asleep or who are now ALREADY fast asleep in the midst of life through chronic indecision, procrastination and endless mildly amusing, comforting, even reassuring distractions. Some may awaken from this dream but others not. What do you want to do? What do you want? Sleepers Awaken!!!!

My thoughts become words, my words become actions, my actions become habits, my habits shape my character which over time becomes my destiny