Thoughts to start a new year

As I sat on the plane today flying home from being with my parents, I was reading from "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Toltec Wisdom" (I know - don't start with me; it's really excellent). I flipped open to where I had stopped sometime during the holiday, and there was a paragraph which drew my eye. (as if by magic! love how that works) It urged me to look at the childhood agreements I'd made with myself with detachment and to try and see if they were still valid.

Here are the ones which ran through my mind, and the surprising responses I received back from my "inner council":

Agreements of Childhood to Reflect on and Ponder:

• You can’t rise above your station – there is a place for you that’s been pre-selected and it just isn’t right to step outside the bounds of others’ expectations of you.

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the answer I heard
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You are an infinite being: there are no limits, no boxes. Others’ reactions are their choices which they get to make to shape their worlds. You get to make whatever choices, whatever agreements you like. You may follow others agreements if you like. But you don't have to.

• I am locked into an existence, a trajectory based on whence I came. I’m tied to my fate as surely as I’m tethered to a pole.

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the answer I heard
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Every decision you make is like a rocket using a thruster: it changes your life trajectory and ultimately your life orbit. You have unlimited fuel: if you want to change your orbit or break it altogether to go to another planet, another star, you are free to accelerate to escape velocity and do it. Whenever you wish to do so. The choice is yours.

• I’m not good enough, not prepared enough, not focused enough, not disciplined enough, not worthy enough to be the bringer of my secret, dear desire to the world. I’ll fail if I try.

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the answer I heard
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You fail only if you don’t try. Flowers flower simply because they give no thought to the seeds they spill, but rather only to the joy of flowering and opening, of bearing. Germination is the business of the seed. Birds sing because they have a song. Writers write because they have a story. Healers heal because they have a deep connection and understanding and vision of wholeness, that all is truly one.

Labels confine – beware of labeling and/or defining "who you are". Please merely be and in being, be happy, be ecstatic, be joyful! be hooked in to Life, the Big Life. Sit in the sun when it feels good to sit in the sun.. Write the stories that have been crowding your head – you’ll find out how as you go. ‘How’ is the domain of the Universe. Your joy is in the Flowering, in the Be-ing. The seeds of that flowering, that be-ing are magnificent and new and filled with light and spread that joy a thousandfold.

• If I were truly, really me to the core, the playful (un-adult!), bawdy, raw me, people would scorn me, shun me, friends would dessert me.

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the answer I heard
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When you touch the true source of radiance at your core and open yourself to the true Light of the Source, that which you really are, you shine with a Light that is so bright and pure and warming and lovely and infectious that you can’t imagine it. There will be those who aren’t yet ready for this amount of truth, of this amount of reality, who can’t see or experience the Light except as a thing which burns, destroys, harms. They will wither and fall away from you, flee back into darkness and the safety of their un-knowing. BUT – beings who need light to thrive, to live, to flourish, will all find you, be drawn to your Life-giving warmth and radiance. Some will fall away. Others will germinate and flourish in your light. Your light shows others that they have one, too.

• I’m afraid of this change. What will people think?

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the answer I heard
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Change is the only reliable thing, the constant expressing of Infinite Possibility. To move forward, to undergo phases and be continually reborn anew is to live. Keep moving forward and delight yourself: no one else will do this for you, no one else will live your life from the inside but you.

• It’s uncertain! I can’t step off into the unknown!

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the answer I heard
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But you’ve already done this every day of your life. Your blindest steps, your biggest leaps have brought you the most joy: auditioning for your first musical, going to college in a challenging field (alone!), approaching the man who became your beloved, quitting the software job to become a full-time massage therapist, teaching!, buying the Little House, not knowing how you'd pay for it all. It’s all uncertain to you, so easy and certain to us. Have you ever lacked? I mean, really, really lacked? No. Only when you have not attempted, when you have tried to remain ‘safe’ (safe really means stagnation, an illusory state! All things change - nothing remains the same. So, why not learn to surf?) is it that you have stagnated and withered. Even your most recent recital: at first a failure, yet you gained much wisdom from that. Nobody died; reputation is immaterial, and also temporal. You know what you are capable of. You have no need to prove it to anyone. Perhaps still to yourself, but certainly no one else.

Set your soul a-fire, a-light! Stop hiding it underneath that bushel.

That which you don’t give to the world, it doesn’t have. No one receives the gift of it. Think more of yourself – trust yourself that the urges you feel are deeply important to you, and strive to please only you. Because ultimately, that's the only being you can please. Others have the job of pleasing themselves. Please that voice that is pushing you to ex-press whatever is in there wanting to get out. Clear the nozzle of your soul-fountain! Let it open! Why be a stately, restrained yard sprinkler when you can be a majestic geyser reveling in its own glory and raw power? Others judge because their light is dim and their nozzles are clogged. That they seek not to brighten nor flow is their decision to do so, not yours. You reap what you sow and your fields are all independent – your neighbor has no say over what you plant, when and why you harvest, or if you leave your fields fallow to regenerate for a time, or even forever in this temporal life. You know and you alone know best.

• Who are you?

We are your council/counsel. Use us. Use us hard and use us often for that is our joy.

Choose
Plant
Reap
Harvest!
Keep moving forward, expressing that which is within!

Failure is illusion. There is only choice, creation, and choice about how you feel about your creation. Remove the concept of 'failure' from your life completely and replace it with choice and creation.

Choice brings gifts to you. Always. Every time.

Revisit your life choices with this thought in mind: dig and find the gifts that your choices have given you and rejoice in them!

Choose, choose and continue to choose! Choice moves you forward into the life you incarnated here to live.

Fear not the ‘bad’ choice. This new resulting life may seem ‘bad’ to others, yet as easy as swimming and breathing to you. Make your choices with you in mind.

You cannot fail.

Unless you fail to choose.

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Happy New Year! May this one be the best ever for us all; may you find your creations coming alive, and may your innermost, most dear desires flower and bear perfect, succulent fruit many, many times over. (Image from postsecret.blogspot.com ... don't know who to thank for it, but thank you whoever you are!)