WOW! 2011 certainly has brought some unexpected and unprecedented happenings to all the “… passengers on spaceship Earth …” (thank you Buckminster Fuller).

I have been pondering the deeper meaning of recent events and decided to share with you some of what I have found:

From www.highway7.com – what this 2011 Year of the Rabbit is about:

“According to Chinese tradition, the Rabbit brings a year in which you can catch your breath and calm your nerves in a world that’s full of destructive forces.

2011 Metal Rabbit is a time for the people – the people have collective wisdom and resolve and great strength in numbers. Go quietly amid the noise and haste, but be ready. It is a time for planning, negotiation, regrouping and strategy.

As an individual, or as a group, don’t try to force issues in 2011… To gain the greatest benefits from this time, focus calmly on a plan B and be prepared for great structural changes in the economy and policy making at all levels.

In 2011, be aware and plan carefully for momentous events, but maintain your focus on home, family, security, diplomacy, and your relationships with women and children, for they are the way.

Make it your goal to create a safe, peaceful lifestyle for yourself, those you love and for your extended community in harmony with the environment, so you will be able to calmly deal with any problems that may arise.”

My take on this? Step back, take a breath and let go. Remember who you are and what really matters and choose to live in love – be loving, do loving action and when in doubt…ask “What would love do now?”

And for another perspective on what’s really going on with mother nature and on our glorious planet Earth, read what Carolyn Myss had to say last week in her piece “Understanding Our Relationship To The Earth”.

Thank you Carolyn … you nailed it for me.

I am putting my loving soul to work … how about you?

When I was being trained and mentored in the early 1980’s I was determined to adopt the new paradigm fully in all of my living. I saw the power and possibility inherent in “I Create The Whole of My Own Reality”. I loved the idea but very little real experience of being response-able for the whole of myself, let alone the whole of my own reality. I was anxious much of the time about opening up and sharing how I really felt, particularly when I didn’t like something or someone. At the beginning of my journey to consciousness and love, although I was eager and willing to be response-able, time and time again I would react, withhold and either run away or push away … hard! The infantile not-good-enough stuff was a strong protective mechanism and I didn’t ever really feel safe.

Over the past 28 years I have worked with this paradigm, shared it and lived it as best I can every day. Some days are sweeter than others and yet I know everything is purposeful and beautiful – no matter how I feel about or even what I do. I have settled into this new paradigm of love, choice, truth and responsibility more and more as each day passes and I can honestly say that life is glorious and I am happy, content and relaxed for the most part.

Then whammo! Last week I created a powerful confrontation that led to a breakthrough that took my breath away. It began in February when I withheld from one of my trainees how I was really feeling about something because I did not feel safe to go there. Over the course of this whole year, every time we interacted, the feeling would resurface and I would withhold, push away and react in subtle (and sometimes) not so subtle ways. I kept telling myself … ”detach, it doesn’t matter” … and I would feel ok … for a little while. I thought I was being clear and explicit in my communication and yet the feedback I received told me this was not so. I thought I was being response-able by responding to the content yet without shifting my context (from fear to love), nothing much changed. The result of all of my fear-ful behaviours surfaced in an intense and powerfully liberating interaction with my trainee, in the training room, on the final day of training.

The courage and commitment to love and truth from everyone in the room was palpable and full. We were completely embraced and held in love and encouraged to open up and tell the whole truth. So we both began to express what was really going on, to open up and go to the heart of the matter … and we stayed in the room. It was simply amazing. At one point I felt I couldn’t handle it and I said “I want you to leave!” I am so glad the courageous response was a firm and clear “No!” This enabled me to sit in my extreme fear and keep going to the heart of my truth and feelings. I have never felt so vulnerable and yet the more I let go and shared the more I realised I actually was safe and I felt safe. Not emotionally but rather the visceral, full knowing and awareness that I am safe. WOW! This is what I have been teaching and choosing and sometimes fleetingly feeling over the years – Fear really is an illusion – I am safe.

I felt peace and love in deeper measure than ever before. A profound awareness of connection, at-one-ment and joy poured from everyone in the room and I knew this was an experience over which I will never get and for that I am truly grateful.

The key to letting go is acceptance. You cannot let go of that which you do not accept. The key to acceptance is awareness – awareness of who you are and what’s really going on moment by moment. And the key to awareness is a willingness to BE present with whatever is occurring as it is occurring, right here, right now.

Sounds simple and it is, although as with most things involving the sticky, messy, human experience, not very easy – particularly when you fear letting go. And that’s what you need to let go of – your fearful thoughts that lead to fearful actions and the insidious anxiety that comes with it. Although the feelings associated with being fearful are quite “real’ in the sense that you feel them, the attachment to something in the past projected into the future is not real. The stuff is all made up, and even though you can feel quite strongly about your stuff, it’s still an illusion.

Letting go of your illusions is very tricky unless you stop and breathe and become aware of your thoughts and feelings, accept them and allow yourself to feel the feelings, acknowledge the thoughts and then remember that you are the one who gets to choose what happens next.

When you let go of resisting what’s so, stop for a moment and get present to the now, energy can flow, feelings can be released and peace will preside. Letting go of your fearful thoughts and feelings is the way to peace. And it requires rigour and discipline and a willingness to be present, accept what is so and allow the energy to shift.

Letting go is effortless when you simply BE in all your magnificence and … let go.

For the past few weeks, I have been waiting for some inspiration so I could write the May newsletter for you. And so far, I have come up dry. I have lots of ideas swarming around in my head and in my psyche and yet every time I sit down to write, nothing seems to click, nada, zilch and zip.

I have been thinking “I must get this newsletter out before May 31st, everyone is expecting it, I can’t miss a month, I have never missed a month, what will it say about me if I don’t get it out in time..” and blah, blah, blah. I would then tell myself “it’s ok, you’ll get inspired, you always have before, it will come” and I would calm down for a while. Then the whole cycle would start again. I realised that the more I engage in the “woulda-coulda-shoulda, someday-oneday-when” conversation, the more unsettled and anxious I feel and nothing gets done!

So this morning I stopped the conversation (and the anxiety) by choosing to embrace what was happening. I chose to let go of needing to write this newsletter by any particular time. By choosing what I was already experiencing, I let go of my self-imposed “have to’s” and decided that I am where I am, things are how they are and I am ok whether I do it or not. Whew! Such a relief.

As soon as I let go, I was inspired to write what I have been experiencing throughout this process! This always happens when I let go, energy flows and things clear up in the process of life itself without any “have-to” or “must-make-it-happen” energy from me.