New
Year’s Resolution
“Accept the holy
instant as this year is born, and take your place, so long
left unfulfilled, in the Great Awakening. Make this year different
by making it all the same. And let all your relationships
be made holy for you. This is our will. Amen.” ACIM
T-15.XI.10.10-14
In the above quote,
as the year begins, Jesus invites us to make a resolution
to awaken to what we are. And just what is that reality? It
is Love and Love only. It is the absence of an individual
will, incapable of seeing differences and comparisons. It
is the life force that we see all around us. We are all the
One family who share the same One Father. To awaken to who
we truly are is to leave behind our separate will in the fullness
of trust that we will be sustained in the same way nature
expresses itself – without concern and worry for the
future.
To make this transition
it is necessary that we undo the one block to the awareness
of Love’s presence - the ego. It is the separate will,
it is the ‘me’ who wants unceasingly. The ego
is the default program and belief system this world operates
within. It is the belief in separateness and separation. It
is the law of deprivation, always seeing lack wherever it
looks. This lack we believe in generates the competition and
greed we see everywhere. The ego is a belief in duality –
good and bad, more and less, you or me! It is a belief in
life and death, mortality and vulnerability, all of which
fuel the main characteristic of the ego – fear.
How many of us put on
a brave face every day? We try to ‘be and stay positive’.
The ego has a mantra, “Seek but do not find” and
this has spawned entire industries and empires built on the
unsustainable promise of abundance, success, more love, peace
and joy! The truth is that anything achieved through the ego’s
doings are high maintenance and unsustainable. Ultimately,
like everything else here in the material world, it must decay
and die.
The alternative is to
stop seeking without and to delve within to find the one true
friend, brother, sister, mentor, protector we have all sought
for. We are one with this internal Source of the One life.
This Unified Will judges not and sees no separation, no deservedness,
no need to qualify and perform, it simply is. In the quote
above, Jesus gives us a clue to experiencing awakening, by
making this year all the same. We do this by looking upon
every situation and circumstance with Him rather than through
the eyes of the ego. We look with love and forgiveness on
all situations realizing that anything else but love is of
the ego and is simply untrue. We are asked to remember that
every act is either an act of love or a call for love. If
it’s a call for love, ask yourself, how would Love respond?
In that one question, we expose the ego for what it is –
an internal saboteur, for Love can only respond with Love
regardless of the circumstance.
Jesus tells us above
that He will make all our relationships holy if we will but
let Him. All we have to do is let Him. Sounds easy yet so
many of us choose not to allow this to happen. We choose instead
to be right instead of happy, mistakenly believing that being
right is happiness! The ego uses relationships as its chief
weapon to show us that this is an unsafe and untrustworthy
world and because so many of us have experienced it as such,
we belief this to be a statement of fact. Abandonment, betrayal,
divorce, violence are all seen as potential outcomes of relationships
and that fate or chance decide your outcomes. The truth is
that as we undo our ego, as we surrender the need to be right,
as we learn to give that which we so desperately seek, we
are transformed and our relationships begin to transform as
well. Speaking from experience, I went from a history of dysfunctional
and failed relationships to transformed relationships of ever
increasing gratitude and abundance. All it takes is letting
go, which is easy in truth but is made difficult because we
have tied our identity to our personality, our values and
expectations. The truth is that our conditioning is not who
we are and that most of us do not know who we are. The best
we can do is offer our fabricated and constructed personality
and physical appearance for the world to see. A sad reflection
of the almighty co-creator of the universe that we are.
When we choose to use
every situation and relationship for the expression of Love
by allowing our false self to fall away, we will feel an irreversible
and fundamental shift in our awareness. We will feel lighter,
more naturally joyous, without the need for stimulation. We
will become less needy and full of gratitude. People will
naturally gravitate to us and we will bless all who come into
our sphere. In so doing, we will fulfill the prayer Jesus
offered us at the beginning of the new year.
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