Natural Selection – The Heart is a Happy Hunter

The most widely sought after experience in the world is happiness. Some call it love, joy, source, contentment, completion, God, the cure, peace, healing, or nirvana.

Because there will never be a definition expansive enough to describe the power that holds the universe together, or fully explain what set the cosmic mass in motion, the words we choose to express the only thing we really want are irrelevant. Words are symbols of symbols and are indications of our heartfelt desires.

Let’s take a look at the trigger points and what it takes to remember what is already at our core. Happiness must be inherent in who and what we are or the goal would be forever unattainable and always out of reach. Simply put, this means we have blocks that need to be removed to get to the foundation and reality of our essence.

Home Is Where The Heart Is

Getting our ducks in a row and determining what we think we want or need in order to enjoy our trek through this world can be a little daunting at times, so let’s toss out everything that will not last: The entire material world. And focus instead on what will last: Thoughts that are eternal.

Clichés’ aside, everyone yearns for a love affair that takes the cake and moves them to another realm. What seems berserk is finally stumbling upon the ultimate truth that the love we are all seeking is our own and we have it now. There is nothing for us to do, no process to undergo, and our mission is accomplished. The search for love is over.

What Works: The Salve, Healing, Peace

There are three areas that each of us will need to master in our lives if we hope to attain permanent peace. No one would want to have partial happiness, or only a smidgen of joy. This self-evident truth leaves us with nothing but our desire for the entire scope of eternal happiness.

Forgiveness: The attainment of peace of mind will be impossible without this free, fool-proof means to get there. We will simply need to experience it to embrace it in its totality and recognize this is the only thing that will set us free from the agony of defeat and misery of this world. In a word: Practice, practice, practice. Once we recognize how painful grievances are, forgiveness seems like a walk in the park.

Apology: This has to do with solidifying the forgiveness we have strived for and ways to increase it until it has eclipsed everything else in our mind. We are worthy of love. Saying we are sorry for any and all incidents that may have occurred during our interactions with others is a sign of respect from the worthy to the worthy. It demonstrates our earnest desire to share ideas that are true with equals.

Gratitude: Here is what instantaneously happens when forgiveness takes the place of anger and judgment, and apology replaces blame. A heart filled with gratitude understands what has true value and worth, and embraces it wholly without limit. Gratitude transcends all fear thoughts, all scarcity-consciousness, and reinstates the memory of what is true and eternal in our mind.

Gravity – Sharing Reality

Sharing is the result of giving and proves that giving and receiving are one and the same. Like gratitude, sharing is experienced as a means of survival on the deepest level. The hunter/gatherer within each of us draws love and happiness into our being through our willingness to extend or share what holds out value and the promise of eternal life.

The world will teach us that “having” is attained through “getting” and refusing to share. Spirit teaches us the opposite is really true and proves it through the happiness and joy the individual experiences when they willingly give their love and joy to everyone and increase it in their own experience as a result.

Sharing is the catalyst that makes the remembrance of love come full circle in our mind. As we gather our thoughts together and recognize that happiness is joy, then all the temptations of the world – which are temporary – take a back seat to the desire we have for love and peace in our lives – which is eternal.

Sharing our happiness increases our love. The never-ending expansion of peace in our mind and heart overshadows everything else in the human experience by demonstrating that only reality has value because truth lasts forever.

The gravitational pull of love is not a fantasy. The reason we are all so attracted to love is because it is real and is our shared reality. Everything in the world gravitates towards love, and through its unifying force love unites all things.

The Awakening – Love Is All

Step by step we make our journey within to the place where peace resides. When the material world no longer attracts us it is because its lack of value has been clearly seen. What is temporary will never usurp the attraction of eternal happiness.

Through complete forgiveness the thin veil of illusion is lifted. By apologizing for our spiritual impurities we polish our inner shrine, which in turn releases us to full gratitude.

A heart full of gratitude reveals itself as the center of all centers shining within us and all around us. Here is the end we are all seeking as we finally recognize that the beginning and end are one and the same. There has never been any separation from Love, which is our Source.

In the light all truth is known as we accept and recognize that Love is the Answer.

“The Gravitational Pull Of Love”, by Carmen Allgood, March 16, 2015 at http://wakeup-world.com/2015/03/16/the-gravitational-pull-of-love/

Third of Four Blood Moons to be Seen Tonight, Best View from the West Coast

Tonight’s the night. The third of a succession of 4 blood moons will shine, or rather, dim in our skies right before sunrise on the west coast. Starting at 3:16 am (any correlation to the bible verse John 3:16 on the eve of Easter Sunday??) the moon will start to move into the Earth’s shadow. This event will last just under five minutes. The shortest total lunar eclipse of the century.

Shortest total lunar eclipse of the century coming Saturday By Amanda Barnett, CNN

There has been lots of buzz about this tetrad and that it seems to be falling in line with Jewish holidays. It is a nice theory, but we have to remember that Jewish holidays were specifically “scheduled” in line with lunar cycles, so this isn’t a surprise.

The Jewish calendar is also not the same as the ‘civil’ calendar that most institutions and households use. The Jewish calendar is based on three astronomical phenomena: the rotation of the Earth about its axis (a day); the revolution of the moon about the Earth (a month); and the revolution of the Earth about the sun (a year). These three phenomena are independent of each other, so there is no direct correlation between them. On average, the moon revolves around the Earth in about 29½ days. The Earth revolves around the sun in about 365¼ days, that is, about 12.4 lunar months.

So, the Armageddon that this tetrad is supposedly bringing does not resonate with me, nor will I focus on it. I prefer not to create that reality.

Enjoy this short blood moon eclipse and gaze in awe of how beautiful the cosmos are.

Sometimes Love isn’t Enough

This would be one of the most contradictory statements to ever come out of my mouth or fingertips. In my experiences, love is always enough. However, this is not my experience and I am grateful for that. John Hargrove, previously a senior trainer at SeaWorld, finally said enough was enough and quit.

John Hargrove insists that his relationships to the Orcas were very deep, meaningful, and he had a profound love for them, but in his words, ‘…love isn’t enough. It doesn’t mean that’s right or make the situation OK”. He feels that up until 2012 he was programmed enough to defend this corporation because he believed in its mission.

That slowly started to change over time. He had his own dance with death while training and suffered many injuries on the job. That wasn’t what did it though. It was the injuries and deaths of fellow trainers and how those situations were handled.

When Alexis Martinez was killed and it was brushed under the rug, it sent him his first warning sign that this corporation may claim to have their trainer’s safety in mind, but when it comes down to it, they don’t. Two days after Martinez was killed, John was back in the water. He and the other trainers were never told the extent of Martinez’s injuries and their bosses never pulled them out of the water to do a safety evaluation as they claimed to the media they had.

Then just two months later Dawn Brancheau was killed by another orca and became the subject of a documentary titled, Blackfish.Around the time of these deaths, OSHA held a hearing on the dangers of being orca trainers and SeaWorld testified under oath that they had no idea the trainers had dangerous jobs.

At that point, John knew this was a soul-less corporation who cared for nothing but profits. People are expendable and these poor whales who suffer every day are only swimming dollar signs.

John explains the horrors these poor creatures endure and at no time blames them for their aggressive behaviors. These orcas went through periods of days without food, forced inbreeding, and they would heartlessly separate mother from calf. The mother would haunt the empty tanks for days calling out for her lost child.

It’s absolutely cruel. SeaWorld in the face of all this, still are willing to fight to the death to keep these magnificent and emotionally intelligent creatures confined and force them to perform regardless of how sad and unstable they are becoming. These animals are bored and heartstricken for the lives they distantly remember or the freedom they know in their heart they should have.

This article is really trying to spread the world on this horrific treatment and are advocating for the release of all orcas held captive by corporate entities. They hope to someday have them released to seaside sanctuaries as they would no longer be able to survive in the wild.

‘I Was Disgusted': How One Trainer Left The SeaWorld Horror Show By Melissa Cronin, The Dodo

Native American Genocide

Now it’s been a little while since I’ve been in high school, but from what I remember being taught about American history…I never once heard my books describe what early settlers did to the Native Americans as genocide, but it certainly is fitting. Not only did early settlers band out to take land, resources, and personal liberties from the Native Americans they also took their lives.

It’s been pointed out that many of them died from European illnesses they had no immunity to, but that aside, early American settlers did successfully dwindle Native American populations. I live near a couple reservations here in Western New York and I can tell you personally they do not have much land and what they do have is such a disgrace and it’s not their fault, even today in modern times.

Here’s how it works here. Native Americans are allowed to have a tax free area to live on. Since they do not pay taxes, they do not have state agencies to assist them. Meaning, they have to patrol their own roads for speeders and the like. “Our” plow trucks do plow the roads in the winter, but that’s mainly because their roads that are heavily used by the tax payers. Tax payers that know they can speed right on through because there is little enforcement.

On top of that, since there is no real law enforcement from “the outside”, many Native Americans on the reservation cannot get mortgages. The reasoning behind that is simple, if the owner defaults on the loan, the bank will not be able to enforce a foreclosure. So, this leaves many of them in dilapidated homes with their extended families.

There are a few really nice homes that you will see when you drive on through and they are the higher ups that work at the casinos we have here in Niagara Falls. They can afford to pay cash for a home to be built. It’s very sad, but this is what it’s reduced to and they don’t teach this in schools either.

The College Board decided that students needed to learn about Native American genocide and it obviously was not very well received. America has always been taught as a country that is better than everyone else because we stand for democracy, equality, and justice. We are a country built on these wonderful ideals of freedom.

How many of us are truly free? If we are being taught to never question the sources of information that are fed to us when we are young, what type of people are we raising to lead our country? Deluded narcissistic politicians who will fight for the American way of life without really looking at what’s going on.

That mentality has led us to where we are today. Thank goodness we are on the precipice of change because this cycle needed to end so very badly.

The Native American Genocide and the Teaching of US History By Tanya H. Lee, Truthout

We are far greater beings than we have been told, far greater beings than most of us realize.

In Light and Love,

(Transcribed and edited from Lee’s live video message.)

Hello everybody and welcome to the Energy Forecast for April 2015.

I hope you’re all doing well. I know that March was super intense. And depending on how you’re doing in your life—or how you’re doing in your own process around how you feel about life—that energy was going to take you to some really high highs or some really intense lows. Such was the propulsive energy of March.

This month is almost the opposite where communication is concerned.

Communication Reset

Heart and third eye are going to be opening very strongly this month. That’s the opportunity for all of us; that our hearts and our visionary aspect (the part of us that can vision ahead, re-create our lives, and re-shape where we are going) are going to be very active.

But interestingly, that means that the throat is going to be a little strange this month as an experience. So communicating in April might be something that you don’t feel called to do very often at all, particularly those of you who are highly expressive people, those of you who are big communicators. You either like to talk or you like to create. You might find that you ‘power down’ on talking and creating in April, simply because you’re going through a reset.

The way that energy moves is that we take it in turns with each area of the body—to open or expand. And so March was very propulsive and was driving a lot of energy from our base up through the body, which was why ‘explosions’ could happen.

For example, think of a fireball between your hips, rising up and expanding as it rushes through you. Another place you may experience this energy is if you’re a meditator or a yogi. You may also notice it during sex. There is a rise of energy that comes from that part of the body, and it can move through the whole body—this is tantric.

When that’s happening in daily life without any of those catalysts, it creates an energy flush around your relationships and other areas of your life. Of that flush, there is only so much we can take before we need to, not only calm the energy system down, but more importantly, give ourselves room for these new energies to take shape in our lives.

Working without Suffering

You have to remember that we were trained, in our Western society particularly, to be very achievement and goal focused and to be quite relentless in our way of working. You know this well: you do your job; work to exhaustion; get a few days off a year, and then you have a holiday. And often during the holiday people get sick because they are recovering.

That is the paradigm that we’re essentially dissolving on Earth now as a collective. Slowly, but surely. Yes, I hear many of you saying, “I’m still in my job…I still have to work,” and I get it. There are very few of us who don’t work for a living in order to survive financially. However, I would also add that most of the people I know who have come into great wealth still carry on doing what they do because it’s an expression of their purpose.

I would argue that if you’re really struggling with the job you’re in, it’s not that you hate working; it’s that you’re doing the wrong thing. So be patient because sometimes it can take a year or so to change jobs.

And don’t just sit there and be angry at your job. Actually consider: What can I do to change this? I do have the power to change.

Even if you’re supporting a family, or if you feel like the world is stacked against you, what can you do to change things?

If you are internally suffering with what you’re doing, there is a better way. And you can re-create the same circumstances that you’re in right now (or similar) with far less suffering. That is the path of evolution for all of us.

So if you’re suffering and feeling angry about it—and feeling angry at the rest of the world about it—really give that some consideration this month. Because the problem with that attitude and that way of feeling is the only person who is really being blocked is you.

Once you can move through those feelings of anger and let them rise through your system, you’ll open out again. This is how energy dances through us.

April Energy Currents – Calmer, Wider, and Hyper-Attuned

And so energy was dancing like a banshee in March. It was the wild dancer. And in April it is certainly going to be a lot calmer…and a lot wider.

I should add the caveat that of course we’re in faster feeling times than ever before and that will continue. But as we acclimate to it, as I said in March, we’re training ourselves now to almost hyper-feeling, hyper-seeing, hyper-awareness. We’re getting used to a new level of such awakened living on the planet.

You may say, “Well I know people who aren’t awake.” Yes, but they too are going through high catalysts into emotion, feeling, and connected living. They may not have the same conscious language or experience around it that you do, but we are all in this together. Even if you like to think of yourself as very separate from the rest of the world. We’re all on the planet at the same time having different experiences in different layers, but all going through, as I said last month, a very new time on Earth that takes time to learn to navigate.

Synchronicities and Making Space for Yourself

Synchronicities will be even more apparent to you in April than they were in March because you will have more space—even if you don’t think this is true. Even if you say, “Well, actually, I’m booked up for weeks. I’m really, really busy,” you won’t be able to stay internally busy with external busyness. You’ll need to balance. It’s the law of energetics.

So, if you are busy in your external world, this is a great opportunity for you to recognize that you don’t need to hype it up internally as well. The external is going to keep you rising and asking you to step up. This is a great opportunity to recognize that sometimes you’re working too hard. Sometimes you’re doing too much. And that’s because of your own guilt or your own ideas.

You could turn up to your job this month and give, let’s say, 30% less energy and focus to your job than you normally do, and the scary thing for you is that a lot of people won’t even notice. Your boss probably won’t even notice. And it’s not because no one is paying attention to your hard work. It’s that the internal taskmaster in you is harder on you than anyone else.

Synchronicities and Making Space for Yourself

Again, if some of you are saying, “Actually, I’ve got a really abusive boss,” I would ask you to get out of that job as soon as you can, because your life is worth more than living with abuse. And while you may need 3 to 6 months to be emotionally ready or practically ready to make that change, you don’t have to live in suffering.

There is suffering everywhere on the planet, and our job is to get as much light inside ourselves as we can so we can be of use to alleviate the suffering on the planet.

To Know Your Purpose, Connect to Yourself

I did a Google Hangout yesterday that was focused on my upcoming Energy Mastery Retreat in Colorado in April and someone asked, “Will the Energy Mastery Retreat help me find my purpose, especially purpose through my work?”

My answer was that the Energy Mastery Retreat, and all of the work that I do, is very much focused on bringing you back to you. And the point is that when you are living fully, authentically as yourself, you are going to be more purposeful and feel more connected in anything that you’re doing.

But the irony is that we often want a purposeful job because we don’t feel purposeful within ourselves. We’re hoping that if we have a purposeful job we will feel more purposeful.

Manifesting from Feeling and Surrendering the Details

I have said several times that whenever you’re trying to manifest something, ask yourself, what are you manifesting it for?

For example, if you want a red Ferrari, why? Because you don’t just want a red Ferrari. What is more important is discovering what is it about the red Ferrari that excites you. What do you think it will give you or make possible for you? What is the feeling that you believe it will give you or elicit in you?

While the Ferrari might be an odd example for some of you, my point is that we often try to manifest through form a particular feeling we want to have. Traditional advice around manifestation says to focus on the thing you want—the job, the home, the bank account, the lover, etc. But when you focus on the feelings you want and let go of the outer details, the Universe and you are co-conspiring to elevate the details.

So you might think that being a chef is going to make you the happiest person in the world, and you’re driving yourself into the ground to try and pay for culinary school. But the truth is, being a chef is really about having a job that you feel joyful about. So if you just keep focusing on, “I want to feel great joy in my work,” you will begin to feel joy in your chef training rather than feeling so hyped and driven. Or, you may discover another job comes into your life that gives you all the same feelings.

This is called manifesting from desired feelings and surrendering the details to the universe.

Beyond Status and Achievement – Stepping into Power and Peace

As I mentioned earlier about the energy that many of you put into your jobs, what a lot of you will notice in April is there will be more peace in you around having less drive or no drive. This is a really important aspect of the change that’s happening collectively. We’re coming to a place where we can just be.

I’m here today in Glen Park Canyon in San Francisco. It’s a beautiful place. I had to walk quite a long way to get to where it was quiet, but as I was walking here, I was noticing the nature sounds and was thinking, “Well this is amazing. I’m having this beautiful nature walk on the way to doing my work.”

There is a quality of experience on Earth that has nothing to do with status or achievement. And I can hear some voices now saying, “Yeah, but what about all the other people who are driving towards status and achievement?!”

Don’t Worry about the Other People

And if you are worrying about the other people, you’re not being completely honest with yourself; you’re not being honest with yourself about some part of you that doesn’t want to let it go. The indicator of this is that you’re so focused on them not letting it go.

Never mind about everybody else. Everybody else will do what they’re going to do. And you will be far more powerful if you come to a place in yourself where you can say, “I know what I want to do.”

Boundaries and Openness

In our society—which is tribalist; a collective—we’re highly affected by the opinions and energies of others. I know for so many of us it has been a really long path to get to the place where we don’t care what other people think. That comes from feeling empathic. You might worry about how you’re going to feel if someone pushes difficult energies or opinions on you. That’s why we talk about boundaries a lot. You have to learn boundaries in order to be able to open.

But you may also feel scared of your own power. And you may be scared of not just what you might do in this world, but what you might feel in this world; the level of vulnerability and openness that could appear in you any day now.

But it’s good to remember that any group or individual who is trying to inflict suffering on another is coming from a very small, closed-hearted place. And so the best remedy you can be for this world—and to find your purpose as to how you can show up and contribute—is to keep learning to open.

Heart Energy Rising – Vulnerability and Trust

Vulnerability is scary for all of us because vulnerability often triggers our safety issues. But the truth is, what is safety? We hear of random things that happen to people and random moments all of the time. And we like to think that we’re immune to that, but we’re not.

So safety is very momentary, and more importantly, I have learned the more you trust the Universe and trust the flow of your life—and agree to surrender more rather than control and drive—you get to drop into the vulnerability that will be quite prevalent in April.

And vulnerability that we are willing to meet and to work towards can create magic in our lives.

Because the heart energy is going to rise in April, the third eye vision energy is going to rise also. So for those of you that can take more space in April, take more space. But unlike other months where I’ve recommended this because the energy was too busy and too frantic, take this space as a holiday. Take this space as a moment to really just stretch out and catch up with everything you have learned and integrated—and with everything that has changed you.

Linking Up with the Universe

As for communication, don’t be surprised if it’s a little funny this month. As I said earlier, some of you may find you’re stumbling over words, and you’re really struggling to get the words out.

Again, I can hear a load of you saying, “I’ve been like that for ages.” The thing about the energy forecast is I try and cover as many subgroups as I can within the thousands of you who will watch this. So you’re not going to identify with everything I’m saying, but there are certain months where there seems to be a collective rising in certain areas. And this month the heart and the visionary ability are coming through loud and clear. As the body tends to weave to keep processing you through the next thing, last month we had a lot around the base and the throat.

So communication may be a little strange this month, and you may not feel very willing to communicate.

You will notice that you will have more vulnerability, more feeling, and a greater ability to just stop and look at the tree and say, “Wow, look at this. It’s amazing!”

It is an amazing planet, and so many forces on this planet would like us to think it isn’t.

They would like us to continue to believe in the idea of control and slavery and suffering. And the point is, if we agree to those impulses—if we agree to allow the media to tell us that everything is going to hell in a handbasket, to use an American saying—then we will manifest that.

You see, the power of your ability to help create things on this planet is very potent. And so if a certain group wants you to be scared about the oncoming event that they want to create, they will get all of us to focus on it and be scared of it. And then we will help create it through visioning it.

So this is why as an energy master of yourself, you have to learn to reclaim your inner self and link up with the Universe. Link up with the part of you that came here as a divine being, as a soul with your own blueprint that is highly readable. It’s set out in front of you. Try and let go of all of the aspects that you perhaps swallowed over the years but aren’t really going to help you on your personal journey toward bringing your strength and your love to this planet.

That’s what we’re doing here every month.

Breathing and Finding Balance

So, big love everybody. Big breath.

It’s good. It’s a good time to be alive in terms of all of the changes, and I say that with a high awareness that there is going to be some controversy around that statement. Because there are as many people who want to jump on that statement negatively as there are who actually see the really strong changes taking place.

It’s incredible to see the innovations that are now beginning to take place. And if we keep focusing on a balance of seeing the innovation and positive change as much as we hold in our awareness the areas where there is suffering and that really need our help, then we are living a balanced life. I suggest finding your place in the middle as much as is possible on this ever-changing planet every single day.

Have a great month everyone.

Lots of love

“April 2015 Energy Forecast,” by Lee Harris, April 3, 2015, at http://leeharrisenergy.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/april-2015-energy-forecast-april.html

A number of years ago I took part in a small conference that had the encouraging title, ‘You Were Born for Such a Time as This!’ The theme of this event was focused on the potentials for creative living and success that each of us have within us. Sitting on a panel waiting my turn to speak, my thoughts went in a different direction, though. What, I thought, was meant by, “such a time as this?”

Clearly the conference organizers had a couple of things in mind. One was the economic crisis facing the United States and the world at large. Another was the general sense of transformation abroad in the land as old habits and ways of doing things confronted a rapidly changing world that demanded new approaches and solutions. But not everyone was experiencing ‘this time’ in exactly that way.

For instance, my youngest son works in a store located in a local shopping mall. When I went to visit him one day recently, I discovered the mall was filled with shoppers for whom no economic recession seemed to be happening at all. The happy faces of people moving in and out of the shops purchasing things bore no relationship to the news of job layoffs, unemployment, and stores going bankrupt that I had just seen on the evening news before coming to the shopping center.

So what was ‘such a time as this?’ For the people in that mall, it did not appear to be one of economic hardship. That got me thinking about time not as past, present, and future but as the unique condition that each of us inhabits. For instance, as I go outside after a long winter and glory in the sunshine and spring flowers, a friend of mine in Australia is putting on warmer clothes and preparing for the growing cold of winter. His time, his season, is not the same as mine.

I had taken my place at the panel not knowing what I was going to say. But when my turn came, I knew I would begin by saying, “We do not live in one time. We live in four of them.” The subject of this essay then flowed from that thought.

We inhabit four times. The first of these is World Time. This is the time we all commonly share by virtue of being on earth at the beginning of the twenty-first century. This is the time the conference organizers had in mind when they came up with the phrase, “You were born for such a time as this!” This is the time as portrayed by national news broadcasts and other media; it is the collective history we are all living. This time is one of global climate change, threats to the ecology, economic recession and meltdown, wars and terrorism, and the possibilities of pandemics. It is also a time of space flights, globalization, cures for ancient diseases, and the development of a planetary mind electronically mediated through the Internet and planetary communication technology. It is a time when the challenges and the opportunities are world-size and humanity is truly experiencing itself as a planetary species.

World time is what humanity as a whole experiences, and the challenge is with its scale. Over and over again, I hear people asking me, “How can I make a difference? The problems are so vast and I am just one person. What can I do?” And the answer individually, at least at a physical level, would appear to be, “not much.” There is very little that my actions by themselves, however enlightened, will do to stop the loss of the arctic ice, restore millions of lost jobs, or halt terrorism around the world. Even the President of the United States, arguably the most powerful individual on earth, cannot by himself accomplish these things.

To inhabit world time is to feel overwhelmed and possibly disempowered for the world is so large and we are so small. If it is the only time to which we pay attention, we can risk going a little crazy. Everything can seem so out of control, rushing towards one catastrophe or another carrying us along with it.

And we cannot avoid it. We are part of the world, and world time impacts us in various ways irresistibly, unstoppably, and impersonally.

By contrast, the second time that we live in is very personal. It is your time and my time. It is Individual Time. It is what we are experiencing—the challenges and opportunities we are facing—in our own personal lives.

When my youngest daughter was born, my wife’s sister was with us to help. In advanced stages of liver cancer, she had only a couple of months yet to live. I will never forget Merrily holding Maryn, each in their own very different individual time, a life going out cradling a life coming in, love flowing between them both.

In any given neighborhood, there are those being born, those who are dying, those who are getting their first job, those who are retiring from their last one; there are some who are losing everything and others finding abundance; there are those experiencing despair and those knowing hope and promise.

Personal time takes the events of world time and translates them into the unique contours of our individuality. The result may move in directions very different from the world at large. Prosperity may be everywhere yet I may be facing bankruptcy; economies are failing, yet I may be generating wealth.

The key is that, unlike world time, individual time is lived at a human scale. I may not feel I can influence the world but I can definitely influence my own life. My decisions, my intentionality, my actions—or my lack of the same—can immediately and profoundly change what happens in the sphere of personal time. Although events can seem overwhelming in my life, I still know that potentially I can make a difference. I possess the ability to choose and to act. World time can seem to be the product of vast, impersonal forces but individual time is hand-made, so to speak.

Personal time is the time we are most concerned with. Events in the world at large may trouble or inspire us, but it’s the challenge of our jobs, of meeting the mortgage, of keeping healthy, of raising a family, and of putting food on the table that will consume most of our attention. This individual time is made up of ordinary tasks, most of them repeated in one way or another each day.

The third time we inhabit is less obvious than either of the other two. Personal, individual time is in our face daily and world time is all about us in the news of events transpiring on our globe. But there is a Deep Time or a New Time that is within us and within the world, and it is where the power of transformation lies.

This might be called ‘spiritual time’ for it exists in the depths of our spirit. It is the ability to stand in and experience not an ‘eternal now’ but an eternal new. It is renewal time, the inner state in which all things are beginning and new directions can be both envisioned and chosen in spite of our history. It is the time of transformation. It is the promise embodied in the phrase, “Behold, I make all things new.”

This time is like a stillness within us. It’s where the rushing momentum of world time and personal time comes to a halt, where world time and personal time step back and make room for new possibilities to emerge. It is a place of vision, a place of hope, a place of power.

For a good part of my life, I was involved with the New Age movement. The vision of a New Age is still a strong and powerful one for me, and while the movement itself may have lost credibility and the term one of derision, the idea that we can create a new time, a new history, a new world for humanity is the most powerful and necessary idea that we have. How else to meet the challenges of our age except with an acknowledgement of our ability to change, to move in fresh directions, and to embody new visions? To think otherwise is to abandon hope and give in to despair.

The challenge with the New Age was that it was seen as an event in world time, usually an apocalypse of some sort leading to a new world. But the New Age is an expression of deep time or new time. It is a recognition and affirmation that within us is a place, a consciousness, where we can think anew, see anew, and act anew. It is affirmation that transformation is possible. It is a call to inhabit and live from the creativity of deep time, new time.

This is a profoundly spiritual place for it taps our most fundamental creative spirit and imagination. It is the place where we can say, “Whatever our yesterdays have been like, our tomorrows can be different.” We can reach this place in a variety of ways: inspiration, art, prayer, meditation, service, reflection. All it requires is that we accept the possibility that we can stop, take a breath, look again, see in new ways, change our minds, open our hearts to potential, and have the courage to step forth in new directions.

Both world time and personal time need the renewal that deep, new time can bring. Old ways of being are not working and are making the global situation worse. We need to become new.

But even inhabiting this powerful inner time is not the wholeness of our power nor the full answer to the challenges of world or personal time. For that we need the fourth time. We need Our Time.

Our time is simply the time we co-create together, and if we do so out of the vision and inspiration, the spirit and energy of New Time, this can be very powerful indeed. As I said earlier, no one person can change the world, however enlightened, however noble, however well-positioned and influential he or she may be. To alter world time is beyond the capability of anyone. But it is not beyond the capability of all of us. It is not beyond the power of individuals working in partnership and collaboration. It is not beyond the power of our time.

At the heart of world time is the momentum of history. At the heart of personal time is the mystery and wonder of individuality. At the heart of deep, new time is the creative spirit. But at the heart of our time is love.

If there is any force that can bring together the four times in a convergence of heart, mind, will, and transformation, it’s love. Love is what brings us and binds us together. Love can be as simple as respecting each other. It can be as complex and powerful as dedicating our lives in affection, trust, and mutuality to each other. But whatever form it takes, it draws us together, opens our hearts and minds to each other, and releases the power that only collaboration can bring. In our time the other times find their fulfillment and their promise. In our time we can make a difference that is not available or possible to us in either world time or personal time and which is only a potential in new time.

There is a power that lies in living in the now as many teachers and philosophies proclaim. But the power that we need at this moment comes from living in the flow of time, in the four times through which the world, the self, the spirit, and the community are brought together in creative potential and transformative partnership.

These are the times for which we were born.

©2015 by David Spangler

“David’s Desk #95 – Interlude,” by David Spangler, April, 2015, at http://lorianassociation.com/95-interlude/