A Blank Slate
When my sweetie Chris and I first got together, he was still navigating a difficult divorce. So one day, I decided to give him a necklace as a gift. It was a simple thing really - it had just a plain black cord with a rectangular piece of silver hanging from it. The metal was flat and smooth with no designs, words, or marks on it. When he opened it I said, "This is for you. It's a blank slate. A fresh start." And he smiled. The magic of a New Year is that it also presents us with the gift of a BLANK SLATE. It's a chance to start over and to finally let go of yesterday's grievances and nonsense and bullshit. It's a bonafide opportunity to surrender all your old stories, so that you and the Divine can write some new ones. I mean, if you really really want to, you can have a repeat performance of last year and drag all your old hurts, judgements, dramas, victimizations, excuses and stuff from the past right into 2016 - but really, why would any sane person want to do that? Ha!
Lesson 68 - A Course In Miracles teaches us: "Love holds no grievances... It is as sure that those who hold grievances will suffer guilt, as it is certain that those who forgive will find peace."
What if you would make the radical choice for love and forgive everyone for everything? What if would surrender all the barriers that you have built against your awareness of Love's presence? What if you decided to set aside all the cheap, petty ways you keep yourself small, stuck and separate that actually cost you so much? What if you - just once and for all - chose to lay down your arsenal of weapons?
Right now, we've all got a choice to make. We can either move forward with the intention and commitment to choose Love and live from a place of Divine Guidance (by putting something smarter than us in charge) - or - we can keep serving the small, ego-self by choosing Fear. Both options are available to us 24/7 - but, one of them is a miraculous path that leads to peace and freedom - while the other is a fast track to suffering and the experience of hell.
Now you would think that knowing this would make the choice abundantly clear and frankly, wicked easy. And yet, you'd be surprised how many people would rather cling to their ole' familiar misery than take a shot on inspired Divine Love. The thing is, that you can have healing and happiness right NOW, in this moment, but it requires your conscious participation. You have to be willing to set down the chalk, pick up the eraser and wipe your board clean. You've got to say goodbye to your limited human vision of "how it was" - so you can enter the Spirit's unlimited realm of how "it could be".
The good news is, in the beginning, all that Spirit asks of you in order to act on your behalf, is a little bit of willingness on your part. Just like a teeny-tiny, little bit, you know .... all you need to do is take a deep breathe, soften your hands and loosen your grip - on who and what you think you are, and who and what you think God is. Allow yourself to be washed clean of the past, forgive yourself and others, so that you can become a blank page that the Beloved can write upon.
