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Notes from Neale...
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My Dear Friends,
As we move deeper into this first month of the New Year I am excited to tell you about two items of interest here at the ReCreation Foundation. And at the end of this letter, I'll do so. But first, let me say why I've always considered this a very special time of year.
This is the Time of New Beginnings. For me, January signifies the wonder and the excitement and the liberation of "starting over." The Old Year is behind me and the New Year has just begun; the blackboard has been erased. I've got a clean slate.
There's something metaphysical about all that; there's a message in the folds of that experience that comes directly from God. The message is: no matter how badly things may have gone, no matter how bad I may have been, that was 'Then' and this is 'Now.'
A New Day has dawned. A New Moment has arrived. It is the Golden Moment of Now, wherein which all things are possible, all things are forgiven, and all things are made new.
Our three-part cycle
They say that February is the Month of Love. If so, then for me January is the Month of Hope. Hope is the first step on the road to Mastery. There are three in all. They are: Hoping, Believing, Knowing.
Hoping begins the cycle and so does January. The cycle completes itself in December with the ultimate conclusion: the discovery within each of us of the Eternal Flame of Chanukah - the light of God that can never and will never be extinguished, because it is Who We Are - and the birthing of the Christ within every human soul that naturally follows.
This cycle that moves us from Hoping to Believing to Knowing can complete itself in one year, in one lifetime, or in one moment. It is really all the same to God, who knows nothing of Time, because God is Timeless - as is Life, except within our imagination.
And so we are born and we die and we are born again, all in the self-same instant, the Holy Instant, the glorious and ever present Moment of Now, which we stretch out across the breadth of our perception in order that we might expand the Now and thus expand Ourselves, thus to know more of both.
This is the incredible, indescribable miracle of Life, and we have come to mutual agreement in fairly large numbers that January shall be called the endlessly recurring new beginning of this ever present, forever ongoing Process.
So I invite you to embrace this moment as a Time of Hope.
If 2007 has been a bad year...
If you have lost yourself in the drama of it all and have forgotten Who You Are; if you have come through the last cycle and missed its ultimate conclusion; if you have made a turn into a corner where it is dark; take heed: The Time of the Light has arrived.
The Eternal Flame has been placed within you. It is you. The Christed One has been born again. It is you. And the New Year offers you another chance, another beginning, another start on the journey to self-realization.
I like to use January as a Time of Forgiveness, too. For me it is a Time of Cleansing, when I try as hard as I can to forgive myself my trespasses, even as I forgive those who trespass against me.
I am not always successful with that first part. I can forgive others, and believe that I sincerely do. I am not so good at forgiving myself. It seems self-indulgent somehow; it feels self-serving. In order to forgive myself I have to let go of my thought that it is not okay to serve myself.
It is self-serving to forgive myself. There's no question about that. The question is not whether it's self-serving, but whether it is okay to be so self-serving.
God says that the answer is yes. You must serve yourself to know yourself. Indeed, you cannot know anything without serving it. Service is the experience of Knowing, in action. This is how we come to know God.
It is also how we come to know Life.
And it is how we come, at last, to know the Self.
Through the process of serving God, we come to know that we are serving the Self. Through the process of serving the Self, we come to know that we are serving God. And through the wondrous process of serving others, we come to know that we are serving both.
Life is an upward spiral
The circle completes itself, and we see that the circle has always been and will always be. There is nothing but the Circle, there is nothing but the Cycle, and it is only a matter of where we are now on that never-ending revolution of the soul.
We are revolving, and as we experience each revolution we see more clearly that it is a spiritual revolution, producing a Spiritual Evolution. We are doing much more than simply "going around in circles." For the soul, revolution is evolution.
The Cycle is Eternal, but that does not mean it is getting nowhere. Ever upward the Cycle goes, and one day we see that the circle is not a circle at all, but a spiral.
Looked at one way, from a place of perception that sees with no depth, but only on the surface of things, it looks for all the world like a circle. Only when we see into the depth of things, only as our perception becomes deeper, do we see that the circle is a spiral.
It is like a Slinky.
Remember the Slinky? What a wonderful childhood toy! Pushed together, crammed together, and looked at one way, it appears to be a circle. Only when it is expanded does it reveal itself to be a spiral.
And so January, the start of a new Cycle, is a time to expand our consciousness, to grow our awareness, to move from Hoping to Believing to Knowing. I hope and believe and know that 2008 is going to be a wonderful year for you. A year of self-discovery and self-creation. And most of all, a year of self-realization.
Let wonder and joy abound!
Now, those two items of interest
I am sooo excited about our Foundation's new monthly electronic magazine, Celebrations. Have you seen it yet? The January issue-focused on Renewal-is chock full of wonderful articles, insightful commentaries, and the popular Question and Answers on Conversations with God column, in which I respond to inquires about the material from CwG readers.
If you would like to take a look at our premier issue for free, click on the link below...
I know that after one peek you'll want to subscribe immediately!
I'm also really inspired to tell you about our one and only East Coast Spiritual Growth Retreat this year April 9th-13th in beautiful Tampa, Florida...easy to reach from everywhere.
The retreat is titled Celebrate Yourself, and it is about just that! In it you will learn:
- How to heal past hurt and create a joyful future!
- The way to overcome fear and guilt, replacing them with love and excitement!
- When to say you've had enough with being small, and where to start in living life as a celebration!
- Seventeen steps to being "happier than God"!
Each participant will receive a free signed copy of my new book, Happier Than God, to be released on February 26th.
If you live anywhere from the middle of the United States to the east, this is a perfect time to reconnect with the wonderful energy of CwG, bringing it into your life in a more powerful way than ever before.
I hope to see you there! And I'll see you here next week!
In love and light,
Neale.
