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New Year’s Eve: Out with the Old!
One of the teachers I am working with has asked us, as part of our year-end review, to release all the old habits, feelings, beliefs, thoughts that are not serving us. I’ve spent this week reviewing the year, in fact the past nine years, to dredge up and lever out the old “stuff” that’s “down there!” As another of my teachers would say, “it is time to metabolize that “stuff” and turn it into compost for new growth!”
2016 is a 9-year, a year for completion. 2017 is a 1-year, a year for new beginnings! Today is a great day to release the old to make room for the new.
Here is my poem to reflect on this process; a riff on the five elements of Classical Chinese Medicine and Philosophy:
Release—
Anger through forgiveness:
Grow through the lessons,
Rise with the lengthening days,
Draw on all the resources,
Create your own destiny!
Anxiety through surrender:
Expand through the lessons,
Allow engaging relationships,
Mature in thoughts and actions,
Manifest inalienable joy!
Worry through service:
Serve from the lessons,
Share from the heart,
Engage in all life offers,
Adapt to the Way of life!
Grief through acceptance:
Transmute through the lessons,
Balance loss with gifts,
Release emptiness for fullness,
Purify life through praise!
Fear through trust:
Contemplate life’s lessons,
Believe in your own power,
Feel free and confident in life,
Flow through the currents to Wisdom!
©2016 Richard W. Bredeson. All rights reserved.
What happens next?
A couple of days ago, Rosemary posted on her Facebook page an article by an archeologist and historian about cycles of human history and how we may be entering one now. It is a provocative article! As I wrote my pages today (one of my practices is to follow the Julia Cameron “Artist’s Way” and write out three pages every day) This article was foremost in mind. Here is the link to the article: https://medium.com/@theonlytoby/history-tells-us-what-will-happen-next-with-brexit-trump-a3fefd154714#.e4rkcn9ib
And here are my three-pages I wrote today; my call to action was to “shed more light”! Here are my thoughts:
“The day before Equinox and the days are getting shorter. And finally the days may be cooling as well. We will see low 60s by Sunday. We are moving into my time of the year when things begin to slow and rest. It is a lovely time of respite. A good time to breathe.
Will we breathe after the election in November? What will happen between now and then? There is an ugly mood in the country, even the world, and it seems to grow uglier every day. Police killings, riots, violence, bomb plots by the crazies on all sides. The election seems to be attracting all the crazies – drawing them out from their holes, somehow giving them permission to raise their crazed cries of fringe creeds and beliefs to the point of drowning out saner voices of reason, logic, thoughtful discourse. Has it always been like this? Or has Trump set a new standard of low? It is a throw-back time, back to Jim Crow, racism, violence, hate, separation, distrust and deep-seated fear. What is to be gained by this?
Is it a cycle of history we are doomed to repeat, another mass kill-off of humanity, like the plague, world wars, famine? Do we need a purge, a cleansing of the human population to somehow restart evolution? Could it get this bad?
Or is there enough lifting of human consciousness now in the world to somehow counteract this pending cycle? Have we brought enough light into the world to defend against the darkness, to shed light into the shadowy corners and prevail? I don’t know. The world as it is currently configured hangs in the balance of my not-knowing. There is a pause now, of sorts, across the next seven weeks while we all consider. News will continue to flow and more of Trump’s antics and tactics will be revealed. The debates may come off to reveal the clown vs. the Stateswoman. But no one will laugh. And we will learn little. Then there will be a flurry, a fury of last-minute campaigning, and we will go to the polls.
It is hard to believe that the buffoon is close to a possible win. It reveals much about the country we live in. And maybe it doesn’t really matter who wins, because this is the country and will continue to be the country after the election. The population won’t change. The hearts and minds of our neighbors will remain the same. The hate and fear that created Trump, the candidate, will remain. There will be violence against the black community and there will be the attacks on the Muslim community. Clinton won’t stop this. And our government will continue to be hamstrung by the same forces that currently prevent real progress. Perhaps a tenuous balance will be found and we will continue to teeter on the edge. But the forces have been unleashed. Trumpism is here now, with a mean voice and no forgiveness. It may not even matter who “wins” in November as we may lose any sense of stability in the world
As I write these words I can too easily see a world war on the horizon. That is a scary thought but too real to deny. It would be irresponsible to deny this possibility!
So, then, what is the responsible thing to do? What is my role in all of this? What am I to do?
Be the light. Shed light on this real possibility. Talk about it, not in terms of fear but in terms of responsibility and action. Do I blog about this? Do I write a poem? Do I publish this “essay” in some form for people to consider? What is there, really, to be done to “prevent” the cycling of history we seem about to repeat? If we hold the light up to it and examine it most carefully perhaps there is a way to dull its edge. Perhaps it won’t bite quite as deeply. Maybe this is the best we can hope for, like the 2008 recession that, thanks to Obama, didn’t descend into a full- blown depression.
We all know a shift is coming. There can be no forward progress without change. We can “pray” the progress will not be in reverse. We can take action to shed light on the possibilities and rally all the forces to support our prayer!”
And we can build bridges, rainbow bridges of light, as the author of History tells us what may happen next with Brexit & Trump, Tobias Stone, concludes!
MONDAY’S POEM: Echoes 1
My newest grandson, Tristan Wallace Bredeson, is here for a visit from California. He is just over three months old now, and beginning to show a delightful personality. He has been just about the most perfect baby I can imagine; he only fusses a little when he is hungry or needs a change! We are having a delightful time with him!
A new generation of Bredesons leads me to the poem today. I wrote it two years ago, but it seems to apply even more as the next generation, the next echo sounds forth. And with my son and grandson with me now, I do catch myself using expressions and words from my past, my parents. Are we learning lessons and moving on to new ones or are we just echoing within the chamber of time? Maybe the answer to this question is “yes”!
Echoes 1
Dad’s voice moved from
My ear to my throat
At breakfast. I heard
Him clearly: A non-sensical
Expression of his.
Mom’s voice jumped out of
My mouth with no thought
Or control behind it. It
Was clear, critical; some
Rule was broken.
Where is my voice? Has it
Been silenced by the tides
Of Time; lost in the returning
Ripples from the
Wall of Beyond?
Is the Wall of Time moving?
Is the sphere expanding?
The already learned lessons
Echo from the cold surface
Teaching, preaching.
Will we ever learn?
©2014 Richard W. Bredeson. All rights reserved.