A dear friend of mine Janice sent me this newsletter on ‘truth’, having asked permission I felt it was worthy of sharing…indeed there is so much negativity, conspiracy, lizard gods, alien spaceships, secret rulers, crazy fundamentalists blah blah to bring hope into what is seemingly a dark world!

 

Truth is within ourselves, it takes no rise

From outward things, whate’er you may believe

There is an inner centre in us all

Where truth abides in fullness;and around

Wall upon wall the gross flesh hems it in…

Binds all and makes all error, but to know

Rather consists in finding out a way

For the imprisoned splendour to escape

Than in achieving entry for a light

Supposed to be without.

                                                                         Robert Browning: Paracelsus

 

Having chosen the Star for our Christmas card as a symbol of a guiding light to keep our hearts and minds full of hope during dark days it seems to also offer a message to keep us uplifted during the longest night of the winter Solstice, as did the lodestar for the wise men seeking the light without. Maybe it can also symbolise the inner light that is awakening across the world at this time of transition and change.

 

Now, as we navigate from an era based on the ‘Old Story’ of a machine- like and competitive world towards a ‘New Story’ of a universe that is 13.7 billion years old and still evolving , we are beginning to realise that we are all deeply connected both with each other and also with a whole web of life.. Having this week had a fascinating fireside conversation with our 17 year old philosopher granddaughter who is already grasping the primacy of consciousness and how our thoughts and deep intentions to varying degrees directs what manifests, I feel humble that she has already grasped what has taken me decades of questing! Christmas reminds us that ‘a little child shall lead the way’.

 

Much of this year I have spent on the”! New Story” in different ways. A key focus has been the ‘New Story Summit’ – an international conference which took place early this autumn. As part of the core team preparing for this we were surprised when all 325 places were taken before even the publicity leaflet was circulated, that 500 or more ‘local hub groups’ around the world followed much of it through web-streaming and that almost 50,000 sent in supportive comments on Facebook. Maybe it is telling us that the time for the ‘new’ is now. We held the summit at the Findhorn Foundation in Scotland on a ‘gifting basis’ in which people’s generosity enabled delegates to travel from 50 countries, from every continent and included many indigenous elders (whose ceremonial offerings of reconciliation brought in both the ancestors and the many subtle dimensions of life). During the summit I had a strong sense that the tide has turned which was deeply affirming. The incoming tide of the ‘new’ will not flow in through one stream alone but through the many currents of human endeavour as we all seek to express loving connection, to seek new principles for living and move towards discovery that “ the centre of consciousness is shifting from ego to soul, from a sense of isolation into a renewed feeling of relationship with the deep ground of our being” ( Lindsay Clarke: author of Chymical Wedding).

 

Just as at the solstice we honour the darkest time of the year and then welcome the return of the light at Christmas, so in the world at any one time the dark and the light co-exist with the seed of the light held within the depths of the dark, just as in the Chinese symbol of yin and yang, As we recognise and hold both with open eyes so , hopefully, we can weave our way between the false propaganda presented to us through the media and over exaggerated ‘conspiracy theories’ which distract us from discerning the truth For example, we are told that GM foods are the only way to feed the global population whereas, in fact , Gregg Braden, who has researched this (The Turning Point, Hay House 2014) and, basing his findings on the “2013 World Hunger and Poverty Facts and Statistics” report says that “ The agriculture of the world produces 17 percent more calories today than it did 30 years ago, enough for at least 2,720 kilocalories per person per day,” that malnutrition and hunger are not caused by scarcity and that “we already have solutions to big problems such as food, energy and sustainable economy.” He states that “our problem is a crisis in thinking” and that “the usually unspoken story of who we are, where we come from and how things can work in our world is a story of separation that is buried so deeply in the way we think and act that we accept its consequences automatically without a second thought. Referring to 400 studies that show how“ Nature is based upon a model of cooperation rather than Darwin’s survival of the fittest “ he concludes that our model of evolutionary science has been turned upside down and that if we perceive with open eyes we will understand that “the universe, our world and our bodies are made of a shared field of energy and that our emotions directly influence what happens in the sea of energy we are bathed in.” (The Turning Point, Hay House, 2013).

This might begin to explain why I am I am on-goingly involved in taking forward the New Story in different ways. One way is with CANA ( Christians Awakening to a New Awareness) and another is co-creating with others the One Spirit Alliance which is seeking to connect up religious and spiritual groups so as to find common ground, a shared vision of unity within diversity as well as collaborative ways of finding mutual support .

The key now is to connect and work together. As Richard Olivier, who acted as artistic director for those of us working on the New Story Summit, expressed succinctly: ‘We are leaving behind the era of expert few and entering an era of the cohering power of the many’. Where is this leading? Well, we cannot know in detail as we are not there yet but Christmas reminds us of the guiding star which will lead us forward. The statement I have posted above my desk for next year is a quote from the evolutionary leader from the USA, Barbara Marx Hubbard . She sees our era as taking a quantum jump towards building the new universal human. “ A universal human is one who is connected through the heart with the whole of life, attuned to the deepest intelligence of Nature, and called forth irresistibly by spirit to creatively express his or her gifts in the evolution of self and the world. Above all, a universal human has shifted ideally from the separated egoic self to the deeper self that is a direct expression of service. To become a universal human is to evolve consciously, choosing a path of development that has never been mapped before, in a world that has never existed before.” Is that so very different from a deeper understanding of the Christmas message?

 

We are all gathering at Solstice, for pragmatic rather than deeper reasons, but somehow this seems appropriate for this year. May 2015 bring you safely navigated through ‘interesting times’, as the Chinese would say.