Archives for posts with tag: expressing life

Seven Keys to Your Personal Evolution

July 5, 2010 //
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keys to evolutionToday we look at seven key activities that are important for your personal evolution.  The fact is, life is evolving.  You are evolving, I am evolving, we are all evolving.  Although our individual and collective evolutionary path is, in my opinion, a given — that doesn’t mean we can’t stray off the path.

Where are we headed eventually?  Simply stated, we are ultimately moving towards higher levels of consciousness and awareness where we recognize the unity of everything.  We are realizing that although we are living through an experience of individuality and uniqueness, at our core we are all one.  There are intermediate steps along the way as our systems become more complex, as we are able to tap more easily the sum total of human knowledge, and as the groups of others for whom we exhibit care and concern expand and expand.

Each of us has a choice to cooperate with this evolutionary process or not.  If you wish to facilitate your personal evolution (which of course facilitates our collective evolution), then here are seven key actions which will move you in a positive direction.  Although all of these steps are important, the first ones start within you while the later ones move outward.

Turn inward – So much of our lives directs our senses outward, it’s easy to live with the belief that all the stuff we sense “out there” is the only stuff that is real.  A daily practice of turning inward allows us a degree of balance.  It shows us a truer reality where we know that there is a presence that connects all.  It is important that our lives experience this base.

Set the vision — As we turn inward, it’s important that we set a vision as to where we see our lives headed.  We must begin with the end in mind.  We must visualize the highest outcome for our lives.  What is it we are called to be?  This vision gives our life direction.

Feed the mind – We must continue to grow intellectually.  We must continue to learn.  It’s too easy to stay in our comfort zone and only learn more about what we already know and only pursue sources that are biased in the direction of our beliefs.  We must continue to challenge ourselves by exploring new areas and new ways of looking at things. 

Nurture the body — We must take care of these physical vehicles which serve us while here on earth.  We must ensure that these “temples” are exercised and well fed. 

Heal the shadow — We must recognize that our early life experiences buried deep within us hidden beliefs and motivations which must be healed.  We must seek to understand why we believe or act as we do when such beliefs or actions are not in the best interest of ourselves and others.  We must seek out and utilize established methods to bring our shadow into the light so we can heal it and make a higher choice.

Act in alignment – Our actions in the outer world must be in alignment with our vision for our life.  Each of us has unique creative ability which we are called to express.  As we express that ability in our work or play, we must consider how it serves our growth, both as individuals and as part of the collective humanity.

Cultivate relationships — As we move outward in our action in the world, we must seek to connect with others.  Developing relationships with others heightens our sense of interconnectedness.  Expanding our involvement with others allows our talents and gifts to touch them and for their gifts to touch us.  The interplay of our individual evolutionary gifts expands their influence and speeds up our collective growth.

These are the seven keys that I believe are essential for each of us to be utilizing in our personal growth.  Each is important. 

Do these seven steps resonate with you?  Are you developing all of them?  How might you grow one you are ignoring currently?  Would you add any other steps to this list?

Mark Gilbert

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Categories Change Agent, Consciousness, Featured Article

Are You Living on the Growing Edge?

February 9, 2010 //
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The Growing Edge of Life

What the heck does that mean?  Let’s stop and think about our life for just a moment… there are areas of all of our lives, I suspect, in which we could point at and say that it has remained pretty constant and hasn’t changed much over time.  The style of my wardrobe hasn’t shifted a whole lot over the years even though clothes come and go.  I can pretty much assure you that if Bob Dylan comes out with a new recording, I’m going to get it.  Most weeks I’m going to eat Mexican food at least once.  You get the idea… and you have your constants.

But then there are those areas of our lives where we are growing and evolving.  There are those areas where the events in our lives such as losses (jobs, loved ones, end of marriage and so on) have forced us to grow.  Then there are those areas where we have felt an internal motivation to move in new directions.  Be it new careers, new hobbies, new relationships, moving to a new city, new friends, exploring and learning about new areas, or any other area of your life where you are called to express something new… all of these areas in which we expressed newness are our growing edges. 

I came across this concept recently in a new book I was reading called “Social Change 2.0″ by David Gershon.  The author’ s objective was to outline a model of instituting positive social change on the planet.  He describes his efforts to motivate people so that the changes in their lives would “stick”.  Ultimately he decided to look at the evolution of a human being into new areas of change by exploring what the multibillion year evolutionary experience of our planet could tell us.  There he saw that the natural world offered us a model for looking at continuous growth, and that model was the “growing edge”.

Gershon writes: “If something is alive it is always growing.  There is always the next shoot, bud or growing edge.  A tree is a good example, if you look at the shoots on a branch that are just coming into existence.  This is where the tree is most vital.  It is where the trees life force is the strongest.  It is where there is the greatest degree of aliveness.  These growing edges have several distinct properties.  They are fragile and vulnerable, without any bark protecting them against the element’s.  They are soft and have the green color of new life.  They are unique to that branch of the tree.  While all trees share the same process of growth, each branch looks different depending on the unique circumstances and stage of its growth.  There is no right growing edge for a tree.  There certainly is no way to say, one growing edge is better than another or one branch should be like another branch.  The only meaningful criterion is the quality of the trees aliveness.  If a tree is fully alive it is always growing and has many growing edges.  If there are no new growing edges coming into existence than the tree is atrophying and moving toward death.”

I like this concept of a growing edge.  As I visualize my life as if it were a tree, I can now sense those areas that don’t change at all and give me strength and stability as my “roots”.  My moral standards and sense of responsibility, which were ingrained in me from an early age are examples of such roots.  They continue to anchor me, as the winds of change blow through my life.  Then there are those areas which continue to change and grow but at an extremely slow pace.  We might consider this as the bark on a tree.  My clothes, my musical taste, my desires for certain food and similar things have grown through the years, but overall, have remained fairly steady.  And then there are those vulnerable edges, where newness extends outward, the new branches and new leaves of our life.  New jobs, new relationships, new learning, new turns on the spiritual path — – areas of growth, areas of vitality, areas of uniqueness.

The mystic Ernest Holmes wrote  .  “Life is activity, and when we stop being active we turn away from the newness of life…today can be filled with wonder if we know that we stand on the threshold of that which is wonderful and new.”

So the question is… are you living on the growing edge or are you fearing change and newness?  I invite you today to contemplate your life using this model of the growing edge to help you gain a sense of where your roots are, where you’re branches are, and most importantly, where the newness of life is expressing in the experience of you as something wonderful….

Mark

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Categories Consciousness, Positive Evolution

What’s right or wrong?

January 19, 2010 //
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As I stated previously, the purpose of this website is to share information and foster dialogue on how we can use the power of our thoughts to create the highest possible future for humanity. That’s a lofty goal, I know. But like any large goal, it’s only attainable by breaking it down into smaller goals that are more manageable. So then that lofty goal, really can be attained by each of us making choices in our daily lives that are in the direction of the highest possible future.

But that raises the big question… given any situation in my life, how can I always know which choice is for my highest good and the highest good of the planet? In other words, given a situation large or small, how can I know which choice is “right”?

I’ve always found great wisdom in these words from the mystic Ernest Holmes, “The criterion for any man as to what is right or wrong for him is not to be found in some other man’s judgment. The criterion is: Does the thing I wish to do express more life, more happiness, more peace for myself, and at the same time harm no one? If it does, it is right. It is not selfish. But if it is done at the expense of anyone, then in such degree we are making a wrong use of the Law.”

I usually boil that down to asking myself if what I’m about to do ” expresses more life and harms no one?”

Of course the devil’s in the details, meaning reasonable people sometimes disagree on when something is expressing more life or when something might be harming someone. For example, a few days ago I stopped into a local Starbucks. Sitting at one of the tables was a scruffy gentleman nursing a cup of coffee and working to create small items of jewelry out of beads and strings he had laid out on the table. I immediately sensed some of the other patrons were bothered by the presence of this man. I stopped and asked him what he was making and he proudly presented me his artistic creations and insisted I take a gift of a key chain after complimenting his work.

So was this gentleman expressing more life and harming no one? In my opinion, he was certainly expressing life through his call to create his jewelry. And, I felt he was really harming no one by creating key chains at a table at Starbucks although some of the other patrons might have disagreed.

I’m sure you can think of plenty of situations in your life, where people disagree on whether something is right or wrong even if using the criteria I offer here. So how do we get to the truth in such situations? There’s two ways.

The first, which most of us use, is to go to our minds and try to logically argue which way is right or which way is wrong. We weigh pros and cons. We often take into account the opinions of experts or which answer the majority agrees with. There’s nothing wrong with using the mind in this approach.

However, there is a second way that we can get at truth when trying to determine if something is right or wrong–trying to decide if something expresses more life and harms no one. That way is to take it into the silence within us… to go within… to ask our higher selves… to listen to our intuition… to seek the wisdom of Spirit or Infinite Intelligence. There, in the silence, we will usually get an inner sense of what truly is best for ourselves and everyone.

Therefore, my suggestion for you today is when faced with a situation when you’re not sure which way to act, do this: ask yourself, which choice expresses more life and harms no one? If the answer is not immediately clear, then certainly use your mind to logically weigh the choices, but also take it in your heart and listen….and then trust your intuition.

Blessings and enjoy life.

Mark

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Categories Consciousness, Positive Evolution