New Beginnings

I'm writing this during the simultaneous occurence of the Christian celebration of Easter and the Jewish celebration of Passover.

These events take place during springtime as Mother Earth renews herself and all of Creation springs forth in newness, fullness, and gladness of life.

We often take this time to freshen our homes, our bodies, our minds and our spirits. However, we can choose to start over at any moment. There is no need to wait for a new year, a new season, a new month, or a new week. There are times in our lives that lend themselves to starting something new.

The beginning of a new year, finishing school, changing a career, or moving to a new home.These all are times that turn our minds to fresh starts. Their advantage is that they bring with them the energy of that event, creating a tide of change around them that we can ride to our next shoreline.

However, we can choose to start anew anytime. In any moment we can decide that a bad day or a relationship - be it personal or professional - that has taken off on the wrong foot can be started again.

It is a mental shift that allows us to clean the slate and approach anything with fresh eyes, a fresh mind, and a fresh expression of our thoughts.

We can make this choice at any time.

Starting anew is most powerful when we focus our attention to what we are choosing to create.

Giving all of our attention to the unwanted aspects of our lives allows what we resist to persist.

We need to remember to leave enough room in the process of new beginnings to be kind to ourselves, because it takes time to become accustomed to anything new, no matter how much we like it.

There is no need to become difficult or judgemental on ourselves if we don’t reach our new goals instantly. Instead, we acknowledge the forward motion and choose to reset and start again, knowing that with each choice we learn, grow, and move forward.

Making the choice to start anew has its own energy. It’s a promise we make to ourselves. This type of forward momentum creates a sort of vacuum behind it, pulling toward us all we need to help us continue moving in our chosen direction.

Once the journey has begun, it may take unexpected turns, but it never really ends. Like cycles in nature, there are periods of obvious growth and periods of dormancy that signal a time of waiting for the right moment to burst forth.

Each time we choose to start anew we dedicate ourselves to becoming the best we are able to be.

We can begin to improve our overall physical well-being by first starting to notice not only our thoughts, but our reactions to our thoughts as well. The power of the mind is a curious thing, because it is so powerful yet so difficult to control sometimes. We often find ourselves thinking a certain way, knowing that this thought may be creating trouble for us yet we find it difficult to stop.

For example, many people have the experience of becoming ill at the same time every year or every time they go on a plane. They may even be aware that their beliefs impact their experiences, and so they continue to believe they will become ill, and then they do.

Sometimes we feel as though we need to suffer illness, be it physical or mental - such as depression, in order to process something or move something through our bodies. However, we often suffer at the hands of our own minds and become ill, or feel exhausted, because we don’t make the effort to galvanize the power of our minds in the service of our physical or mental health, which is one of its most important functions.

We really can use it to communicate to our bodies and our minds, yet we often regard the two as separate entities that have little to do with one another. Knowing this, we have the power to create physical health and mental health, simply by paying attention to the tapes running in our minds.

Once we hear ourselves, we have the option to let that tape keep running or to make a new recording.

Frank often tells me that it's "time to weed the garden".

By this, he means that it is time to cleanse ourselves of the negativity, impurity and distraction of the weeds we have allowed to thrive within us. It is time to cull the gardens of our homes, our bodies, our minds, and our spirits. We harness the power of the mind in our defense when we choose supportive, healing words that foster good health and high spirits. All we need to do is remember to tend the field of our mind with the attentive and loving hand of a master gardener tending the flower beds and gardens of our lives, culling out the weeds so that the blossoms of springtime may come to fruition.

The beauty of life is that we don't need to wait for spring in order to begin our spiritual garden. Perhaps it's time to dig our hands into the soil and plant our future.

May your garden be fragrant and fruitful.

With love and light,

Rob