Sunday, December 28, 2008

The Only Real Change Necessary: from Fear to Love

Change seems to be the word for 2009! It’s about time we embrace the only constant in our lives. What a beautiful concept and yet how we fear it. Imagine if things didn’t change. How boring would life be? And yet the unknown scares us so.

It’s been said that there are only two real emotions, love and fear. All others issue from them. For instance, anger comes from fear of something. Happiness comes from love of something. If I approach life with love then change seems enjoyable and welcome. If I approach life with fear, then change is very stressful and I will try to resist it causing more stress.

We have a choice and, in my opinion, this is the only real choice we have. This is our Free Will, our choice to come from love or fear. All of our life experiences result from our choosing to respond to life from love or fear.

I must admit that in my earlier years, my conditioning steered me in the direction of choosing from fear. As time moved on, something in me noticed what these choices were doing to my life. I made a commitment to myself to start turning my life in a different direction by choosing to come from love rather than fear. That decision led me to the realization that Truth is more important than comfort. To face Truth rather than to seek comfort has become my choice from love. By living in Truth, being true to myself and others, by looking life squarely in the face and not hiding from the messages my body, my emotions and the world mirror back to me, I have found a comfort that is much deeper than the one I sought by avoiding fear.

This is a crucial time in the history of our lives. We are awakened enough to see what our choices do to not only the quality of our lives but to the survival of our planet. We can put an end to life, as we know it, by the push of a button. We can put a slow end to life on our planet by continuing to selfishly and ignorantly exhaust our resources. We can continue to live as if we were separate individuals with no need to care about the welfare of one another. We can go on thinking that our group is better than the others, that our nation is better and deserves more, that our religion is the only way and go to war over these beliefs. But I believe deep down we all know how foolish this is.

It is my wish that we all awaken from our illusion of separateness and drop our silly identifications, which are causing all our wars both internally and globally.

We are like leaves on a tree. Our source comes from the same place. Without that source, we cease to exist. Imagine leaves warring over their individual interpretations of God. The tree could care less about what each leaf thinks. The tree just loves it’s own leaves and equally, I’m sure. Imagine a leaf thinking it was so special and so much better than another. Imagine one branch trying to suck all the water and hoard it. Think of how the whole tree would suffer, if it could even accomplish that mission. The beauty of the tree is in its entirety. If the tree becomes sick, all the leaves suffer.

It’s time we wake up to the fact that we are all from the same source. It’s time we drop our selfishness and our sense of separateness. It’s time we embrace one another and act from love rather than from fear. Our survival is at stake.

The most important change we can make is to reorient our lives and embrace change with love. I recently read this quote in the newsletter of Namaste Publishing "....we will not only come to know and act on the dictum that we are our brother’s keeper, we will at last recognize that we are our brother. We are all made of the same spiritual essence."

Just say no to fear.
Your life depends upon it.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Jarl - I read your article on the Secret in 2007 and it keeps surfacing when I roto-rooter my desk. It was a wonderful article -- dangling the always optimistic nugget before us "hungry-to-know" types that after having grown tired of "creating my own reality," you had your first experience of surrender, commenting "Ahhhh. That is living."

So I am interested in knowing if that experience has continued to stay alive in you? Also interested in knowing if your previous reference to 'clients' -- which seemed to be of a spiritual sort have been replaced by your Artful design clients?

Your designs are indeed wonderful (also very much like my own.)

Sincerely, Sam (Dianne) Law

Anonymous said...

Dear Sam,
Thank you for your comment. I'd love to see your design work, you are certainly a good writer. Next time you write a comment, which I hope you will, please leave your email address or write to me at jarlforsman@gmail.com To answer your question, yes the experience has continued. Surrender is a moment by moment choice and once one has the motivation (and that usually takes a major challenge) to truly surrender and see the result, it's an easy choice. As for your questions regarding clients, I have not replaced my spiritual clients with design clients, I see both. My spiritual work is my true work and passion. Design is just for fun. Please keep in touch.
Cheers, Jarl

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