Article Highlights:

• Exactly what IS hopeful?
• Getting our facts straight
• The reason for optimism

Dear Hopeful One,

Last week we had a Heart of Love Message in which we were asked to become emissaries for Hope in the world, to hear the hope, see the hope, speak the hope and to lend hope a hand.

As I listen to the casual conversations going on around me everywhere – even at New Age events and on the phone with my friends – I’m sometimes disheartened by what we are creating with the power and energy of our words.  Again and again I hear people affirming that these are the worst of times, that things are bad, very bad.

I believe this to be uninformed harmful gossip at best and outright lies that we are perpetuating at worst. That may seem a shocking statement but I’ll just stick my neck out there and say it.  These things are not true. They simply are not.

There are many problems.  That has always been true. At many times, throughout history things have been bad in our world.  There have been many wars and plagues and natural disasters.  We live in a time that is challenging in that way.  But is it the worst of such times?  Not even close.

Our recent plague (there have been many in the history of humanity) was very scary, many died.  The numbers seem to be settling at about 2% as an average.  That was many people and we were all sad and worried.  

However, it was not as bad as the last flu pandemic, in about 1916 through1918 when 40-60% of the population died in many, many places around the world.  The same numbers have been true of the black plague which ravaged the known world numerous times.  Ours was bad enough, but it was not the worst.

The current wars are unacceptable.  Completely unacceptable.  But they are not the worst.  And increasingly when a country wars now, growing numbers of people lend their voices together in outrage because it’s possible now to be heard in that way.  We can be heard in great numbers now, and we are speaking against war and in support of the innocent civilian victims of war.  This matters.  

It is an important change.  Something is building there. We are beginning to realize that maybe we don’t need to be silent victims of war.  This is real progress… this is how change occurs over the course of human evolution.

The population is no longer primarily indentured surfs and oppressed peoples ruled by church and state, or at the helpless behest of landowners and kings.  More of the population has freedom, better quality of life, better health, education and more opportunities.  Not for all, but for many more.  

It is important to say as well that where there are inequities, people are working hard in every area of life to change this.  I challenge you to name a century when more people have cared about making the world a better place and are actually working to create that world.

So much is better for so many. Reflect on who humanity was en mass during earlier times such as the dark ages.  Think on this.  Many things have changed and improved.

It must be said. If we are to effectively speak of and address the problems that exist, we must have a balanced view of how much has changed for the better over time. If not, we will lose hope and begin to spiral into the creation of its opposite.  

Some of you will remember I shared the following short paragraphs a few years ago. Chipotle restaurants printed them on their December takeout bags in 2015.  It is no less true now.  

A Two-Minute Case for Optimism
by STEVEN PINKER

It’s easy to get discouraged by the ceaseless news of violence, poverty, and disease. But the news presents a distorted view of the world. News is about things that happen, not things that don’t happen. You never see a TV crew reporting that a country isn’t at war, or that a city hasn’t had a mass shooting that day, or that millions of 80-year-olds are alive and well.

The only way to appreciate that state of the world is to count. How many incidents of violence, or starvation, or disease are there as a proportion of the number of people in the world? And the only way to know whether things are getting better or worse is to compare those numbers at different times: over the centuries and decades, do the trend lines go up or down?

As it happens, the numbers tell a surprisingly happy story. Violent crime has fallen by half since 1992, and fifty fold since the Middle Ages. Over the past 60 years the number of wars and number of people killed in wars have plummeted. Worldwide, fewer babies die, more children go to school, more people live in democracies, more can afford simple luxuries, fewer get sick, and more live to old age. (more…)

Article Highlights:

• The word for 2024
• The Action for 2024

I asked for a message for us for 2024.  Here it is with all its wisdom and beauty.  Enjoy.

Loving you right into 2024 and beyond,
Mayet

The Heart and Soul of 2024
A Message From the Heart of Love

Dearest,

We have at this time a message of hope and love.  We might say that it is a message of some urgency though we assure you there is nothing onerous within it.  None-the-less, we do ask you to feel the timeline and to feel its timeliness and urgency, for now is the time you were meant to fully grasp this wisdom and carry it forth.  This is your year to do so.

It is not the year you will finally achieve this or that thing, no; it is the year you will realize what you have already achieved and you will carry that forth!  Do you see?  You have achieved what you came to share – the awareness of your real being, and all the love and wisdom within it.

That is where the hope is for the world. So what we are telling you is that you carry the hope the world awaits.  You and every other person who knows the Light they are – to whatever degree it is known by them.  

You are exactly what the world needs.  Just as you are! Not more perfectly so, not more purely so, nothing more or less than you already are.  You are enough for this work, just as you are.  Do not wait for further self-improvement before you begin to radiate what is most true about you… the Light within you in all its perfection.  It is perfect… you don’t have to be.  Isn’t that wondrous to know?

We wish to say that HOPE is the word for 2024.  This is the year of HOPE. That is why we say 2024 is the year for you, Light-carrier.  For the Light is Hope itself.  In your scriptures it is said that Faith and Hope and Charity are 3 great principles.

Faith in the Light within
the Hope of all the Light brings
And the generous, Charitable sharing of that Light that you carry.

We and all the hosts of Heaven have joined in the outpouring of the Light of God upon the earth at this time, it has commenced – as you are aware.  We invite you to step forward and join us, there is nothing more powerful for your world than you doing this.  It must especially come through you – through your every word, thought, and deed.  That is what will complete the advent of Light, beloved.  

Be the mouthpiece of the Light – speak the words of Hope.  Do not let your words be, “Oh no, Covid!  Oh dear, so many problems! Oh my, the world is in such trouble.”  Waste not your words upon any lament, dear one.  Speak of the hope, shine your Light on the Hope.  This will keep your field bright and purely shinning.

Wring not your hands in concern, be the hands of hope, lending your hands where needed.  Brighten your eyes, let them shine with hope, be the eyes of Light’s hope.  Hear the hopes and prayers of the masses, be the ears of hope.

Hear the hope, see the hope and speak it, share it.  Hope has much to do this year of 2024.  Will you lend it a hand?

Article Highlights:

• The joy of vigil
• Vigilance is bliss itself

Dear Vigilant One,

While working with a client recently I received a message that offers a profoundly new understanding about Holy Vigil. With so much upheaval in the world, the idea of holding vigil has great potential for good just now, as a spiritual work for our lives and our world.

Vigilance and vigil have become greatly misunderstood over time. Vigilance comes from the root “vigil.”  Holding vigil is a sacred act and being vigilant is as well.  Holding vigil and being vigilant are holy actions done gently, peacefully, in quietude. Holding, within us, to what is most true.  To our truest nature.  

Another way to think of surrender is to understand it as holding vigil.  By seating ourselves at the flame of truth in us – with constancy – we hold vigil to the truth of who we are.  This is the real meaning of vigilance.  To continually surrender to the Light and Truth we are.

We have had another connotation for the word vigilance… a somewhat negative one… meaning excessive and often strident effort.  What we have called vigilance has merely been hyper-monitoring of the altered ego. Usually out of fear about losing something or the need to guard against something.  The original intent of the word has been lost.  This misunderstanding removes the sacred from the original intent of the words.

Both vigil and vigilance are important words to reclaim as a way of beginning to restore the language of the sacred for our own use.  So many sacred words have been high-jacked with ideas and usage that gradually leads to negative connotations.  

In this way we have lost much of the language of the sacred which results in the sacred becoming harder to discuss or think about or bring ourselves to.  This is a considerable loss and we would do well to notice and to begin to reclaim sacred words that have been removed in this way.

Vigil – such an important concept, spiritually.  Holding vigil to what?  Where? Why?  To the truth of our nature that is known by our Soul .  To gather around the flame of truth residing in our heart.  To reside there.

We might indeed ask, Why is vigil an important spiritual concept? As long as there is any belief that we are separate from God, from one another or from wisdom, harmony, peace, then our purpose is to hold vigil regarding the real truth of this.  

We are not separate or abandoned by that which is God.  We could never be for we are one with God.  We are that Light, that Beauty, that Wisdom.  And so we sit in vigil around the flame of truth, at the heart’s hearth, holding space, allowing it to illuminate our existence here.

The idea that vigilance is onerous comes from using it as a spiritual practice… all those lives in monasteries, ashrams and isms.  All that striving.  We are among those who lowered the frequency and meaning regarding vigil and vigilance with our excessive striving.  Isn’t that funny?

Real vigilance has a purity to it.  Pure vigilance is an effortless surrender, not a doing.  We are not doing vigilance.  We are surrendering consistently, constantly.  That is vigilance.  The action of vigilance, is surrender not effort. Surrender is the essence of Holy Vigil.

In vigil, we are not encountering patterns, events, objects and others.  When we go within, vigilantly, to see what is really there, it is not with effort or guilt.  It is not to find fault or room for improvement. It is not to find anything.

There are no objects, no events, no others in pure vigil.  There is only the all-encompassing life we are.  The rest is all surrendered at the door of Holy Vigil.  It is such a relief, such true freedom, to sit in Sacred Vigil.  Inexpressible relief!

In that place, we are not an individuals surrendering this habit or that thought or pattern.  We are not the individual petitioner beseeching the sky.  We are the sky itself, observing the experience of being individual.  Can you feel this?  That is the purpose and nature of self-inquiry that leads to surrender.  It is the return to this surrender that is vigil.

To be vigilant means to be spiritually constant – in physical form – as long as there is separation.  As long as life includes the ticking off and winding down of our desires, as long as we are experiencing ego, as long as there is breath in the body we continue in vigilantly holding this quiet, gentle vigil of light and truth for the world.  Sacred Vigil – that is what it means to be a light carrier.  Isn’t that beautiful?

Vigilance is pure joy!  It is the ultimate freedom, it is one of life’s greatest blessings and is bliss itself.  

Constant surrender is your true nature, becoming one with God again and again and again.  

That is what the saints have known, the constancy of this vigil.  The vigilance that is awake to what is Ever-Present. (more…)