It’s about twenty years since I first became interested in ideas about the new paradigm. At first I grasped the concepts intellectually; I taught a couple of classes on the subject and it all felt very exciting and revolutionary.
Since then life has unfolded a process of experiential learning in which I’ve had glimpses and revelations of a new way of being in the world. If you are anything like me you “get” something on one level and then you cycle through it again and again; a new experiential reality slowly emerges and becomes integrated into your being and into the body. It’s no longer something you believe, it’s something you know inside. It’s only in the last few weeks I’m actually beginning to live from this new place and, since I know many of us move forward together, I am going to write a few posts to explore this new way of being.
So first, the conceptual understanding: as I understand it, humanity is in a transition to a new way of seeing, comprehending and experiencing the world which then gives rise to a new way of living and a new culture. A new paradigm is a collective evolutionary new perspective; a bigger picture of our shared reality which enables us to make sense at a new level of the world we share with 7 billion other humans and a mind boggling diversity of other species. As Albert Einstein said, we can’t solve our problems at the level of thinking that created them, we need to transcend to a bigger perspective, a more integrated, holistic way of knowing the whole all at once. This is an inner knowing or in-tuition arising not from the mind alone but from the whole being – from the heart, from the wisdom of the body, from the soul, from consciousness. Most of us awaken gradually to this new way of seeing and being and sometimes we see and know and then fall back to sleep.
A few weeks ago I ground to a halt. I’d been doing a lot of focused creative work over many months, creating a learning programme called Sitting with Death and Choosing Life. I was also re-creating my website and getting ready to launch Tribe in Transition into a new chapter of its life. Everything was lined up and ready to go, then suddenly I was unable to move forward.
This caused me a lot of self-questioning. The first place my mind went to was “there’s something wrong” and worse “there’s something wrong with me”. Was I caught in an old pattern of self-sabotage? Was I scared to move forward? I sat with that question. I sat with my. I adopted the strategy I’d been learning through Sitting with Death: make space for whatever is arising and meet it without judgment. I sat with it and sat with it over a couple of weeks – there was nothing else to be done.
I realized I was making a split between the intuitive way I live my personal life, in which everything unfolds in its own time through serendipity, and the structured way I had been approaching my work in the world. I came to the conclusion I was missing something, that everything was not yet in place for me to move forward, that it was time to step back and makes space for new insight to emerge.
So I let go of my plans and sat in the not-knowing and made space and dropped judgments and shifted into a more curious, experimental state – into beginner’s mind.
This happened to coincide with my soul friend, Maggie, coming to stay. She brought with her a course she’d been following with Neale Donald Walsh: Living from Soul. I’ve never been a great follower of Neale but I agreed to listen. By the third episode I was very excited. He was offering deep insights about the nature of soul and simple tools which fit perfectly for my next steps.
At the same time Maggie and I were going out exploring this beautiful region of the Snowdonia National Park, where I had been drawn to live through serendipity. We enjoyed a series of adventures in which we set off without much of a plan and followed the flow of moment by moment preferences creating delightful days full of nice surprises and ease. On one particular day we were in the zany village of Portmeirion and we wanted to visit a café for a coffee and a bite to eat. There were some five to choose from and we rejected the first three we came across as being too utilitarian, or noisy or cramped. I wanted to be in a spacious atmosphere, from which I could look out at nature and have an uplifting experience. We happily continued on and before long, we ended up having lunch at a beautiful hotel overlooking the estuary. The whole experience was very uplifting and gracious. We didn’t spend a lot of money and we both felt very grateful and taken care of. Although this is. A mundane example this is my experience of living from soul and a good recipe for living:
- Have a clear idea of the kind of experience you choose to have – don’t be too specific on the details but focus on how you want to feel within the experience, for example: light, happy, open, inspired, abundant.
- Do your research – find out what options are available.
- Be prepared to wait for what you want – don’t be impatient and don’t compromise. Trust that this or something better will show up.
- What you are looking for may not come in the form you expected, be open to receive and explore the surprises life offers. Enjoy the feeling of gratitude and the magic of living within life’s creative flow.
This intuitive way of living life as a co-creative, ever unfolding adventure also fits with Neale’s teachings about Living from Soul and was echoed in the book I was reading by Michael Singer, The Surrender Experiment. The message was clear – stop trying to control life, relax, and at the same time consciously choose your experiences in line with your values whilst surrendering to what life is putting in front of you. Easy!
So what does all this have to do with the new paradigm? Well, I believe the new paradigm – a whole new world – emerges through us as we surrender to living from soul. As we come into alignment with the authentic self, as we choose to practice embodying the values of soul, life unfolds as a creative play in which we are conscious co-creators. We don’t know where we’re going or how we’re going to get there, and we can’t choose what life throws at us, but we can choose how we respond to life and the quality of our experience in every moment. It may not always be easy but it is an exciting and evolving practice.
