Living an Inquiry

4th September 2010

I’m preparing to give a five minute presentation about A Whole New World to the audience of conscious cinema here in Nelson. It’s going to take discipline to convey the most important aspects of my all consuming passion in such a brief moment. Lying in bed this morning, looking out into the starry sky, I decided to write a blogpost about it and spread the word a little further.

I’ve been dedicated to developing A Whole New World, full time now for four and a half years. The seed was planted in 1995 when I first arrived in the South Island, and in the intervening years I was mostly on a spiritual path, releasing my story, learning to be present, participating in community, experimenting with creative offerings. By 2006, the seed had gathered enough life force to compel me to clear a space so that it could grow. And in doing that I was creating a space in which I could grow.

Through A Whole New World I’m living an inquiry; it’s a vehicle through which I have an ongoing creative conversation with the Universe. One of my first questions was, what does it mean to live my passion? And how can I create a sustainable livelihood from living my passion? I went some way to answering these questions through my book, “Living your Passion: How Love-in-action is seeding A Whole New World.” Now people come to me and say, “I don’t know what my passion is.” Or “I want to find my purpose.”

Our purpose is to awaken

I have come to the conclusion, for all of us, our purpose is to awaken and actualize our potential; our passion is the fuel to move us forward and keep us going; and the particular form of our creative expression is the vehicle. Once we create such a vehicle it has a life of its own and carries us forward. It is bigger than the little self.  And that is what it means to live our passion: to put our creative energy in service to something bigger, something transcendent which serves the Whole. When we do that, everything in us which isn’t yet whole, healed, grown to its full potential, comes forward to be seen, heard, reckoned with, and ultimately embraced.

A central question I have been living is: how do we individually and collectively make the transition from the old, dysfunctional, crumbling, melting world, to a new world built from the values of peace, creativity and respect for all life?  And within that, how can I, as a conscious awakening individual, stay open to all of life with all its tragic waste, imperfection and suffering, whilst focusing on what is positive?  And then, how can we make the shift from the “I space” to the “we space”?

The first question is too big to address in this article; suffice to say, that we change the world from the inside out, one relationship at a time, one circle at a time. We do so by connecting all our little lights into one BIG LIGHT, by joining together in love and truth; heart to heart and soul to soul, whilst holding the most expansive visions.  And how do we ground that higher consciousness and bring our visions into manifestation? It’s easy one thing to know it all in our heads but it is not at all easy to live truth in all our relationships, all of the time, is it? It’s in the details of everyday life where we are challenged and where we see the work that still needs to be done.

Life can be pretty overwhelming these days and being a conscious person doesn’t exempt us from stress, in fact the more awake we are the more open we are to all of life, to all our feelings.  There’s so much going on at once isn’t there? While we’re doing the inner work of letting go of the old story and our conditioned limitations, at the same time we’re creating the new with all the challenges that involves. Both the inner and outer worlds are full-on intense at this time of transformation.

When we’re awake we’re alive to everything. For example, I see the global crisis manifesting right here in Nelson. I walk down the main streets and see how many of the little independent businesses have closed and their spaces been filled by national or international chains. What happened to all those businessmen and women who may have earned their livelihoods for a lifetime serving the community? I see the global crisis in my friends who are struggling to pay rents, mortgages, credit card debts, who are stressed by what it takes these days to keep a home together. I see it in other friends who are feeling isolated, far from family, with not much community, getting older, not knowing how they will support themselves for the rest of their lives. I see it in people of all ages who are suffering from stress related diseases, and in the steady erosion of natural beauty and public amenities for the profit of private developers.

The global crisis is being lived every moment in our lives

Further afield the news is more dramatic, but right here, in our private lives, the crisis is being lived day to day, moment to moment. What is an enlightened attitude to all of this? How can I, as a conscious awakening person respond, stay positive and be of service? If I cut off my grief and outrage at some of what I see and hear, I also cut off my joy and my connection with Source. It is necessary to feel it all, experience it all, contain it all, transmute it all, use it all as passionate fuel.

Those of us who are creating a whole new world are in transition from “What about me?” to “How can we do this together?” We’re waking up from the old paradigm which taught us we have to be strong and struggle alone, and take care of ourselves and our own, and hang on to what we’ve got and compete for our slice of the cake, and take a bigger piece of cake than we really need because it might come in handy later. Aren’t we? And we’re all in this process together of learning how to do something new. Like, learning to really listen to each other, and appreciate each other, and share what we have, and live more simply, whilst at the same time knowing that what we already have is outrageous abundance and that what we are capable of creating together is beyond our wildest dreams.

I have huge faith in collective intelligence and the power of the imagination and in the magic that can happen when we join heart to heart and soul to soul. I have experienced this magic and I love to create spaces where this magic can happen. That’s what A Whole New World is for. I’m currently creating some spaces for growing conscious co-creative community in Nelson and Golden Bay, and soon I will be doing more tele-gatherings and interviews also. If you’d like to join me please email me: rose@awholenewworld.net I’d love to hear from you.