The New

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The New
The New

God is always the new. ~Osho

It’s a new year. There’ always so much excitement about the new year. What will it bring? What will transpire this year?

As we approached 2010, just like in past years, I heard and read many comments about possibilities and opportunities, intentions and resolutions, hopes and desires.

I’m struck by how excited we humans get about the possibilities we feel for the new year. It also happens when school starts each year. It happens when we move into a new home, begin a new marriage, start a new job.

It is in the beginnings of things that we connect with our longing and natural comfort with newness.

As I awoke this morning, this first day of 2010, with the fresh scent of new. I came across this post by Nicola Warwick at The Whole Self. Nicola’s post was prompted by a quote I had written on my post ‘Craving Words, My Only Job Is To Serve’. As I read it again, under her blog banner, The Whole Self, a felt a spark of insight.

The quote by Martha Graham, speaks to the blessed unrest, the divine dissatisfaction within us as creative beings. As I mentioned in my comment to Nicola, I used to think this unrest signaled something wrong with me, this constant desire for something new. Usually, alongside the unrest was the unwanted handmaiden to the new unknown, fear. I feared my desire for newness meant I wasn’t disciplined enough, wasn’t like other people who seemed so much more settled into the routine of life.

I have come to discover that this blessed unrest is longing and the yearning to remember our nature, to live our true nature as creative beings. It is my natural comfort with the new. I feel energized and vibrantly alive when I dive into something new.

In his book on Courage, Osho talks at length about the new. He writes,

“That is the whole meaning of prayer or meditation – you open up, you say yes, you say, ‘Come in.’ You say, ‘I have been waiting and waiting and I am thankful that you have come.’ Always receive the new with great joy. Even if sometimes the new leads you into inconvenience, still it is worth it…The new will bring difficulties. That’s why you choose the old – it does not bring any difficulties. It is a consolation, it is a shelter.

But, here is the kicker, the piece that pulls at my longing, my blessed unrest. I believe this is why we somewhere deep inside, love beginnings:

“And only the new, accepted deeply and totally, can transform you. You cannot bring the new in your life; the new comes.”

Somewhere within, we long for this transformation. We long to open to the ‘throbbing, streaming life’ (Osho) that awaits us.

So what happens. When does the new year turn into the not-so-knew year? When do we settle into the old complacency of this year as it unfolds? How does what seems so full of opportunities turn into the same-old, same-old where we close ourselves off to this ‘throbbing, streaming life’?

Time. The sense of time takes us out of the new. In the new, there is no time. There is just life. ‘We can only use the present…It is always fresh, virgin. And it has ingress in you.’ (Osho) The present comes into you, if you are open, if you are receptive, if you are willing to meet it and embrace it.

Fear. Fear of what the new will bring, that it will be risky, that it will be inconvenient and difficult. Yet, when was transformation ever easy?

Habit. Our habits were created to keep us from this newness, this risk of transformation, for the habits are solely the not-so-fertile field of the ego. (Habits are different than discipline. Discipline allows for the opening that embraces the ingress of the new).

For me, this embracing also means embracing the blessed unrest as an open-arm desire for the new, a yearning to dance with the mystery that is always longing to dance with us, inviting us into its dance of possibility.

Stay present and notice when the mind turns the new into the repetitive dance steps that are safe, but oh so boring and dulling to the senses.

Wishing you a happy new year, that is no year at all, but rather the constant invitation to live into the transformation of your soul that can only come with the creative emergence of the new.

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6 Replies to “The New”

  1. We are, not surprisingly, on similar pages today. I’m dealing with a hand issue and the question of openness. I am meditating on entering illuminated cosmological life. I am aware of the constant pulsing evolution that is ever new. It’s always new, we just think it isn’t. We need the eyes of enchantment to see it. A song I was listening to the other day has these words ” It feels like standing still but I know I’m just moving uncomfortably slow.” (Newton Faulkner)

    I wonder about the “blessed unrest” which I call creative tension. Our ability to be with it is a muscle we grow. Maybe it feels like tension or unrest only because we refuse to surrender…swimming upstream instead of down. Takes me back to my open hand…and the post I might as well get to writing.

    Thanks for your beautiful blog and sharing of yourself herein.

  2. This is beautiful. And the open thing – the accepting thing – I see that with regards not just to what’s new, but also to what’s “ugly” or “bad” (in our interpretation – not ACTUALLY “ugly” or “bad” – the parts of ourselves we’re afraid of or dont like) – love how what you write (here and throughout the blog) feels like balm to my heart — gentle and healing. ahhhhh…love and acceptance..what a gift!

  3. Thank you so much for the mention on your post. I think the divine dissatisfaction is what pushes us all the time to remember who we are. I think our journey, in this lifetime in particular, is to remember our purpose for being here, which is, essentially, being who we are supposed to be. Being authentic. The unrest seems to come when we are in the wrong place, the wrong job or the wrong relationship because the unrest challenges us to move on.

    I read this quote last night from Dr. Wayne Dyer:

    Release Others’ Expectations. If you focus on what others expect of you, you’ll continue to act on and attract more of what they desire for you. But when you can shift your inner thoughts to what you intend to create and attract into your life, you will no longer have to give mental energy to what others want for you.

  4. “In the new, there is no time. There is just life.” My favorite line of this post, Julie. I’ve been thinking more and more lately of how to keep the newness in the habits, the resolutions, the intentions I’m creating this brand new year…maybe the trick is to see the life in what we’re doing and let it be new each and every time.

  5. “Blessed unrest” is my new favorite phrase for the new year. Yesterday I was mentally obsessing about an upcoming event, worrying if it would turn out one way or the other, and it occurred to me that I won’t know until it happens, so why worry about it? But now I have a mantra to tell myself when I start obsessing. Blessed unrest.

  6. Julie you speak to me. My heart swells each time I read one of your posts. I have been playing with my word for the year, and Expand resonates with me. After reading your post, I believe I have chosen right. To walk open armed towards the new this year…that is what I want for myself. Scary, uncomfortable, thrilling, resisted, wanted, unwanted…however it comes, I WANT IT! *all of a sudden – I feel a little nervous. 😉

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