The last few days have been fun. My friend and I have been gathering furniture to make a group room, a little Soul Sanctuary, here in Nelson. I knew I was coming back to New Zealand to create a retreat centre and had no idea how that would happen, and here is the first small and simple manifestation of my dream; a place where people can gather to raise consciousness and step into the bigger space and energy of co-creation.

My heart sings. It’s such a wonderful feeling when things come together easily like this. I’ve been studying and practicing and inquiring into the creative process all my life, yet it still remains a mystery. Numerous people have written about the process of manifestation, talked about it, made dvds about it, yet how do we actually translate all those ideas into practice? And what makes the difference between success and failure? Why is it that sometimes things flow easily and effortlessly, like the group room, and other times, try as we might our efforts only meet with frustration and disappointment ?

I’m remembering how, as a younger woman, I experienced an ease of creation most of the time. So much so it was as if I was charmed. For example, when I decided I was ready to start working as a Gestalt therapist, I declared I would have four clients by the next week. And I did. Around the same time I started my first business, Teamwork, and with no experience of how to run a business, I easily acquired a weekly allowance and swanned into the bank for a small loan to get me started. It all lined up effortlessly.

A decade later my lucky charm appeared to fail. Rubbing my Aladdin’s lamp to bring forth these easy connections with business and money, brought forth meager results. Or, at least that’s how it appeared to me at the time. What had changed?

The first thing I notice when I look back on my younger self is, I didn’t have any doubts. There was no gap between my desire and my expectation of success. That surety was sometimes interpreted by others as arrogance; I was sovereign in my domain and commanded reality to follow my will. I didn’t worry about whether things would work out or not. There was a seamless movement from desire to action.

Yet, at the same time, this confidence was built on shaky foundations and when push came to shove I easily crumbled. As a manifestor , I had a lot to learn about standing in my power and carrying things through all the way to the end.  During my 30’s I experienced several painful personal disappointments and traumatic group events which fragmented my sense of self. It was as if I had been ambushed and my magic lantern smashed.  At the same time this fragmentation opened up deeper dimensions of Self and I entered into my journey of deep soul healing. It has taken many years to piece the lantern back together again in a new way. Now I see it whole and burnished and glowing with light.

The other day, I was looking for something to read and my friend handed me a copy of “Ask and it is Given” by Esther and Jerry  Hicks. I had seen this book many times yet never been attracted to it. Now, I was reluctant at first yet, as I started to read, the magic of the words communicated to me.

It’s message is very similar to the movie, The Secret.  Here is a brief summary:

Source energy is a stream of well being.

We are one with Source.

Whatever we ask for, we are given.

We will only receive what we ask for when we are open to receive it. That means our energy has to be aligned with the well being of Source.

When our energy is not so aligned, we receive a reflection of our lower consciousness energy. Or, in other words we receive a reflection of our fear, resentment,  feelings of unworthiness or disempowerment.  ( And our failure to manifest what we desire  then reinforces those feelings of unworthiness and disempowerment.)

Our emotions are a surefire guide to show us when we are aligned or not aligned with the well being of Source. When we are aligned we feel positive and radiate good will. When we are not aligned we feel miserable and vibrate at a lower level.

The Aladdin’s lamp of manifestation is our radiant Source energy and our first responsibility as a powerful manifestor is to keep this Source energy burning bright.

Old trauma in our energy system blocks Source energy. There are still relatively few people on the planet who have reached a stable state of enlightened consciousness and are at Source constantly. Most of us on a conscious path are in a process of healing and mending the holes in our psychic foundations. I call this being on the Soul Journey, the journey to remember who we truly are and reconnect with our true power. When we become consciously engaged with this process we start manifesting more from a soul level rather than from the needs of the personality. The personality is concerned with self image, with looking good and feeling good and being seen to have it altogether. The old paradigm consumer culture caters to the needs of the personality. The soul is on a very different mission and is only concerned with truth, wholeness and unconditional love and acceptance. What we manifest from soul we are often shown how we are not yet whole, and from the personality’s point of view this can look like failure. It wounds our immature narcissism to be seen as needy, disheveled, wanting, not knowing, impoverished. All those years when I thought I wasn’t being successful I was actually manifesting  powerfully, but  because I was in a process of stripping away the old, rather than adding something to myself, I didn’t always recognize what came to me as being for my good. When we can learn to welcome everything that comes as a manifestation of the sacred mirror of life and part of our soul’s healing, then we live in gratitude and gratitude connects us with Source.

In my Soul Weaving Mentoring Programme for women, I encourage participants to consciously trawl back through their lives to discover the unconscious patterns still lurking in the psyche. This takes courage because most of us would rather keep going and get by and not have to dig around in old pain and misery. But we can’t build an empowered present and future on shaky foundations. Many of these old disempowering patterns are collective patterns: fears and hurts held in collective memory, from way back, from the witch burnings for example, or the Holocaust. When we free these patterns in ourselves, we create an energy field in which others can more easily and quickly free themselves. In this way, as Soul Weavers, we contribute to the collective liberation of consciousness.

It takes a compelling reason to do this deep soul healing. Sometimes that reason is, we are simply sick of our own misery and self sabotage. Or, we wake up to the realization of the interconnectedness of all life and know we can be conscious creators of A Whole New World. In order to be so we desire to be the very best creator we can be; one who can build truly on firm foundations.

My first group event in my little Soul Sanctuary in Nelson, will be a Soul Weaving Mentoring Programme for creative and visionary women who are building projects and businesses which make a positive difference in the world. I will also soon be offering a short course on the Soul Journey. If you don’t live in Nelson, both of these programmes will be run as teleclasses very soon and can be accessed from anywhere in the world.  I also offer 1-1 coaching and mentoring sessions in person or on the phone. Please email me in the first instance for more information and if you haven’t already done so, sign up for the A Whole New World newsletter in the box above.

Until next time, have  a very soulful week.

Rose Diamond, August 4th 2010

As soon as I stepped onto the Air New Zealand plane for the flight from LA to Auckland, I experienced a difference in the energy. The urgent go-go-go of the USA was left behind at the gate and the time chariot to transport me back to my soul home stood waiting and vibrating with calm presence.

I noticed a slight irritation in response to the calm atmosphere, as if a stimulant or adrenaline rush had been suddenly withdrawn, leaving a bland absence. I’ve heard people speculating that a peaceful world will be boring. Don’t we all thrive on drama? Or are we simply habituated to it?  Could we live without the constant drive for self improvement, to get ahead, get by, keep it altogether, be heard, be seen, be someone, make a difference, tweet, twitter and jump at the sound of the next email dropping into the inbox?

After many months concentrated work in creating my internet business, I jumped streams and crossed the world to re-discover how it feels to be unplugged. It’ a long way to go for a rest, I joked, as I contemplated the 33 hour journey. I wasn’t sure if this overwhelming desire to return to New Zealand, my former home for 12 years, which had arisen like a whale breaking the surface of resistance, was an act of self sabotage, or, as all my friends assured me from the vantage point of objectivity, was exactly what I needed to do.

I will soon find out.

After we touched ground, the same sense of calm accompanied me through passport control and customs and on to the domestic lounge of Auckland airport, where a four hour wait afforded me the opportunity to watch and observe. By now I was deeply relaxed and mindless and I remembered Eckhart Tolle’s two years on a park bench. Yes, I could get into this. As I watched the comings and goings of lean attractive women, happy laughing men, beautiful children; Maori, European and Asian faces, I felt no separation. I was seeing with my heart’s eyes, One Family.

The energy in New Zealand is very soft and Yin, the people are open, friendly, helpful, natural and smile often. It was this that attracted me on my first visit, 15 years ago when I made the choice to stay and make the South Island my home. I was on my Soul Journey and my soul was stirred and soothed. And now a new chapter of the Soul Journey unfolds.

And then it dawned on me: this is A Whole New World. It’s already here. I know I am prone to idealize New Zealand and like any other country it has its shadow side. But I know peace when I find it and I could sense my being vibrating on a higher level of consciousness in tune with this environment.

A beautiful day blessed my return to the South Island and sunny Nelson as we flew over the Land of the Long White Cloud and the clear sparkling waters. And when we touched down and I stood on the land again, I didn’t cry as I thought I might, but laughed when I turned to see the mountains capped with snow, and the glorious spaciousness of the land/seascape. I had been away for three and a half years yet it was all so vibrantly familiar and homely, time seemed to collapse.

The next day, July 25^th was the Mayan Day out of Time and I went to a celebration of Time is Art. This was such a typical Nelson community event in the beautiful community house where I’ve given and received so many workshops and gatherings. Old friends and familiar faces, dance meditation, thai curry and chai, a dvd of Jose Arguelles reminding us that it is Time, and a concert from the Gong Masters with their big gongs tuned to the Earth and the Moon and Chiron, that resonate through and bathe the whole being. Who-hoo, I’m home!

Arguelles spoke of the necessity, for those of us who intend to hold a higher frequency of consciousness, to unplug from the distraction of technology and open our minds and hearts to the higher intelligence of the Cosmos and of the Earth and to expand  our telepathic abilities. He urged us to surrender totally, to give up the illusion of control. Nothing is more important than holding this higher energy now.

Personally, I don’t want to give up all my technological tools. I value the global community I have been able to create and participate in using the telephone and internet. An important part of the mission of A Whole New World is to help to join up all the little lights of conscious community into one big light of radiant consciousness, and technology has an important part to play in this. Yet, it is just this calling to be closer and more attuned to the Earth and the Cosmos that has brought me back to New Zealand. I crave immersion in Being and Nature to balance the focused work of building and creating the new culture.

It feels very important at this time to follow these inner callings, to find this balance, to create situations where we can listen to the emerging wisdom of the universe and drink deeply at the well of renewal. May you all find these blessings.

An earlier talk by Arguelles,   vodpod.com/watch/ 578447-2012-spiritual-journey-jose-arguelles

Dvds from the Prophets Conference http://www.prophetsconference.com/audio.html

If you are interested in joining me for an exploration of the Soul Journey, I will be giving and introductory teleclass soon. Please email me to express your interest.  rose@awholenewworld.net

Photo by Henrique Araujo, www.henriquearaujo.com

Unplugging, July 27th, 2010, Rose Diamond

We both explored our own soul journeys for many years before we met in 2006 on the Internet. We were attracted to each other through our shared love of Eckhart Tolle’s teachings, a deep fascination for expanding consciousness through practicing presence, and a passionate desire for global transformation.

From the beginning our email correspondence became a living dialogue and inquiry into what a conscious, soulful life can be, and how we can create more of those potent “peak experiences” when everything comes together in a heightened, more expanded state of being. We met in person for the first time in New Zealand where Rose was living in a beautiful cottage and garden next to the sea in Golden Bay, and we discovered how, in each other’s presence, we could have dialogues which took both of us into a higher vibrational field where we received new creative insights and weaved new threads of  knowing. This was very exciting for both of us and it seemed to be directly related to the work Rose had embarked on to create transformational community. If two people can come together in a creative field of presence, then so can a whole community, and when that happens together we send out ripples into the world and our new consciousness touches and transforms the world.

We have now been on a nearly four year journey with each other in conscious relationship and laying the foundations for A Whole New World; this blog is the latest manifestation of our exploration, and we invite you to join us and participate with us in creating more soulful lives and a more soulful world.

The soul’s yearnings

Rose wrote the following message shortly after Woods left Golden Bay to return to Virginia in October 2006:

Rose: What I want to understand goes beyond you or me, there’s something I’m reaching for, something transcendent my soul is yearning for.  Since you and I have this wonderful ability to dialogue, I see our conversations as a vehicle for discovering more of what a soulful life is and what it can be.

Before we met, I thought I could find what I’m looking for in relationship and maybe I have and will to some extent or another. I realize now what I’m longing for is not to be found in relationship, nor in vocation and both of these are different sorts of vehicle. My real longing is for transcendence, for becoming one with the evolutionary impulse itself. In our face to face conversations –  the ones that went on for hours and hours – by being present together, we went beyond egoic thought into a stream of consciousness that was neither you nor me but that which was presenting to be expressed through us.  I call it love. It might also be called evolutionary consciousness.

The reason (partly) I’ve been so maniacally writing since you left is my attempt to reconnect with that stream of consciousness and put myself in service to it, and I have a growing sense this is where my passion is now, so that everything else pales beside this ability to listen to and “bring down the music”. I’ve had similar crazy feelings lately to those I had in 84/85 when I was going through a spiritual awakening, a kind of driven creativity which is the only way to alleviate the pain of separation and find any peace.

I’ve been longing to let go most of my material encumbrances and set off on a spiritual adventure; to be in a BIG spiritual energy, like some of the gatherings that happen in India with millions of people in a higher state of consciousness. The limitations of egoic consciousness are so painful I am just about ready to do whatever it takes to throw off the shackles once and for all. Nothing short of spiritual enlightenment feels enough.

I feel tensions within me between the work I’ve committed to do in the world and the pull of the inner life.  Joseph Campbell said “follow your bliss”, Tolle says “the present moment is the portal”. I’m having difficulty envisioning a future and I realize what I need to do is be totally present, trust the evolutionary process, follow my passion and my bliss, and let life unfold.

There’s something about getting it down and sending it off to you to be witnessed that feels more powerful than just having thoughts in my head.  Are we transformational catalysts for each other?  And is what’s needed for global transformation simply to enter into all our relationships as transformational catalysts? Does it take a particular configuration of qualities  to be this for each other?

Woods: I want to say we seem to be asking what revelation is. I know you are in part referring to an inner quest for a kind of permanent revelatory subjective state, the familiar altered state of consciousness at the heart of creative and spiritualized experiences, which gives us a taste and caress of bliss and makes bliss junkies of us. It’s a delicious, timeless consciousness. I’m reminded of my experiential “discovery sessions” during the 90’s and how “hooked” I got on them, and how I longed for them all week long; on the verge of this heightened state waiting the unbearable week till the next session. When you say you believe we are being transformational catalysts for one another, I understand you like the mysterious creative boost I have on you, and this is reciprocal, as I equally dig the creative boost you have on me, or what our creative readiness in tandem catalyzes.

Musing on the words creative and spiritual, I see they have become fused for me.  Creative has left the art class of high school and spiritual has left the stained glass cathedral of my youth, and the best of both words, and that toward which they both point, is the same, as Tolle would say. Put differently, a person having a full blown creative experience of the highest magnitude and a person having a full blown spiritual experience, are having the same experience, though their interpretations of their experiences may radically differ.  To the extent that we can “love” someone, they can become a transformational catalyst for us.  But we must “love” them.  That might be one of those configuring “qualities” that must be in the mix for an experience to be transformationally successful.

If there is “a particular configuration of qualities” that must be present for creative transformation I submit this old list of ingredients I identified during my discovery sessions in the mid 90’s:

desire, motivation, and openness to it

designating a specific space/time coordinate for its emergence

belief that the uncreated can arise of its own accord

careful attention to its actual arising

felt love and a sense of the beautiful

psychic receptivity and intuitiveness

joyful sense of wonderment

vast cosmic humility

and a deep feeling for the sacredness of life.

Could it be the more ingredients and conditions like these we have in common with another person or persons, the greater the potential for transformational alchemy? And could we say these qualities could be looked upon as aspects of evolving consciousness? Then again, it may very well be all that’s required is for two people with intent, who know how to be creative, and get off on it, to engage in it together. Your question is a good one, Rose. I think it’s mostly just being open and freed of any limiting beliefs that sets the stage for powerful creative, spiritual, transformational experiences; or whatever you want to call these expanded states or new form of consciousness.

Some thoughts have formless sacredness clinging to them

Tolle hasn’t quite said so, but I believe he could say that once we are no longer obsessional thinkers, run by our minds, our mind can be used in the service of presence.  He has implied this by saying that some books written from presence carry the fragrance of presence in them. Separately he’s said that the sacred sutras from ancient India are examples of uprisings from presence.  In my discovery sessions, I tried to make my mind subservient to a more intuitive or psychic way of knowing and put it more in the service of what I now call presence.  One way I could tell I was in my “discovery zone”, was how my voice would drop an octave, how I’d have less to say, and how what I said didn’t seem to be coming from me.  Sometimes I’d have to force myself into verbalizing at all.  Just now I recall my spiritual experience in your garden, and how little I said and how it was mostly limited to blissful descriptions of my special experience, such as “the sunlight is love itself.”  Words spoken from presence have a higher resonance and vibration.  They have an implanted poesy about them.  There’s more mindfulness, wisdom, perhaps higher intelligence in them.

The taste of a mango

In December 2006 Rose came to visit Woods in Virginia and in March moved here ror a longer visit. Our explorations of consciousness continued for the two years we lived together in Virginia where Rose wrote Living your Passion and Woods finished  Dazzlephrenia and we discovered how having a conscious relationship involves mirroring each other’s shadow sides so we could be released from them, and create more space for co-creativity to flower more fully, all the time laying the foundations for A Whole New World.

Here is an extract from a conversation we had when Rose returned from a three month visit to England in September 2009.

Woods: Rose arrived back from the UK yesterday and I feel a dimension of awareness returning that’s hard to access by myself, it brings with it an aliveness I’ve felt a loss of.

Rose: You were saying how presence feels sacred to you?

Woods: Yes, loss of presence can almost be defined as an absence of the sense of the sacred.

Rose: Can you say what the sacred feels like?

Woods: When I use the word sacred I think of the mystical experience that has occurred to so many people who have beautifully recorded throughout history how the world felt different. And the core of that is a state of radiant alertness and a deep profound sense of witnessing the fullness, the totality of what existence is. We have moments when that totality can’t be disturbed; it’s a feeling of completeness and rightness of the world. It’s full of glory, glowing and so fabulous, we don’t have words for it; it’s so immeasurably beautiful and wonderful. Then we just forget and fall out of that transcendent nature of reality.

I want to go back to the importance of people learning to develop deeper states of presence. Creating a whole new world at least in part involves people cultivating more states of presence to help them to de-stress their lives and to enjoy life to the fullest; to realize their potentials. It’s a basic uplifter at a time when people need a way to stay as sane and as balanced and relaxed as they can, as life becomes more complicated and confusing and scary.

Rose: I want to pursue this idea of sacredness you’ve introduced. We appear to step into a different dimension when we’re at our best together, as we are right now. This dimension feels very complete, there’s nothing missing, yet the fullness of it is very simple. The fullness comes from the taste of the mango, or the sound of the cicadas, or the color of the tree. It’s latent in very simple here and now things. The environment we’re in now lends itself to that because it’s so lush and soft. This is interesting because I see America mostly as being very yang, yet this little piece here feels quite yin; Mother Nature is abundant and nurturing here in Virginia. There’s something in the etheric energy of the environment that provides a container for consciousness to expand into.

I’m very much into this idea with the Soul Sanctuary work I’m developing that what’s needed is a container for being to expand into. We can make a container with a relationship, or a group of people, or in nature. This particular little Garden of Eden here provides a container for being to expand. I find it relaxing, there’s nothing to fight against, nothing I need to resist. Whereas elsewhere I’m continuously coming up against mess and the absence of beauty, and the mess encroaches on me and doesn’t allow me to have that fullest expansion. I can’t expand into something which is cluttered; it’s necessary to have space. This deck where we’re sitting is an uncluttered space, if there was lots of stuff scattered in the space it would be distracting and pull our attention away.

For me sustainability is something to do with simplicity and an empty space. I’m not looking for anything to fill me up yet everything that comes into the space feels like an act of grace. Even eating a mango feels like an act of grace. That’s the sacred aspect you were talking about. Our soul connection is energetic too. With you also, when we’re attuned to each other, there’s nothing I have to fight against or resist, it’s a state of relaxation, a letting go, an openness. It’s a relief to relax. Sacredness has an etheric energy, an energy of the soul.

Magnificent Moments of Being

In the blog we invite you to join us in our inquiry into how we can nurture more states of magnificent being each day. We’ll be sharing our own stories of Magnificent Moments of Being and we’d love to hear your stories of the highest and deepest experiences you have harvested from your life. We are pulling our own special times together into the first e-book in the series on Magnificent Moments of Being, and our vision is then to collect stories from people all over the world, from different generations, different cultures, ethnicities and faiths. For surely, these magnificent moments of being are part of our shared humanity, and when we see our higher selves mirrored back in the other, love, compassion and unity grow, and we will find the Great Peace.

Let your awareness drop within you like a stone, sinking below the level of what words can express…to the deep web of relationship that underlies all experience.

It is the web of life in which you have taken being and which interweaves us through all time and space..See the being before you as if seeing the face of one who, at another time, another place, was your lover or your enemy, your parent or your child…

And now you meet again on this brink of time, almost as if by appointment. And you know that your lives are as inextricably interwoven as nerve cells in the mind of a great being.. Out of that vast web you cannot fall…no stupidity or failure, or cowardice, can ever sever you from that living web.

For that is what you are.

Rest in that knowing. Rest in the Great Peace.

Out of it we can act, we can risk anything and let every encounter be a homecoming to our true nature.

Joanna Macy, Coming back to Life, Practices to Reconnect our Lives, our World, New Society Publishers.

To find out more about our books on the soul journey: Migration to the Heartland and Dazzlephrenia, go to: http://www.awholenewworld.net/books.htm

Photos by Braveheart www.illusionsbybraveheart.photoreflect.com