Start Co-Existing with Love

“As the year closes out we should look back in gratitude and forward with optimism. The future is waiting for adventurers like us. But the future will only be bright if we learn to co-exist - not forcibly as the farmer does with the turkey until Christmas, but with the realisation that the only alternative to coexistence is co-destruction. Now, more than ever, it's time to ring out the old, and ring in the new; ring out the false, and ring in the true.”
— Mickie Kent

It's New Year's Eve 2012 and if you've got this far, you've survived the Olympics, Christmas and the end of the world. It's time to celebrate. For me, spending a holiday break in Devon at Hotel Endsleigh means spending time in a beautiful architectural countryside - it's a place that highlights how the beauty of nature and the design of humans can co-exist together.

And in the first days of 2013, which will be as ever filled with its own unique challenges, I'd like to think that the main theme for this new year will be a greater focus on co-existence. But as countries all across the globe face difficult financial times, this may be hard to do. In the United Kingdom, large public retailers and temples of entertainment are foreclosing, while the coalition government has introduced a series of austerity measures designed specifically to reduce the country's debt levels, but their funding cuts have meant that many worthy causes are finding it impossible to continue. Yet, just as the clock strikes midnight to mark the start of another year, so too millions of people will use the moment as a blank canvas and look forward with optimism to a better 12 months.

To help with that aim, the latest advancements in medicine, technology and science need to become more ecologically minded, basing its innovations not just on ergonomics, but created with the impact of the environment in mind as well. With car congestions spewing out all sorts of harmful emissions, such as carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide, and electronic devices making up a huge percentage of landfill waste, we are living in an increasingly gridlocked world. No-one really knows what the future holds, but the reality now is that our urban spaces are overcrowded and polluted. In two or three decades, it is forecast that about 70% of the world's population will be living in megacities. Therefore, we have to look for greener options.

Before some readers mark me down as a Luddite, let me clarify that nothing could be further from the truth. The other day, I watched a documentary where scientists demonstrated with two gadgets the advances in time travel. One sent a message to the other a few minutes in the past, and that second gadget acknowledged that message before the original one was sent. Technology, quantum physics and scientific research are digging up astounding things, and I appreciate and welcome new technologies, innovations and gadgets that will benefit humanity - but they must not damage life to do so.

Science in and of itself is amazing. Even though the rise of new inventions has brought new addictions, they also offer us numerous new outlets for creativity. Furthermore, some medical advancements are truly ground-breaking; the development of new treatments will benefit future generations in ways we can hardly imagine today. Scientific knowledge has made us architects of evolution in one sense that could in time help us to colonise other planets with life.

But we must remember that as humans, we are products of our environments and vice versa, since the environments we create reflect and affect our physical, mental and emotional health. The landscape around us has been shaped by successive generations, moulded to our needs be it for agricultural, economic or transport reasons. We shape the landscape, we shape the things we build, and then they shape us - even in the womb. As case in point, the company which invented thalidomide, a drug sold in the 1950s as a cure for morning sickness and withdrawn in 1961 after it was linked to birth defects, only just apologised this year. As a result of their product, a lot of people damaged by thalidomide are struggling with health problems in the UK and around the world.

However, not all influence is so quick to damage, or damaging at all, but its effect can be so profound as to affect our evolution in more far-reaching terms. These influences show that it's not just evolutionary necessity that has wrought our changes - our inventions have, too. For instance, historical changes in the ways we cook and eat have not only dramatically altered public health, but have also changed us physically. Bee Wilson, author of Consider the Fork - which documents the evolution of cooking and eating technology - claims that the alignment of the human jaw changed with the usage of the fork, citing American anthropologist, C. Loring Brace, who put forward the thesis that this results from the way we use cutlery, from childhood onwards.

Modern inventions seem to work in much the same way. The internet has not only been the harbinger of a changing paradigm of privacy, it has changed our social habits as more of our lives move to the virtual, seemingly affecting the way we think and act. Meanwhile research shows that the removal of lead emissions from vehicles might be linked to a fall in violent crime decades later. And with new forms of mobility on the rise, reducing our carbon footprint with new designs for the automotive industry does not seem futile - especially when we read that new temperature statistics indicate the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet is warming nearly twice as fast as previously thought.

Similarly, we need to balance our energy concerns with their possible environmental impact, while understanding, too, how extreme weather conditions can threaten the survival of many species to directly affect our food chain. Antarctic researchers are saying that what we're seeing is one of the strongest warming signals on Earth, and although in 2012 there was a UN summit in Rio - with calls on governments to eliminate world hunger and pledges on issues such as clean energy - this was largely branded as "a failure of leadership". With half the food bought in Europe and the US ending up in the bin, rather than learning how to distribute more fairly, we are experts at wasting our resources.

Likewise with the threat of global deforestation. Trees are a vital global resource, providing fuel, shelter, clean water and food for many species including people, and helping to maintain a healthy atmosphere by harvesting carbon dioxide, and it is vital that our irresponsible harvesting not remove them from our landscapes. But if we continue to act irresponsibly and treat ecological warning signals as simply a blip, like some brief disruption to a major performance, then the world will exit this stage quicker than we'd like - if not in our lifetime, then very soon down the generational time-line.

This is no doomsday scenario; it's just the inevitable conclusion of science. It is cause and effect. People play an enormous role in wiping out species and endangered animals, and what we fail to care about, we lose forever. Our relationship with wild animals is an ethical minefield - cute animals gain our attention, garner the "ahh" factor and take our money. So they survive. Or animals we see as food survive, because we want them around to consume. The animals that are not cute or tasty don't benefit from our attention; we forget about them, then when we realise they are endangered, we opine because nothing can be done.

Adherents to this view say there's no doubt that in the past, hunting and eating did wipe out entire species. But the biggest danger right now is habitat loss and the best way to prevent that is giving humanity a stake in a creature's survival (even if just to uphold the food chain). The Prince of Wales has said, too, that he does not want to hand on an "increasingly dysfunctional" environmental situation to future children, and it is indeed a poisoned chalice.

Air pollution in the Chinese capital Beijing has reached levels judged as hazardous to human health, while the meltdown at Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant - which happened in 2011 because of human error - irrevocably changed the landscape of the country and poisoned the land. And taking gambles with frontier science will become more frequent because, increasingly, it is our scientific knowledge that provides us with the power over own lives today. But with power comes responsibility. And if holding the fate of the world in our hands is an absolute power, then it follows that so, too, must our responsibility be absolute.

Thus with the New Year finally here again, co-existence in 2013 would not be a bad resolution to make. And the way to bring co-existence into our lives is to focus on consciously creating moments of harmony every day. If for nothing else, experts recommend the principle of doing one thing each day for an entire 12 months, because at the end of the year we can bask in the satisfaction of a year's worth of endeavour.

Although being focused on the present moment is the mainstay of many life coaches, we mustn't have a blind-spot when it comes to our view of the past. While science looked to the future this year in fields ranging from particle physics to planetary exploration on Mars, to uncover yet more mysteries, it also gave us a rich view into history in 2012, with many archaeological discoveries peeking into our prehistoric past. Still, science has yet to answer the big questions on existence and the origins of life (if ever), and whether we share those origins with others in the universe. But science likes to put new spins on old questions.

Termed as a "new science", quantum physics deals with the behaviour of the smallest things in our universe: subatomic particles. Pioneering thinker, Max Planck, used the term "quanta" for the tiny particles of energy he was studying, hence the term "quantum physics". Planck said the amount of energy contained in an electron is not arbitrary, but is a multiple of a standard "quantum" of energy. One of the first practical uses of this knowledge led to the invention of the transistor.

Only coming into its own in the early part of the 20th century, when physicists began questioning why they couldn't explain certain radiation effects, some experts believe that quantum physics will change the world - or at least the way we perceive it. Unlike the inflexible laws of standard physics, the rules of quantum physics seem made to be broken.

Just when scientists think they have one aspect of their study of matter and energy figured out, a new twist emerges to remind them how unpredictable their field is. Still, they are able to harness, if not totally understand, their findings to develop new technologies that sometimes can only be called fantastic.

In the future, quantum mechanics may help keep military secrets secure and protect your bank account information from online thieves. Scientists are working on quantum computers that can execute jobs far beyond the capabilities of today's machines. Broken into subatomic particles, items might be (theoretically) transported from one location to another in the blink of an eye. And, perhaps most intriguing of all, quantum physics may lead us to discover just what the universe is made of and what or who did the making.

The formulas of quantum physics are as far from classical physics as algebra is from multiplication tables. As Danish physicist Niels Bohr is attributed as saying, "Anyone not shocked by quantum mechanics has not yet understood it." For instance, two quantum scientists are now offering a quantum theory as proof of the existence of the soul.

American Dr Stuart Hameroff and British physicist Sir Roger Penrose developed a quantum theory of consciousness asserting that our souls are contained inside structures called microtubules which live within our brain cells. Their idea stems from the notion of the brain as a biological computer, "with 100 billion neurons and their axonal firings and synaptic connections acting as information networks".

Is the 10% brain a myth?

Dr Hameroff, Professor Emeritus at the Departments of Anesthesiology and Psychology and Director of the Centre of Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona, and Sir Roger have been working on the theory since 1996. They argue that our experience of consciousness is the result of quantum gravity effects inside these microtubules - a process they call orchestrated objective reduction (Orch-OR).

In a near-death experience the microtubules lose their quantum state, but the information within them is not destroyed. Or in layman's terms, the soul does not die but returns to the universe. Dr Hameroff explained the theory at length in the Morgan Freeman-narrated documentary "Through the Wormhole", aired in America by the Science Channel.

Go in search of the soul.

The quantum soul theory has trended worldwide, thanks to stories published by The Huffington Post and the Daily Mail, which have generated thousands of readers comments and social media shares. In the event of the patient's death, it was "possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body indefinitely - as a soul". Dr Hameroff believes new findings about the role quantum physics plays in biological processes, such as the navigation of birds, adds weight to the theory. he says:

Let's say the heart stops beating, the blood stops flowing, the microtubules lose their quantum state. The quantum information within the microtubules is not destroyed, it can't be destroyed, it just distributes and dissipates to the universe at large. If the patient is resuscitated, revived, this quantum information can go back into the microtubules and the patient says, "I had a near death experience".

If there indeed is a soul, and the mind is a conduit for it, then some experts believe we can ego-tame the mind to open our human apertures beyond our physical senses. When we gain this wider perspective of life, then co-existence doesn't become an ideal, it becomes a common fact of life. In order to progress, it's said we have to relinquish our ego's desire to be right, which is not unlike coaxing a pit bull to drop a stick it's been chewing on.

We need to learn built-in processes for acknowledging and setting aside those premature, unfounded and usually incorrect conclusions that the conscious mind is bound to make. Some see it as a novel approach - calling out your self-defeating or judgemental thoughts, rather than sweeping them under the carpet. Over time, by becoming an unrelenting observer of your own mind, the mental challenges lessen, because it gets called out on the carpet. And when you can co-exist peaceably with yourself, then you can co-exist with others.

Some experts say the mind is like an iceberg - 10% ego, 90% subconscious. If this is true, then we want to tap into that submerged block of knowledge, but we need to get beyond the ego-gatekeeper. How can we do that? One tactic that some believe works well is to distract the conscious mind by keeping it busy. Sitting on a pillow and emptying the mind of thoughts might work for some people with meditation, but for others simply keeping busy by doing work that gives value is of benefit in itself. Like anything else, practising co-existence makes it more fruitful.

Consequently, as we become more aware of our mental faculties, and rely less on physical sensations, experts say we become more sensitive and intuitive. There is even research that suggests "spiritual" people may suffer worse mental health than conventionally religious, agnostic or atheist people, because the spiritual journey can sometimes be a painful one.

Is there a meaning to life?

The search for meaning can be exhausting, and some philosophers say that an unfulfilled desire for answers may explain why some research has found that spiritual people have more mental health problems. When we we fail to find the answers, it can lead to awkward questions about life itself and our purpose on Earth. You're going on an interior mental journey. It's risky to go and try and see things from a bigger perspective. The promise is tremendous but the journey can be very painful.

But whether you think the information comes from your subconscious mind, God, invisible elfin-faery helpers, nearly everyone has experienced some sort of extrasensory weirdness in which they suddenly knew something they had no business knowing. Some will seek to cultivate their sensory sensitivities further, while some may just feel more under the influence of the planets.

Astrologers, for instance, believe people more in tune with themselves feel the energy of the planets and stars than others - because they are connecting with their true self. In such instances, people are said to discover that what astrology says about their personality and career paths can be eerily correct.

Many high school students take an aptitude test to guide them on a path that they would enjoy. Proponents of astrology say it works in much the same way - it's like a blueprint of your personality. We all come into this world with likes and dislikes, natural talents and areas where we need to learn and grow.

A professional astrologer would say that a Gemini, for example, is totally comfortable networking and socialising. Put her in marketing or sales and she's happy. Stick her in a cubicle with no human contact and she will wither. Whether or not you believe Lady Gaga when she says she was "Born This Way", as an Aries, she's a fire sign, making her naturally inclined to be high energy, very creative and fiercely independent.

if you are looking to change your profession in the new year, or in the new years to come, or looking for a new start, then as a bit of new year fun, below I provide some tips from professional astrologers to work out our own blueprints. The tips below may even help us to co-exist with new people we meet, or the people we already know - like the loved ones in our lives. Being willing to compromise over small issues rather than fighting to prove a point can make us so much more attractive in the eyes of someone special.

Co-exist with your Zodiac sign

“The bad news is time flies. The good news is you are the pilot.”
— Mickie Kent

Want to know if your career is on the right track for your Zodiac sign? Experts in this field have recommended some career paths best suited for each sign. According to the professionals, the most general way to identify your natural career strengths is by your element, of which there are four in the zodiac: Fire, Earth, Air and Water, with three signs belonging to each element. Here's what the experts say your element reveals about you:

Fire signs (Aries, Leo and Sagittarius): All Fire signs are natural leaders. They are high energy, very creative and independent. Like a flame — they get inspired quickly and can motivate others. However, they may burn themselves out by having too many irons in the fire.

Earth signs (Taurus, Virgo and Capricorn): All Earth signs are practical and grounded. They like having a plan and taking steps to achieve success. They do best in the corporate world where structure is needed.

Air signs (Gemini, Libra and Aquarius): Air signs are the thinkers of the zodiac. Don't expect them to get their hands dirty — they prefer working on a computer or brainstorming ideas with others.

Water signs (Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces): The Water signs are the touchy, feely people of the zodiac. Water is related to our emotions and many excel at counselling. They are highly empathic and each sign has its own unique energy.

Looking for a more in-depth analysis of what the cosmos hold for your career? Astrologers have pinpointed the key traits, and best and worst careers for each sign, below.

Aries (March 21 – April 19) Key traits: Enthusiasm, creativity, warmth — a short attention span. As a leader, you have great ideas but dislike getting mired in the tiny details.

Best careers: Entrepreneur, sales, film/TV, stockbroker, military, rescue worker.

Careers to avoid: Any mundane, detail-oriented desk jobs.

Taurus (April 20 – May 20) Key traits: Determined, hard-working, loyal, stubborn. You enjoy accomplishing tasks from big to small.

Best careers: Engineer, computer programmer, technician, administrative assistant.

Careers to avoid: Any job that involves taking too much financial risk.

Gemini (May 21 – June 20) Key traits: Quick-witted, clever, adaptable, indecisive. You multi-task well and get bored easily so it's hard to focus on the same project for long periods of time.

Best careers: Media, advertising, marketing, journalist/writer, delivery/driver.

Careers to avoid: Serious or mundane jobs that are extremely detail-oriented.

Cancer (June 21 – July 22) Key traits: Caring, intuitive, creative, persevering, moody. You love to support and nurture people but can feel burdened by this responsibility, too.

Best careers: Real estate, interior design, psychologist, teacher, therapist (occupational, speech, etc).

Careers to avoid: Isolating Jobs that involve constant oversight and no creativity.

Leo (July 23 – August 22) Key traits: Confident, ambitious, creative, generous and domineering. You shine in careers that show off your dynamic personality. Plus you need to be in charge of something.

Best careers: Entrepreneur, entertainment, politics, public relations, maître d.

Careers to avoid: Any job where you are out of the spotlight.

Virgo (August 23 – September 22) Key traits: Detail-oriented, analytical, hard-working, yet fussy. You love to cross things off your to-do list.

Best careers: Editor, accountant, engineering, graphic design, florist.

Careers to avoid: Jobs that deal with a variety of people, who may not be as fastidious and perfectionist as you.

Libra (September 23 – October 22) Key traits: Diplomatic, artistic, intelligent yet prone to indecision. Because you are graceful under pressure, you work best in partnerships with other people.

Best careers: Architect, designer, lawyer, counsellor, behind-the-scenes in the arts.

Careers to avoid: Conventional jobs that lack creativity and independence of mind.

Scorpio (October 23 – November 21) Key traits: Dynamic, creative, resourceful, strong willed. Outspoken and self-starting, you can only work in a career that you feel very passionate about.

Best careers: Psychologist, designer, law, humanitarian organizations or charitable foundations.

Careers to avoid: Anything you perceive as shallow or materialistic.

Sagittarius (November 22 – December 21) Key traits: Philosophical, optimistic, straightforward. You enjoy your freedoms of movement and self-expression and do best working in a field that allows you both.

Best careers: Entrepreneur, airline pilot, sports industry, police officer, flight attendant.

Careers to avoid: Any full-time desk job.

Capricorn (December 22 – January 19) Key traits: Ambitious, resourceful, patient and authoritarian. Driven and competitive, any project you take on, you'll do what ever it takes to be the best.

Best careers: Finance, business development/management, doctor, trainer.

Careers to avoid: A financially risky job or a career where there is no room for advancement.

Aquarius (January 20 – February 18) Key traits: Analytical, clever, inventive, and obstinate. Friendly and autonomous, you get along with most people, yet you have no problems voicing a divergent opinion.

Best careers: Apps developer, veterinarian, scientist, engineer, alternative care practitioner.

Careers to avoid: Any conventional job that discourages independent thinking or differing opinions.

Pisces (February 19 – March 20) Key traits: Compassionate, intuitive, flexible and overly sensitive. A visionary like Albert Einstein and Dr. Seuss, you work best in a situation where you can actualize what you see in your imagination.

Best careers: Artist, designer, psychologist, entertainment, charitable foundations, dog walker.

Careers to avoid: Any job that has a physically or psychologically gruelling schedule or deals with the harsh realities of life.

Whatever your star sign, putting yourself out there and making every day a step that moves you forward, is a prescription for success for the entire year. Every moment we are on this planet there is a window of opportunity for all of us; and being courageous and positive carries its own momentum that will see you through, not just for this year, but in the years to come.

Being patient always pays off throughout your self-hood, because moving forward on your chosen path is not going to be easy. Spiritual advancement gives us fire-power, but it doesn't necessarily provide easy targets. You can accomplish a great deal, not just for yourself, but for the greater good of everyone concerned. You are a major player in changing your life, and what rules the individual is our thoughts and emotions as we perceive them through all our senses.

Connect to the spirit and grow.

Experts recommend a mastery of our senses, heart and mind, but I prefer to call this mastery as a getting to know ourselves in a synergistic way, where we harmonise our modern lifestyles with our inner desires and purpose. We are in an age where power is being given back to the individual; in the news we are increasingly seeing how those in power are having to answer to the individual - for the good of the community as a whole. It's about promoting human solidarity, but also the rights of individuals to be who they want.

That is what co-existence is truly about; there is no more ruling class of the 1% running everything, we are all in this together. The individual has power, and we will be reminded of this every time we take positive action for the better in our lives. This is a time to stand up for ourselves, and for others. We have to let go of old systems that have become corrupt, change our bad habits, and open our minds to new ways of thinking and doing things.

Empowering our minds, empowering ourselves is the mantra for a new era. Moving up in spirituality will affect every area of our lives, because we are dealing with our core. It is the spine of our individuality in the body of existence. How we show up in the world depends on us. How we treat the person next to us depends on us. And when we change our old habits and lifestyles, this will transform and change us in ways we would not have thought possible.

For instance, there are scientific studies that show performing deliberate acts of kindness makes pre-teen children more popular with their peers. They become happier, and are able to build positive relationships with their class mates - and even prevent instances of bullying. Thus, simply by changing the way we treat others can take us to the next level of our own individual evolution in our lifetime.

So, let's be ready for new adventures, and to attract new opportunities. Being ready to start something new shouldn't just be at certain times of the year that focus on endings and beginnings; each new day can help us focus on starting something new. When we wake up, we can make our affirmations that today will be a new day, a new step towards the future, while keeping our minds focused on the ever-present moment we are in. It's really all about learning from yesterday, living for today and hoping for tomorrow.

It's time that we all restructured our lives so we can do more of the things we want to be doing; let's treat every day as one more step forward on the road of opportunity. Step into the consciousness of who you really are. Attempt to look at your endeavours in a new light and from a different angle, and be open to new breakthroughs. And when we do hit those bumps in the road, let's remind ourselves that they are only temporary. The message for all of us is to go for what we desire, whether than be in our careers, our love life, or in our private goals for self-improvement in terms of health and body image. Harmonise with what you do and who you are.

7 steps to creating your heart's desires

Experts say that creating our dreams to come true requires we live from our true and authentic nature. This creates inner peace. Our inner peace builds outer peace in our life and world. Creating inner peace will replace our anxiety and fear. See yourself as a powerful creator, and believe that we create our reality with our thoughts and feelings. This empowers us to laser beam in on our goals for the coming years.

Ask yourself: What are you creating? What is your heart desiring in the year ahead? What do you love and value? What gives you passion? If money were not a concern for you, what would you be doing?

The alchemy is in using the power of love to manifest our wishes and desires. If you desire greater love, prosperity, health, well-being, vitality and new opportunities to come your way, then experts recommend using the 7 steps below to your success. Use these steps as a ritual to focus on what you want to create in the next 30 days. The power of focused intention can manifest our heart's desires. Have fun creating!

• Step 1) Get into a meditative state
• Step 2) Visualise what you want, including what you want to release, i.e., anxiety, fear around money etc., uncertainty and state your intentions out loud.
• Step 3) Fill your heart with love.
• Step 4) Breathe deeply, in with the love and exhale out with the fear.
• Step 5) Release and let go of your wishes and desires surrender onto the universe.
• Step 6) Understand that you are worthy of receiving and living fearlessly.
• Step 7) Go have fun and be in JOY.

You don't want to look back on your life years from now and find your regrets staring back in a haunting depiction of the self doubt that always lay behind your fears, which stopped you from going after what you love to do. Keep telling yourself that your desires are the ambassadors to your success. Give yourself the freedom to go after what you want, and empower the individual within you. Take this time as an opportunity to harmonise all your sides, bring balance to your light and shadows sides, and to your male and female sides.

Some astrologers say the "goddess energy" will be strong in the new year, as three out of the five eclipses are lunar eclipses in 2013. Experts say this will awaken feminine power in everyone - this will mean respecting feminine values, which include peace, prosperity and abundance, and will make focusing on co-existence much more easier.

And the more balanced we feel, the more balanced the world is. There is great inequality in the world, and many believe the global economic system requires reform so that it works in the interests of the whole of humanity. But if we want equality and outer peace in the world, we must first create inner peace and balance inside ourselves - before we can successfully move away from a model of war and inequity to a new world transformation. Thus, improving our lives will encourage co-existence with fellow individuals, which is, after all, part of our human legacy.

We are culturally close to those things we have a spiritual relationship with - and it's time to add the human species to that list. We have to begin thinking as an extended family. Loving the entire human race doesn't entail losing the old identities (religious, political or other) - it means broadening existing identities. World peace isn't about minimising or masking differences, it's about celebrating them.

Moreover, being part of a society doesn't necessarily mean having to make sacrifices for the benefit of your fellow citizens, but it does mean thinking of them, and not fearing them or their differences. It is the domino effect in reverse; we will no longer knock each other down, but will help each other to stand in our tribe of humanity. Let's all focus on forward movement, and new beginnings. Keeping that in mind, here's wishing you all a happy new year, and I'll see you on the other side.

Yours in love,