The Mission of Love

“On the path to self-improvement, we often find ourselves feeling confused. For instance, we confuse self-love with ego satisfaction. We confuse living in the now for living only for the present moment. If we want to conquer the anxiety of life, we live in the moment - or in the breath - but not for the moment. However, neither ego satisfaction nor living for the moment is wrong if we put them on the right mission. It's about focusing our attention on what really matters, and making our mission one of love and balance. Centring everything we do on love is not a mission impossible, but a mission that opens our lives up to infinite possibilities instead. It's a journey that teaches us stability and balance, the strongest ground on which to improve the self.”
— Mickie Kent

I always say that living well is a pose dedicated to balance. As such, we need to take a step-by-step approach to life, and all its aspects. For example, the intelligent placement of the body and breath or a well-trained, stable, and focused mind is an asset in every sphere of life, and essential for any spiritual endeavour. Without a healthy brain, we fire off unbalanced hormones, and this affects our behaviour and the very core of who we are.

Like love and life, the mind is bad thing to waste but a wonderful thing to invest in, and with such a step-by-step sequential, alignment-based life change will be gradual, and lifelong. When healed at our core, we can heal ourselves. Even in times of great stress, we have the power to recalibrate ourselves. It's an invigorating flow that builds up our strength to combat all difficulties life WILL throw at us. Our journey back to balance not only helps us defend against external issues, it will also help highlight any internal issues we may have.

I feel that the practice of yoga expresses this in physical form. It encourages us to practice diligently, listen carefully, and stay open to the outcome. Guidelines for how to live a yogic life will invariably include advice for us to incubate the will to practice, the time to reflect and the ability to let go, whilst nourishing and challenging our bodies. But most importantly, it forces us to be mindful of the importance of balance to pose, alignment and breath.

Establishing stability creates more freedom in your life. Knowing the importance of balance allows you to become your own moderator - even when it comes to the practice of yoga. You could practically do nothing better for your holistic health than go to yoga, but you certainly need to be very careful about your commitment. You can make immense positive change for your body and mind, but you can overdo things without balance. Often by appreciating balance we can "get away" with doing things considered "bad" for us now and then. Likewise, we need to moderate those things that are "good" for us as well.

With yoga, you'll hear people complaining of pain, muscle soreness, bloating, sciatica and other such problems that signal they've overdone it. It can be an incredibly quick to pay you back for your troubles. But allowing yourself to take a day off from yoga gives you a breather in your heart, mind and body - where you can meditate on what is going wrong. If your body is telling you it needs rest and space (to regenerate muscle tissue, resolve pain, etc.,) then you need to listen to it. Because without the moderation of balance, too-frequent yoga can become unsustainable.

And if learning brings knowledge, then letting go can bring wisdom. By letting yourself off the hook regularly once in a while, any guilt dissipates, and you regain balance on that day of rest. It's just like your own yoga Sabbath. So when you have aches and pains, take a day off and listen to them. When your yoga is making your body sore and unsatisfying then usually it means you have to fix your poses (if you're not overdoing it, breathing properly and taking enough water). Your body is calling out for proper alignment.

Balance, too, is the key deciding factor when we choose which particular style of yoga we should practice. The aim of hatha yoga, for instance, is to balance our lunar and solar energies, but our asana practice tends to reflect a bias for the solar, because we often emphasise sun salutations and heating practices in the quest for physical fitness. We shouldn't choose yoga for firmer buttocks or a slimmer waistline or tighter abs. The key is whether a particular style balances you or throws you further out of balance (and thus causes you pain). You begin, therefore, by looking at yourself.

Experts in this field will urge yogis to learn something about ayurveda (the science of staying balanced). Some have translated ayurveda as the "science of life", because it incorporates various holistic treatments designed to rebalance the body and mind - along with yoga and meditation - which are seen as integral to all round well-being. This ancient healing system is attracting a growing number of thoroughly modern, stressed-out Western devotees.

These holistic therapies, unlike conventional regimes, seek to address any number of ailments simultaneously, while allowing the body and mind to rest. Yoga and ayurveda see the health of the heart and the health of the body, mind, and emotions as inextricably intertwined - one affects the other. It's believed that heart disease is so prevalent, because we're disconnected from our hearts. We live in our heads, and suffer from depression and loneliness. Framed within this concept, yoga isn't about fitness. It’s a powerful tool for balance, integration, and empowerment. It's a tool not only for your body, but for your life.

Balancing the body of life

If we analogise life as our body, then we need to constantly connect with and know our heart and engage our core. It's said that the focus that you hold in your life determines how your reality turns out, and what you focus on expands. Thus, we must ground ourselves and remain focused on the next step we need to take to attain our personal goals. If exercise is a contract we sign for better health, then spiritual exercise is an internal agreement for a more balanced state in life. And when we are balanced within ourselves, certain truths open themselves up to us.

We realise we are deserving of love, and that self-love is about minimising the ego, not maximising it. We can end the emotional suffering at the hands of others - and ourselves - simply by realising that nothing really matters, except what we what to matter. Going beyond the realm of "me" or "mine", we untangle ourselves from a narrow perspective, and digging deep inspires what should really be important to us. It promotes a "selfless" kind of love, but one that is more connected to self than before. It should really be described as "egoless", where we are less selfish and foolish, and more aware of others.

We are more empathic, because we are on a journey to understanding how our feelings work, and that self and the ego need to be amicably divorced from each other. Case in point, if you're going through a divorce right now, and you have children, then it will be the toughest of times - but you still need to have an awareness of your behaviour towards your ex-partner, and how it will affect your children. Even if you've now decided you made the wrong choice as to the other parent, your children came to the world because of the two of you. No matter what the circumstance, or how you now feel about their father or mother, your children are one-half of you.

This may seem like blunt words for divorcing parents, but in such instances, every time we may feel like saying what an "idiot" the father is or a "fool" the mother is, or how bad the absent parent is or what terrible things that person has done, we need to be mindful that you are telling the child half of him is bad. You can be forgiven for doing this, if you're unaware of what it's doing to your son or daughter. But you need to understand that this is not love. It's acting from the ego. It's possession.

If we do this to our children, we will destroy them as surely as if we had cut them into pieces, because that is what it's doing to their emotions. Thus, if we don't begin to love ourselves with a less egocentric attitude, then in our mania to master and possess, we will think less of our children and ourselves. Everybody suffers.

It's the same with the self; it's not about shunning your ego (it's part of you after all), but accepting and learning to work with it, while not allowing it to dictate the relationship you have with your self. If you're in physical or emotional pain at the moment, then it's only YOU who can end this type of pain. It all comes back to what we feel we deserve for ourselves. Whatever happens around you, we shouldn't take it personally. In a very real sense, although it might seem to the contrary, nothing other people do is because of you. It is because of themselves.

The same goes for us. What we do is because of ourselves, not because of others. We're trying to fulfil a need, a belief or something we feel has to be given to us by another, so we take them personally. Yet, attaching expectations on an another individual to give us what we can't give ourselves - even if that person is the love of our lives - is wrong. Unless our soul is balanced enough to realise it's already whole, it cannot be twinned with another.

Until we realise this, we'll keep finding relationships that mirror back to us how undeserving we are by choosing someone equally undeserving. It deviates us from our mission of love, which is to discover our authentic self. First and foremost, love is an inside job. The less we love ourselves, beat ourselves up or focus our unloving feelings on the other person in our relationships, the more it will show up in our life.

Take up the mission of love

In my post "Can Love Restore Us?" I touched upon how love - romantic love in particular - seems to unbalance some of us, rather than provide us with the balance we seek. Looking at the science, when we fall in love with someone, studies show that our brains are flooded with hormones to provide us with feelings of euphoria and addictive-like feelings of reward and the desire to please. Some would say this is nature's way of getting us to procreate, and that romantic love is mere fiction we've invented for ourselves.

Even though scientists now say they've found romantic love in brain scans, people have suggested that this "romantic fiction" was made up by ancient Persians, while others have it that romantic love was an invention of the Middle Ages. Yet, when we look back at some of the "greatest love affairs" in human history, we see a common thread of pain and suffering that comes in denying true love (or when it's denied to us), not in submitting to it. The true story of Pierre Abélard and Héloïse d'Argenteuil is one of the templates of this narrative.

Abélard and Héloïse were prominent intellectuals of France in the 12th Century. Abélard was a man of noble birth, a prominent lecturer of philosophy and an adventurous thinker, constantly at odds with the Church. On several occasions he was forced to recant and burn his writings. He was 18 years older than Héloïse, who was a strong-willed and gifted woman fluent in Latin, Greek and Hebrew, but came from a lower social standing.

They fell in love, had a secret affair that produced a child out of wedlock, and were punished severely for their feelings for each other. Héloïse's uncle, himself a Church official, had Abélard castrated and exiled. Abélard became a monk, while Héloïse entered the convent - forever separated from the man she loved, who had been irrevocably changed by the cruelty of others.

We know of their love primarily through the letters they wrote to each other during this time. Originally written in Latin, the former lovers are passionate both in the remembrance of lost love, and the attempt to reconcile that love with their respective monastic duty to remain chaste. The tension between these two poles generates a huge amount of emotional electricity. Although Héloïse attempts to rekindle their relationship irrespective of the injury done to him, Abélard forces their correspondence to focus on professional subjects rather than their romantic history.

Abélard insists that he never truly loved her, but only lusted after her, and their relationship was a sin against God. He recommends her to turn her attention toward the only one who ever truly loved her, Jesus Christ, and to consecrate herself fully to her religious vocation. Scholars believe Abélard does this in an attempt to spare her feelings (or his feelings, altered from disrupted hormones), pointing to the damage of his hormones and psyche, but from then on the letters take an erudite turn. Héloïse acquiesces; having his letters is better than not having him at all.

Nevertheless, Abélard dedicated his profession of faith to her, and is quoted as saying that, "If I am remembered, it will be for this: that I was loved by Héloïse." When they died, their bones were interred together, and were preserved even through the vicissitudes of the French Revolution, and now are presumed to lie in the well-known tomb in Père Lachaise Cemetery in eastern Paris (although this is disputed). The transfer of their remains there in 1817 is considered to have considerably contributed to the popularity of that cemetery, at the time still far outside the built-up area of Paris. By tradition, lovers or lovelorn singles leave letters at the crypt, in tribute to the couple or in hope of finding true love.

I can't help but ask myself, had they not been denied their chance to be together, what balance could they have brought to their lives, their writings, and to the world with their ideas? And still, cut down in their prime, their love persisted, even despite their own attempts to turn against their relationship and bury their love. The suffering this caused is evident through their writings, but it has also been an inspiration for all those who believe that romance is not mere fiction.

Be the love you seek

As the story of Abélard and Héloïse shows - whether love is entirely in our brains or not - it's very real for those that experience it, and there is no greater guide to fuel our drive or inspire us to greater things. But it's only when we realise the point of love in life is to bring balance and harmony, and we are the instruments to that purpose, that it will bring value to our lives. But if we want true love, then first we must be the love we seek.

Moreover, if we want to improve ourselves, we have to understand that it has to be a mission of love. If we make this our ultimate mission, then it will be one where the end can truly justify the means - because we cannot really love what we hurt or harm. In essence we don't ask what love will do for us, but what we can do for love - and so what we do for ourselves simply becomes a method to gain balance on that journey. Even times of imbalance are beneficial, if they help us to seek balance. It's all how you use the difficulty to your advantage.

Thus, although self-stupefaction of any kind is arguably wrong, the path of pleasure is never wrong if it feeds into our true nature, which is divine and eternal. Correspondingly, we may sometimes need to live for the moment, to reward ourselves when a goal has been achieved, as a treat for a job well done. We may find we need to satisfy the ego now and then, rather than burying it in a subconscious minefield only to blow up in our faces later and completely deflate our true self-worth. You also need to keep in mind that whether your future will be disappointing or exciting for you depends only on your attitude, and how open it is to influence. Our brain is wired for empathy, and emotions - like yawning - can be contagious.

We are affected by the emotions of others around us. We can catch a negative emotion from someone like we catch a cold, but so it's true of positivity, too. Laughter is infectious. Love and kindness are addictive. Seeing others be kind makes us happy, and inspires us to do the same. Similarly with joy. But all these can be unbalanced by "energy vampires" unless we counterbalance this with a strong self.

So, as we redesign our lives, let our strength be built on love. After all, the best designs are based on a love of something. When we are in love, our eyes are more attuned to beauty, and like art, it reinvigorates us and opens us to the infinite possibilities in life. This isn't about superficial beauty, which is as brief as a fashion trend, with a price tag just as heavy. For true beauty isn't about having a beautiful façade, but a beautiful heart, mind and soul.

In the same vein, our inner strength will be a much needed commodity for the coming years - which will undoubtedly hold great changes and entirely new challenges for us all. Because even with all the negative upheaval predicted in the West, this year the Chinese are celebrating the Year of the Horse for the lunar new year, said to bring prosperity and wealth. For some it will mean new investment opportunities are coming, while others may simply want to start cutting back on junk food or be more accepting of differing opinions.

Whatever our personal goals, we have to be on a mission that has us looking at the bigger picture - instead of running around in ever increasing circles. No one can rescue you from the vicious circle you find yourself stuck in, unless you understand that it comes back to what we believe we deserve. No one can say to you, "I've arrived, and here is all the love you're missing" - because relationships are not just about taking love. It's about loving back.

We don't fall in love because we want someone to make us happy, but because we have so much love to give we want to make another person happy. If you can't give yourself love, you can't give love to anyone else, either. And if you don't believe you deserve love, how can you believe anyone is deserving of any you have to give? If you want happiness, you must start feeling you deserve it, by doing things that make you happy. If you want love, you must start by feeling you deserve it. Don't withhold it from yourself. Follow your conscience, follow your heart and follow your wisdom, and in doing so, find ways that express love for you. Then love everyone else, even if they deserve it or not.

Love in its best form, therefore, is a competency, it's a way of thinking, it's a way of doing that you apply to life. It's about acknowledging your heart. This will eventually promote a healthy relationship with yourself, because it will allow you to get in touch with your authentic self. Communicate honestly with yourself. Communicate the truth. Listen to yourself, to your needs and wants. Your body is your messenger, and if you're not feeling good, it may be your body's way of telling you to rest more, change you diet, or go to bed earlier. Whatever gender you are, try to balance the feminine side of listening and receiving, with the warrior side of taking action and achieving when dealing with challenges. Meditate on the heart to get in touch with the gratitude that always lives there.

Be your own best friend. If you label things as "good" and "bad", don't go against yourself by doing "bad". And if you do, forgive yourself. Learn balance from it. By learning to access a deeper part of yourself, to recognise and change habit patterns that don't serve you, will help you have a more compassionate relationship with yourself. So if you want a healthy relationship, start by feeling you deserve it.

Every human being values being loved, but they need to realise they deserve it, too. Remember the mission of true love is not simply to match us to a partner. It's to make love itself THE mission of our lives. It's the guidance we use to choose the path we want to take in life. It's the bigger picture that helps put our lives into context.

Love is either everything, or love is nothing. The medieval story of Abélard and Héloïse taught us that, and Love's will shall be done on Earth only when we learn what that really means.

Yours in love,

Can Love Restore Us?

“In the crux of all our stories lies love. This is as true now as it was centuries past, and it will be true in the future. But with our current efforts to engage more ethically with the environment and accept each other for who we truly are, this means our present is filled with global upheaval. Filled with protests, wars and revolutions. Economies are hard hit. Violence is on the rise. Catastrophes, such as the rise of pestilence, floods and drought, loom like portents of doom. Yet, within it all, there are those that continue to frame such events within the universal language of love. Are they right to do so?
— Mickie Kent

The story of life is represented by some as being filled with magic and oddity. But let's not kid ourselves. Living, like anything else, takes effort. It's a work in progress. It's often mundane, hard work. And one way or another, if what some astrologers tell us are true, 2014 will be hard work for many. Hard times will continue, especially during the coming spring and on though to next winter. But is our destiny in our minds or our stars?

I know many look for signs of doom in the news, as though it will somehow predict the end for us. For instance, scientists have described the growing resistance to antibiotics as a "ticking time bomb", while the world's landscape has been ticking turbulently socially, politically and economically since the start of the 21st Century. Some believe it's payback for our carbon and ecologically devastating footprints. They say it's time to pay the price. The golden age of man (or more precisely the West) is over. But whether or not any predictions of doom come to pass, or the astrologists are right when they say upheaval will be with us until 2015/16 right up to 2020, we can find restorative ways to relax through it.

Our problems are there for us to celebrate a solution. These challenges can make better warriors out of us all, where we do not fight to harm others, but to protect ourselves AND others from future harm. The fact is, to secure a better future is really a progression to better ourselves, and every personal upheaval suffered can be viewed as a step up towards that aim. Yet many choose to embrace the psychology of helplessness and victim-hood, preferring to explain all their struggles in terms of the actions of others. But our great enemy is what we demonise as negative emotions.

Rue McClanahan: "Every kick is a boost"

Fear, self-pity, envy, jealousy and anger hold us back, can tie us down and suck the joy out of life - unless we love every emotion and make constructive use out of them. For when we use the difficulty that appears, rather than push against it, we will find footholds through the obstructions to climb to a higher position that we began. Actress Rue McClanahan, who played Blanche Devereaux on comedy series The Golden Girls and for which she won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series in 1987, said in her acceptance speech that her mother told her "every kick is a boost". From where she stood, she could see clearly that every rejection she had ever received helped boost her to that podium to take her award. And the way we can do this, too, is to be able to see every event from a divine perspective of love.

Now, some will say love has more than its fair share of ups and downs, and that it's simply a series of chemical reactions which toys with our emotions. The science says when we fall in love, our brains release serotonin or dopamine so we feel euphoria, happiness or contentment. But the many negative upheavals we may feel when we believe ourselves to be in love, and the chemical and hormonal imbalances said to come about through romantic love, could be no more than a result of infatuation, unrequited love or something even darker. Infatuation is often the hardest, because it occurs when there's enough intellectual beauty to make one "fall in love". And then, as in all love affairs that become requited, there's the cooling off period of realising that love isn't ours to dictate to. How could we ever have fancied it would be?

German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said, amongst many other clever things during his lifetime, that we are shaped and fashioned by what we love, and yet there are many reasons people are afraid of love. Emotional burnout is just as debilitating as physical burnout, and some argue we all need to love - just not too intensely, because it can make you feel vulnerable. Suddenly you find that your life holds much more value, and so have more to lose.

It was Goethe who also believed that the true measure of love is when we believe that no one could ever have loved so before us, and that no one will ever love in the same way after us. Likewise, when we fall in love we want to believe that he or she is the only one we shall ever love, and that all loves before and after will either be experimentation, mistakes or moments of denial. Yet most relationships bring up an onslaught of challenges, because getting to know our fears of intimacy, and how they inform our behaviour, is an important step to having a fulfilling, long-term relationship.

Real love, however, does not isolate us from ourselves or others. Love should not be a drug that divorces you from any every day reality, but makes the every day a better reality. Such love expands what it consumes, it does not narrow. It does not create a vacuum, because it cannot survive in one. True love balances, because it is the one real balancer in life. And although romantic love may feel unbalanced and unequal, what we're really feeling is our fears getting in the way of real love.

But it's also during times of imbalance we have an opportunity to take the path less travelled - the one that leads within. It's part of human nature to want to restore balance, and it's only when we are strong on the inside that we can become stronger on the outside. Any healing must start from within to change the outlook we have on life, and looking inwards is sometimes the best way to turn things around. When you repair a machine, you must look inside. You take the cover off, and identify all the parts. It's only when you really look at it for a while that you can understand how it works.

In this manner you become more conscious of the machine and what it really is, how to quickly identify the problems affecting it, and when you become an expert on the machine, how to improve it. This is not possible until you can become conscious of the machine for what it is. So, too, with material objects. To become more and more aware of who you really are, you have to choose a process of becoming more conscious.

The more conscious you get, the more you can expand your awareness to include the broader aspects of consciousness. When you do, you will find that you become more "you", and at the same time, become more aware of "us" - the living community. Because while the world is in a long season of changes, so are we. It suggests that everything is a microcosm of everything else. What goes on within you at a personal level is also a reflection of what is going on in society and, indeed, the universe as a whole. It might sound like a stretch sometimes, but it is, in fact, a good way of understanding many things in life.

Some make a great mystery of enlightenment, but many believe the process of enlightenment has much more to do with how you feel than how much you know. However, the intellect and the emotions are inextricably linked, and the process of intellectual discovery can itself be very exciting, and an aid to strengthen emotional intelligence. This conscious unfolding of the process of finding of self, and expansion of self, involves reaching for thoughts and states of being that feel better.

As a result, in this expanding interlude every revolution of self is really a breaking down to basics, to let go of what no longer serves and what needs to be changed in order to support and strengthen the heart, body and mind ratio.

Learning to work better

It can be frightening to discover how easily we can lose control of our lives, but even these challenging episodes are "warning signs" for us to heed, before it's too late. Deciding what matters to you most and focusing your attention on that isn't always easy, but the best tips to creating the life you want resides in knowing how to make your challenges work to your advantage and not against you.

Learning how to work better is just one facet. To reconstruct we first need to de-construct previous habits that may have us locked in a cycle of negativity - consciously replacing them with new ones. This may be the most important reason for embarking on a path of awakening. Our daily choices create effects in the world that we may never know, but when we are conscious of our motivations, we can choose wisely. And whether your problem is joblessness, addiction, overspending, obesity, or a damaged personal relationship, you can only move closer to a solution the moment you stop the blame game.

This works two ways. We either subconsciously sabotage our efforts because we are filled with self-blame, or we refuse to take responsibility for our lives by constantly blaming others for our problems. Every time you blame someone else or make excuses, you give your power away. You feel weakened and diminished. Without the acceptance of personal responsibility, no progress is possible.

On the other hand, once you accept total responsibility for your life, there are no limits to what you can be, do and have. Likewise, when you stop blaming yourself and others, you'll realise it's impossible to stay destructively angry. The very act of removing blame and taking loving responsibility short-circuits and cancels out negative emotions. In doing so, you gain the awareness to use what may once have been destructive feelings to your advantage.

Upheaval is never an easy time, but we must steer clear of blaming ourselves or others in a crisis. There is no quality more closely associated with unhappiness than the habit of blaming others for our difficulties, or continually blaming ourselves. It's also linked to poor self-esteem. Low self-esteem is generally characterised by a hypersensitivity to the opinions of others. No one wants to lose the respect of others, but conscientious people don't need to fret about what other people think.

We need to live life in a centred way, rooted in our inner reality - not being dependent on or clinging to others, or expecting them to make us happy and fulfilled. Doing this will allow us to let go of what stops us from moving forward. We must take responsibility for our lives, not for the actions of others - but neither must we allow self-blame to keep us from rationalising why we procrastinate over NOT doing what needs to be done to better our lives.

We don't always know the consequences of the choices we make, but turning negative self-blame into positive responsibility, to make amends or fix what has been done, will in the long run eliminate any need for blame over things that have gone wrong in the past.

This is not to say there aren't times when our lives are significantly influenced by outside forces, too. There are certain moments in your life that will take you, and just rip you out of your own skin, and we have to live with that. Things will go wrong that is the fault of no one it affects - and we are living through a prime example of such times. But victims don't create change. It's only when you choose to focus on what you can do and how you should act that you gain power. The difficulty can be a stepping stone to something greater if we continue to love when things go badly.

You can be negative only as long as you convince yourself that you are entitled to be angry. Unhappy individuals will always be found explaining and elaborating on the profound unfairness of their situation. But when we have a positive outlook we realise that we are changing ourselves rather than the situation, and the way we perceive it.

Self-revolutionise with love

Psychologists say human beings have a natural propensity to accumulate pride and shun regret. Whether we recognise it or not, we tend to take responsibility for the positive developments in our lives and attribute unfavourable developments to others or circumstances (or else to subconsciously blame ourselves while deflecting that on to others).

But taking ownership of your actions creates freedom and control. It gives meaning to life. Believe it or not, life IS beautiful, and conditions need not apply. Self-reliance is the great source of personal power. We create ourselves, shape our identity and determine the course of our lives by what we are willing to take responsibility for, and by accepting that there will be challenges to face. Ups and downs are the general terrain of life.

Similarly, self-revolutions are necessary upheavals. It's what restores us. There will be times we discover the pendulum that swings inside us, which moves to the rhythm of spiritual refreshment. It's a way of evaluating how far we have come, and how far we have yet to go. And although self-discovery can be an uncomfortable quest, when done with wisdom, a spring clean of the accumulated dust of the ages - mindful of past acts in the context of the present - can be the step back we need to propel us even further forward.

Of course, there are ancient wisdoms we must keep because they speak to the truth of who we are, but there are also old beliefs that we must leave behind if we are to continue to progress on this planet. French Enlightenment writer Voltaire said history is nothing but a pack of tricks we play on the dead, and I say if we doom ourselves to repeat the same tricks, then the joke is on us.

But it's not one we should laugh at. We are still paying the price for the wars we have fought, even with the best of ideals, and it's odd to talk about winning. In World War One, swathes of Europe lay wasted, millions were dead or wounded. Survivors lived on with severe mental trauma. The United Kingdom was broke. And of the estimated 70 million people killed in World War Two, 26 million died on the Eastern front - with up to four million of them still officially considered missing in action. While Holocaust Memorial Day, on the 27th of January, is an opportunity for us all to remember the millions murdered in the Holocaust under the long arm of Nazi persecution, and in subsequent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.

For a long time we have dominated the world in such ways, forgetting that the world IS bigger than us - even if most major religions try to tell us it's our own special domain to do with what we will (as long as we abide by their rules). The fact is that if we compress the world's entire lifespan into 24 hours, we have only been alive for a minute of it, and look what destruction we have wrought in that small time.

Shall we continue repeating the same tired old joke, like a running gag that has gone on for far too long? Shall we continue holding our reason hostage to irrational fears over our perceived differences? Become so busy looking for the next terrorist, that we begin to see one on every corner of our lives? Carry on setting up lines of separation between people drawn over culture, colour and creed?

And though we are in 2014, we are doing just that - and subconsciously condemning history to repeat itself. Terrorist acts will continue on a major scale, because while wanting to win the war on terror, we have lost the battle for hearts and minds. Don't be surprised if we experience the same global upheaval of past years, if we continue making the same mistakes, and allow ourselves to be led astray by futile distractions.

In America, while racial profiling and white-hate groups are on the rise, we are scandalised more by the stories of monogamous gay couples raising healthy, loving children. But to awaken spirituality, we need to be grounded in reality. An enlightened state does not exist in absolute isolation from the world and worldly matters. It teaches us how to live and how to shape our lives with a commanding sense of purpose, capacity, and meaning.

Love teaches teamwork

We should not be afraid of difference, or of changing to be more inclusive. Nevertheless, some of us still fear when others try to use the best, most inclusive language then can, to replace the rhetoric of the past.

For example, I often find it strange that people who complain about "religious persecution" when Christmas is called the holiday season by some - so as to be more inclusive - will in the same breath shout "freedom of speech" to use their religion as a pulpit of hate to preach against same-sex couples.

But why are we making our lives more difficult by adding insult to injury? Everyone has the right to live within a groundwork of human rights and freedoms, and no singular belief has an overriding right to encroach on that dignity. It's a dignity we must afford to every living thing simply because they are alive. We should not define people by their religion, or their sexuality.

Moreover, repressing our sexuality, or our true nature, is wrong. It can have devastating consequences. Many experts tell us that human appetites for sex and food are normal, and attempts to suppress either, will make men and women nervous wrecks at least. Sex is best within a monogamous, trusting relationship, but sexual desire shouldn't be viewed as sinful. As Adam Gopnik, writing for the BBC, says:

I think the French view of sex and life is essentially right and ought to be universally applicable: Sex with children or by force is wrong, and the rest is just the human comedy, unfolding, as it will. Puritanism is a sin against human nature, and the worst of it is that puritanism is the most leering and prurient of world views. Far from wanting to keep sex in the private sphere, the puritans can't wait to drag it out in public. Puritans are the least buttoned-up people in the world. They can't wait to pin a scarlet A for adultery on someone's clothing, or hold a public humiliation ritual.

Naturally the power to refrain is necessary in certain circumstances. We indulge our hungers while not overindulging, at the same time. We do not gorge. We consider the company, and the occasion. We think before we act, and we are mindful when we do so. Otherwise life comes to represent a gargantuan ego. For instance, focusing on true self does not mean blindly focusing on ourselves. That is focusing on ego. When we focus on true self, we focus on the love, and the ego takes a back seat.

It's when the mind is partnered equally with the senses in this way that sensory pleasures bring inner joy. In other words, a balanced state will always involve some balance of appetite served and appetite curbed, yet moderating oneself isn't to deny, but to merely promote growth. A pruned tree grows healthier, stronger and eventually higher - but to do so it must be watered at the root. Deny a tree water, and it will die.

Nature dictates that all things must decay and die, all things must come to an end - but not while it lives. No one can progress in a deadened state such as that. Love, therefore, is the water that brings life to the root. It allows life itself to take root and grow. After a harsh winter season, it can be the spring that restores. And as every tree stands individually on its own, it must do so within the family of the forest.

We, in turn, must learn to be as one like a forest, where all trees of the same genus stand side by side together, growing in the same soil, watered by the same rain that makes their roots grow. If we are to develop past our turbulent history, then we need to bring such peaceful analogies to life. And those in the process of self-improvement will testify that real development is democratic, because teamwork makes progress easier.

It's a terrible statistic suggested by one survey that as many as a third of British adults feel they have no-one to turn to in a crisis. Every crisis is personal and can have a lasting impact on the individual affected. There are a growing number of people facing crisis all across the world, reluctant to turn to a voluntary organisation because they are embarrassed to ask for help. Yet helping others is as integral part of life as learning how to help ourselves, because it brings us in sync with our humanity.

Let love restore your true nature

To me the most exciting part of personal progress is interacting with our true self, and with other people. Rather than fight or dehumanise each other, it's so much better if we can pull together, with each being for who they are. To share, to give, to understand, and to grow together, not simply to tolerate, but to accept and respect the unique differences that make us who we are.

I realise some will point out how this may sound unrealistically idealistic. Those that know their history will realise humanity has played this tune before. In the sixties and seventies of the last century many groups believed that if world leaders just got together and used the language of love as opposed to the rhetoric of politics, somehow it would eat through all that red tape for them to realise we have a lot more in common than we think.

It was a utopia; a neat idea that didn't work - but that's not to say it was without merit. We just didn't believe in it hard enough, or maybe we weren't as committed to it as we could have been. And so fuelled by greed and preoccupied with consumerism, we continue to outdo each other in the scams we cook up to trick people well into the 21st Century. And as we watch nationwide power cuts, our economies in meltdown and cities going bankrupt, governments use austerity as an excuse to curb climate controls, and bribe councils into using controversial extraction processes for energy rather than renewable energy sources.

But the green movement doesn't mean giving up all the things we enjoy and stopping having fun. It means doing things responsibly and with consideration for the world we live in. Today many of us are still in search of a fairer, moral economy, but taking an active interest in our environment, wanting to use our democratic voice to protest feels difficult in a climate where well-intentioned activism (even eco-activism) can cross over too easily in to destructive terrorism.

It's hard not to become disenchanted, disengaged - and disenfranchised. The moderate amongst us have become wary of taking sides. So, we go through this cycle of people whole-heartedly committing to things they'll only half-heartedly execute - not because we feel we can't change anything without resorting to violence, but because we fail to believe we can. The problem is no one is challenging us to do better, no one is keeping us accountable for the things we need to do. Yet we do have examples of countries doing better. In Scandinavia for instance, if you think of the Finnish psyche, it's a very fair culture, while all forms of corporal punishment have been outlawed in Sweden since 1979, where the uptake of pioneering practices has historically been quicker.

But the majority of other nations have yet to follow suit in regards to changing our stance over violence. Or better still, of setting an example that to be non-violent isn't a sign of weakness. On the contrary to dismiss the need to harm another living thing takes great strength. But, no one is introducing us to a different perspective. Quite the opposite, we have become communities and nations that are all too frightened of a different view.

No where is this more clearly evidenced than by our use of networks, once created to be free and open, to spy on each other and track every thought different to our own. Everyone is entitled to their opinion - it's just that we mustn't allow differing opinions to divide us, but instead become a bridge for greater understanding. For at the heart of making the most of life today is the ability to identify and then treasure and protect our connections to what we care about. It's about making our moments more human. We only have a finite amount of seconds to spare on this planet, and we need to make them as human as possible.

It's said by the time you are 32 you will have lived over a billion seconds. The question is how will we spend them? By restoring, by revolutionising, by loving? Or by repeating the same mistakes of the past? If the latter, then the doom many predict for 2014 is just around the corner.

But even then, it can still be an opportunity or "morning call" for those that still slumber in the past century to wake up to the new. And one thing will be certain for all of us - that it's finally time to let love restore us to our true nature, and to a life of abundance we all deserve to live.

Yours in love,

Continue Co-Existing with Love

“In 2012 I said that the first days of 2013 would be filled with unique challenges, and this rings true for today as it did for yesterday. But we must all embrace change as our universal friend, rather than our common foe.”
— Mickie Kent

Life is about ringing in the changes, and although I'm mindful that a new year is celebrated at different times and months by different cultures and beliefs around the world, the essence of new starts is a universal one we can all understand. Philosopher Heraclitus is famous for his insistence on ever-present change in the universe - as stated in his famous doctrine defined by Plato that, "No one ever steps in the same river twice". We may not all share the same day universally, but we do all share the same universal truth that life is about change.

Change is not something we should fear. It's something we should prepare for, and be ready to face head on. Rather than simply wishing ourselves a year of happiness, we should wish for a year of great challenges as greater opportunities to shine bigger, better and brighter than the last. It's a chance to roll up our sleeves and get to work to steer those changes into the positive results that will benefit our lives, our community, and the world at large. But it's not merely about doing good with our passions, it's about making goodness and love THE passion of our lives.

However, thanks to the money-making gurus, "passion" has in recent times become overused and misappropriated - so much so that it now causes annoyance like certain other words we've seen trending in the past year. Talking about passion is not enough. If you do have a passion, the best way to illustrate that is to demonstrate it. Once planted into our everyday actions, such seeds will branch into all areas of our consciousness. Self-respect and respect for others, tolerance and awareness will flower and blossom in our minds. They will be a guiding intuitive light that shines on all crises as a chance for progressive change.

In doing so, we will have nurtured a loving co-existence with all living things, because the basic moral goodness we have guiding us will take us to love.

Where is the love?

Nevertheless, there are those of us that will feel anything but love when we look back on the year just gone. We'll have our own lists of the worst events and the notable deaths that so marked 2013, here in the United Kingdom and across the globe. But we must remember, too, the stories we shared en masse about people that have inspired or surprised us over what our species is capable of achieving.

Those prone to superstition would say that 2013 lived up to its "unlucky" numerical 13, while others believe in the other side of 13 - that it was a year which saw the harnessing of the powers of the goddess. The image of a goddess may conjure up in some of us the idea that women will finally be taking their rightful place as equal partners with men globally. And indeed, in some areas we are seeing just that.

Women who have worked diligently within their communities, in the arts, politics and industry are now gaining more recognition than their male counterparts, and becoming increasingly influential. A good example is the New Year honours system in the UK. The list recognises more women than men for first time in its history. Meanwhile, an analysis of thousands of shops and stores hints at a dramatic change in the character of Britain's commercial centres, with female traders now matching their male counterparts. But it feels like a different story across the Atlantic, especially in the Hollywood film industry.

Though 2013's crop of potential winners has been hailed for including several films with female producers, concerns remain that, in Hollywood's upper echelons, the business is an unreformed "boy's club". Touching on this, singer Beyoncé has said gender equality is a myth, and people need to "demand" women get the same opportunities as men. Criticised herself in times past for turning her back on feminism, she has a point. Discrimination - and violence - against women will always remain deeply entrenched in any staunchly patriarchal society, where any "weaker" groups seen as the minority are still very much marginalised. The radical emergence of the "new man" seems to have all but disappeared, and we seem stuck in a time warp. Even our most developed societies remain gender-specific, male dominated and, as a result, institutionally heterocentric.

Those that adhere to the energies of the goddess, however, will tell you it's more than just a gender issue. Women can be just as "blood-thirsty" as men, and there are men as gentle as any woman in tune with her femininity. Thus, some believe this burgeoning feminine energy is more about a growing awareness of ourselves than any deity.

This feminine form of corporeal energy in yogic philosophy is known as kundalini - described as a sleeping, dormant potential force in the human organism. It's not restricted to women, this energy is within us all, waiting to be awoken. As such this energy lies in all of us, and some have interpreted the last year as the start of a greater focus on breaking the restrictions stereotypic gender divides have placed upon us.

While as women - even in developed nations - we know all too well how difficult it is to find our voice, being a "man" or "woman" will mean something completely different to me (and maybe you, too) than what such a phrase implies. The terms "man up" or "be a man" is something all men will have heard at one time or another - even a few of the women reading this right now. But that in itself is just as stifling a straitjacket as the one women have been forced to wear throughout the centuries.

Speaking for my partner, I fell in love with his soul, before his gender, but I can't even begin to describe the toll that the concept of masculinity has taken on his life. He was constantly trying to "be the man", fearing I might love him less for his sensitivity, when in actuality I fell in love with his authentic self - whatever that may be - because it's twinned to my own. But this inadequacy of living up to stereotypes is felt everywhere, and it's time we make changes, starting from within ourselves.

True nobility, as Ernest Hemingway was once quoted to have said, is being superior to your former self, not to others, and yet for many of us a new year will mean getting a new look, rather than a new outlook. However, unless we do chime with the changes, we will never progress. If you want something you've never had, then you got to do something you've never done. If you want to better yourself, then you first have to know yourself. Where once we lived in an age wondering what others would think, now we live in an age where we must ask, "What do I think?"

New beginnings and challenges can spur us on to look at things differently, and on a wider and more personal scale, I'm sure we've all experienced challenges and read about issues that forced us to take another look at our prejudices and opinions - to evaluate if what we had known along was still true. A perfect example of this in recent years, which has taken up a lot of column space in the West, is the issue of allowing same-sex couples the rights to marriage.

The changes that challenge

Whatever you may personally feel about homosexuality, or what your religion says about it, it would be morally wrong for us to ignore a community in our society which has contributed greatly to our freedoms and the benefits which we enjoy today. Moreover, besides being morally reprehensible to marginalise anyone because of their genetics or lifestyle, such ignorance is causing the deaths of our young.

The suicide rates of gay teenagers, who feared they would be ostracised by their families and peers, is high. Instinctively as parents we want our children to respect their bodies, and be sexually responsible for many good reasons. But being gay isn't simply about sexual orientation, who you sleep with, or how many people you sleep with.

Some studies have reported that up to 46% of all men have had sex to the point of orgasm with another guy at some point in their lives. And that's ALL guys, straight and gay alike. It's well known that teenagers will experiment, and attraction and sexuality may change over time, but being attracted to your own sex at one point or another in your life isn't what makes you gay.

Being gay is about who you love, and that isn't a danger to monogamy. People in a long-term trusting relationship will want to be faithful to one another irrelevant of sexual orientation. And whether gay or straight, marriage isn't a guarantee of eternal love, either. You can have a long, satisfying commitment without a piece of paper. But even the idea of monogamy is changing - with many people in a three-person or more relationship describing themselves as being monogamous, because they are long-term partners who have sworn off casual sex. And to equate casual sex, and the dangers of sexually transmitted diseases, solely with the gay community is wrong, too.

Being gay did not create the "cruising" subculture or its "hyper-masculinity" - the work of hormones and being marginalised did that. There are many conservative couples that happen to be gay as well, but shun that lifestyle opting for a more traditional one bound by their understanding of monogamy. Likewise, heterosexual couples have darker subcultures, too, such as swingers, dogging, those looking for one night stands - and neither one or the other is immune to sexually transmitted diseases. Sexual well-being is as important to an active gay guy as to a heterosexual one, and monogamy within a trusting relationship - or voluntarily choosing celibacy - will always be the golden standard to protect against STDs.

In fact, a lot of what we might think are "unnatural" human sexual traits are shared by animals. The sexual habits of penguins, for instance, are full of accounts of sexual coercion, sexual and physical abuse of chicks, partner-swapping, non-procreative sex and homosexual behaviour. Male dolphins practise anal intercourse, and even fellatio using their blowholes it's been said, while a BBC documentary called "Dolphins: Spy in the Pod" has revealed that these favourite sea-creatures like to get high on drugs, too. They are also said to resort to rape to get their way and are constantly unfaithful to their partners, having sex as casually as shaking hands.

But dolphins also see the world in the same way as us, form lifelong friendships and court their mate with gifts and presents, and along with whales are known for being capable of recognizing suffering in other animals and forming empathy. New science is showing us that being able to empathise with another living being is not particular to humans. We are discovering that other creatures in the animal kingdom, especially mammals, have the necessary neural mechanisms to experience emotions that we have come to think are exclusively human ones.

Nature has shown that animals can forge remarkable bonds - even between natural born enemies, beyond the normal boundaries of biology - and such interspecies friendships are not as rare as one might think. Although we see nature as fundamentally violent, it holds vital lessons of co-existence - with science finally catching up with ancient held beliefs that have told us we're not the only ones out there that care for other beings.

Unlikely friendships forged in the wild include whales and dolphins, dogs and dolphins, dogs and apes, monkeys and deer, rabbits and deer - creating extended families where the laws of nature seem to get turned on their head. There are examples of cats adopting hedgehogs, rabbits, squirrels and ducklings, where these felines have somehow managed to suppress their natural hunting instincts to care for another species. But whether it's dolphins finding new friends or cats adopting animals that should be dinner, it shows that humans don't have a monopoly on caring, and that we can be a slave to our hormones just as other animals are.

In the animal kingdom instincts of self-preservation will be a major reason for choosing co-existence, but looking at why certain animals from different species bond together has thrown up some interesting answers. Cats, for example, seem to be controlled by their hormones and usually make such special bonds after giving birth because of the oxytocin hormone that promotes bonding. The young the cat adopts will accept the feline mother due to what is known as "imprinting" - where they attach themselves to the first thing they see.

When an orphan duckling needs a mother, or a lonely dolphin needs social contact, nature has programmed them to face such challenges by forging bonds with others - even if it means making "unnatural" friendships. Co-existence, therefore, is paramount for survival - but what elevates co-existence for humans is when it has a moral purpose.

We co-exist not simply because we will end up destroying each other if we don't, but because it's the right thing to do - however challenging that might be or contrary to our set prejudices.

What should guide us?

It has been said that to explore the psyche of a people, do not look at what they do - look at what they do wrong. In today's society, we often get relationships wrong. We get sex wrong. Sex releases oxytocin as well, a hormone that has been touted as the moral hormone in humans, and yet we often see sex as something dirty rather than cleansing.

Some say that the practice of casual sex may have a hand in this image. Having sex with no strings attached might sound fun and exciting, fulfilling a basic need without obligations, but it may also ultimately leave you feeling so empty that you realise there is no such thing as "casual" sex.

All sex is in actuality causal, and every time we allow another person into our bodies there are internal repercussions. Quickie sex with a stranger may be exciting, especially for men, but what isn't lost in self-respect may be lost in the ability to work at a future long-term relationship - let alone running the risk of your sexual well-being impacting on your physical and mental health.

Experimentation in our formative years is important, but the essence of sensuality - the part of the sizzle that glues adults to one another - is in the pursuit and seduction of a person's mind, not just their body. A few "seedy" moments may titillate, but sex framed within a romantic, trusting relationship is what elevates it from the physical act. It makes it 3-dimensional. It gives it a purpose outside of procreation. It's a form of bonding that cements our need to exist, rather than simply being the act that continues it.

The challenge for us therefore in the coming years, some believe, will be to stop wasting time arguing over whether sex should only be allowed between opposite sexes, or only between a certain number of people subscribed to some institution (or marginalising those that don't adhere to such beliefs), and to educate people towards being sexually more aware and responsible instead. After experimentation with sexual identity, sex can be an aid to greater communication between responsible and consenting people who realise some form of monogamy not only allows time for greater trust to fortify the sexual experience, but that it's also currently the best protection for sexual health and well-being.

Sex is neither sinful nor something that requires censorship; it's an essential part of the human experience, but naturally if we are irresponsible repercussions will follow. Even with some sample studies touting the health benefits of multiple partners, these are quickly cancelled out by the very real problems linked to an irresponsible attitude towards promiscuity. And like wholesome food, regular exercise, and mindful meditation, the practice of good sex is also essential for our well-being. These are guiding principles that nurture respect for our bodies. These aren't luxuries. If we junk our food, our love-making, our daily physical activities, we will stagnate and become blocked.

Conversely stranger sex isn't a release at all in such instances, it cuts us off from what is real. This is true in all areas of life, as is the case that one of the conditions to be in a successful relationship is to first be happy with your authentic self. In other words, we cannot love others if we don't love ourselves for who we really are. This requires loving our true nature not with the ego, but from the seat in which the mind sits - the heart.

When we do this we are not letting our hormones or the physical need for sex guide us, we are following an intuitive inner voice - which if we listened to would intuitively tell us that we all want sex with the right person anyway. Monogamy may not be natural to our physical being, but it's aligned to our spiritual one. It gives our natural urges a moral foundation. Like the aesthetics of art, emotional sex smooths over the crudeness of reality, separates us from the beasts in a way, or in another returns us to our true primal selves - a soul yearning to be twinned with its flame.

Indeed when the sex is great, we cannot help but be reminded of the centrality of the body - that intellect and emotion must have its place, too. The mind and heart must take motion for the body to act beneficially. And it is only then, as they say in the Christian tradition, that words become flesh. In this context, many today are reinterpreting their religious beliefs that prohibit same-sexuality to actually promoting monogamy between trusting partners - whatever their gender, colour or creed.

Nevertheless, due to the dogma and inflexibility of many religions, and their refusal to change, we have seen our co-existence threatened as one belief vies for domination over another, training its adherents to treat the world as their own special dominion to do with what they will. The rigid interpretation of religious texts by powerful institutions have also played their part in the fractured state of humanity.

Religion has often seen us as evil or sinful, and that we needed to be moulded into what a certain church thinks we should be. The way we see our bodies, the way we view sex, the way we view our own and opposite sex has been distorted down the ages through the imposition of religious belief. We have used religion to smooth over the crudeness of our primate reality, too, but often instead of elevating us, it has separated us from our authentic self.

Changing our beliefs

In a healthy mind, beliefs should constantly be challenged and open to change depending on the evidence observed. What we know to be true today may not be tomorrow, so we need to be open hearted and open minded when we are faced with the contrary. Today we don't like to be told what to think, and those more aware among us won't allow any long held beliefs to do so, either.

As with the issues of same-sex couples, or sex in general, when faced with the choice between being theologically correct (as if this is even possible) and being morally responsible, many of us will go with being morally responsible every time. If shunning homosexuals - or their lifestyles as practices of Sodom and Lesbia - is causing the death of our young, then any religious basis for it is unjustified.

It's an irresponsible interpretation that serves no purpose other than to segregate and divide communities, families and loved ones and should be consigned to history. In previous centuries people who loved one another were forced to stay apart due to religious edict, but change is coming. One day it's hoped this will be a complete thing of the past.

Notwithstanding the problems religion has helped cause, however, having such purposeful beliefs are not bad on their own. Being religious can provide the guidance many seek outside of the temporal world. Often religion has given many of us a sense of moral purpose and guidance, and will continue to act as a compass for many in the future. Our beliefs and our moods are engineered in our brains and reflected in our actions, and there are even studies that have shown people who are religious or spiritual have "thicker" brains which could protect them against depression. Being religious in one sense, then, might be good for us.

I don't believe this gives precedence to any single religion, but rather highlights the benefit of moral - not merely religious - guidance. And for it to work for us in our lives we need to experience it for ourselves, because while religion is belief in someone else's experience, spirituality is having your own experience. Yet both "religion" and "spirituality" have become overused - like the word "passion" - to become a mouthpiece for mysticism and the esoteric, when the important thing is to respect all people and be tolerant of their beliefs even if they differ from ours. It is after all one planet; we are one people, and we practice one love.

Our beliefs shouldn't be used to judge others or condemn. They should be big enough to accept all faiths, and walks of life. All religions are true if they are true in the hearts of all those who believe in them. The world is large enough to incorporate heterosexuals and homosexuals, conservatives and liberals, for those that love and worship a myriad of beliefs. Our minds are large enough to encompass all that and more.

And if we are to allow religious beliefs to guide us, maybe we need to start changing the way we view religion. For many Protestant church traditions, the season of Epiphany extends from the 6th of January until Ash Wednesday, which begins the season of Lent leading to Easter - and so maybe today is a good day to have our own symbolic "awakening" to the energies of change, especially as it coincides with "Blue Monday" this year, according to some sources.

Often when the festive season is over we get the January blues, and the time for guilt is nigh. But this year can be the year we start to turn religion into a TRUE guidance for love, instead of fear. In the past, churches have been harsh on those it deemed morally wrong or sinful. If we look at the different religions that exist today, most state that if you do not belong to their religion you will go to Hell, and since people do not belong to more than one, it seems that we are all hell bound going by that logic.

The logic that should guide us - and WILL guide us - towards greater co-existence with all living things is love. Love is universal when religion is not. Love is not only open to change, it is the impetus for it. It leads us to the real truth of the authentic self instead of forcing us to hide it. Love gives us a moral basis for our actions that supersedes any religious one, and when it is faced with challenging changes, love can bend with the blows to overcome all obstacles. The other choice is to be guided by the edict of others, and of fear.

What is the attraction to fear?

Beliefs have never been set in stone. They have always been changed, and replaced. Not all ancient beliefs are correct, or welcome in these more enlightened times, and the same is true of all the major religions today. Science may not have all the answers (it may never do) but it helps to ask the right questions, and keep an open mind for the answers. It helps sift through the accumulated wisdom to see what works and what doesn't. And rather than fearing what we don't understand, science helps us to come to grips with it.

In times gone by, when fear replaced understanding, we often interpreted things we didn't understand as portents of doom. For the doomsday believers in bygone times, there was a lot of story fodder in nature's weirdest events. In nature, fact is often weirder than fiction, incidents so extraordinary that they even appear to be somewhat supernatural or so unsettling they could be seen as omens foretelling the end of the days.

Trees oozing red blood, people reporting alien-like sounds from the sky, fish walking out of the water, or bees making shocking multi-coloured honey, these signs of the apocalypse to apocryphal tales can at first instance seem so alarming that it's easy to see why people might think that the end of the world is nigh.

But even if they look like portentous events, science can unlock the mysteries behind such bizarre and extraordinary happenings in nature. What these stories reveal is that events we might read as signs of the apocalypse are actually nature's survival strategies. Whether it's a fish adapting to new territory in search for food, healing sap pouring from trees or street wise bees on a sugar rush, far from signalling the end of the world we are seeing nature at work in its own perfect but rather peculiar way.

However, as challenging our limits is part of our nature, so, too, is the allure of mystery. We still like to frighten ourselves despite the information at our disposal. There are still those that believe the world will end in the coming years, or those that prefer to shun the science and stick to superstition. It often seems the case that when we have a choice between myth and reality, we prefer to believe the myth. Something in us seems attuned to turning what we don't understand into a religious experience to provide a greater sense of purpose.

Symbols of nature like trees, and celestial symbols like comets and stars, have always inspired myth and folklore. From the first, trees have marked sacred sites, while we have used the heavens as markers to foretell future events. With such a sense for the dramatic, it's easy to see why it's more entertaining to believe a tree that bleeds, rather than the cold scientific explanation of a red-coloured sap.

In the right setting trees can be haunting, even eerie. Some even believe that trees have a soul. And when people regularly report that yew trees - which can live for thousands of years and are seen as sacred - are found bleeding, even with all the science available there will be those ready to believe in the end of days, rather than a sign of the changing times.

Similarly, there are those that will always resist change - especially those that serve the status quo - but denying change is like denying the rising of the sun. The ineffectiveness of dragging our heels in the sand may cause hysteria among the more conservative among us, but it's a fact of our modern age that the lines of convention are being blurred all the time.

This isn't just particular to this century. Change has been with us since the start of times. Change will always be with us. It's what life is all about.

Continue on with love

In my post on the last day of 2012 I looked back in gratitude and forward with optimism to 2013. I said that we must start to co-exist with love. Now on the sixth day of 2014 - the date for Epiphany or "awakening" - I say that we must continue that mission with even greater hope and effort, for we stand at the horizon of golden opportunities, now more than ever.

Celebrating the new year should in one sense be a celebration of the coming spring. The ancient winter solstice feasts and festivals were a way of encouraging the sun to come back and to get the spring started - a vital part of any primitive culture, and itself symbolic of new beginnings. Yet, although we're in a hurry to get spring started, we're also worried about the great changes necessary to bring that about.

As millions across the UK see in the new year, we have our own worries about social integration and national identity, rising fears over climate change, a failing economy and the fractured cohesion of our communities. But feeding into the toxicity of events with toxic thoughts only keeps us locked in a poisonous cycle. What and how we think has a lot to do with how we exist, and co-exist with others.

This was most recently evidenced by a study performed by scientists in Wisconsin, Spain and France that found there are specific molecular changes in the body following a period of mindful meditation. According to these doctors, what really separates us from the other animals is that we can literally change the fate of our cells by altering our thoughts. The theory is that your mind can adjust the body's biology and behaviour to fit with your beliefs. If you've been told you'll die in six months and your mind believes it, you most likely will die in six months.

This doesn't mean you can think away your homosexuality, as though it were a handicap. That's as futile as trying to think your eye colour from brown to blue, or to attempt to change your skin colour with the power of thought. What we are really doing is reprogramming our subconscious to connect with our authentic self, where our deepest beliefs reside. These are not religious, or even mystical or spiritual experiences (or necessary to be grounded in such beliefs for it to take hold) - just a deeper connection to who we really are.

Arguably this is the greatest guidance we need to give us moral purpose, to know who we are, and to accept and love ourselves unconditionally. And if there is one thing to take away from this post it's that we should let our actions be guided by such love, because it's a love that will bind us together.

Today is the sixth blank page of a 365 page book. So why not write a good one? Make it your own personal epiphany. If people laugh at you for being different, then laugh at them for being all the same. Or when life is dragging you back with difficulties, use it to mean it's going to launch you into something great. An arrow can only be shot by pulling it backward. So just focus and keep aiming with the knowledge that the best is yet to come. Be mindful that when things seem at that their most bleak is when we must strive even harder towards our goal. Dawn is just around the corner. Let darkness be the thing we always leave behind.

The cynics amongst us will say that this is all just "feel-good" nonsense, but when was it ever nonsensical to feel good? Or to do good? Remember that although such cynicism may slow us down, only we can distinguish our light. When we look back to the darkness of previous centuries, where the torch of enlightenment shone dimmer, people every year continued to hope and to strive, and it's their efforts that carried the fire which still burns with us today.

Of course we shall always have our fair share of critics, cynics and doom sayers. With the "end" of the Mayan calendar in December 2012 and the massive solar storms for 2013 gone as leading candidates for the end of the world, people will turn to the predictions of a meteor shower in 2014. And though we have no power to prevent natural disasters, we do have the power to create catastrophe.

Even if we do not actually destroy the planet by such actions, we will destroy much of humanity's strength, vitality, wisdom, knowledge, peace, and tranquillity. When we are driven by fear we engender calamity. In an attempt to ward off danger, we become violent and dangerous to ourselves. But by choosing co-existence over segregation, and compassion over fear, we can preserve the world for future generations, and pass on the fire of enlightenment.

There are also predictions that after two more years of global upheaval, peace will come for a while in 2016 setting up for great change in 2018. But the truth is that there will always be ups and downs. It's a part of living. The process of life is ever unfolding, guiding you, pushing you, preparing you for the next part of the process. Difficult challenges, bad days, upset feelings, moments of confusion are part of life's process.

Perhaps these things are there to keep us alert, to remind us that unexpected things happen, to love and appreciate every minute that we have with those who mean the most to us, to make us stronger, or to test our resolve to keep moving forward. And that come what may, if we let our light shine in 2014, then it will do so all the brighter in 2015.

Yours in love,