We are living in a time of turmoil, when humanity is gripped by fear-consciousness, and is paralyzed into non-action and denial, when the foundations of our lives are on dangerously shaky ground.
We are being rocked by some of the biggest wake up calls in history. Our planet is in a state of crisis on many levels: climate change, ecological and environmental degradation, mass species extinctions, bitter wars, protracted interracial and religious strife, endemic poverty, starvation and disease, political and corporate greed and corruption and financial collapse.
Our media’s constant focus on the drama of negativity fuels fear-consciousness and keeps all of us in a perpetual state of heightened anxiety. With every new crisis, every threat to our personal circumstances, every new world disaster, a part of us cowers in fear. Instinctively we react by shutting down in a futile attempt to keep the sense of impending disaster at bay. We put a lid over ourselves. Our world becomes smaller, and less of our innate greatness is available and as a result we disempower ourselves. We can no longer access the inherent creative genius and inspired action that, in openness and health, is available to us all.
Yet despite our unhealthy conditioned responses to the fundamental uncertainty of our lives, a truer aspect of ourselves knows there is a different way forward, a healthier existence, a greater possibility. Somewhere inside us is a deep knowing that living freely, fully, wholesomely and abundantly is a destiny we all deserve. This destiny is calling us. It is a quiet and compelling pull that is drawing us into a fresh, new expansiveness, and it cannot be ignored.
That fact that you chose this book and are reading these words is a sign, a confirmation that you are responding to this call. Some deep level of your being recognizes this. You may already be aware of it. Something is pulling you to investigate, to explore, to open and experience this greater possibility.
Your essence is an expansive potential that is completely free and already whole where all is possible. It is beckoning you to open beyond the fears of your current circumstances and conditioning; it is inviting you to break free from the negative paradigms of our times. It is insisting that you shed the shackles of fear-consciousness that diminish and immobilize you. It is calling you into an infinite field of all possibilities where access to inspired answers and creative solutions are effortlessly available – even when life seems to insist that such answers and solutions don’t exist.
This infinite field longs to embrace you, to use you as a vehicle for a new type of abundance, one born directly from open, truthful awareness, one that effortlessly embraces all of life; an abundance that experiences all of life, each individual aspect and component, as an integral part of itself; an abundance that is a guardian of the health and wellbeing of all its parts, and acts for the greater good of the whole. An abundance that forgives, shares, heals and is a reflection of our deepest desires to live in a fully expressed love, and to be a contribution to the planet rather than a drain on its resources.
Old school, market-driven materialism, with its me-first myopia and its wanton excesses, is already archaic. As a system it is broken and defunct, and has failed colossally. Its compulsive consumption, its obsessive competitiveness and defensiveness, its addicted stockpiling of increasingly expensive possessions, its selfishly unconscious denial of the destruction it caused were all driven by fear. In fact, the whole model has been driven by fear – fear of lack, fear of failure, fear of loss of security. Even at its height, when it produced stupendous financial surpluses for the few, it was never an example of conscious abundance. It was a recipe for separation, suffering and the degradation of life. Conspicuous consumption has been the cause of a great rift in humanity. It is no longer hip nor cool, no longer the zeitgeist. It is no longer a realistic option. In fact, if humanity is to survive it is no longer possible. As an ideal it is dead.
Instead we are being invited to uncover and embrace a new model of abundance, one that is consciously aligned with the greater good, one that is inclusive – one where there is deep gratitude, generosity and a cherishing of the blessing of life. We must move forward into a new era of abundance-consciousness; one that is accepting and encouraging, one that is deeply fulfilling and embraces all of life.
Our planet, our home, is demanding a greater largeness of being. It is demanding an entire shift in our awareness, in the way we think, in the way we act, in the way we are. Ultimately it is demanding a fundamental shift in consciousness itself. It will be seen in the ways we do business, in our intelligent use of planetary resources, in our understanding of the interdependence of all living systems, in our tolerance for differences, and in our generosity of heart. These will be the natural expressions of a more fundamental change in the way we know ourselves.
Consciousness is the new currency.
Consciousness is a powerful, compelling force for change. In every age there have been inspired individuals who went against the tide of conventional restrictive norms and beliefs, people who single-pointedly stayed true, even in the face of extreme hardship, persecution or calamity. With such beings, the powerful transmission of their consciousness, their simple yet potent ability to stay wide open and immersed in the infinite field of all possibilities in a vaster, more inclusive awareness was such a radical catalyst for transformation that in many cases it altered the course of human history.
In the last century we have been blessed with very powerful examples. Mahatma Gandhi was uncompromising in his certainty that the power of compassion and nonviolence would free his country. Through the force of that consciousness, he became the primary catalyst for India’s liberation from British rule. This consciousness not only brought about Indian independence but opened the doors to a change in world attitudes and politics that eventually brought political freedom to dozens of formerly colonized countries and is even today the inspiration for nonviolent movements worldwide. Gandhi was a living transmission of his own words, ‘Be the change you wish to see in the world’.
Nelson Mandela, a conscious embodiment of compassion and forgiveness, accomplished the seemingly impossible when he galvanized the nonviolent end to apartheid in South Africa and became the country’s first black president. During twenty-seven years of incarceration as a political prisoner he remained steadfast in truth, and ultimately the immense power of his conscious presence almost single-handedly liberated his people. Even today, in his early nineties, he continues to be an inspiration to people the world over as an example of the power that can occur through one person’s commitment to his ideals.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was a man with a dream. A dream so compelling, a vision so powerful that it continues to shape the way we think to this day. He was a conscious embodiment of his message of liberty. His dream of freedom and equality began a process that has eroded the roots of prejudice and intolerance in America. Its reverberation set in motion a shift in consciousness that eventually made possible the election of the first African-American president of the U.S.A., Barack Obama.
What all these great souls share in common is that their individual expression of consciousness shaped history and reshaped humanity. Though the general consensus was that their dreams were impossible, through the power of consciousness alone they made the impossible possible. It was not what they did, but who they were that made the difference. They were not just part of the solution, their consciousness was the solution. The power of consciousness itself accomplished miracles.
And, of course, we are not talking about the greatness, the consciousness of just these specific examples. All consciousness is already here. All the greatness that has ever been, is available in this moment.
Their greatness is your greatness – it is the same greatness. It resides in you. It is your true essence. Their consciousness is your consciousness – it is the same consciousness. It is who you are.
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There is an urgent demand, in fact, a global imperative, for radical change, and it can no longer be ignored. Every honest person knows it: something has to change.
We are at a time in our evolution when the world is in such acute crisis that we can no longer simply rely on the conviction and strength of a few rare individuals. We can no longer passively rely on anyone else to make this shift for us – not a few elite geniuses, visionaries or saints, not our politicians, our religious leaders, nor our corporate magnates, and not future generations. Everything now relies on us. The time has come to access our potential greatness and to let this greatness use us to the fullest. The time has come to decide to be part of the wave of awakening and healing that our planet so desperately needs. For true change to happen, for real transformation to take place, we must decide that it will start with us, with you and with me. This is a demand for a change in consciousness that can only take place from the inside out. Because you are reading this book you already sense the call. Indeed, this book was written in answer to this call.
It is time to wake up. Not as another fanciful distraction or casual experiment but as an absolute imperative. If our world is to heal, if humanity is to survive, if as a species and as individuals we are to thrive, we must find a new way of living, a new way of interacting and cooperating – not as a rehash of old ideas, concepts or beliefs; not merely with more rules or different governances – but by stopping and opening, by letting go of and healing from our unhealthy past, and by opening into our pure potential and moving forward in a fresh, new consciousness.
It is time to stop. It is time to open beyond our excuses and our perceived limitations. It is time to be done with our fear-based values and doctrines. It is time to listen more acutely than ever before, time to tell a keener, deeper truth. It is time not just to break a paradigm, but to break with the paradigm of the known. It is time to freshly open into the expansiveness of the unknown and to discover its power to bring about miracles.
“As people see their predicament clearly – that our fates are inextricable tied together, that life is a mutually interdependent web of relations – then universal responsibility becomes the only sane choice for thinking people.” ~ Dalai Lama
Some books and strategies tell us to hold bigger visions and to get more ambitious in our goal setting. But what we are proposing is not simply about the power of positive thinking and repeating more positive affirmations. It is not about stirring up a more fiery personal conviction, nor drumming up a stronger personal will to overcome our circumstances. Nor is it about denying ourselves or becoming self-sacrificing martyrs, confirming some false sense of spiritual nobility. It is not about telling ourselves more stories about our fears. It is not about overriding or ignoring our fears; it is not about pushing them away, pretending they don’t exist, or transcending them. It is not about reframing them into something more manageable. These are ego-based strategies that have brought us to where we are right now. They are short-term expedients that ultimately don’t work. They have never really worked.
The demand is a greater one. It is a demand for us to get real. The true demand is that we stop for long enough to uncover, face and meet our own deepest fears and insecurities, and to free ourselves from their grip, so that they no longer unconsciously drive our destructive behaviors. It is a call to uncover the silent saboteurs that have limited our lives and to finish with them once and for all. It is an imperative to open beyond all limitations into our deepest potential, which is whole, free and bursting with creative inspiration and solutions. This is a call for true liberation and a call to take conscious action born from this freedom.
In our heart each one of us wants these things; in our souls we crave them. We feel a light beckoning from deep inside, bidding us to remove the lampshade, to liberate an inherent magnificence that until now has remained hidden. We long to thrive and flourish as individuals. We long to be a proactive force for change, to act in concert with a higher purpose, to feel that there has been some tangible and lasting benefit to life from our short stay on this planet. We long to make a real difference for ourselves, our loved ones, and our communities. We long to live life consciously, recognizing and utilizing all of our true potential. We yearn to be used by grace.
Yet no one told us how. No one gave us a manual.
This book was written to teach you how. You can use it as your manual. It will give you the means to access the innate genius inside you and will enable you to begin living from that greatness. It offers simple, effective tools and powerful processes to clear out the limitations, negative constructs and emotional blocks that have put a lid over your life and made you play small. It will give you ways to meet and clear out your old fears, so you can be a fuller, more vibrant and alive expression of your true self. This book will allow you to open into the infinite potential that is your soul and will give you the practical means to live an authentically guided life in freedom, fullness, and abundance.
This is an experiential book. The work is born from direct experience. It is not a theory or a formula but an expression of living truth that has had profound and lasting results for many thousands of people from all over the world.
With this book, you too will have the ability to open into inspired and creative solutions and catalyze healthy abundance in all areas of your life. If you use its work and live from the truth of your own potential, it will give you the results you have been seeking all your life. And as you live in the fullness of your own potential you will become a living transmission of possibility-consciousness. Your very presence will awaken those around you, and you will become a force for conscious, positive change. Your actions will be a mirror of that inspiration and they will catalyze others to also take conscious action. And, as with the rare souls who have gone before, the ripples of your awakened consciousness will continue to reverberate over time.
This is your chance to become a living expression that is and always has been your destiny.
(For more details and to order a copy of Consciousness The New Currency by Brandon Bays & Kevin Billett please visit our website www.thejourney.com, or go to www.amazon.com)
Wonderful book! I recommend it to everyone. Timely wisdom, a true gift.
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