Hopeful 2011 and The Tale of the Sands

Recently, I have become fascinated by the study of universal laws. The most popular and well known is the Law of Attraction, but there are many, many others. I have wondered how they might inform our continual journey and wrestling with change - as individuals and as a society.As we look to the new year, and look back on the one that is nearly past, many of us are constructing images of what we want to be different in our lives. For many, 2010 has been a challenging year - pushing us to our limits and requiring us to do some serious reflection about what is valuable and treasured in our lives. And we hope that 2011 will be easier.I believe in some ways 2011 will be easier. I suspect that it will be a year where at least economically we will see some improvement. However, we will continue to be pushed to change. Our personal rules, our expectations for ourselves and of others, and all that we have constructed because it has always been done that way will continue to be challenged. We are in the process of doing some very serious 'house-cleaning' in regard to our beliefs and ways of being.I experience this most as I work with small businesses owners who continue to discover that they ways that worked before, aren't any more. That the hard work that they are pouring into their business is just not delivering like it 'should.' And so we work on what they believe and why they believe it. And we find, time and again, that what they are doing and what they believe comes from somewhere else. It is not what they want to do or want to believe but they have been told that that is the way the game works. And so we begin to make change.And little by little, I am seeing how the world is changing. I am getting to experience the shifts happening in people that will lead to big shifts in how our major systems will operate. 'You have to work hard to earn a living' is being replaced with 'I can enjoy my work and live abundantly.' I am meeting people who are unveiling their treasured gifts, even though they may seem odd to others, but they are discovering that even though they are unusual gifts, other people need them and want them. By this I mean, people who have types of healing, types of insight, types of teachings that help the rest of us find our way or get clear of what is holding us in tired patterns.I'm feeling hopeful for 2011.As you consider your next year, I share the following parable with you. We are all, in some way or another, making a change like the water does in going from a stream to the wind. And as we journey and reach our next landing we will discover that while it felt that we lost ourselves for a while we actually found our way to a deeper  - and I believe, more fulfilling and enjoyable - self.Blessings to everyone.A Sufi parable, "Tale of the Sands", as written in Flowing with Universal Laws by Margo Kirtikar, Ph.D.A bubbling stream reached a dessert and found it difficult to cross. The water was disappearing into the fine sand faster and faster so the Stream spoke to the Desert: 'My destiny is to cross this desert but I don't know how to.'The voice of the desert sands answered in the hidden tongue of nature and said: 'If the Wind crosses the desert so can you.''But whenever I try, I am absorbed into the sand and even if I dash myself at the desert, I can go only a little distance.'The desert voice answered quietly, ' The wind does not dash itself against the desert sand.''But the wind can fly and I cannot fly.''You are thinking in the wrong way, trying to fly by yourself is absurd. You are water. Allow the wind to carry you over the sand.'The stream said: 'But how can that happen?''Allow yourself to be absorbed in the wind.'The stream protested that it did not want to lose its individuality in that way. If it did, it might not exist again.This, said the sand was a form of logic, but it did not refer to reality at all. When the wind absorbs moisture, it carries it over the desert, and then lets it fall again like rain and the rain again becomes a river again.But how, asked the stream, could it know that this was true?'It is so and you must believe it, or you will simply be sucked down by the sands to form, after several million years a quagmire.''But if this is so, will I be the same river that I am today?''You cannot in any case remain the same stream that you are today. The choice is not open to you; it only seems to be open. The wind will carry your essence, the finer part of you. When you become a river again at the mountains beyond the sands, men may call you by a different name; but you yourself, essentially, will know that you are the same. Today you call yourself such and such a river only because you do not know which part of it is even now your essence.'So the stream crossed the desert by raising itself into the arms of the welcoming wind, which gathered it slowly and carefully upward and then let it down with gentle firmness, atop the mountains of a far off land. 'Now,' said the stream, 'I have learned my true identity.'But the stream had a question, which bubbled  up as it sped along: 'Why could I not reason this out on my own? Why did the sands have to tell me? What would have happened if I had not listened to the sands?'Suddenly a small voice spoke to the stream. It came from a grain of sand. 'Only the sands know, for they have seen it happen; moreover, they extend from the river to the mountain. They form the link and they have their function to perform, as has everything in the universe. The way in which the stream of life is to carry itself on its journey is written in the Sands.'