TAKE A STAND!

Many years ago I heard a quote that has never left me and has also informed many of the choices I have made since hearing it:
IF YOU DON’T TAKE A STAND FOR SOMETHING, YOU’LL FALL FOR ANYTHING.

This is the week in the calendar year when statistically well over 90% of people who set intentions for the New Year have already lost the resolve to embody the changes they stated they wanted to make. Isn’t that amazing? I am writing this at the beginning of the third week of 2011. During the days that occur between the third and fourth weeks of any new year intentions, resolutions, goals, and commitments have already been abandoned by well meaning people who, having been so moved by the clean slate of a new calendar, looked more closely at their life experiences for places where a greater potential could be realized. I believe that this inquiry is inherent in the path of every emerging Soul in time and space reality. We are wired to reach for more. We have an internal siren that goes off when we are taking residence in mediocrity. We truly are Beings of Infinite Possibility that are here in this realm of manifest creation to allow consciousness and matter to expand our inherent Essence into an earthly experience reflective of our True Nature. We are, in short, here to G-awed within G-awed. We are here to allow Divinity to flower forth into our humanity. In more theological terms, we are here to heaven earth. We are not here to squander our days and pilfer our potentiality. There is something in us that both wants to plant our feet firmly on this glorious Gaia earth and also to spread our Soulful wings and to soar into the heavens of our Highest consciousness. If this is indeed indicative of our inherent Sourced reality, then why is it that we often can’t seem to maintain an energizing focus on an intention for more than a mere three weeks?

I truly believe it is because we haven’t truly taken a stand for our own Sourced worthiness. We haven’t taken a stand or taken seriously the responsibility for living the most radically loving and passionately expressed lives that we possibly can. When we do not take a stand for Essence magnificence, we fall for the excuses of the fearful ego story that buries itself in holes of doubt, fear, and limitation. We listen to and believe the lies of our own surface selves. We build walls of programmed limitations and ceilings of conditioned contraction and then move into these houses that become prisons of our own mis-perception. Yet we cannot positively think our way out of these jails. Spiritual or self-help concepts do not a transformation make. A Sunday service and a daily reminder are helpful tools, but they do not equal a devoted stand to unconditional awakening. They cannot rival the power of an uncompromising commitment. By taking a stand for Who you really are, you rally the Universal Force that holds the planets in their orbits and miraculously grows babies within the womb. This is the Source-force that moves a tiny shoot up and through a Manhattan sidewalk to present as flower, and tenaciously uses a flowing stream to dig a canyon Grand. This is Life. We are Life. And yet we must decide what experience we are going to have in this earthly atmosphere. We must choose. And once we decide, it requires vigilance, dedication, perseverance, and great devotion. Spiritual surrender is a full time gig. We truly must take a stand for living this Life of Love in the most spacious and expansive way that our heartful yes can possibly allow. We are each called to it. We are each and everyone the chosen One. Life longs to live freely and fully as you. You know it. You can feel it. That is why we set intentions and let goals pursue us. And we must take a stand, or we will repeatedly fall back into the trance, just like 90% + of the population is doing this very week.

I invite you to truly take a stand for what it is your Soul is urging you to express. Don’t fall for the critical mass lies of what is or isn’t possible. In Source, everything is possible. Take a stand for Truth, and it really will set you free.

IF YOU WANT TO TAKE A STAND IN 2011, SIGN UP FOR THE GREAT WHO-OVER WORKSHOP HAPPENING JANUARY 29. SEE DETAILS AT www.taylorestevens.com

JANUARY 2011 RADICAL EXPRESSION

There is something unique, special, magical, and yet daunting about an individual or
collective demarcation point in life. A common collective demarcation is the bringing
in of a calendar New Year. Many people individually choose to observe a birthday in a
conscious and intentional way. There are myriad examples of these choice points,
perhaps the most dramatic being that of a near death experience. These are often spoken
of in hushed and hallowed tones. This is perhaps appropriate in that they may drastically
alter the way in which we view and participate in our life experiences. To realize at a felt
sense level that we are finite beings can be a profound and miraculous wake up call. It
invites us to really take a good, intimate look at how we have been living. What quality of
attention have we been bringing not so much to the grander occasions of our lives, but
especially to what is usually thought of as the more mundane and ordinary aspects of the
day to day? How engaged are we in our moments? How congruent are our thoughts,
feelings, activities, and interactions? How present are we when no demarcation is calling
for heightened awareness? How present am I to my own Presence? How much of my
surroundings am I actually cognizant of, and how curious am I about the astounding
capabilities of my own inner workings?
Each moment is demarcation if we are paying attention. Perhaps that is the richest of all
invitations. To pay attention to attention. To reside in a state of perpetual curiosity and
awakened awareness. To be less intrigued by the near death, and more committed to the
now life.
What is this moment of demarcation calling you to, my favored friend?

-Taylor E. Stevens

Living, Loving, Giving, Being GREAT!

And so we are invited to enter into conscious relationship with the demarcation point of another New Year's celebration. Another calendar page turns and another digit changes in the number of years recorded. We call this history, and yet what is the raw potentiality? We pause to look back, to remember and to contemplate. We feel the pains and the pleasures, the losses and the longings, the regrets and the rejoicing. And though this thing called time is arbitrary and perceptual, it maintains a power over us that ages our bodies yet often wisens our reactivity. Time calls to us to grow and to expand, to soften and to sweeten, to relax and to allow. There is a force beyond time that is ever-urging us to more; to be more, to give more, to live more, to love more. And as this force enters time and space, it seeks to know ItSelf fully in us, as us, through us. It presses the walls of our defenses, and pulsates within our mental limitations. It is never still for long, though it becomes known within the stillness of our Sourced inner being. It calls. It is always, ever calling. It beseeches and beguiles, beckons and bewilders. It will not leave us in the worn out comfort of our contracted mediocrity. It is too strong, too magestic, too attractive. It is the demand of the demarcation. It will not take no for an answer for very long. This Universe knowing ItSelf within your Soul is a cosmic force for yes. Can you feel it? Hear it? Sense it? Is this the moment to finally align within that yes? Will you face the past fear to free your innate now love? How large are you willing to live? How openly are you willing to love? How passionately are you willing to express?

This is the moment of demarcation. Here it is. It is now. What is calling to you, from the depths of you? And how are you responding? How new is this moment, and how fully are you within this now? Say yes, beloved one. Simply say yes. Allow the flow of Light to shine through your moments. Stay open and allow. Shine. Shine now. Shine fully, freely. Be new within this now, and simply Shine.