By Francoise E Netter
As I contemplate the last week of 2021, I can’t believe that it has been two years of the Pandemic, the accompanying issues that seem to divide us, and the mental, emotional and physical circumstances of limitation and fear that have continued to linger personally and globally. My last week was filled with health scares and a loss of safety with an institution that I had come to think of as family.
As I launch my new work with “No Grit. No Pearl”, I sit here trying to make sense of the past two years of darkness. There were two weeks of focused, extraordinary fun, joy and play by the sea in 2021, but much of this year was also ridden with heavier more solemn times. Not much movement forward and I am a dancer and love to move, especially forward!
If 2020 seemed to magnify the wounds and unfinished business in our global and personal lives, then 2021 was its twin sister. The uncanny juxtaposition between the way we are all connected and uniquely different continued to divide us instead of to allow us to bathe in our unique differences and celebrate in our similarities. For a few short months, it seemed we could travel, mingle and be free to explore our personal and global adventures and then the Pandemic evolved into Delta and Omicron and Climate change took on a more obvious imminent challenge for so many of us in different parts of the world.
So how do we approach 2022 in an optimistic, benevolent and hopeful way? I have cultivated the belief that we create our reality and are not victims. I teach that we must rely on our inner state for joy and happiness rather than on others or the outside world. The courses I teach educators involve the knowledge that not only must we be mindful of our thoughts, words, beliefs and actions, but that those inner resources are our only true source of freedom as we cannot control people or outer conditions to bend to our will or desires. Those very beliefs became my testing ground in 2020 and again in 2021.
Last Fall, I asked: “So where is the silver lining in all of this”? “How do I not get so negatively swayed by the outer conditions I find totally unpleasing and sometimes intolerable”? “Where is that darn pearl from all this grit?” I find myself facing the same issues that I found intolerable a year ago, so how do I pivot in a different way even when nothing much has seemed to change outwardly and maybe even gotten worse in certain situations. What I finally realized on this eve of 2021 is that maybe nothing much has changed outwardly, but the question becomes what has changed inwardly? Maybe this is an extraordinary opportunity for all of us to make a quantum leap into inner refinement. Yes, we live in a physical world, but the greatest and some of the oldest of luminaries including Betty White used to emphasize the positive and find the humor in everything while honoring the grief and the pain that life accompanies.
Again, I think it relevant to end this year with a quote from my favorite hero, Alice Hertz-Summers (who was the oldest living holocaust survivor at 110): “Every day is a miracle — No matter how bad my circumstances, I have the freedom to choose my attitude in life, even to find joy. Evil is not new. It is up to us how we deal with both good and bad. No one can take this power away from us.”
From this place of human pain and evolution, I invite you to join me in a course, session, clairvoyant reading, book, CD or class. I have on-going weekly Zoom Yoga classes, Graduate Educator credit courses, clairvoyant/spiritual private readings and will be expanding my public classes and workshops and on-line video resources as well as products. Contact us for more information.
To 2022 — may the darkness of the past finally turn into the light and wisdom of tomorrow,
Françoise
