As we travel around the world many people speak with us about 2012.  In China recently I was told of the popularity of workshops about avoiding the “Black Hole” of 2012. It is true that we are in a collective birth process and as in all birth processes if there is resistance there is pain and discomfort but we need to change, not just the Arabs of the Arab Spring or the Bankers or the Americans but we need to be aware that we are all being called.

So what is the change that is being asked for, what is this leap in consciousness that we are being asked to take? This is a question most before us tomorrow as we start our 10-day training in Salisbury. While there will be a number of themes that we will explore, the deepest part of our minds and I believe a core topic will be our willingness to give up our rampant self-interest. Human history is filled with tales of self-interest, mostly accompanied with denial, of being right if not totally righteous; even the basis of our civilization, “survival of the fittest”, is mirrored back to us on a daily basis.

It is also true that there are examples that rise above this belief in scarcity to leave us eternal models of how it could be so different. These examples show us the opposite of self-interest, of a life based on needs, fear and separateness. Instead they are lives based on love and all its multitude of expressions including sharing, equality, caring and inclusion. These are words we hear or speak so often but even the shortest examination of our lives seems to reveal the former rather than the latter.

Fear and needs are inseparable. If we find one the other will be close behind and this toxic blend drives our competition and self-interest. This force is subsequently destructive to our relationships, our families, our companies and communities and even to our world. We believe we are being asked to step past this illusion with its millions of pieces of supporting evidence that it is real; we are being asked to truly give up our self-interest, our belief in fear and scarcity, to give ourselves to a world built on truer foundations of sharing and mutuality, of giving and inclusion, of caring and happiness.

This will not happen through politicians or religious leaders, not through psychologist or gurus but through people like us, starting with ourselves learning to be a true friend to those around us and to the world.

This, we believe, is the step we are being asked to take in 2012. In his book  “Man’s Search for Meaning” Victor Frankel, who survived four Nazi Death Camps during World War 2, wrote that within a short time after new people entered a death camp he would know who would live longer and who would die sooner. Those that survived were those that gave, shared, included and loved and those that died soonest were the self-interested.

Frankel wrote, “Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love”

With love, Jeff and Sue