Advice for the New Year: Be Wise, Be Joyous

by Emanuel Kuntzelman

Happy New Year!

At the close of 2011, the Greenheart Transforms book club participated in a wisdom gift exchange, sharing quotes, books and ideas. Inspired by that evening, I thought I would also share some words of wisdom from various people who have been masters for me as we embark on this transformational year in 2012:

George Leonard:  “How can I describe the kind of person who is on a path to mastery?  First, I don’t think it should be so dead serious.  I think you should understand the joy of it, the fun of it.”

And Joseph Campbell:  “When you follow your bliss—that thing that truly electrifies you—four things automatically happen:

• You meet the people you want to know.

• Doors open where there weren't doors before.

• Doors open for you that wouldn't open for anyone else."

As we listen to our own pieces of found wisdom, hopefully a new spiritual paradigm will arise.  And, going back to my own epiphany at the Book Club, and with all due respect to the great spiritual traditions, it is now, at the dawn of this Era of Transformation, high time that the interfaith dialogue moves onward and upward to a higher understanding of our Spiritual Source. 

The dialogue no longer needs to be about the common ground that our spiritual traditions share from their historical perspectives, but rather it should engage the uncommon territory where the world’s religions merge in a context of the emerging evolutionary paradigm.  But as we develop new wisdom for a New Era, beware of those who would speak the truth, because that’s what got us in trouble to begin with.

To explain, I have taken some liberties with a story from my favorite Sufi master, the Mulla Nasrudin:

“If you want truth,” the Mulla Nasrudin once told a group of Seekers, “you will have to pay for it.”

“Buy why should we have to pay for something like truth?” asked one of them.

“Have you ever noticed that it is the scarcity of a thing that determines it’s value?” asked the Mulla.

“How much, then, do we have to pay?” inquired the seeker. 

“I wouldn’t know,” said Nasrudin.  “I never tell the truth.  And anybody who does is a liar.”

Or, as the Kybalion states:  “All truths are but half-truths.”

Be wise, my friends, in this New Year of change and transformation, but also be happy, joyous and light.