You are the architect of your destiny.

There are parts of your life that are working, and others that aren’t. It is in dealing with your challenges differently, that you can find your true potential to make this new year a time of real transformation and victory!

Never mind the hype about 2012: this coming year will be exactly identical to all others in that it will give you plenty of opportunity to stay trapped in your conditioned ways of unhappiness—or not!

I can make one unfailing prediction: if your desire to change is not great enough to spur you to action, you will stay exactly the same. Your desire will remain a desire, not more. An unfulfilled hope, like you’ve had many over the years. Surface change will not work.

The reality that surrounds you is just that: a chain of opportunities, perfectly designed to help you realize your inherent freedom and bliss, your enlightened nature, your great heart.

Your challenges are not bad luck, personal failure, or a sign that the universe doesn’t care. Far from it! They come to help you realize the deeper truth: that you can be incredibly happy in life, not despite, but because of it all.

See what doesn’t work in your life for what it is: Something you have yet to master. Something that is designed to bring out the best in you, to show you the missing pieces, to awaken you. Even discouragement and hopelessness are like that: they are the beginning of courage and mastery.

You need to brace yourself therefore not against challenging events, but against your habit of staying asleep, of reacting to life’s challenges in the same old negative ways that have perpetuated your suffering in the past.

And you have insisted on staying asleep even as a profoundly caring universe has tried time and again to shake you awake.

“A profoundly caring universe?” you may say, with a rather incredulous look on your face.

Imagine a loving mother who notices her child suffering from a nightmare. She comes to wake up the child, but he resists, and, still in the grip of the nightmare, blames her for disrupting his sleep.

This mother-universe is going to try to prod you to awake this year. How will it happen? Will it be through a new love, an unforeseen good fortune, or greatly renewed strength? Or will it be a financial meltdown, a sudden loss, an illness, an accident, a moment of deep despair?

Probably some of both.

How will you use these events? How you react to them—and therefore, the result you get—is up to you.

There is a simple law in effect here. If you do nothing now to change old unconscious patterns of reacting with anger, or fear, or desire, dependency, worry, and so on, then you will react as always before, and your old patterns of suffering will be reinforced. This means you will suffer more in the future.

That’s the default mode. But by engaging in a regular high-level awakening practice now, you will avoid future suffering. Such efforts are the wisest way of investing your time and effort.

Then, when the inevitable events of life happen, you are not helpless. Instead, whatever comes will help you become more skilled, more aware, more kind, more awake. This is a masterful way to live. It is based in wisdom and love.

You can only be a victim to your own unconscious tendencies, your blindness, fear and confusion—but they can be explored and removed now.

Your old patterns of suffering are what keep you asleep. They are what can turn life into a nightmare. But, let me say it again: you are not a victim!

At your core, deeper than the troubles of life, are undisturbed peace and vast awareness, waiting to be discovered by you. You are the unconditional love in your deepest heart, which creates this dance of a world. Now make a deeper resolve than ever before to discover that and shed your pain like the worn-out skin of a snake!

Whether by default, or by aspiration, you are the architect of your own destiny. The events of this world are nothing more than the raw materials out of which you build your character and through which you either rise to freedom, or entangle yourself further in pain.

So here’s to 2012, a year, which will offer you challenges and support, exactly like any other.

And here is to you, the hero in the quest for the awakening out of the slumber of eons into the clarity of your mind and the depth of your heart.

You, the one who can make this year an epiphany, the beginning of a new world!

Happy new year!

Ram Giri
and the Skills for Awakening team

………

To assist a few committed individuals to make the best of the challenges and the grace of this new year, Ram Giri offers a 20% sale on his personal or group coaching program for 2012. Please call (305) 567-1406 or visit http://skillsforawakening.com/coach/ for more information.

This offer is valid through January 31, 2012.