_______________________________________________

To see the full newsletter in its original format, click here.
_______________________________________________



October 10, 2006 ~ Warren, Michigan


Letter from Mark David

Dear Friends of the Light,

It's interesting to find myself in the east during fall, a place and time where trees are shedding their old cover and the smell of decaying leaves is a constant reminder of endings.

As I write below in The Currency of Faith, I too am shedding my old ways and venturing into a new season, certain only that a new one will flower, yet with no notion of when that will be or how it will look.

Once more I have suspended teleconferences (though my five-week Wisdom-Keepers Training teleclass is still going ahead see below). Once more, the live events I have facilitated are gearing down. (Three more Detroit events remain; see sidebar for details.)

Once more, I venture into the void of renovation, redefinition and realignment. Once more, I open myself to the highest expressions of my highest self and surrender to the highest outcome.

I begin the next phase of that process this coming weekend by stepping into the time machine of my past with my first visit to my native Canada since "accidentally" leaving more than nine years ago.

Sometimes it seems as though we must return to the beginning — to first principles, if you will — in order to discover where our next leap will take us.

Of course, it's never truly a step backward. Rather, it's like getting off the elevator in an old familiar building, but on a floor you haven't yet explored.

Often, as Columbus discovered, when we think we're journeying to the Old World, what we discover is a new one.

I will look forward to sharing my discoveries with you as I journey to the other side of this particular uncertainty.

In one form/forum or another, I will share them. For the constant in all my shifts and transformations is my passion for inspiring you (and, through that, me) to live your highest potential as the most perfect expression possible of your divinity and God presence.

I know you can do it. We all can.

Namaste,
Mark David






The Currency of Faith

You can build walls, pass laws, buy guns, deport immigrants or demonize minorities. But none of these will bring you any more security than you will find in the place of your faith, your surrender, your divine essence.


"I'm 53 years old and I've never felt so insecure in my life."

The speaker: an author being interviewed last week on NPR [National Public Radio]. The topic: uncertainty.

This author was not alone in her feelings. It's a natural reaction to all that's going on in the world.

But although I understand why she feels the way she does, allowing the rampant uncertainty of these times to throw us into insecurity solves nothing.

As I wrote last time in The Fires of Uncertainty, little of the conventional stability, security or grounding we've been programmed to expect and seek exists anymore. Nor is it likely to return. Ever.

One way or another, this revolution is playing out in everybody's life, including mine.

When I complete my current round of Michigan events in a few days, for example, my life will resemble the scene in my novel, The MoonQuest, when the main characters throw themselves through a portal that takes them beyond the "end of the known world."

Put another way, it feels as though I'll be stepping off the edge of one of those flat-Earth maps you see in old books, right into the script that warns, Here There Be Dragons.

From Michigan, I walk into one of the biggest unknowns I've ever experienced. It's even bigger than the one I faced when I left my old Sedona life 22 months ago.

Then, I expected to be on the road for a few months, after which I would settle, somewhere, into a new life. That was the assumption that helped me feel secure enough to leave.

Today, I recognize all such assumptions as fundamentally flawed. Today, it feels as though my life is about to take a radical turn in unimaginable directions. Today, I have no hint of where to go, no knowledge of how I'll be supported along the way and no idea of what focus my work will take.

Of course I've been there before. But this is a deeper level.

Is it stressful? At times.

Would I prefer a newer version of the illusion that helped me two years ago in Sedona? Possibly.

Will I get one? Not likely.

Even as I might prefer the illusion of knowing what's next, one thing I do know is that such illusions are part of an old paradigm, a paradigm we're being called to leave behind.

Why? Because we no longer need those illusions or that paradigm.

It's clear that the portal through which we are moving, the initiation we are now experiencing, requires that we operate without that paradigm so that we can learn to function more effectively in the moment. So that we can learn to feel secure despite the uncertainty. So that we can learn to ground our security in something other than illusions.

Last week, in response to a friend who was experiencing his own financial uncertainties, I wrote (in one of those flashes of brilliance that was as much for me as for him) that the only currency we can count on is the currency of faith.

Not blind faith, but a faith grounded and anchored in the certainty that we are powerful expressions of the divine.

If it's true that the only currency is faith, then the only legal tender is surrender, surrender to that very divinity that is there for us in each moment we open to it.

Some call that divinity God. Some call it Divine Intelligence or Infinite Mind or Higher Self. It doesn't matter what we name it. What matters is that we recognize that the energy we're describing is not separate from us. It's more than than a part of you. It is you. And you are a part of it.

Think about the word currency. It's from the same root as current, which, itself, has two critical meanings in this context.
• Current, as in flow.
• And current, as in now.

It's through your faith in that divine current that flows through you, that you will thrive....through all — however uncertain it appears. And it's your ongoing faith in each moment, in each breath, in the current moment that is the eternal now, that will, that must prosper you.

Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and all shall be added unto you.

That Kingdom of God is, in this instance, your faith in, your trust in and your surrender to the divinity that would reign within you in each moment you allow it to do so...in each moment you allow that gift to yourself.

From that place of faith, all shall be added to you. For in that place you are at your most open to the Infinite in all its manifestations.

Here's the thing: The uncertainty isn't going away. If anything, life is going to get more, well, uncertain.

All the responses and reactions to uncertainty we have learned since caveman days are now irrelevant. They simply don't work anymore. They never will again.

It's time to recognize that all attempts to build more conventional solidity in your life are doomed. They cannot succeed. The energy of these times, of this Age of Uncertainty, simply will not support them.

The only safe place is in your heart. The only protection is in your soul. The only certainty is in your faith. The only constant is the moment-to-moment choice for the higher road, the higher vibration, the higher beingness.

Where we're going, wherever that is, we won't even desire certainty. To get there, to get to that place where we can access the Kingdom of God more than we're now able, we must wean ourselves off that need, that addiction for control. Which is all our desire for certainty truly is.

If I know where I'm going to be next week at this time, if I know how I'm going to pay my bills next month, if I know what my job will be next year, if I know that my company pension plan will pay out to me when I'm 65, then I believe I have control over my life.

All those things are fictions. They're all illusions.

Who you think you are today, what you think you're doing today, can change in a heartbeat, in a moment. A death. A layoff. A diagnosis. An accident. A "Dear John" letter. Love at first sight. You can't control any of them. You can't predict any of them. You can't plan for any of them. And life in the next moment is never the same.

Nothing is certain, except this moment. When you are steeped in faith... when you live surrender...when you take each moment and breath for the now-lifetime it represents, control is irrelevant.

My desire for control is an attempt to fix the future to make me feel better in the present.

If the future ever could be fixed, it will not be anymore.

You can try to create security for yourself — by building walls, passing laws, buying guns, deporting immigrants or demonizing minorities — but none of these will guarantee any more certainty or security than you can find on your own, within yourself, in this moment...in the place of your faith, your surrender, your divine essence.

Ultimately, certainty is irrelevant. Certainty is not currency, unless it's the meaningless dollars of the Confederacy or rubles of the Soviet Union.

In this moment, you are in, of and with the only currency that matters or has any value, the current of life.

The world isn't going stop turning, and life isn't going to stop changing until you and I have no choice but to be in the moment. Wouldn't it be better to begin now, by surrendering to this one?

The way to thrive in the Age of Uncertainty is to relinquish your need for certainty. The way to thrive in the Age of Uncertainty is to relinquish your need for control. The way to thrive in the Age of Uncertainty is to surrender to the currency of faith. The way to thrive in the Age of Uncertainty is to be in your divinity in as many moments as you can manage, until all those moments are one, and that oneness is now.

— Adapted from "The Currency of Faith," part of Mark David's October 4 teleconference titled "Thriving in the Age of Uncertainty."