It seems like we are all wondering what’s next!  We got through the long awaited 2012 with all the varied expectations and enter 2013 in the opposite mode.  Don’t know what to expect!  It feels like entering the Great Unknown.  This is perhaps a very good start – to stand in not knowing with eyes wide open,  like in the fog – on alert and awake.

We need courage to walk into the unknown.  Instead of waiting until we know what to do and what to expect, we must put one foot in front of the other and see where it leads.  But doing this gives us the potential to discover something new and to create from the emerging future instead of the past.

It is good to have companions when heading into the unknown.  Gathering together and using each others strengths is a smart move.  Lynne MacTaggart speaks of this in her New Year’s blog: 2013- What Happens Next. We need like-minded friends with us but as Lynne points out “group-think” can blind us.  So it is good to have those who see things differently to help us find our blind-spots and shadows.  We need to use our whole mind – both the right side that looks for similarities and the left side that judges and separates.  Jill Bolte Taylor, the famous Ted Talk woman who had the stroke, wonders whether our planet needs a stroke of insight!  She suggests we choose right brain over left brain which also makes sense in the way she puts it.  Just being aware of our two approaches is a big start.

2013 is the Year of the Lovers (from Tarot Key VI) according to Steve Nelson.  This represents the masculine and the feminine but in balance and empowered through the transformation of instinctual sexuality into higher love and soul purpose.  Could this be a metaphor for the brain where the right side with openness and compassion moves into balance with the left side of discriminating necessity.  According to creativity studies, we need both sides of the brain to make creative decisions.  Transforming our shadows, our unconscious motives and patterns and learning to work together perhaps will find a new potential this year.

With all the hate and violence we see around us which we associate with the masculine / left brain approach, it does seem that a healing of the masculine would be very welcome.  A little less know-it-all attitude can soften the judging aspect, opening up for the new.  I liked the questioning, not-so-sure approach of two stories I came across today, both written by men.  The first in AlterNet by Charles Eisenstein called Everything We Tell Ourselves About America and the World Is Wrong: Why we need a new story that gives meaning to the world.  The second one is a response to this in Nuets Nodes: Pathways to a Better Future called Waiting for THE STORY – What is Missing?  Both are powerful pieces to get us thinking.

And the feminine side of the equation needs strengthening also.  We see a great surge of women entrepreneurs and change agents as well as the recent push that demands a stop to violence against women. And now inspiring stories of sustainable initiatives by women are appearing everywhere.  Here is a current article in WeNews about 21 Women Leaders in 2013 with a focus on Seven Who Transform Opportunities.

The articles I am pointing to in this post were all written in just these first five days of January.  All are positive and provocative, giving clues to how we can walk bravely into the Unknown.  As we start the New Year we can all take an inventory of our ability to do this.  What needs to be softened?  What needs to be strengthened?  What needs to be balanced. What opportunities can be transformed?

Happy New Year to all!