I wrote my vision and my goals. I created a vision map or board. I set out with good intentions. Nothing. Same ol’, same ol’.

I could blame it on the fact that my daughter is here visiting. That clients called. I had things that got in the way..projects, the need to learn to podcast, interviews to conduct, old work to get handled and out of the way, bills to pay, shopping to do, emails to answer, social media to attend to, etc., etc., etc.

It felt l like 2012 came in with a rush, driving me forward at breakneck speed. That’s how 2011 went out. Why would the new year be any different? I don’t seem to have brakes on this car I’m in. I’m not sure I’m driving. I’m trying to get control.

Here’s the fact: In the first eight days of 2012, I  didn’t keep to the schedule I set as part of my plan. I didn’t do even one of the things I said I would do. Well…I take that back. I did do one thing. I took a bit of time off to spend with my daughter. I relaxed with family. That is on my vision map and in my goals–to find balance in my life between work and personal.

Yay! I made one change. I made it consciously.

Changing habits can prove difficult. Yet, to achieve some new degree of success we must change our old habits. They’ve only gotten us the degree of success we enjoy right now.

Anything can get in the way and become an excuse. For me, getting up early to complete my client work first is a new goal, a new habit, I’d like to form. It’s easy to say I went to bed too late and simply not get up early. It’s easy to answer the phone when it rings during that time period, or to schedule an activity anyway (like walking with a friend, since that’s a goal, too), and to say that’s why I couldn’t meet my goal, make the change, create a new habit.

I find myself saying all too often I just don’t have the time to change, the energy to change. I’ll do it tomorrow or next week.

Well, a week has gone by of this new year…this year that everyone said would be one of such awesome change…when we could affect change in ways heretofore not possible. I, for one, have not found this year much different. It still remains up to me to make the change. (I hear the refrain of some song…I can’t quite put my finger on it…)

Ah, well…the Kabbalists must right. We are simply in transition. We have a long way to go before the predicted time of peace on Earth or the World to Come. (They say not until the year 6,000 on the Hebrew calendar.) Actually, many other people also say we are simply in a time of transition. And it’s likely our consciousness is changing. We can affect change and do so faster, more effectively if we do it in a conscious and focused manner. We don’t need a new year, a new era, a new anything for that.

The trick is to put that lesson–an old one really (and no “secret” either) to use now to create the desired change. For me, I’m starting small–in my life, with my habits. This helps me achieve what I need to achieve and then has a ripple affect, allowing me to affect others through my work.

I’ll go back and focus again on my vision, my goals, my vision board. I’ll work every day to keep on track, making those little changes that end up in new habits formed. By year’s end, I may have achieved a new level of success based upon those new habits.

What about you? How’s it going after the first week of the New Year? Does the energy of 2012 seem to be supporting you? Is change happening in your life or around you?

This year Chanukah and Christmas fall during the same week. Christmas is about miracles,too–the miraculous birth of Jesus.

It doesn’t really matter if you believe either of these stories are true. Our wisdom teachers–the Kabbalists in particular–tell us that this is a time when we can access the energy of miracles.

As we soak in the light of the Chanukah candles–or any candles–we can become receivers of miracles. Like the oil put into receptacles used to create light, we can make ourselves receptacles for God’s goodness.

Light has always been associated with God. And the Kabbalists say God created us as receivers. We need only open ourselves to that light, allow it in…make room for it in our lives and with ourselves.

How do we do this? I suggest we spend eight days considering the miracles in our lives already. Gratitude is the strongest prayer of all, so why not consider the miracles we already have in our lives, and be thankful for them?  Each night, thank God for a small or large miracle you now experience or have experienced over the last year.

Bask in the glow of miracles.

If you want, you can also imagine the miracles you’d like bestowed upon you in the coming year. Offer gratitude for them–as if God had already graced you with them.

Bask in the glow of these miracles as well.

Eight days of miracles…When you spend more than a week considering miracles, you’ll realize you live a miraculous life all the time. You’ll appreciate the miracle of life and the miraculous nature of God.

That’s the miracle of truly observing Chanukah.

Although God created us in such a way that it is natural for us to have strong desire, it’s also important for us to learn to accept where we are and what we have in this moment. We have to learn to have desires and also be in the moment—and feel okay in the moment. If we are constantly longing for something else, this causes us to “future” in a negative way. We constantly creatively vision about the future and create negative thoughts and feelings that go with those visions because we don’t have what we desire.

Thus, we must learn feel good about our desires and then to move into acceptance. We must feel “okay” with where we are and with what we have despite the fact that we possess as yet unfulfilled desires.

If we remember that God is in the moment—not in our futuring and dreaming and visioning. That’s why creation happens in the moment. We create our desires in the moment. Knowing this helps us learn acceptance.

Simply be with God in the moment and know that as you connect with God and feel good about that connection, your desires are being fulfilled. Let God know about your desires and then let them go: Let go and let God.

You see, no matter whether your project entails manifesting a new car, finding a new job, writing a book, improving a relationship, losing weight, or getting out of debt, you must begin by asking yourself how doing or accomplishing these things allows your soul to do what it came to this Earth to do. Every soul has a job here. Each person has a unique talent or gift. Everyone is good at something or especially suited to some task. We each feel passionate about something–when we do that something our heart sings. That’s what we are supposed to be doing. And when you or I understand how what we want or need–the project we want to undertake–serves that purpose, we’ll have an easier time meeting our goal or manifesting our desires.

That’s why the first step in my conscious creation process asks people to get in touch with what the Kabbalists called “Adam Kadmon,” the blueprint of all creation or, what I call the repository of your soul’s purpose. I want you to discover your unique talent or gift and how you are going to bring that into the world. I want you to create from a place that is in touch with your soul’s purpose–with the reason you are here. When you create things that help you fulfill your soul’s purpose, you manifest those desires more easily. They fit into the Divine plan and, therefore, you find them taking physical form almost miraculously when you set your mind, emotions, and actions to creating them. Additionally, you will want to share them as a way of fulfilling your soul’s purpose and completing the conscious creation process as I outline it.

I think overall we manifest things more quickly and easily when they fit into the Divine Plan…not into some human plan. If you aren’t just manifesting more “stuff” but things that help you fulfill your soul’s purpose–things that help you do what you are meant to accomplish in this lifetime, you’ll have more success with your conscious creation efforts.

Remember, this is a co-creation process after all. You and the Ultimate Creator are creating together.

If you don’t have any idea what your soul’s purpose might be, you might find this post helpful.

For more information on Kabbalistic conscious creation and the Law of Attraction, check out my booklet, the Kabbalah of Conscious Creation, or the articles here.

Here’s the gist of what the Kabbalists believe about creation:

Kabbalists describe creation as a thought in the mind of God. If God removed Its attention from that thought, all of creation would disappear. If God were to focus for even one moment on a new thought, the universe as we know it — and us, too — would disappear. The world in which we exist would collapse, folding into the Source of Creation.

From this perspective God’s thought could be seen as the laser that creates the hologram of the world in which we live.

That, however, got me to wondering if our thoughts of God continuously sustain the Source of all Creation? I know that God existed before the world. In fact, initially the Source of Creation was all that existed and made space for something else to exist within All that Was/Is. So, we must assume that God exists no matter what.

Yet, without us thinking about God, without us focusing our thoughts–our laser beams (energy)–on God, what happens to God? Does God cease to exist?

Like a hologram that appears real but isn’t, when we stop thinking about God, God does seem to disappear from our lives. When we turn off the laser (our thoughts of God), the image disappears. Poof. Gone. However, God’s presence does not disappear. God continues to exist, but we can only see God when we focus our thoughts upon God. Only when we turn the laser on does God become apparent, it reveals God all around us in the world.

We’ve seen climate weather, world economic changes and political and government leadership changes. In spiritual, mystical and metaphysical circles, everyone is talking about and predicting change, the biggest of which is, of course, the fact that the Mayan calendar ends with the Gregorian calendar year of 2012. This has caused some people to predict a cataclysmic end to the world in that year. More people are actually predicting a huge shift in human consciousness at that time, which is what I believe will happen…and which I believe is happening already little by little.

More correctly I believe, 2012 actually will be just the culmination of a long process of human consciousness being raised little by little. And, since processes tend to come to a head but continue from that point onward, the process of raising human consciousness will continue beyond the year 2010 as well.

I study all sorts of spiritual and wisdom traditions, but my heart lies with Judaism. In its mystical tradition, called Kabbalah, the mystics claim that creation as a whole is moving toward a change in consciousness that will herald in the World to Come, a time of peace on earth. Rather than this occurring in two years, the date of the end of the Mayan calendar is seen as just a step on the way to the ultimate transformation, which they say lies 230 years in the future – yet the change is happening now, every day, every moment as we move ever closer to the year 6,000 on the Jewish lunar calendar. That would be the year 2240! (We are in the year 5770 on the Jewish calendar.)

Any way you look at it, we seem to be in the midst of a change process. What better time to become part of the change, to become a change agent and learn how to create change within and without, than now.  Of course, to do that, you have to start small-with a process of your own. You have to start by creating change within yourself and in your own small environment, and then work outwards. You have to start raising your own consciousness. In the process, you help raise the consciousness of humankind and of the planet as a whole.

To become part of the change, to become a change agent, you don’t have to become an activist, although you can. You do, however, have to change your consciousness.

Let’s look at this change in consciousness from a Kabbalistic standpoint, which, by the way, is not just for Jews-anyone and everyone can and should consider this perspective if they want to become a change agent. The Kabbalists, or Jewish mystics, taught that human beings were created as receivers. God, the Ultimate Creator, created us as the receivers of all the Divine goodness He/She had to offer us and all of creation. Our purpose in creation lies in receiving that goodness. That’s the easy part, because we naturally desire that goodness for ourselves, and the desire pulls the goodness to us. (Admittedly, actually allowing in the goodness can be difficult for many of us.)

To raise our consciousness to a new level we need to have a new desire. We have to desire a higher consciousness…a new consciousness that wants to receive Divine goodness not for our own sake alone but rather for the sake of giving it to others. That’s the hard part. We have to have the desire to share what we receive with others.

For those of us who love others, for instance, our children, this actually may feel easy. We share with them unconditionally. However, we have to feel this way about everyone and everything. We have to want to share unconditionally with all of creation. We have to want to receive in order to share.

And when we do this, we find ourselves in harmony and in unity with the Creator. We find ourselves one with God, because God is a giver and we have become givers. We have removed any perceived separation between ourselves and God. From this place of oneness and with this higher consciousness, we can create amazing change in our lives and in the world, because we are tapped into the flow of goodness and abundance in the world. We are tuned into the Source of miracles.

For the Kabbalist, becoming a change agent means achieving some semblance of this consciousness-developing the desire to share unconditionally and having the consciousness to want to receive for the sake of giving.

In other traditions, changing our consciousness or achieving a higher consciousness may look or sound different. It may be explained in different words. People will talk about creating peace and harmony or accepting diversity. However, the same holds true. To really do this, we want to function from a place connected to Source. It’s here that we actually begin to vibrate with the energy of peace and harmony and non-judgment. This takes coming from a loving place, a place of acceptance, a place of non-judgment, and a place of wanting to share.

To become a change agent in 2010-or any time-you have to find a way to reach this higher consciousness. The Kabbalists recommend getting there through receiving with the intention of giving. However, you also can do it through meditation, chanting, prayer, or any number of contemplative exercises. The change in your vibration and consciousness immediately will radiate out into the world and begin to create change. Then, if you also can take that energy out into the world and put it into action with the same vibration of love and peace, you’ll do a lot of good towards creating change as well.

We can’t stop change, but we can be a part of it. We can become change agents. I challenge my readers to begin by simply changing their own consciousness.  Create change within. Raise your consciousness in some way…to a more loving one, to a less-judgmental one, to a more giving one. When you do so, you can’t help but begin creating change without.

Primarily, all this stuff just takes up room in my home and in my office. In the process, it leaves no space for anything new to come in. Thus, by removing it – throwing it away – I create a space for something else to exist.

This works much like the Kabbalistic creation story in which God wanted to create something other than God. The problem was that God was everywhere and everything; no room existed for anything else. Thus, God had to contract to create space for something else to exist as well. Into the void God created within the Divine, something new could become manifest.

So, by cleaning out and throwing away all the old stuff I don’t need – the stuff that is just taking up space – in my home (and in my life), I create a void in which something else can become manifest. I make room for change to take place.

Of course, this is just one way to create change, but it does tend to work pretty well. I’ve gotten really caught up in the process, and I like the results. They make me feel good. It’s easier to think, to focus, to concentrate, and to function in my home with less piles and stuff… Everything feels cleaner and more organized. That’s a nice way to start the New Year anyway.

If you want to create change in the new secular year, begin creating a place for that change to exist now. Look around. What have you accumulated that you don’t need? What can you throw away or give away? How can you make room for change?

When my kids were young, I used to decorate the house with tons of Chanukah decorations. Albeit, this was not much different than what Christians do, but it helped my kids–indeed, my whole family–get into the Chanukah spirit. Last year, we pulled out a few at the last minute. It felt sort of anticlimactic. There was no “umph” to the whole holiday, because we were busy with school and work.

That’s the other problem. Christians get time off for Christmas, but unless Chanukah falls during that “Christmas break,” Jews have to fit the holiday into every-day life. It can be hard to find time to make latkes and play dreidle when you work all day and the kids have activities and homework.

Yet, Chanukah brings with it the energy of miracles. The Kabbalists said that during the eight days of this holiday, it was possible for humans to access that energy and create miracles in their lives. If we remember that one fact, we can make Chanukah feel magical even in the midst of homework, dishes, work, soccer, dance, and errands. We can focus on the possibility of miracles happening all around us.

I’ve heard it taught that we must actually raise our consciousness to the level of miracles–rather than expecting miracles to “befall” us, or for God to bring miracles “down” to us. If the Kabbalists are right about this fact, then despite our busy lives, during Chanukah we can work on raising our consciousness above the mundane to a higher spiritual level. By doing so, we access that miracle consciousness.

This doesn’t take much really…a little time spent offering gratitude, a few moments focusing on your breath, a quiet moment of prayer–even while driving, an awareness of God’s creation all around you, a blessing for another day of life as you awaken, a focus on the little miracles that happen in your life all the time.

Anticipation also brings us into the Chanukah spirit. Maybe that’s what my decorations accomplished. Putting them out a week or three or four days prior to the holiday helped me build energy around the holiday. Jews often do this by cleaning prior to a holiday, just as we do each week before the Sabbath. We can build energy by getting out our chanukiah, buying candles, making sure we have potatoes for latkes, purchasing gifts or getting brand new dollar bills to offer as “gelt” for the children, or putting out special Chanukah place mats. Or we can anticipate by meditating on the miracle that created the holiday…and the miracles we’d like to create during the current holiday.

We can purchase Chanukah music and play it not only during Chanukah but before the holiday begins. We can read about Chanukah and find new rituals and traditions to make part of our yearly observance. We can have a Chanukah party. (Read about the party I used to throw and the one the president throws in the White House here.)

Really, there’s no excuse to not get into the Chanukah spirit. It’s easy to look around at the Christmas spirit building and to become a grinch, grumbling about how everything is all about Christmas from Halloween all the way until New Year’s Eve…but wouldn’t it be better to get into the Chanukah spirit and create some miracles instead?

There’s really more to it than that, though. Not only do we create energy around the things we place our attention upon, thereby drawing more of those things into our lives, we also tend to “do” more in the areas in which we focus our attention. In other words, we actually end up placing more of our own energy and action in that area, which generates more energy as well. The more energy we place in any one area of our lives–be it in the form of our thoughts, actions, words, or emotions (all of which are necessary to consciously and deliberately create our desires an manifest our dreams)–the more energy we generate. And this not only makes us focus more attention on this area, it also helps us attract what we desire.

That said, even when we aren’t wanting to “create” something per se, we can see how our focus or attention on something affects the energy around it and what it “attracts.” This past month my focus, action and energy on many fronts has been on another blog other than this one. In November I write a daily blog called Write Nonfiction in November. Organizing the guest bloggers, writing the introductions and my own posts, formatting and editing posts, promoting the blog, and generally manging the whole project takes up a huge amount of my time and attention. For this reason, I didn’t do a lot of writing in As the Spirit Moves Me during November, and when I did, my attention wasn’t as focused on the blog. I was distracted. My attention was scattered.

Because my attention was not in one place–not focused like a laser beam, and because I wrote and posted less blog posts, my readership on this blog fell off considerably. I could easily see the correlation between how much I write–how much I focus my attention on this blog and put my energy (also in the form of action–writing–and emotion) into it–and how many people read this blog by simply looking at my statistics. Each time I put my energy into the blog, readership went up.

This provides a great example of how the lesson works. What you focus on really does expand…always. This is especially true when you place your attention and energy on your work-related projects, your art or any project in which you believe. Your energy will draw others to your work.

In the same way, you can manifest other things you desire by focusing your attention and energy upon these dreams and goals. Be sure, however, that you focus attention, action and emotions on what you desire as well. Although each one of these elements will begin the manifestation process in and of itself, you need all three to get the energy moving in a really powerful manner.

Think about the areas in your life you are NOT focusing upon. From what have you become distracted? You’ll easily see what you are manifesting there. You probably are creating very little or nothing. In my life, for the last 8 or 9 years I have spent almost no time trying to develop close friends. I haven’t gone out and participated in activities where I might have met “like-minded” people. I haven’t made time to be with the few acquaintances I whom I might have nurtured into friends. Thus, I have almost no good friends. However, when I lived in Atlanta, I spent a lot of time doing things that allowed me to develop really good, strong friendships. Today, some of those women are still my best friends.

What you focus on expands. This represents the most important lesson you ever will learn. If you want to manifest your dreams, achieve your goals, create your desires, put this lesson to use in your life. Focus on what you want–not on what you don’t want. You surely will see–and create–more of it.

Earlier this week I was reading an email newsletter sent to me by my friend, author Melinda Ribner. She wrote about the fact that, according to Kabbalah, each month offers new energies and offers new opportunities to realize our full human potential. Each month our spiritual and personal energy fluctuates just like the weather. Indeed, even the weather changes month to month — as we can saw here in Northern California as the rain and cold came in on Monday with the new moon. If we attune to these energies, we can use this knowledge for personal growth and achieving our goals.

Last month, Tishrei, was filled with Jewish holidays-more holidays than during any other month in the Jewish calendar year. Now, during the month of Cheshvan, there are no holidays. This gives us a chance to turn our attention to taking action on our goals for the new year, which we celebrated in Tishrei. We begin to translate into reality the visions we focused upon-the targets we set-for the future as we thought about the new year.

Even if you aren’t Jewish, though, you can take advantage of the energy of this time period. The energy is “generic,” and can be accessed by anyone.

According to Mindy, this month is a time of cleansing and purification. Not coincidentally, she points out, we begin the month by reading the Torah portion about Noah and his ark. In the Torah, Noah was instructed to build an ark to safeguard life from the destruction of the flood-a flood that cleansed the earth.

I suggest that we use the next few weeks to think about what we might allow to “float away” in a flood, if we had to…or if we chose to. If we had to board an ark, what might we take with us? Why not cleanse your home, office or life of what you don’t need or want to take forward with you, keeping only what is of value?

Mindy pointed out that the word for “ark” in Hebrew (teva) also means “word.” Thus, the energy of this Hebrew month also involves watching our words-or using our words wisely. As you focus on taking action to bring your visions into reality, use your words to speak about your visions clearly, thus utilizing the Law of Attraction and of conscious creation to speak your goals and dreams into reality-just as God created the world by speaking it into existence. Build an ark to hold your dreams for the future by vocalizing or writing down your intentions, goals, visions. Speak your future world into existence. (But don’t forget to feel what it will be like to have manifested your dreams and visions…and to take action towards manifesting them.)

You can find information about the energies of every month in Mindy’s book, Kabbalah Month by Month. To receive a free posting of the kabbalistic energies of each month, please contact Miriam@kabbalahoftheheart.com.

For more information on how to put the Law of Attraction to use in a Kabbalistic manner, check out my booklet, The Kabbalah of Conscious Creation.