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Shen To Shen:
Entering The New Millennium

This piece appeared in the Autumn-Winter 1999 Pulse newsletter of the American Association for Bodywork Therapies of Asia.

Words from the Editor’s Xin (Heart)
By Michael Gaeta

This is our last Pulse before the new millennium. We have a lot of “lasts” in these months—last solar eclipse, last birthday, last taste of the 90’s. Soon we will have lots of “firsts”—first baby born, first “2000” check written, first time you hold your breath and turn on the computer.

What does this mean for us personally? What in me is ending, that needs to pass away? What in me is being born, that needs to emerge if I am to be more fully who I am? These are things I’m considering lately. There’s something in the air, in our bones, that’s telling us that this New Year’s is not just another ball drop in Times Square with Dick Clark. I sense a feeling of great—even magnificent—potential, with some fear of the unknown in the mix. It’s an intuitive knowing that the collective effect of how we our lives individually will create heaven or hell in the new millennium world.

I am hopeful. I trust more in the power of what is right in people than what seems to be wrong. I sense real change in myself and those in my life, motivated by an increasing need to live a meaningful, peaceful life of purpose. I observe similar growth in our Association. We are looking at issues of our identity and purpose—the two essential questions for any person or group. “Who am I? Why am I here?”

What’s the next step? The Book of Proverbs says, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” As we as people and as an Association delve deeply into who we are and why we are here, our vision will expand and rise.

What is our goal? Martin Luther King, Jr. stated the ends and means clearly: “Our goal is to create a beloved community and this will require a qualitative change in our souls as well as a quantitative change in our lives.” We—as an Association, a profession, a nation, and a world—have the opportunity to create a “beloved community.” As we allow our minds, our hearts, our bodies to be increasingly responsive to spirit, then we will become all that we can be in our living.

The word “inspiration” speaks of being in the spirit. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary describes it first as “A divine influence or action on a person believed to qualify him or her to receive and communicate sacred revelation.” As we reveal that which is sacred to us in our living and in our work together, then we will know what magnificent potential awaits us in the new millennium.