Solstice & New Year's Contemplations

 TO KNOW THE DARK BY WENDELL BERRY 

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To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.

To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,

and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,

and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.

Feel free to explore what comes up for you, whether or not it seems to be a direct answer to the question.  Take what resonates for you, and leave the rest…

Wonder Question:  

How can I connect with and embody the sacred life moving through me and us, which is ever emerging, structuring and re-structuring, and available for to me to express as creativity?

Related to the Solstice / Season of Long Nights here in the Northern Hemisphere:   
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• What healing aspects of light and darkness can you connect with as a resource in your life?

• What supports and sustains you (on a physical, emotional, mental and/or spiritual level)  when you experience times of darkness?
• How are you supported by your past experiences?  What aspects of the past (personal, ancestral or collective) are you presently available and supported to turn toward, for purposes of healing and restoration?  Can you connect to a felt sense of resilience of those who have come before you / us?

The great conjunction, Jupiter & Saturn, occurs in the sign of Aquarius on January 21.  Jupiter will be in this sign for nearly a year, and Saturn will remain here for around 2 1/2 years, so these qualities will remain and ripen for some time...  How do you relate with these qualities in your life:
 
Jupiter – healing, magnification, expansion
Saturn – pruning, grounding, structuring
Aquarius – air, breath, fixed nature, communication justice, balance, the collective

• What part of your life is emerging a whole new way of being for you, going forward? 
• How can you befriend the qualities of Jupiter, Saturn and Aquarius?
• What support, practices, rituals, connections, etc. are important, alive structures for you?  What habits / rituals support you and what need to be pruned or changed?
• How do you integrate to stabilize your expansion?
• What aspects of your life feel resonant personally and with the collective?   Another way to wonder about this is, what are you doing / how are you being collectively that also feels good and replenishing to you personally?

Related to the Gregorian Calendar New Year...
 

• What did you learn in 2020?  What was lovely about it?  Is there anything you will miss?  What awarenesses awakened in you?  What did you learn?  What did you let go of?   What do you appreciate about yourself and your life?  
  
• What qualities do you want to embody, or begin to embody in 2021?  Are there simple steps, practices, or rituals you want to create to support your evolution?

New Year's Resolutions - Creating Lasting Change

January 3, 2009

Happy Creation Time ….



New Year’s, for many, is a time to evaluate how life is going, a time of setting goals and making resolutions. Or for some, a time when they remember they’ve given up making resolutions, discouraged about lack of success in creating lasting change in their lives.

How can we create lasting change in our lives?

Basically, the only reason we don’t make a change that we say we want to make is that, at some level we’re more committed, either consciously or unconsciously, to what we’re already doing (or not doing). In other words, what we are currently doing—or not doing—is meeting more needs than the change we wish to make.

Often the needs that are being met by the experience we are already having are in the shadows of our consciousness -- are unknown or unacknowledged by ourselves at some level. By accepting ourselves, choosing to love ourselves and what we are currently experiencing (including actions/inactions, thoughts, feelings—all of it), we open to ourselves. Through unconditional self-love, we each open to our deepest self.

This self-love frees us from our aversion to what we are afraid to see, or know, about ourselves. We are free to wonder, “hmmmmm what beautiful quality am I attempting to fulfill by what I am currently doing/not doing?” “How can I appreciate my effort to fulfill this beautiful quality, however unhappy I may be that I’ve been doing it unconsciously?” “hmmmm what can I learn from this ….. I wonder how I can continue to fulfill this quality, maybe even more fully than I am currently experiencing AND make the change I’d like to make?” “hmmmmmmmmm, I wonder…..”

“I won’t look! I won’t see! No – that’s ugly, bad!” In my own experience with aversion to seeing a part of myself that I haven’t welcomed, or feeling feelings such as anger that I’ve been conditioned by our culture to believe are “inappropriate” or “bad”, I have an image of myself as a stubborn 2-year old, with my jaw clenched and my hands covering my eyes or my ears. She likes to hide under the covers, or stand up and stomp her foot. “NO” is her favorite word. I feel so grateful for her. She helps me set boundaries in my life. She’s a gift to me. I’m grateful that I’ve learned to know and love her, and that I get opportunities to choose to love her, and to play with her, again and again.

Knowing ourselves deeply equals power. Knowing why we do (or don’t do) whatever it is we are currently experiencing, is powerful. When we know and accept/welcome/love ourselves at that level, we touch ourselves right at the very place of choice and creativity. The place where we can make another choice, if we wish. A choice that arises not out of ‘against-ness’ to any part of us, but rather out of ‘with-ness’ of whatever it is that we would like to embody or experience.

To me, this is living life creatively. And the process of exploration into this deep inner place of power and wellspring of creativity, and back out into manifesting and embodying the change I want to be, is life’s greatest adventure, greatest promise, and greatest gift.

I’m reminded of a verse from the Upanishad’s, an ancient Yogic text, which I will paraphrase this way --- through practice (and it’s referring to the deep inner contemplation and practice such as I’m writing about, along with cultivating the steadiness of mind and nervous system that supports this deep inner work) it is possible to overcome any obstacle, and to achieve ‘almost’ anything your heart desires.

Happy Creation!


Note: I draw from processes of Compassionate Nonviolent Communication, Para Yoga, and Body Mind Vibrance to facilitate these changes in myself and others.