And how in the deepest, darkest part of the year, my thoughts turn to the rising light and to turning the page, to leaving an old year behind.
And welcoming the new.
We get a preview of that as we go to bed tonight and wake up in the morning to a new lunar cycle, to observing the moon's waxing, fullness, and waning over the next month. Before we know it, the old year also will become new again and fresh new energy will capture us and widen our creative imagination.
Many of us are doing the inner work to start the new year well. For some, it is clearing and de-cluttering. For some it is dreaming and visioning. For many, it is some of both.
Here are some great questions to think about --
How do I want to feel in the new year?
What kinds of changes might I be willing to make to create that?
Even small shifts can open the way for something new.
Or perhaps we might want simply to accept what is and to be at peace with that, to not engage in self-improvement, to feel like we don't have to change anything.
If that's the case, perhaps some good questions to think about might be --
What feels good about my life right now?
What are some ways I can cultivate gratitude for what is?
What might it feel like to sink into my present circumstances and to be mindful around the present moment, the breath I'm taking right now?
Can I simply enjoy this moment?
Early in December, I take a day to relax into some possibilities for the new year. To think about the year that has been and about what I might like the new year to feel like. What might be ways to shape my life so that I can feel the way I want to feel and do the things I might like to do.
An interesting thing happens when I do this.
I find myself wanting to live my best life. And so I say to myself, there're only a few more weeks left in the year. What if I dedicate them to living each day mindfully, with the intention that I live each day to the fullest? I count this as a low risk, high yield experiment. Something I can take with me into the new year.
An awareness that with mindful living, each day can indeed offer me my best life.
It's not always easy to do because we can get distracted by so many things. But I find myself during these last weeks of the year cultivating a different kind of resilience and a different kind of awareness, a different attitude around allowing myself to be expansive and freer than I usually allow myself to be at home in my daily life and work.
The temptation toward constant self-improvement can rob us of our peace. It's so easy to feel like we're not enough, that we don't do enough or achieve enough or strive enough.
I have a strange theory that if we were to relax about ourselves and our lives, if we were to live mindfully in the present moment with an awareness of how fortunate we are, if we were to be happy with what is instead of always wanting more and better, we might just begin to create without expectation. It might become natural for us to live our best life without angst and striving.
We would be living in grace. And grace opens the way. Everything else is fear. And fear shuts us down.
It's just that simple. And also that complicated.
But when we close our eyes and take a deep breath or three, we glimpse another possibility.
Beauty in the Night: Meditations in the Dark Time of the Year. I don't know if this will be a series, but if there is one in me, this is what I am drawn to thinking about and writing about these days.
The photo was taken by a friend one new year's morning at sunset. I forget who took it or which year it was, but I keep the photo close when I am in the mindspace of expansion.
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