Gazing in the Mirror

January 1 - New Year's Adjustment

What is the best way
to learn Tao ?
Go beyond schools.
Follow nature.
~ Deng Ming-Dao, The Lunar Tao

The heavenly birth,
means being born
into the knowledge of Truth.
~ Ernest Holmes

Each year that I am at home on New Year's I spend the first day adjusting to that change. The first day of the year is like a bridge of transition for me. It is a welcomed pause between the sometimes frenetic activity of the holiday season from Thanksgiving through New Year's Eve and the resumption of business as usual on Jan 2nd. Not that "as usual" means the same as before. I love the "blank page" that the first day of the New Year offers me. Today I feel complete with the year just passed. I have reflected on all that passed through my life's awareness and have let go of the past year's concerns. Of course I retain all of the memories worth keeping but I reflect upon and release whatever ideas no longer serve me.

On this first day of a new year, I do not yet know what the coming year will bring. I do not have unrealistically high expectations about it. I was definitely grateful when the year 2012 was "over" without any significant disruption to the ongoing nature of Life in general. I am certainly glad that the kind of intensity as was suggested before 2012 arrived will only come back around in 26,000 years !! On reflection many years are a mix. The year 2013 started off for me on a happy note of carefree wanderings and family visits with plenty of financial resources and so no concerns. I was grateful for the blessing of that. At the other end of the year 2013 was another more difficult financial experience. For 2013 we were only able to take from our business 75% of our annual salary and we barely managed to create a good enough Christmas at the last minute. Happily it was "enough" to satisfy every family member's heart. Our sons were still young enough that Santa arrived but we can see that the influence of that childhood myth seems to be definitely waning. Because our lives are unconventional, our sons did not let go of childhood fantasies quickly but went through a happy, slow and natural way of adjusting to more mature realities. It feels pleasantly just about right to my mothering heart.

Now that I have passed the landmark of my 30th wedding anniversary with my husband, I find a more comfortable and accepting relationship existing between my husband and myself regarding our genuine natures, interests and needs. I did not think that it would be that significant to reach this point in our marriage but it is a happy discovery to find that we continue on together. We are aware of all of the dangerous moments in our relationship that we successfully weathered and yet we do find ourselves still preferring to have each other's company. During the last year, I have felt a new acceptance in my husband of my writing career and his support has been welcome. I do try to maintain a balance by giving adequate time to our business and to my family and by limiting my online community time, getting away to a place of seclusion and leaving the rest behind for 4 hours each day. I have no doubt that in this time of intensity, that daily break has positive effects upon me.

We had a festive New Year's Eve dinner of party-like foods and we enjoyed watching The Iron Giant on dvd. We celebrate holidays and birthdays as a family.  My husband and I have not gone out alone as a couple since the older boy was born in 2001.

We were all awake at midnight on New Year's Eve and wished each other a Happy New Year.  My husband gave me a kiss.  Midnight was a bit of a low key event for us this year.  In the past, we went outside to shoot off fireworks (one of the joys of living in rural isolation) honoring ancient traditions of unifying the elements of Fire, Wind, and Water and bringing them into a single voice that is the song of Earth while shattering and confusing all the forces of divisiveness that may have congregated around us. One year, Midnight found me beating a hand drum with tambours, my husband blowing a wooden whistle and my youngest son spinning a metal noise maker while my older son ran around with a party-popper confetti gun chasing invisible "demons" away.  We no longer drink a toast of any beverage.  We begin the return to our own daily routines very quickly.

I began this first day of the New Year with a tarot reading which was mostly positive with a reminder to practice the spirituality that has helped me so many times.  I also listened to an energy update from Lee Harris, who's gentle nature I appreciate.  Other than that, just conveying or replying to New Year's greetings from friends online.  Not only do we leave the past behind but we can also go to the very root of the beginning of all we know. This understanding can ground us in the most fundamental way. This beginning is also mysterious, enormous and beyond definition. Any one of us can always go back to the beginning whenever we wish to validate our own philosophy. Any one of us can look to Nature whenever we want to continue a type of learning that is beyond schools and teachers. And there is a knowing that is even beyond nature. When we reach that realization that we are actually some aspect of All That Is, we become a unified with our self and with the larger patterns of life.

~ perspective

The first day of January always feels
like a true new beginning to me and
a blank page upon which to begin to write
a new story.
I declare to The Universe itself that
I am willing to let go of struggle and
to learn with the eagerness of
a beginner's mind.
I do not wait for conditions to be perfect,
rather I begin to cooperate with what
calls to me knowing that Life will meet me
in supportive ways.
A new day, a fresh start and one more try
always holds within it my own understandings
of the potential for pure, natural magic.
Often I start with what seems difficult
but necessary, then I add in what it is possible
for me to accomplish and at the end of
the day I often find – a deep sense of
having productively spent my time well.

#beginnings #bridge #change #contentment #cycles #enough #finances #money #relationships #reset