Congratulations! You've made it across the finish line of 2020. As we all begin moving into mid January, there may still be lingering feelings of changes being "unfinished." You may in some or many ways, still feel like you are hanging in the balance--in a manner of speaking, waiting for the other shoe to drop. It's been an exhausting process and most of us are in need of some new skills that can bring us back to feeling nourished and refreshed with resources to move ahead with confidence. I have identified three areas: Practical, Presence and Spirituality which can be used to ease you into a greater sense of wholeness, happiness and success through this New Year.
I believe it's safe to say each and every one of us would like to feel better and do better as we move more deeply into this pivotal year ahead. You can sit down with your computer or even a pad of paper and pen and step into the practical with creating plans, goals or action steps to take and deciding what new skills you believe are necessary to develop as the times change. This is always a great idea. The only problem here...thinking minds do indeed have limitations. In other words, we can only go so far with wracking our brains to figure out new strategies going forward and/or heavily disciplining ourselves toward such change. Whatever we come up with may feel factual, cut and dried, or workable to a degree. But in 2021, even your best ideas may be only part of the equation. Yet, still a valid place to start, we find our first "P" which is the PRACTICAL.
Sometimes the constriction or barriers to creating what we want come from the limitations in the measuring tools we use to define what we need or want. Here we may consider: "What can we add to this mix to expand beyond the limited mind, in a way that allows for more inspiration to come to the fore that we can consider and act on? The word inspiration comes from the latin word, inspiritu, which actually means "with Spirit." That sense of intuition, inspiration, and expansion is the place of timelessness, limitlessness, wisdom, spaciousness that is free flowing and fast moving. So as we start amassing ideas of how we'd like to move forward in 2021, this is an interesting option: to create your own personal mix of skills and goals that allow you to incorporate a connection with a more Spiritual part of you. This can help you to expand on the practical ideas you have, or even come up with something you never could or would have thought up if you were just using your "noodle" alone. Our "S" is for SPIRITUAL.
Never walked down that lane of sacred spirituality or made efforts to connect with your heart and the deeper Self? Then you need to know you are living with only a fraction of your available power, intuition, intelligence, compassion, harmony, peace, clarity and wisdom. Last year was a hard year. Last year was a lot about the mind, too. It was a year where everyone was trying to figure out what in the world they needed to do to make it. Often, times such as this tend to either drive us deeper into greater levels of fear and doubt, or further into faith. Fear and doubt are two of the blocks to connecting with the deeper Self, or the softer energies within. These include the energies of love, listening, harmony, community and compassion. These softer energies are deeply alchemical with the power to streamline our ability to choose well for ourselves. When we begin to access these energies at the heart, we can create our own special blending of practical and spiritual for our challenges and resolutions of them, from which we deeply benefit. Think of it as the best of both worlds. This is the path of knowing ourselves. We move into greater alignment and experience a connection to inspiration, intuition, unconditional love. As you allow those energies to blend and grow, you wisely expand, elevate, temper or sculpt the decisions of your mind alone. Therefore, we could say: PRACTICAL + SPIRITUAL = MORE CLARITY, ENERGY AND PEACE.
Developing presence means managing your focus. You are becoming fully aware of your surroundings, your impressions, thoughts and emotions, the energy of conversations, moods of people, whether you feel safe or not. You see, if we come to a moment with our expectations from the past and worries or concerns about the future, those will cloud our abilities to be fully present and achieve "clear seeing." When your mind is consciously engaged in flowing with what is, you are responding through thoughts, emotions and actions, rather than reacting. You are in the flow and more easily gain access to the available benefits of the situation or environment. When we are focused in this way, we have access to all our faculties, or "all our power." It has been said many times over the years that the power is in the present. It certainly does give us up-to-the-moment information. Yet, you still may feel a bit vulnerable as you develop this skill, especially if you are a person who tends towards a strong mental/intellectual focus. Often, it feels difficult to be in the moment, or in the flow, if you are analyzing the moment rather than participating with it using more than just your intellect. It takes an intention to want to trust what is; to surrender and be open to allow whatever presents itself. Our last "P" therefore, is PRESENCE.
I firmly believe the skills required greatly in 2021 will include a more accentuated need for what adepts have always encouraged: Presence, discipline in the Practical and connection to the Spiritual. These practices awaken our intuition, inspiration and give us a more overall view of life within and around us. We can approach the days with compassion, logic, presence, power and wisdom. We pause in the space we have created by using these practices...that space created from our highest good, which helps us activate our innate abilities to organize, strategize and decide for our highest good. I call this chain of events the development of Honor-consciousness. Attaining unity and Oneness, even wholeness, begins by becoming unified within. This is when our reflection, rather than our reaction, is an echo of our Self-honor within. It is also a culmination that can be expressed this way: PRESENCE + PRACTICAL + SPIRITUAL = LIVING SELF-HONOR.
When it comes to wellbeing and helping people to activate thriving wholeness, I believe in expanding one's consciousness rather than inundating people with lists of do's and don't's that simply drive a never-ending, unrelenting and often unfulfilling path of self-improvement. Moving beyond the thinking mind, there is a unique blending of the practical and Spiritual which can truly elevate and clarify our thoughts, emotions and actions. Who couldn't use a bit of that after last year? Deeply rooted wellbeing means we learn to choose in our present moments to be vitally connected to our deepest intelligence, innate joy and power as a skill for healthy living. We each determine the right amounts of mind and heart that feels authentic. This is how we begin the journey in manageable steps and organically connect to our wisdom, intuition and love. Feeding these energies requires us to awaken and activate the true power of our breath and bodies as a supportive energy to overall wellbeing. Your own beautiful and fluid mix can uplift you toward a sustainable, unique and sacred embodiment of wholeness. Here we discover where wellbeing and life come together simply, as "the joyful path." Not a bad way to start a New Year. Learn more about the power of developing Self-honor in my book It's Time For A YOU-TURN. https://quietmountainwellness.com/products/its-time-for-a-you-turn-hard-copy-e-book