As this old year exhales its very last few hours here in England, the birth of a New Year is already being celebrated on the other side of the planet. In Nature, death and birth are enfolded, each within the other…cycles of Life:Death:Life are Nature’s own ‘Sustainability’, ‘Design and Development’ and ‘Renewable Energy’ programmes.
Creativity and newness require the death and decay of old structures…but the possibilities of every new being, time or system exist only because of what has gone before. Death is ever the Handmaiden of Life.
When we honour our own ancestors - without judgement - we can begin to acknowledge and sense their benevolent presence in our DNA. We are a part of their going-forwards, just as they are inherent to our own. As a bodily-felt-sense, this connection is profoundly resourcing, it feeds and anchors us to our existential roots - and the ground they are planted in.
So, whatever 2019 may have been like for us…whatever judgements have been formed or fostered about it – 2019 is a symbol of the unfolding Time-Space road that brought us here. Our collective fates, and those of all living in our planetary home are wrapped up in it. Past, Present, Future.
This time of year is always one of deep reflection for me. I have half written many blog posts in the intervening months, but at this ‘Turning’ time of the year, there is a powerful pull in me to be still, to reflect and watch (against the tugging my more usual busy-ness). It does feel to me as if we are witnessing a death, and then celebrating a birth. Our own renewal - just as much as that of the calendar hanging on the wall. It is a time to be really Present.
The past twelve months for me have involved a massive de-structuring: – selling my house and moving into a wooden hut on wheels, negotiating to buy ten acres of land and then taking off for three months to travel right around the Southern Hemisphere. That journey was challenging, sobering, exhilarating, deeply heart-warming, fascinating, blissful, nourishing, exhausting…
Thinking about it now, it seems that – whilst travelling alone I am able to come home to myself more fully...but I also discovered, freshly, the joys of connection.
Aloneness seems like a resting state for me, but it doesn’t settle that way indefinitely…at some point the desire in me for community returns ... then I am all the more delighted to come back into direct connection with others and thereby, the sense of my belonging within community.
This dance of 'going and returning' has profound psychological and spiritual significance…as many philosophers and psychologists have already observed. Cycles of contact, experiencing, affiliating…and leaving again, facilitate our evolving perspectives and help create our shifting identities. This, for me, is the creative dance of love and consciousness…everything moving and unfolding in spirals.
So, just as a way to reflect on your own unfolding life, some questions: -
What has nourished, sustained and resourced you through the challenging times of last year?
When have you been able to be most authentically yourself?
How is your essential creativity being expressed right now…and how would it be best supported? (by you).
How do you connect to yourself, others, community, society…and to the environment?
Attending to our own spiralling growth and healing in these ways will give us the best chance to be reflecting back warmly on 2020 - when we get to that vantage point again.
We are all ‘works in progress’, so let the New Year celebrations be also for all of our new possibilities…which are renewed, not annually, but in every breath...
So - blessings, love and light to us all for 2020!