Pondering the New Year
Humans like to track stuff. It brings order to what otherwise can appear chaotic and uncontrollable. By marking certain points in time, we are able to memorialize, reflect upon, and compare past events. These markers become turning points during which new resolve is sought, new visions are dreamed into existence, and change frequently occurs. The New Year is one of those points in time. Not insignificantly, it represents the completion of the Earth’s orbital cycle around the Sun. It’s a journey of 584 million miles.
Along this road each year, we accumulate experiences. These experiences make up the sum total of who and what we are. Depending upon your beliefs, they can also be accumulated through many lifetimes you have lived, but that’s a whole different blog post! There is joy and despair, growth and retraction, optimism and fear, health and illness, peace and conflict, to name just a few things we encounter during our magical tour. Our responses to this plethora of polarities, molds and shapes the soul.
Sometimes, while getting tossed to and fro in this sea of opposites, one can become discouraged and feel singled out. This is a natural feeling. Remember though, there are 7.8 billion people having similar experiences, as well as many others who have come before. It’s very easy to get trapped on our island, not seeing all the other islands that are out there. Seen in their totality, those islands weave a much larger tapestry that makes up the collective. All of us are on that same 584-million-mile journey each year, different in many ways, yet also similar.
At these annual turning points, we get to look back, reflect, and if need be change the things our soul is calling upon us to address. This often comes from our internal voice, but it can also come from outside of us. Perhaps a blunt friend who points out something, or even a stranger, or it could be a podcast, or book. And it could be an Astrological reading! Whatever the source, I believe the universe is extremely efficient at bringing to us what is needed. Truth be known, we don’t always recognize the prompts, but that’s ok because it seems to circle back giving us more than one opportunity to grasp the messages.
Today, as we mark yet another New Year on spaceship Earth, back at the 0-mile marker of our annual journey, take time soon to reflect. Look honestly at yourself, are you living authentically? Is there some pattern of behavior blocking your growth and progress? Are you ignoring some message that has been given to you over and over again? Are there changes you need to make but have avoided? There is no shame in any of this so get over that. From a shamanic view, it is important for us to engage all aspects of life with openness and humility. We need to meet our darkest selves with love and compassion, not shame and fear.
So, I offer in closing, a shamanic blessing to you dear reader. May you reflect with honesty upon your life at this important marker in time. May you show compassion to yourself for the journey you are on. May you release to Spirit the pain and suffering narrative that might be shadowing you. May you hear the divine messages that are being whispered to you on your journey, and have the awareness to comprehend them. May you come to understand your divinity, as a quantum creator in an unconditionally loving universe. May all of this be yours…
Written by: Urban Shaman
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