Happy New Year!
It’s one of the times of year that feels like a fresh beginning. It’s probably the “new beginning” time that carries the most cultural pressure—the time when we “make resolutions” and “set goals” for being better, happier and more productive people.
I do love goals. I very much enjoy having a challenge to work toward, and I relish the feeling of accomplishment when I reach a goal. However, my experience has been that goals are much more suited to yard work or housecleaning than they are to my inner soul-work.
The world of soul is not compatible with goals. While tending our inner lives requires effort, it is a matter of meeting the moment rather than reaching toward an accomplishment. The pattern of soul-work is more of a spiral than a straight line. The dance involves steps that feel like backward motion, and movements that seem sideways.
“Resolutions” are another cultural expectation that don’t meet the needs of soul. Resolutions, in my experience, arise out of a sense that I should be or do something different than what and who I am. There’’s a feeling of “I’m going to work really hard at this …” They tend to come from mind-effort, which often includes comparing myself to someone else or someone else’s expectation.
Soul-work begins in the heart, with loving attention to what matters to me, and an honouring of myself as worthy of my own attention. Often what matters to my heart can’t be measured in terms of goals or resolutions.
I may feel a need to cultivate a certain quality or awareness, and so I might “set an intention” in that direction. Intentions have less to do with accomplishment, and more to do with the direction of my focus. Intentions leave room for the way life interrupts our routines, and how being human involves ups and downs. In my experience, intentions are gentler than goals or resolutions. They can serve to remind me of the subtler aspects of my life which I value, but which often get lost in the clamour of schedules and urgencies.
A fourth word comes to mind at any transition time, and that word is “invitation”. As I’m doing my soul work, and tending what arises in my heart, I will often have a sense of being beckoned toward something new. Perhaps it’s a shift in how I relate to some work I’m doing, or a new perspective on something that challenges me..
An invitation of this type often begins with the sense of beckoning, but I don’t have words for it right away. I just feel a pull toward an unknown. As I make room for what I can’t define, it grows clarity. However, its source is always both greater than me and born from the deepest part of me. It feels like a call and response between me and the Divine.
As I have become more familiar with these invitations, I’ve begun a practice of listening for my invitation for a new season. Sometimes it eventually expresses itself in a word or phrase. Sometimes it’s more easily expressed as a softening of my heart in a particular direction. Rarely are there signposts indicating I’m “doing it well”. I’ve learned that when it comes to meeting invitations, I can’t “do it wrong”.
My continuing experience with the unfolding of these invitations is that they always deepen my connection with my own soul and with the Divine. They reveal to me more of what I am beneath the layers of personality I wear and remind me of the value of my being.
Our gift to the world is our being, just as we are, no improvements necessary. Our gift to ourselves is gentle attention to our inner being. The less we judge ourselves, the more brightly our lights shine.
My wish for you this year is that you grow in compassion toward yourself and honouring of the value of who you are. This world needs the spark that is you.
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