Have you experienced the past few months as intense, chaotic, and full of uncertainty?
Yes?
You’re not alone.
Some days feel like a tough slog. Like we’re moving through dense resistance. Which is all the more reason to embrace your spiritual practice and deepen into it.
Many seers have spoken of this time we are in as an amplification, when everything is speeding up and gaining power. This is exactly why you have to choose your own sanity, clarity and peace.
Not only because the chaos is ever growing, but because the benefit of you doing your inner work is amplified during this time. In other words, you can use this time to fast track your liberation.
Recently, we explored the big idea in which I asked you what myth are you living. If you’re still ruminating on this, here’s another tool that might help you drill into it: archetypes.
The concept of archetype is something Carl Jung spent a tremendous amount of time exploring and is so rich! Caroline Myss has built on Jung’s work and expounded on how we can access and utilize archetypal energy to better understand ourselves and the world.
A powerful way to help understand where you are on your life path, is to recognize what story or stories are playing out in your life. This is a question/idea that comes from Carl Jung. He famously said:
I was driven to ask myself in all seriousness: “What is the myth you are living?”
I found no answer to this question, and had to admit that I was not living with a myth, or even in a myth, but rather in an uncertain cloud
of theoretical possibilities which I was beginning to regard with increasing distrust.
Happy New Year!
Are you ready for 2025?
It still feels pretty new, which is why it’s helpful to employ some anchoring exercises to support you as you get clear about how you want this year to be for you.
I always start my year by choosing a word or phrase, something to focus on, dive into, and act as a theme or inquiry for the upcoming 365 days.
Some of the ones I’ve chosen in past years include: receive, relax, joy, shine, communion… you get the idea. Once you hit on your word (or phrase), the invitation is to spend the next 12 months deepening into how you can experience it in your life.
I love sharing spiritual tools with you with this blog.
Sometimes it's a poem, mantra, prayer, breath exercise, or affirmation. But each technique is one I’ve tried and tested over the decades and is now part of my box of go-tos. The ones I rely on when I need additional support, assistance or help reconnecting to the truth of myself, which is love.
Today I felt called to share one that I return to again and again. It's a breath I was taught by my guru over twenty years ago called the Chittakash, which is the heart space over the head.
Since it’s the middle of January I’ve still got resolutions on my mind. Last week I wrote about turning those resolutions into goals and then taking action by identifying the: what, why, how and when. If you need help with that, download my FREE Goals and Action Step worksheets at :
But if you’ve already done that and are still struggling to get going, it may be time to dig a little deeper and uncover any negative beliefs that might be getting in your way.
On some level, I think all of us dread one thing about the New Year… resolutions. What we think is lofty or even good for us can soon feel obligatory and for some, even oppressive.
This is why I’ve taken a new attitude on the resolution. We all know that it’s easy after a few glasses of champagne on December 31st to make loads of promises we may or may not keep, right?
For the past several years, our family has had a New Year’s tradition. We decided to make our own, because- here's my confession- I always hated New Year’s Eve. From the time I was a teenager, my sister and I would look at each other mystified. All everyone seemed to do was get drunk and then watch a stupid ball drop. What was the big deal?
So a few years ago, we modified our evening to make it work for us. As a family, we enjoy a celebratory meal, something special, because it is a holiday after all. We even have a bottle of champagne or Prosecco along with sparkling apple cider, (known in our house as kids champagne.) After our leisurely meal, we all gather in the living room and get to work making… vision boards.
Last year, right after 2014 had just begun, I was listening to Dr. Robert Holden on Hay House radio. He shared an idea he’d been doing for awhile of choosing one word for his new year. Then he would meditate on it, delve into it, and explore it for the next 365 days.
Over the past twelve months, I’ve allowed myself to simply be with this word and see what happens. At one point, around March, I had a serious crisis with trust. I became super afraid of the future, and about what might happen. That experience invited me to go deeper with trust and prompted me to create a visual representation to both remind and inspire me to open up more to trust.
When I was a little girl growing up in New York City, it was pretty common to see people living on the streets. In the 1970s, many were heroin addicts, or at least that’s what my mom told me. But in the 1980s, the number skyrocketed, due in large part to the closing of mental hospitals, lack of affordable housing and the recession. We walked over people everywhere, many of whom were permanently camped out in the Port Authority and Grand Central Station.
I watched as my mom, dressed in her suit, trench coat and heels systematically ignored everyone from panhandlers to women hallucinating in the public bathrooms. My father acted the same. So, thinking that’s what I was supposed to do, I followed their lead and pretended that I didn’t see people suffering everywhere. The only problem was, I did.
The holidays, for all that we look forward to them, can also bring out stress, tension and emotional tests. And when we add divorce into the mix, things can get even more challenging.
My parents split up when I was a young girl and although I looked forward to presents and special holiday treats, underneath that excitement was always a layer of sadness. Because I knew that one of my parents would be spending the holidays alone.
These days I observe my own children navigating a similar landscape. I watch as they jockey between houses and allegiances. It seems even more complicated than when I was little. Do my girls spend time with my created family, their stepsister and our extended relatives or go to their Dad’s and be with their half brothers and stepmom?
I studied Art History in college. It was January of my sophomore year and I had to choose a major. Up to that point, I hadn’t really liked or more accurately, felt genuinely interested in anything. There’d been the sociology and psychology lectures, the African history symposium, French, Classic literature and a number of political science classes. But nothing had really sparked my curiosity until I’d signed up for a class on Cubism the previous semester. It was a small group, maybe ten or twelve students sitting around a large table. We delved into the roots of Cubism, the birth of modern art, looking through a historical lens, a painting lens and discovering how the writers, thinkers and visual artists all influenced one another. I was rapt. I felt alive. This was fascinating.
This is the week of giving, when we pause in our busy lives to be with family and friends, to honor them and to reflect on what we are thankful for.
This year, my older daughter will not be with us since she is in France (lucky her.) But as I write this and contemplate gratitude, I find myself thinking about something she said to me at the beginning of the year, in January.
She’d returned home from the store with a box of cards and walked into the kitchen where she announced that she was going to send thank you cards to everyone before she returned to school.
When I was 28, I moved back to the United States after living in Asia for over 6 years. I came with my toddler and my new husband, and that was about it. Money was tight.
That summer while living on the west coast, I’d planned on visiting my family in New York but had put off the trip until December when I was sure life would be more financially secure.
My Nana turned 91 that August and I wanted to see her again as well as enable her to hold her great granddaughter whom she’d met a year earlier.
From my earliest memories food was always there. I see my nana serving meatballs, me polishing off an entire plate of food and getting fifty cents, walking to the new Haagen-Dazs for a vanilla cone. Food was there when people weren’t. Food was there when we had to move again. Food was there and eventually it began to keep love out.
When I was in my early 20s, I was offered a job in sales and design for a manufacturer in Hong Kong. My office was in a factory located in an industrialized and severely polluted part of the territories. After arriving and settling in, I quickly realized that it wasn’t the job for me. They hardly had anything for me to do and had hired me primarily as a favor to my mother. Every day I sat at my desk in a windowless room pretending to work. It was pretty awful.
It’s really easy to get sucked into busy. I watch people race around corners, speed talk into their phones, order lunch while texting. And I confess, I’ve been addicted to busy too.
Not long ago I was a single mom of two, and then started a business. If that wasn’t enough, a few years after that I went back to school and then… Yes, the list continues but not for long because soon I’d blown my adrenals; too much stress.
Guess what that felt like? Like having a constant panic attack. Instead of feeling no energy, I felt even more anxious, stressed out and crazed. Fortunately, I had a health practitioner who diagnosed it and I didn’t end up on anti-anxiety medication, just adrenal supplements. Almost immediately I felt calmer.
Last week my 14-year old was being just that, a 14-year old. When I’d ask a question, I’d get a grunt or if I was lucky a one word answer. I knew in my heart that it wasn’t about me but as the days wore on and the behavior stayed the same I watched my tolerance expire.
Ram Dass says, “if you think you’re enlightened go live with your family for a week.” Most days I’m thankful for the lessons I’ve learned from my loved ones. But some days, I’d rather be left alone.
Recently I had an opportunity to examine my own judgment from a situation that occurred. In my opinion, one of my family members, let’s call him Dave, had intentionally hurt another human being. I was deeply bothered by this.
