Sunday evening, we facilitated a New Year’s Eve Celebration filled with music, message, prayer, meditation, and ritual. They were all aspects of a sacred evening called The Wholeness Resolution. The entire evening was an invitation to let go of the old year, 2023, and welcome in the new year, 2024, in a new way.
Traditionally, we may have created New Year’s Resolutions for ourselves. I believe that we typically make these resolutions from one of two places: either from our humanness, from a consciousness of victimhood or brokenness, from lack and limitation, from fear, or from “something is wrong and needs to be fixed”, trying to create solutions at the level of the problem. Or, if we have been in this teaching long enough, we create positive affirmations of that which we desire to be the experience of our lives, knowing that our thoughts are impressed upon a law that receives our words and manifests them in the material world. Yet, even these often come from old beliefs, from the ideas of Race Consciousness and from present paradigms in which we are stuck that do not allow for the allness of possibility.
On Sunday evening, I invited everyone to do something different: to powerfully step into a Wholeness Resolution.
In order to do this, the invitation is to know that the most important impress on our life is our awareness of Divine Presence in all things. Goodness is ever available to us, seeking to touch our lives in subtle and overt ways. We can choose to look beyond surface-level human perception and see the goodness everywhere, if we look and see with the perfect resolution of our spiritual eyes.
In order to do this, the invitation is to remind ourselves daily that we are one with God and to remain open, receptive, and responsive to Divine inspiration and guidance.
In order to do this, the invitation for each of us is not just to create New Year’s Resolutions that we may or may not keep, but to actually create a space for transformation for ourselves and our lives. Transformation literally means going beyond our form, either our physical form or the form of the experiences of our lives, such as our jobs, or our relationships, or our bank account. Beyond that which we can see, hear, touch, taste, or feel with our human perceptions. Transformation proclaims that no matter who we are, no matter what has already happened to us, no matter what we have done or have not done, it is still possible to be and do something new.
The underlying Truth is that everything we need to transform ourselves, our lives, and the world is within us. So how can we tap into that Power and Possibility and step into 2024 in a brand-new way?
Over the course of the evening, interspersed with all kinds of music, meditation and ritual, I shared three ideas.
My first idea is Gratitude. As we look back on the year just completed, the invitation is to give thanks for all of it: the good we experienced and the things that we wouldn’t necessarily name good. The invitation is to be grateful for all of it, both the blessings and the learning. Only as we have reconciled and befriended every aspect of the past year are we in a good space to accept the blessings of what is on its way to us.
My second idea is Release. Transformation involves the shedding of old ways, especially those that have become burdens. In our new year, we can choose to release our beliefs and actions that keep us stilted, those ideas about ourselves and our lives that inhibit us from living the fulfilled life that God desires for us. We can choose to stand in the awareness that the love, poise, and power of God are more authentic than our illusions or limitations. We are one with the same Power that created the Cosmos, the same life energy that has made everything we see and everything we cannot see. That’s our divine heritage, and that’s the reality of our yet-to-be’s this coming year. Lao Tzu says, “When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.”
My third idea is Rising Up. We can decide today that no matter what the situation, we will no longer give our power away, either to others or to our own emotions. We can decide today to rise above our stories and step into a new way of being in the world. Tonight, the invitation is to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that we have the power within us to transform. We can choose to die to the old and rise up out of the ashes. Despite the appearance or the experience of obstacles and adversity, the nature of Life is always to rise, expand, and evolve.
Our highest and best expression will emerge when the conditions are right, just like they do for everything else in nature. It is not our job to make it happen but to make it welcome. What I know is that as we do so in our own individual lives, within our families, and within our communities, our raised-up energy shifts the energy of those around us, inspiring them to rise up themselves. This is the technique, the fire, and the outcome of a wholeness resolution.
With all of the lessons learned and the wisdom gained over the last few years, we now have the opportunity to participate collectively in a grand rising. We have the freedom to shake off the years that have come before and step into our greatness. Join us next Sunday, as we begin a brand-new year, with a brand-new theme: The Grand Rising.
