I think the reason some of us fall short (or at least why I often fall short) is because I / we try to cram everything we want to change into a single list without really thinking about what it will take to make that list a reality.
A second (but related) reason we don't succeed, in my opinion, has to do with the word resolution itself. A resolution - something we resolve to do - suggests a serious commitment, a pledge or even a vow. And pledges and vows, like sacred quests, are destined to succeed or fail.
I didn't realize that until I wrote my previous New Year's post but, when I did, the more I thought about it the more it made sense. I realized that, because there is no halfway point to a resolution, progress doesn't mean much of anything. And so, if we over-estimate ourselves and can't complete our resolutions, our only option is failure.
Since I don't want to feel like I've failed in 2016, I'm doing things differently by setting several new Year's goals and only one do or die resolution. The resolution is to publish a book. The goals include changes I'd like to make in my health, my home, my career and even my garden over the course of the year.
For each large goal I have set one or two realistic, smaller or short term goals I feel pretty sure I can handle.
Becoming more self-sufficient means a rain barrel this spring and building a small hen house over the summer. It does not mean we are going off the grid in 2016 (or ever).
Setting an expectation for home remodeling means that I'll keep on plugging and that I want to have the front hall finished by the end of the winter. It means I'll look at the kitchen project over the summer and decide if we are going to be able to build new custom cabinets then (or in 2017). It does not mean that everything will be (or, in an old house, even can be) complete.
Improving my health means the same thing it means every year but because I'm going to focus on the small things (e.g. some exercise everyday whether that's at the gym or in the garden) I think I will finally learn to accept that this is a long haul, change your life kind of endeavor.
And this is what I like about goals. We can say we are going in a specific direction (our goal) and then set meaningful check points between here and there. If we don't get to the goal but manage to arrive at those intermediate points, we know we're on our way to something better.
Still, there is something about setting a resolution that has always appealed to me. Resolutions are big meaningful things. Resolutions are grand and honorable and brave. They may be a little over dramatic at times but there is something about declaring your resolve that can very inspiring.
Because of this I just can't let any New Year go without making one.
For me, a resolution is a commitment to get something done. It doesn't matter how you do it or even necessarily when (as long as it's completed by next New Year's Eve, of course). What matters is finishing, honoring your word, and feeling proud. A laundry list of New Year's resolutions diminishes that enormous thing you are going to be so proud of when it is finally done (and makes it a lot less likely that you'll succeed).
My 2016 resolution is writing and publishing a book. Going on record here with that great big declaration is an important first step. But there are a lot of other steps too and that's okay because I've made a promise to myself that I'll get it done.
My resolution advice for the New Year?
If you have a list of resolutions, pull that list out and pick the one that makes your heart beat. The one that scares you. The one that makes you feel proud. This is one you will commit to doing - no matter what.
The rest are your goals. Break them down into smaller pieces and add a few dates. Don't give up on them when the going gets tough but prepared to revisit them and adjust things if you find that you've over-estimated your stamina or free time.
You can (and should) create a plan for your resolution just like you did for your goals It can have a number of action steps and, if your first step is figuring out just how you are going to succeed, that's okay too. Because you know that whatever it takes, that one proud thing is going to happen. No matter what.
Wishing Everyone Success and Good Fortune in the New Year <3
Barbara
Last Weekend I attended the Order of Bard, Ovates and Druids East Coast Gathering in Milford PA and it was a lot of fun!
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| Damh the Bard Inspiring Me to Reclaim the Pen of Fiction! |
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| Kristoffer Hughes offering wonderful insights on the legacy of Iolo Morganw. |
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| The Ritual Tent |
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| The Scrying Center |
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| Make Your Own Amulet Station |
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| Ritual Tent: Fabricated and Constructed by a Member of the Order |
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| Ritual Area |
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| The Path Into the Woods |
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| Love the Idea of Stewardship! |
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| Walking in the Woods |
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| The Raptor Show Begins! I believe this guy is the Red-Tailed Hawk. |
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| Close Up of an Owl |
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| Meeting a Golden Eagle! |
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| Still water. |
This summer was beautiful and bright and busy. In just a couple of months, I helped build a fence, planted a garden, remodeled a pantry, and took a relatively public step in the direction of my own earth-centered path.
In between those well-planned, over-sized events came a host of smaller and more spontaneous experiences - the feel of the dew on the grass, the sound of the wind coming down off the mountain, the moon lighting up the soft summer sky, the scent of fresh earth, the heat of garden, the taste of tomatoes straight off the vine - and somehow those small things ended up staying with me in a way that the big things do not.
Thesepics chronicle my summer in big ways and small.
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| Spaghetti squash, strawberries, tomatoes, cukes, peppers and beans fresh from our garden. |
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| Fence phase two with our yard and garden on the other side (plus neighbors pool). Phases 3 & 4 are done too! |
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| Pantry in progress. |
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| Pantry now.. Hard to see in the sunlight but cabinets are a pretty pale green. |
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| The full summer Moon and possibly Venus. |
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| My little dog on the way to the park. |
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| Path alongside the lake. |
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| A window into the woods. |
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| A friend overhead. |
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| Summer sunset complete with crescent Moon and Venus.. |
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| Our solstice fire doused by the rain at the end of the day! |
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| Fence phase one (side yard) is complete! |
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| Working the psychic fair at Inner Peace. |
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| My new friend come to hang out. |
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| Herb garden growing. |
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| Our beautiful berries. |
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| The top of the mountain behind our house. |
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| Talking to spirit people at a country cemetery. |
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| Salad fresh from our garden. |
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| The start of the herb garden. |
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| Ready for summer! |
Just wanted to let everyone know that I'm going to be offline for several weeks due to tenosynovitis (inflamed tendon) of my right hand : ( So aside from the occasional social media post (being handled by a friend) I won't be communicating electronically at all.
Not being able to write or type for an extended period is a bit daunting and I can't help wondering how I will manage. I hope I will benefit from the electronic and paper hiatus. I hope I'll enjoy all the wonderful mostly hands free things that I love (like reading and researching) and get deeper into activites that I don't get to do as much as I'd like - like meditating and psychic development and dream work and astral projection and sitting in the garden and watching the sky.
So on one hand I'm looking forward to the break and on the other I'm panicking.
I'm panicking because I'm a writer and I love writing. I love typing. I love blogging. I love writing copy. I love early morning longhand journaling. I love penciling in notes, very neatly, in the margins of books. I love notebooks and journals and paper. I love making lists and checking things off as I navigate the day. I have dozens of places to write and hundreds of things to write about.
Being disconnected from all of that will be strange but maybe it will liberating as well.
How will I hold up? Your guess is as good as mine but I will let you know hopefully sometime in August!
I celebrated the Solstice with some wonderful friends in one of the loveliest settings you could imagine. The weather was questionable to begin with, but we were thrilled to see the overcast morning turn into a beautiful sunny afternoon with just the right amount of wind. Between the solstice fire and the pond was a wide expanse of green, where dogs played and humans exchanged tarot card readings and friendship.
As part of our solstice ceremony, each of us was given the opportunity to place an offering in the fire. Mine was mugwort and sage donated by a dear friend, a handful of rose petals from my garden, a fortune cookie message I found resonant on a half-forgotten difficult day and a hand written commitment to the things I mean to accomplish between this solstice and the next. Standing before the fire I released all the fear and insecurity I could muster and prepared myself for the new energy to come.
The rain held out until our gathering was about to close, then fell full-force, dousing our fire and rushing our goodbyes. Thinking about the day later in the evening, it occurred to me that each of the elements had been especially well-represented. This, I thought, has meaning.
Committed to my new journey and direction, I had approached this solstice as a student, reading about the old ways and the Wiccan connection between the Summer Solstice and the journey of the god. But I didn't want to approach Midsummer in terms of a single element or the masculinity of the solstice sun and in the end I didn't. Instead I experienced the living dance of wind and fire, the steady containment of the earth, the falling, clearing curtain of rain, and the sacred alchemy of fire and water.
This Memorial Day Weekend we watched a wonderful movie called Above and Beyond
. It was about the fighter pilot volunteers - some Jewish, some not - who flew for Israel in its 1948 war for independence. These were men who survived World War II and then continued to serve, risking both their lives and their American citizenship to so. A truly amazing story!
. It was about the fighter pilot volunteers - some Jewish, some not - who flew for Israel in its 1948 war for independence. These were men who survived World War II and then continued to serve, risking both their lives and their American citizenship to so. A truly amazing story!
Recent Journal Entry
To give you an idea of what I write in my journal, here is an excerpt from last weekend's journal entry.
I'm listening to Celtic music as I journal. It's early Saturday and all the windows are open and there is rain in the air. The point of journaling for me is to find peace. Not necessarily to examine my life or arrive at some great stream-of-consciousness insight - though there are times when those things happen. I have Welsh and Irish and Scottish in my family tree and this music touches me in a place other music does not. So it may be that it's time to chase beauty and peace instead of knowledge and skill. At least some of the time, anyway. And it says something, I think, that when I listen to this music and write from that quiet place inside, I tear up. Every time. Last night, shadows moved in my room and sleep eluded me. But this morning, here I am on the page.
It's not great writing. But it is the kind of writing I could only do with pen and paper because, for me, typing out my inner thoughts just isn't the same. We are more likely to read as we type. Which makes us more likely to edit or censor.
That doesn't happen with typing fiction necessarily, but it does happen, for me anyway, with nonfiction.
Fast, sloppy stream of consciousness writing makes it possible for me to reach a place I don't get to with other writing. Sometimes, this place is peaceful. Other times, it is sad. But I almost always feel better after I've been there.
To me, the music is key and Celtic music moves me like no other.
One of the songs I listened to (a Celtic version of St. Hildegard Von Bingen's O Frondens Virga (Oh, Flowering Stem) by NóirÃn Nà Riain:
I am in the last weeks of the Practical Astral Projection Intensive offered by famed astral projectionist and author of Astral Dynamics: The Complete Book of Out-of-Body Experiences Robert Bruce.
We had been asked to observe our hypnagogic imagery (visions that come to us when we're in between sleep and wakefulness) at night before we went to sleep. So on this particular night I was observing the darkness behind my closed lids when I begin to feel a lot of vibration / pins and needles over my whole body but especially in my hands which were clasped over my stomach.
Vibrations are a known precursor to astral projection or out of body experience and a sign the course has taught us to look for. In the beginning of the course (and at periods throughout my life) I found the vibrations a little overwhelming but at the time of this event we were several weeks into the class and I had learned how to relax into them. And so I just let myself experience the sensation.
As relaxed I began to feel my vibrating hands lifting slowly but steadily up into the air. I knew my flesh and bone hands weren't lifting because I was motionless and relaxed (and not making any effort to move) but I really couldn't feel them - I was aware of my vibrating floating hands, instead. Or, to be more precise - as I remember it, they were still vibrating, but I am quite sure that these vibrating (or energetic hands) were floating.
I didn't try to force anything else into happening and then the hypnagogic imagery came back and I saw a desk - possibly my own but with different items on it (I think) - from the perspective of the person sitting at it. I have a vague memory that it had interesting things on it - possibly a crystal ball which I do have but not on my desk. I also had a sense of a room beyond that but it seemed dark.
Unlike my usual clear and bright hypnagogic imagery this visual was muted and dim but there was detail and it seemed fairly real. Also, I noticed that it was 'to scale' whereas most of my hypnagogic images seem quite small - for reasons I don't really understand.
Seeing the desk seemed to signal the end of the experience - possibly because, as I recall, my hands were no longer vibrating - so I turned over and jotted down what happened in my dream journal. And was too excited to go back to sleep for some time!
Said Julius Cesar of the Celts:
“The principal point of their doctrine is that the soul does not die and that after death it passes from one body into another..... the main object of all education is, in their opinion, to imbue their scholars with a firm belief in the indestructibility of the human soul, which, according to their belief, merely passes at death from one tenement to another; for by such doctrine alone, they say, which robs death of all its terrors, can the highest form of human courage be developed.”
But I do think that there is something of the energy of that time which remains in the natural world. And that may be why the dreams and visions that tied me to that past seem valid in a way that clocks and calendars do not. And so, for me, the old holiday, Imboc, isn't history. It is a place on the wheel of the year and the turning cycle dark and light and every place on that wheel has meaning.
Outside my office window, here in Northeast PA, the snow fell all through the night and into the morning. The sky above the mountains is a light silvery gray and if the sun is lost behind the pale clouds. But I know that it is there somewhere and I know it's returning because of this marker, this holiday, this space in time.
Imbolc is the traditional feast of the Celt goddess Brighid. A goddess of both fire and water who is revered as a Catholic saint. As a goddess, she represented creativity, fertility, healing and light. In the role of the light-bringer she reminds us that this circle will continue to turn.
This Imbolc I will shovel new snow and water the Moon Flowers I planted on Alban Arthan and light a candle for Brighid and the return of the light.
I'm very excited to announce that I will be starting Robert Bruce's five week online astral projection course (The Practical Astral Projection Intensive) this week!
So I'll posting more on the Astral Dynamics course, Bruce's method, the practice of astral projection (or out of body experience / OBE), and my own experience with the material.
My own (possible) out-of-body experience to date has originated in the dream state. I believe that I've experienced other realities and met with family and friends who have passed in my dreams. According Bruce, this is not unusual.
Robert Bruce maintains that we all access the out-of-body state during dreams but that recalling these inter-dimensional experience is difficult due to what he terms the "mind-split effect."
The mind-split theory, as described in Bruce's book Astral Dynamics: The Complete Book of Out-of-Body Experiences, describes a process of splitting or replicated our consciousness, creating a sort of energetic double which is free to travel the astral dimension. The other part of our consciousness, or master copy, remains with our physical body.
While the mind-split effect may sound fantastic, I find it an interesting explanation for our tendency to forget our dreams. I often have a sense of reintegration when waking up from a dream. For a few magical moments, my dream experience hovers on the edge of my awareness. If I don't get to my dream journal fast enough, I can actually feel the memory of my dream dissolving into thin air.
For me, these dream memories are fundamentally different than ordinarymemory. Ordinary memories may get lost (or misfiled) but once retrieved they are quite stable. They don't hover, in my experience, and I have never had one dissolve just beyond the edge of waking consciousness.
Bruce calls such memories shadow memory, remarking that they are subtle and easily overridden by waking consciousness. If not "downloaded" to physical memory, usually within a few moments of waking, they are, often irretrievably, lost.
My spiritual (or nonphysical experiences) so feels fundamentally different from ordinary experience. Dreams and other nonphysical / spiritual experience are subtle, fragile, mutable. So it isn't surprising to me, that the mental processes that occur in this state would take on these same characteristics.
According to Bruce, where most of us "fail" in our deliberate out of body exploration is at the point of re-entry when we may drift into sleep without downloading our memories into the long-term (or relatively stable) storage of our of physical mind.
To me this is encouraging. Astral exploration is not, per Robert Bruce, a pinnacle attainable to a select few but a place we all frequent, albeit unknowingly, and one which we are all capable of bringing into our conscious awareness. This week I'll be working on improving my dream recall using the affirmations and shadow-memory trigger phrases mentioned in Astral Dynamics, as well as working on increasing my awareness (and recall) of the hypnogogic imagery I routinely see as I drift off to sleep.
The information I've shared in this post is only part of Bruce's approach and the Practical Astral Projection Intensive which I am beginning. The major focus of Astral Dynamics is the energy work which helps to strengthen the energy body (or double) and promote the awareness of this other self which makes conscious OBE possible. And the course explores all of this and more.
I'll be sharing more on my experience with the material as I progress through the course. And do please keep in mind that this course start tomorrow and that enrollment is still open at: Practical Astral Projection Intensive! Would love to see you there <3
There is no getting around it - here in the northeast, winter is our darkest season. The days are short and the nights are long and our precious daylight hours are often dimmed by overcast skies or falling snow.
This is why cultures all around the world choose the midpoint of the season to remember and celebrate the light. We're drawn to these celebrations because there is something about the light shining in the darkness that speaks to us deep within our soul.
Now, for most of us, our seasonal celebrations are drawing to close. And it's not unusual to feel a drop in energy (and optimism) when this time comes.
This week, as I put away my decorations, I'm opening my curtains, burning my holiday candles and thinking of new and different ways of honoring the light. And it occurs to me that a hearth fire would be the perfect thing. I don't have a fireplace in this house but I do have an idea.
When my son and I built the shelves in the living room we left a place for a TV. Over time however we realized that having a TV in the den was enough for us and that listening to music is a better living room activity. So we moved the TV out.
I tried to fill the space with a few crystals and candles but it didn't really work. So my idea is to make this spot my "hearth" creating a focal point of light and warmth that will reflect the energy of fire into my interior space.
I tried to fill the space with a few crystals and candles but it didn't really work. So my idea is to make this spot my "hearth" creating a focal point of light and warmth that will reflect the energy of fire into my interior space.
I'll be doing this with a large mirror (donated by my son) and all the candles I can find. A bit of green would be nice, too.
Hopefully I'll have pics of my new honoring the light "hearth" by the end of the weekend - so please do check back. Until then, remember that, just like the moon flower, the seeds of summer have taken root and will soon began to bloom <3
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Everyone loves a cozy
winter night gathered around the fireplace or bundled up in an afghan in
the warm glow of candle or Christmas lights. Warmth is comfort at this time of year and many of us take extra steps to keep out the cold by weatherizing doors and windows.
When
it comes to our heating bills these steps make sense. But there is a
flip side to creating barriers against the season. Weather tight homes
don't "breath" leading to stale indoor energy and that familiar closed
in feeling called cabin fever.
This winter I'm working hard to break up stale energy and open the channels that allow environmental energies to flow by clearing, cleaning and organizing my space.
In the days leading up to New Year's Eve, I worked hard on my bedroom and kitchen. When I was done with the bedroom, I hung the wind chime (left) from the inside corner of my bed to help move and clear any stagnant energies - and honor the element of air.
Wind chimes are a classic Feng Shui fix and they really do work. Another thing I love, whenever I turn over in bed I hear a delicate tinkling chime!
I do have more to do but I feel that I'm off to a good start for 2015. Now to work on my resolutions :)
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