It’s November. The year is about to be over...done...finished...gone. How do you say goodbye to 2011? How do you discover the inner meaning of 2011? How do you prepare for 2012?
Each year you evolve. You become something you weren’t last year.
Some of your evolution is intentional and some is unintentional. But if you don’t take time to review your year as the unfolding of a new you, how do you know yourself? How do you know what you mean when you say I am?
How do you SEE yourself?
How do you CELEBRATE yourself?
How do you MAKE WISE CHOICES about the coming year?
Are you PREPARED TO BECOME new, different, more mature, more self-compassionate, more creative in the coming year?
INNER ADVENT is a program that guides you in saying goodbye to the old year. It provides an organized approach to looking at your inner evolvution and understanding the meaning of your year with creative compassion. It cleans up your soul and prepares your inner life for becoming new, for a another year of evolving. It creates a sweet emptiness, a manger in your soul.
It will take time to realize the meaning of your year. The webinar is 60-90 minutes each week. Your selfwork of journalling, creating your Inner Advent mandala (not a work of art but a self-illuminating artistic representation of your year - no critiquing, just wondrous and courageous self-expression) will take your attention and your effort - 2-10 hours over the four weeks. Optional partnering calls could be another 30-60 minutes each week.
Is your Inner Advent worth this much of your precious time? Will you be happier? More peaceful? More grounded? More alive? More awake to your self? Yes, yes, yes!
Will you find more true freedom to be and become yourself? Yes.
Will you find more love? For yourself? for others (even the difficult others)? for the world? for the future? for the past? for the moment? Yes.
Inner Advent, like all the Imagine Self, Inner Year and Inner Life programs, is a serious, profound and mysterious spiritual practice. It also offers moments of true joy when the experience of your evolving I AM sings in harmony with the evolving Cosmos.
Inner Advent is part of a spiritual curriculum for finding, knowing and becoming yourself.
How do you find yourself in all the events and circumstances of the year?
How do you recognize yourself with confidence and authority? What was authentically YOU in your thoughts, feelings and deeds?
How did you evolve, become new, more mature? What new truth lived in your thoughts? What new beauty formed in your feelings? How did goodness pour out from your actions? What happened to your soul over the year?
The cosmic rhythm of your inner year wakes up to these questions and finds their answers during the last few weeks before the Solstice and the Nativity - your soul's Inner Advent.
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Lessons from an Old Stove
My landlord finally agreed to replace the old stove. We had been living for six weeks without a working oven. The delivery men had arrived with the new stove and were removing the old one. And I was about to have a spiritual lesson from a piece of junk.
This stove was over 20 years old and I had been living with it for less than two months. Now useless junk, I watched it being wheeled out through the backdoor.
Suddenly, I began to think/feel about all the people, all the human souls, that had been connected to the stove:
I did not know any of these individuals personally, but we had a connection through this metal object.
Rudolf Steiner said we must materialize spirit and spiritualize matter. I share this wisdom often in my writing and teaching. How often do I apply it in my life?
But these thoughts about the old stove, put this wisdom into practice and it felt very good to my soul. I wasn’t being sentimental: I was being morally awake. I was recollecting the human meaning, purpose and significance, and honoring the numerous human connections living in an old appliance. I was spiritualizing matter.
It took me less 20 seconds to think the thoughts and feel the feelings. but I have spent a number of minutes sharing the experience with others and now I am taking about 30 minutes to write this post. About 3000 people will read this post and some will be inspired to think spiritually and morally about the mundane things in their lives.
Yes, the stove is now on a waste pile somewhere along with thousands of other discarded, useless objects. It is part of the ecological challenge of waste. But energetically something spiritually dynamic is living in my consciousness and now in yours. The stove that was used to feed bodies, fed my soul with insight and my heart with awe for all the human initiative and connection that came together around this appliance over its “usetime.”
You might want to make it a spiritual practice whenever you throw something out to momentarily bring your attention to its relationship to the engagement of so many human souls, the thoughts, feelings, and initiatives, surrounding its existence.
What also happened in those few seconds of honoring the old stove and its role in the human community, was the preparation for the new stove.
We took a few minutes and some focused energy to clean the stove space (twenty years of other people’s spills and ant traps, etc.) The new stove was installed into a place that was clean and prepared.
Always have a thoughtful moment when you say goodbye. Always put some thought into preparing for the new.
Reminder: We are approaching Inner Advent when you bring your inner attention to saying goodbye to your old year and preparing for the new. To learn about Inner Advent click here.
This stove was over 20 years old and I had been living with it for less than two months. Now useless junk, I watched it being wheeled out through the backdoor.
Suddenly, I began to think/feel about all the people, all the human souls, that had been connected to the stove:
- All the people who worked for the manufacturer who made it, the appliance dealer who sold it to the building contractor and the guy that installed it. How many individuals had been involved in bringing the stove into the house it was now leaving?
- All the people whose bodies had been nourished by the food cooked on the stove. I have no idea how many people have lived in this house but over 20 years as many as 20,000 meals could have been prepared using the stove.
I did not know any of these individuals personally, but we had a connection through this metal object.
Rudolf Steiner said we must materialize spirit and spiritualize matter. I share this wisdom often in my writing and teaching. How often do I apply it in my life?
But these thoughts about the old stove, put this wisdom into practice and it felt very good to my soul. I wasn’t being sentimental: I was being morally awake. I was recollecting the human meaning, purpose and significance, and honoring the numerous human connections living in an old appliance. I was spiritualizing matter.
It took me less 20 seconds to think the thoughts and feel the feelings. but I have spent a number of minutes sharing the experience with others and now I am taking about 30 minutes to write this post. About 3000 people will read this post and some will be inspired to think spiritually and morally about the mundane things in their lives.
Yes, the stove is now on a waste pile somewhere along with thousands of other discarded, useless objects. It is part of the ecological challenge of waste. But energetically something spiritually dynamic is living in my consciousness and now in yours. The stove that was used to feed bodies, fed my soul with insight and my heart with awe for all the human initiative and connection that came together around this appliance over its “usetime.”
The Spiritual Practice of Saying Goodbye to Things
You might want to make it a spiritual practice whenever you throw something out to momentarily bring your attention to its relationship to the engagement of so many human souls, the thoughts, feelings, and initiatives, surrounding its existence.
What also happened in those few seconds of honoring the old stove and its role in the human community, was the preparation for the new stove.
We took a few minutes and some focused energy to clean the stove space (twenty years of other people’s spills and ant traps, etc.) The new stove was installed into a place that was clean and prepared.
Always have a thoughtful moment when you say goodbye. Always put some thought into preparing for the new.
Reminder: We are approaching Inner Advent when you bring your inner attention to saying goodbye to your old year and preparing for the new. To learn about Inner Advent click here.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)