Mundanes often celebrate New Years by making lots of noise, drinking, hanging out with friends, looking back on the year and making promises to themselves of what they will do in the next year. And that's fine. But you're an intuitive, a meta now, someone who has intentionally begun to grow awareness of more than the physical, who has begun to heal their energy system as well, to grow up inside, to find personal power and a much greater sense of purpose. What do you do with New Years? Or is it just like any other day?
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The end of the year, and especially the last day of the year, is a great time to look back on the year you have just had and celebrate. To think back of everything that happened in 2011, to you personally, your growth, the people around you, and find gratitude for what you have gained, learned, experienced. Celebrate the new things you found, the old things you left behind, the people who supported and loved you and those who challenged you to step up and learn more. Review the most important things that happened this year and see how they affected you, what good came out of it, and don't forget the little things in life that are easy to overlook but that make it so beautiful and breathtaking to be alive.
While you do this, only focus on things you can honestly, with integrity and from your guts, feel good about and celebrate. Write them down, in as positive a language as you can manage. Instead of "I lost a lot of money", for example, you might change your feelings to "Because I lost a lot of money, I had a chance to learn asking for help, and trusting others to be there. It made me realise how many amazing people I had in my life."
The end of the year is also a wonderful time to look forward to the new year. You could try to make rules for yourself of things that you have to do in the new year to "be a better person", but you may well end up with frustration and disappointment in yourself for not following the rules you made, or doing it because you feel you should. It is more helpful to instead focus on what you want out of the year. Where to you want to be at this exact same time, December 31st, 2012? What do you want out of your personal development? What things do you want to have reached, grown into, achieved, learned, experienced? Who do you want to meet, where do you want to go? Find things you can get excited about, and that you really would like to have come to you in the next year. You can't plot a course and take steps forward if you don't know where it is you want to go. So spend a little time, and imagine all the things you want to have, and feel your excitement about them. Again, careful of the language, so instead of "I want to get away from my stupid parents and get out of this rathole town", change your feelings to "I want a chance to live on my own, to learn about independence and taking charge of my own life and to make my own decisions." It makes all the difference.
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So what do you do:
Before the year is over, if you can, do three things.
1) Make a list titled "For this year, I am grateful for: "
2) Make a list below that, titled ""For the coming year, I want: "
3) Put both in your journal, for yourself to review and for others to celebrate with you.
Spend some time on this, at least haIf an hour per list. You'll find quickly that there are so many things you hadn't even realised were amazing in your life, or that you didn't know you very much wanted until now. While you write it, feel it, make it real to you, more than just words on a page.
If you want, make a full body picture of yourself as well and add it to the rest. So that next year, you can look back, and see how far you've come in a year, what has changed, what hasn't, in which places you have grown, etc.
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To all my students and teachers, have a beautiful 2012. May you continue to grow in love and awareness, to keep showing the enthusiasm you have in this past year, your curiosity for sometimes strange new things, and your willingness to work to step up and take your place in this world.
Thank you to all of you. On my own list of things I am grateful for in this past year, you are at the top. I'm very aware that this school would be nothing without you guys. It is beautiful to see you grow over the time I've known you - some of you longer than others - to see you shake free of fears and find power, maturity, joy and heart. To see some of you suddenly get up, look around and say "Hey, wow, my life makes sense to me now!" or "Oh, I had no idea that I could do this, too, but I can and I like it!" To see others become amazing teachers in their own right and while doing so, finding approaches and solutions that I hadn't thought of before. It is perhaps the most beautiful thing for a teacher to see one of your own students come up with things you hadn't, to help people you didn't know how to, and I've seen especially Melanie do both of those this year. I've seen Inge continue to be strong and reliable even when she didn't feel it, always there to fall back on, to help out her teammates and students and her teacher, and I've seen her step up and be bigger than most even though that's a very scary thing to do. I've seen Maarten and Sytske go through a lot of trouble and pain in their own lives, pioneering new meta-paths that need exploring so we can better help current and future students, and then pull it together despite exhaustion and fears because there were students to be taught. And many of you who've been here for a long time, I've seen you continue to give us your patience, trust, even when you weren't progressing as fast as you'd have liked. I've seen the younger students come in with excitement and willingness to help, bringing us new perspectives, ideas, ways to fix some things that needed done or that we hadn't even considered yet. I've learned so much from all of you this year, both the ones who found success and the ones who had difficulty alike. From the first I learned what works, from the second I learned what needs fixing. Both are needed.
We've changed a lot this year, and I realise it's not been easy on most of you. There's still a whole lot to be done, and we're working on it. For the coming year, I want to give you all your own proper journals, blog style, so you can organise your thoughts and talk about your experiences more easily (with tags, filters, etc). I want you all to have access to our tools, or at least pictures of them, as they come in. To be able to hear all the Angel Audios, and ask him your own questions. To finally make our signup process work better, to get all the text on the site that needs to be there, to give you a class environment where you can easily see where you're at in the process, what your next class is, to make notes, message fellow students and teachers... We've got plans on the technical front, and we'll find a way to make them happen this year. We'll continue to do our very best to be there for all of you, to help, to teach, to encourage you to grow and to guide you to finding your own integrity and power.
We're in for a ride this year, but from here on, it'll only get easier, lighter and more fun. Stick together, support and love each other, trust, ask for help when you need it, and go with the flow, because it's taking us somewhere amazing.
I'm looking forward to sharing 2012 with all of you. Happy New Years, and have some fun tonight
With love,
Rohaa
