Destruction (not fun; very necessary)
At the beginning of this year, I meditated on what the year would bring, and pulled a card from Doreen Virtue’s Goddess Deck. (Side note: I have long been one of those people who would normally groan, “A GODDESS DECK? ARE YOU KIDDING ME?” But nonetheless, I loooove my Goddess Deck…and for what it’s worth, I have a relentlessly pragmatic streak that rides parallel to all of my “woo” inclinations).
Kali, goddess of endings and beginnings, sh*t-shaker who’s going to bust up the old, in order to to make way for the new.
Usually, pulling Kali scares me. She symbolizes everything getting thrown asunder before change can happen, and any time I’ve had life thrown into disarray, I’m like everyone else in that I kick and scream and resist–I want to hold on (tight) to my joy!
But this year, I felt excited. I felt excited for something new to be born, and I understood that when we want something new to grow in our lives, we’ve got to clear the space.
What Needs Room to Grow?
For something new to come in our lives, we often need a Kali moment where the old gets busted up, in order to make way for the new.
So what needs room to grow, in your life? In your relationships? In your business? With your health? With your finances?
Nothing can grow unless it’s got room. That’s why sometimes, we need to spring-clean our lives. Sometimes, it takes the pain of something getting intolerable–something about the system that favors some while oppressing others; something about one too many days of being like roommates in a marriage; something about feeling way, way too bogged down by tasks to feel any joy–that has you have your own “Kali moment.”
So what needs to be decluttered, before anything new will have room to grow? How much will you resist the “Kali moments” that come calling in your life?
Destruction: Make Your Stop-Doing List
Consider now, all of the things that have you actively feeling…kinda unhappy.
– The self-doubt and lack of confidence.
– The conflict in a friendship.
– The world not willing to take action around injustice.
– The ways in which you’re struggling with health or money or something else that feels really big and outta control.
Even though we can’t always control the circumstances, there’s usually at least something that we can shift in the area of our beliefs. Is there a belief in one of these areas that you’d like to have on your “Stop-doing list”? Like perhaps the belief that change isn’t possible?
Setting (Conscious) and Joyful Intentions
Setting a conscious, joyful intention doesn’t mean blindly reciting so-called “positive affirmations.” It means making a conscious choice–a decision–that you’re going to put your intentions in the direction of your hopes for a better future.
YES. This is really difficult to do, when you feel anything but joyful!
But really, what else are we going to do? Get pulled down by the world’s sorrows or our difficult days, to the point where we can’t help ourselves or anyone else?
I say, no way. Let’s declutter the doubt and the dismay. It has its place, yes. We need to feel. The process will not always be helpful. But at a certain point, keeping the heavy emotional stuff around that isn’t really helping us starts to become…just keeping heavy emotional stuff around. It’s neither a badge of honor nor helpful.
Let’s be willing to release the old, and sow seeds that can grow something ripe and rich. Let’s honor the past and all that it’s brought, and then let’s be as ruthlessly pragmatic as Kali, burning it all to the ground without any attachment or resistance, because that’s the cycle of things.