Which comes first, the beginning or the ending?
I've heard the saying that in each ending there is a new beginning, and in each new beginning, there is an ending.
This past cycle of seven or so years has been a challenging one for many people, including those 'walkers of the horizon's edge' -- the visionaries and Lightworkers who are planting the seeds and doing the clearing to 'be the change' for a new era of how we approach life, work, and interrelatedness with others, with the world, with the Earth, with the cosmos.
Many people planted the seeds of new visions and ventures early on in this cycle, near or in the few years after the new millennium. And for many, including me, the shift from 'the old' and the birthing of 'the new' has seemed a slow, often uncertain, and sometimes perilous experience.
There seemed to be steps of progress, only to be followed by a seeming tidal pull backwards, or times of getting stuck in the mud of a receding tide.
Many people gave birth to their ideas and created bold and wonderful ventures, only to experience frustration and blockages -- seen and unseen -- at every turn. Like sweeping water up a hill, or walking upstream against a very strong current.
As we know, these are times of radical change; the proverbial 'sea change'. Everything is moving. Of course, that's always been the case, yet there seems to be both a new dynamism in the cosmos and our Earth energy, affecting even our experience of 'time and space' and our conception of 'reality'. Forms take shape, only to dissolve and reshape themselves. Quick silver.
What do we hold onto, as creators, manifestors, harbingers and embodiers of the new era, for whom 'being the change' requires 'doing the change' and being subject to its seeming whims. We learn to walk on water, metaphorically, or ever-shifting sands. We learn to become facile with that quick-silver, to create and dance with that which holds no one shape for very long. We learn to cultivate a new comfort with what the poet David Whyte calls, "the fierce edges of Life."
And what of the forms that we created when we approached these wonderful ideas with the beliefs, mindsets, and ways of understanding and creating we had seven or more years ago? The forms that we had such high, and specific, expectations for? These may have been relationships, projects, homes, businesses, or life directions that we thought would last forever, or at least for a long while.
It's hard to release things we've given birth to and fertilized with such love, energy, time, effort, compromise, and hope. The tendrils and roots of it sink deep, so it takes time and patience and compassion -- self-compassion -- for us to clear it systemically ... to really let it die and let it go. After having faith challenged, it can require a real leap of faith to trust that we can let 'the old' pass, die, or 'transform' from one energy 'body' to a new and fresher one. Energy shape-shifts, even as we've been fully indoctrinated into a belief that form lasts.
Regardless of what specific new 'shapes' are being conceived, germinated, and born now, the old cycle is at its end. We must put to use all of the skills we've studied and practiced, and weave this into our practice.
In fact, practice becomes the way, just as it opens us to the Way. What wants to be born, what wants to gain a new momentum, can't fully do so until the past cycles are completed and old constructs -- mental, emotional, physical, and even spiritual -- are released or transformed.
If you have a major ending, a major cycle to complete and allow to 'die', perhaps you might 'borrow' a 'rock ritual' that I did recently to mark a very significant ending, and also the pearls of a new cycle beginning.
Though it is only one ritual in a whole practice of releasing, it was powerful.
Find a rock that symbolized your tight bond with it as a being, an entity that you'd conceived and given birth to, and breaking it, burying that which is time to 'let die' and release back to Mother Earth, and keeping that part that represents the gifts, the pearls, and the Wisdom that can move forward with you.
As with the major 'endings' that came with the closing of a recent life chapter -- which included several things to which I'd given years and years of commitment, nourishing, time, energy, effort, and tears, it seemed vital for me to release it, and also to allow that the past cycle and its manifestations -- its forms -- had other priorities and experiences intended for me; they weren't forms to remain in place forever, never changing.
I had to release my own struggle with it -- how it should have been, how it could have been, what else I might have done, what was done, and so on. It's taken more than a few rituals and release works and retrievals.
The good news is that endings come bundled with a coupon for a shiny, bright new beginning. A new cycle -- as you know, it has started, and will grow in the 'compost' of the past one.
Allow yourself some 'cave time' -- specific spaces of time for releasing, ritual, prayer, meditation, contemplation, journaling, creativity, movement, rejuvenation, and visioning.
Consider doing a transition vision-plan, which won't be so much the 'strategic plan' of the past era, which assumes that nothing will change or shift.
Rather, work with your inner-guidance (and Divine guidance, if that is your Way), to open to a vision, guiding intentions, or 'vision seed' ideas or insights for your emerging cycle. Make a date with them; play with them; dance with them; let them into your mind and body.
These practices -- and a willingness to be open in the face of change and the unknown -- will allow new things to be born into the space created and cleared. It will allow the momentum to begin anew. As with Spring's blossoms that make their start deep within Winter's embrace, the new beginning is already begun.
Blessings, and lots of Joy.
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