Greetings my Winter Dreaming buddies,
We are now in week three of our Winter Dreaming Series. In our first week, we listened for a question that would guide this personal exploration time.
Then last week, we reviewed this year to get a sense of what unfolded for us. We travelled through each month, revealing the highlights and lowlights of our experiences. Then we translated our insights into a beautiful image that captured our remembering.
It is now time to clear space in our awareness for new dreams, yearnings, and intentions to arrive. We need to do a little housekeeping to be neat and tidy for next week when we enter the Dreaming Cave.
And so, this week, we will spend more time with the findings from our looking back over the year. There are two threads to this week’s activity. One strand is to decide what we no longer need, what no longer serves us and that we wish to let go. The second thread is to determine what to keep from this year, ready to weave this into our dreaming for 2022.
The Two Baskets Process
Imagine you have two baskets like the ones above. You will place anything you decide no longer serves you in one basket. These are the aspects of the year you are 'letting go.'
In the second basket, you will place elements of the year that still have energy for you. These are aspects you are 'carrying forward' and will weave into your dreams for 2022.
Below is a step by step process for creating your two baskets and what to do with each basket once you are complete.
Sit with the materials from last week, and look for themes that arise from your exploration.
Write down your insights on pieces of paper. Or you can use elements of nature to represent them (leaves, stones, sticks, acorns). Please have one item per insight.
Decide which basket the insight belongs in and place the notes or pieces of nature in their respective baskets.
Keep going until you feel there is nothing more to do.
Please take your time, be with Mother Earth if you can and let her wisdom guide you. Be gentle with yourself and try not to get caught in emotion. Trust that you are clearing space for the new to arrive and that the beauty from 2021 will travel with you.
What to do with your 'Letting Go' basket.
Once you feel complete, take your 'letting go basket' outside and give the items away to the natural world. You can bury them, place them in a river or the sea. You can give them to the fire if they are paper notes. Then, say a prayer or words to honour the experiences and the learning. You know that Mother Earth will take them and let them flow back to the Divine. Nothing is lost; all will be healed and returned to Source. It is all perfect, just as it is.
What to do with your 'Carrying Forward' basket
Place your' carrying forward basket' somewhere safe when you feel complete. Imagine placing the basket in a cool, calm, quiet place to rest for the time being. You will reconnect with the content in the basket in the New Year.
So that is us for now. I hope you enjoy this time of being with yourself and your life experiences from 2021. Below is a poem that I hope will inspire you.
Happy Festive Season, and if you are called, I would love to hear from you.
Ann
As You Go Through Life by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Don't look for the flaws as you go through life;
And even when you find them,
It is wise and kind to be somewhat blind
And look for the virtue behind them.
For the cloudiest night has a hint of light
Somewhere in its shadows hiding;
It is better by far to hunt for a star,
Than the spots on the sun abiding.
The current of life runs ever away
To the bosom of God's great ocean.
Don't set your force 'gainst the river's course
And think to alter its motion.
Don't waste a curse on the universe--
Remember it lived before you.
Don't butt at the storm with your puny form,
But bend and let it go o'er you.
The world will never adjust itself
To suit your whims to the letter.
Some things must go wrong your whole life long,
And the sooner you know it the better.
It is folly to fight with the Infinite,
And go under at last in the wrestle;
The wiser man shapes into God's plan
As water shapes into a vessel.