Happy New Year!
Have you made your New Year’s resolutions yet? No? Me either. Making resolutions just doesn’t excite me.
Why not try a new approach to the New Year? One that is marked by a New Moon in Capricorn, with the Sun, Pluto and Mercury also in Capricorn, especially appropriate for this New Year’s Eve, the occasion of a lunar eclipse of a Full Moon. Full Moons, and especially eclipses, according to astrologist, Stephanie Austin (insert link – www.EcoAstrology.com), are a call to us to release what is no longer serving our growth. Releasing what no longer serves us seems like a great way to start a New Year, personally and creatively.
There is a card in the tarot, the Four of Coins (or Pentacles), which usually shows a man holding four large gold coins tightly to his chest. This card is usually about being miserly, about holding on too tightly to what one has in order to maintain a sense of security, while also shutting oneself off from others (the coins cover the heart).
One day, however, when I was doing a reading for someone and the Four of Coins appeared, I suddenly realized that because this client was so worried about her financial security, she was holding on too tightly to her money so that the Universe couldn’t bring her the abundance she desired. Why? Because her arms, and her heart weren’t open to receiving more.
That reading and card were a big revelation for my client and me. It taught me that whenever I reach a point where I find myself holding too tightly to my resources, whether time, money, energy, or creativity, to stop and think. Am I making it impossible, out of my fear of not enough, for the Universe to bring me what I most desire or need because my arms (mental, spiritual, emotional or physical) are holding so tightly to what I already have that they are not open to receiving new gifts?
We really need to be alert to this in our creative lives where we might hold too tightly to our creative security that we don’t make room for new directions and expressions. For instance, if I still held tightly to my identity and success as a nationally recognized weaver, there wouldn’t room for my growth and work as a writer and creativity coach.
A writer, as another example, who has been very successful as a romance writer, has to release her grip on that secure identity and audience in order to dare writing fantasy.
We can’t make room for new gifts and opportunities if we can’t let go of some of the security of old gifts and ways of being. Your arms don’t have to be empty, but the Muse and the Universe respond when they are open to receive.
So, what I am doing this New Year’s instead of writing resolutions? I am looking at what in my studio and my life I am ready to let go of in order to empty my arms and make space for the gifts of the Muse and the New Year.
Once I have figured out what I need to let go of, then I can focus on what I’d like the Muse and the Universe to fill my arms with, creatively and otherwise.
So ask yourself: In order to nurture and increase my creativity this year, what do I need to let go of?
Then open your arms to embrace the adventure and gifts of the New Year. Let go to let in.