It was quite cold for the past couple of weeks, with enough snow to use my snowshoes. I love this weather as does Carlie. She has certain ‘snow games’ she loves to play which include digging for her green ball and jumping to catch the snow I kick. Lucy has aptly named this game ‘kick snow’. Carlie’s life purpose is about living our joy. It’s not a goal she has – it’s an innate attunement to a way of being in her world. It’s part of her expressed consciousness and intentionality!

As a new year begins and our hopes are ignited for a better 2018, Carlie and Rayna (Carlie’s dog sister), as well as my professional training and spiritual practice, call me to live the lessons I have learned, and they teach me. Although 2017 has just ended, our lives are continuing and will be an extension of the past year!

This ritual of starting a ‘new year’ is a celebrative invitation

to come back to our soul’s focus, to our purpose and dreams,
to our vision of what we want our lives to mean and to be about,
to what we hope and aspire to experience in this year,
to bring forward the best of who we are and what we love to do.

It is also an opportunity to release what is now finished. An opportunity to lay down the burdens that keep us from ‘lightly’ walking our life’s path. Not everything from 2017 and before is relevant to this present time. Let it go with blessing and gratitude.

The ‘spirit of joy’ of this New Year can be a blessing of hope, of aspirations and of new intentions for changing toward our preferred future and who we hope to be. To take full advantage of this ‘celebrative spirit’ which currently inspires us, we need to co-create with and absorb this ‘spirit of joy’ into our New Year’s hopes and wishes for a finer year.

As I watch how Carlie and Rayna embrace everyday moments, and I apply the best of what I have learned, I have chosen to share a few ways to accelerate your path to joy or your heart’s intentions for this year —

1. Clarify your vision of what you REALLY, REALLY desire in your heart … for how you would love and cherish to live your life. Communicate it to those who can help you. Be grateful for what you already have done or accomplished. Bring these timeless blessings with you.

2. In heart meditation, contemplation or centering prayer, listen with open and softened mind to your inner wisdom for the ‘intentions’ that will serve to influence and shape your actions and choices toward your vision. Choose only those intentions that have the power to truly influence your actions and choices when the challenges to revert to old habits are in full gear. Your intention/s must absolutely matter to you.

• They need to be Life-Giving and Life-Affirming
• They need to be Genuinely Personal to Your Heart
• They need to Provide Power, Love and Strength to You in your Present Reality – Enough to Transform Your Attitude, Belief, Habits, Emotional, Motivation, etc
• You Can, Will and Do Emotionally Commit to Living your Intention Because the Outcomes and the Path to the Outcomes are Precious Blessings.

3. Identify your current resources to get started in living your intention. Resources often include your skills abilities and talents, your contacts/network/support, your financial resources, your inner inspiration or aspirations. Carlie has learned to keep track of her toys and what she treasures. For me, when I want to learn something new or accomplish something, I first clarify what I need and then look around at those in my life and see who has what would be useful to me, or who has the contact that I need.

4. Identify where you need help to gather and put in place the resources you need and ASK FOR HELP. Both Carlie and Rayna are confident in asking for what they need. They trust their needs are important and will be listened to respectfully and appropriately. Carlie will give a single bark to let me know a toy is someplace where she needs help to get it. In this past year, I have brought new people on my ‘best life’ team, released others and maintained those who remain dear and wise and ‘useful’ to me.

5. Daily Ask your Inner Guidance three core questions as you connect to your life vision:

What would I love to do today to serve the greater well-being?
What do I need today to love and be loved?
What is love calling me to become or do or be aware of in my world today?

6. Take inspired and informed action. Carlie has learned skills and behaviour that support her pursuit in living joyfully and exuberantly. Likewise, when I ask for guidance and listen to my intuition, remaining attuned to the power and light of my intention, the action presents itself. It is up to me to follow through on the action, and often the action is a behaviour I have already learned, but need to apply in a new situation.

What I have learned over the years is that for me, truly inspiring intentions toward my vision of a more peaceful world, where all beings are healthy, happy, prosperous and at peace (thus justice and kindness are core values of our common humanity and determine our relationships with all of life) are the catalyzers for my change. Whether it’s through a spiritual word which focuses and empowers me, or a soul expressed intention which expands and informs my actions, these simple and yet powerful words carry me gently, cleanly and synchronistically beyond my familiarities toward the reality of my vision well lived.

This is a Goddess way of living for me. I have a vision that grows, changes and evolves as my soul awakens, evolves and grows. I have core intentions that attune me to my True Self. My goals arise out of these intentions and vision from deep within me. My intention for 2018 inspires me and continues to support my vision to love and be loved, to be peace and act for peace. My actions are beginning to naturally flow from these heart inspired intentions to live with greater kindness and generosity. And as Carlie reminds me, when I follow my inspired dream and intentions, I will know my joy, Goddess joy.

What I have laid down over the years are the ego goals and/or intentions of status, of colonial definitions of belonging, of excess use of resources and wealth for the elite rather than for the whole of the planet – goals and intentions that deny the presence of the Goddess as Life-Giver here on our Mother Earth. As Indigenous teacher and scholar, Maya Chacaby, stated recently, “we have all been colonized”. She challenges us to lead by doing differently than the status quo, by not following the ‘normal’ which is depleting us all and making us all sick.

So, when you listen for your intentions, listen deep, listen in truth and love for what will awaken your soul to the fullness of love and life and light, even if it upends the status quo. Sometimes, as Carlie knows with her arthritis, living your joy can also mean you will need to attend to your pain. However, her motto is GO FOR IT! Joy lessens pain.

My 2018 hope for each of you and all life that you touch:

Happy New Year to all young and old and those in between. To those who stand tall and to those who crawl on the ground. To those who fly and to those who swim. To those who sing and to those who howl. To those who bloom and bear fruit and to those who mushroom and grow in groves. To those who trickle and wind, and to those who ebb and flow. To those who shine and radiate and to those who cause darkness through cycles, I wish you a year of joyous happiness, healing hearts and bodies, and the essence of abundance that is sufficient, generous and sustainable for all. Blessed be.

Namaste,
Shirley Lynn