New Year...New Truth

Issue No. 14 of the Knowing Road

Happy New Year! Wishing you all a blessed new year in 2022. Thank you for reading and supporting this personal project of mine and look forward to sharing more thoughts and interesting news in 2022 with all of you. Be well. —Stephen

Photo courtesy of Jim Eischen

WEEKLY ESSAY:

Its been a few months since I last posted. With the passing of my Mom in September, the finalizing of my divorce and just dealing with life’s circumstances and its related stresses and dramas (work, family, and health), it has been admittedly hard for me to focus and write. Now that I have been isolated as a result of COVID despite being double vaccinated and boosted, I find myself spending much of the day in my bed alone with my thoughts.

With the upcoming New Year, it’s quite commonplace to reflect on the past year and look forward to the upcoming year. As they say, it’s the opportunity for a “new year, new you.” For me though, with such a year filled with such significant loss and transition, I can’t help but reflect on my past life and how I came to this place and my new truth.

From a certain perspective, I am 54 years old and in many ways starting a new chapter in my life. For most people, when you get to my age, you have generally settled in with your life. You have enjoyed the good while accepting the bad. Reveled in your blessings and questioned the outcomes based on the cards that were dealt to you and made the best of that hand and the choices made along the way. You simply persevere.

This perseverance is easier when you are young since there is time to overcome mistakes, unfortunate timing, or poor decisions. Time feels endless and the consequences appear to be correctable. At some point, unfortunately, that generous understanding of time gives way to reality. You begin to understand that time is finite and the runway is shortening. You feel that your life is getting away from you and what was aligned for you no longer serves you and has been eroding the person you thought you were and revealing someone you don’t recognize. Often, this realization becomes too painful to stay on your then current course. You will either allow time to carry you out to sea to be lost forever or you could start swimming to save yourself. I chose the latter.

We all feel helpless at times but we are not. At any given moment, we can choose to change course. We can choose to address our false narratives that were ruling our waking hours and step into a place of self-love. We can choose to lovingly recognize our boundaries while respecting others. We can choose to live in the present and let go of the past and not worry so much about the future. We can give the ones we love the most generous assumptions while diminishing our tendencies to take things personally. We can take care of our bodies not out of our fear of death but from a place of respect and gratitude. We can choose to let go of and walk away from those relationships that no longer align with our truth despite the difficulty in doing so. We can choose to face and acknowledge our shadows and bestow the grace to forgive ourselves and seek the forgiveness from others that were harmed by such darkness. We can choose to understand and embody our truth even after years of denying it. This is challenging work for sure but from moment to moment the daily work of “chopping wood and carrying water” will reap benefits for you and the ones around you. I am a believer that “healing” is a self directed but communal effort.

This lifetime is about choice and intention to embody your truth and understanding what is getting in your way from doing just that. That is what the Hoffman Process began for me, and my spiritual and meditation practice, energy and shadow work, and plant medicine only deepened by self awareness in that regard. For me, it’s no longer about resolutions, goals, achievements, destinations, status, plans, or tactics. I have battled with such thoughts and hopes to only be disappointed in myself or others. One can see the stack of yearly goal notebooks or planners that lay abandoned and unfinished despite my New Year’s resolutions otherwise. Instead, I envision the person I want to be in the present moment and the intentions and qualities necessary to embody that vision. Here are a few:

• Abundance: I intend a life of abundance, abundance in love, in joy, in inner peace, in health and in prosperity and wealth;

• Gratitude: I intend a life of gratitude, gratitude for each breath, for each moment (big or small), for my children, for my family, for my blessings and tribulations and the lessons they will bring;

• Self-Love: I intend a life that I am loved, lovable and loving not because of a book, quote or teaching but as a result of experiencing such love and forgiving myself when I fall short of that truth and letting go of those things and people that diminish that inner light.

The interesting fact is that our intentions don’t have to wait to occur at the strike of midnight on December 31st each year. They are available to me and all of us at any given moment. I hope that you will embody the life that is truly the best version of yourself now and whatever your goals or resolutions are, never forget that you are enough, always were enough, regardless of whether you lose those extra unwanted pounds, get that exciting new job or big promotion, or buy that new house you were dreaming of. The truth has always been with each of us, and I wish for you and everyone in this upcoming “new year,” an abundance of health and happiness and may all of your intentions shine brightly as you walk on your own Knowing Road.

Happy New Year!

What are your intentions you wish to embody? What is your truth?

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QUICK HITS:

• Small habits implemented daily can amount to big and lasting results, I liked this list of 80 Micro-habits that can help all of us.

• So further down the habit theme of “New Year, New You,” here is another great article by James Clear, the author of “Atomic Habits”) on how we can create good habits and get rid of the bad ones.

• Relationships are at the heart of our lives, so how can we make them better, Carol Bruess, PhD, helps us in her easy to understand TEDTalk article.

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RECOMMENDATION:

Acclaimed American writer, Joan Didion recently passed away at the age of 87. I wasn’t intimately aware of Ms. Didion’s prior writings but after reading her essay on “Self Respect” that appeared in Vogue in 1961, I couldn’t but admire her. She wrote how self respect can be embodied and developed and how pleasing others just for the sake of well received opinions of oneself only results in self-alienation. One particular quote that stood out for me was “Nonetheless, character—the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life—is the source from which self-respect springs.” It is a highly recommended short read.

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Until the next year’s first issue, be happy and well. All feedback, comments, and suggestions are always welcomed and encouraged.

I would greatly appreciate it if you could share the Knowing Road with ONE friend (or more). Sharing is caring ; )