The new year can bring such huge expectations, resolutions, aspirations, manifestation rituals, etc. All for things we want to accomplish, achieve or HAVE at some indeterminate but hoped-for time SOON! Even with the concept, “soon,” it’s about what we will have LATER. Later, as in “over there.” If we can just figure out the right steps to GET there. If we can just change ourselves enough, work hard enough, figure out the magic words to make things be different. We gear ourselves up, brace ourselves, or maybe even hide from the tremendous oncoming pressure of “the starting gate” of January 1st.

We don’t really WANT to hurl ourselves at life, but we’re afraid if we don’t we’ll miss out. (Or won’t be good enough or loved enough or safe enough.) But we’ll never catch the carrots we dangle in front of our own noses. Really, the new year can just amplify that familiar, confused panic we feel so often – the urgency to make things be different than they are. To make OURSELVES be different than we are. That frantic chasing after Life itself. (As if we can ever be separate from Life.) The carrots are illusions. We are ALREADY good, loved and safe.
The more I slow down and breathe, the more I can FEEL in my body that we ARE Life itself. It’s not “over there.” We’re it. IT. Perfect as we are, right now. Complete. If we chase after our future, all the juice of this extraordinary, ordinary NOW goes by without us taking it in. Without us experiencing the fact that we ARE so alive and whole, right now in this moment. Without us realizing that we ARE the juice. It doesn’t only come later after we’ve “earned it.” And it’s not some thing or accomplishment “out there,” and always “just up ahead.” All the love and gold is sitting calmly and beautifully right here. We’re it. We, the magical, extraordinary, ordinary, messy, perfect whole expressions of LIFE that we are.
And so, We Who Are All Perfect Life Now, without changing a thing let’s celebrate! Yes, Happy New Year! But even more, I wish us all a HAPPY NOW HERE!
HUGE love, Chris