#019 – New Year, The Great Adventure
We have hit the second week of January. The New Year vibes might have worn off a bit if you have returned to work (like I have), or might still be in full swing if you are sitting by the pool with a pacy novel and a cocktail.
Whatever you are up to, you might be thinking about how you want your 2024 to shake out. I know I have been.
A friend and I have started a tradition of exchanging our ‘word’ of the year – or what our intention will be for the year. I delighted in scrolling back to 1 January 2023 in our chat to reflect on whether my word ended up being a key part of my year, or if it fell by the wayside in 2023 (a little bit of both, if I am honest).
This year, I chose the word ‘Range’. I am a creature of comfort and while I love trying new things, I relish the familiar. So this year I wanted to push myself out of comfort, into a little bit of discomfort. I might do this through reading authors/genres I don’t normally reach for, cooking from a recipe rather than just cooking the familiar, go-to meals, lifting heavier weights at the gym even though it feels impossible – you get the drift.
Another thing I want to dabble in this year to push myself, to embody Range, is to start teaching meditation. This week, I graduated as a meditation teacher after a five month training course with The Broad Place. It was brilliant.
As part of my final assessment I had to record myself teaching. So, dear readers, I pretended that you were my students! As readers of this, you are curious about ways to improve your wellbeing – and meditation, as I have written before, is high on my list of no-brainer things you can do to transform your life and your wellbeing.
If you click through to my substack there is a guided meditation on ways to bring about more clarity around your intentions in 2024, inspired by the below passage called “The Great Adventure” from The Sunlit Path, by the Mother.
We are in a very special situation, extremely special, without precedent. We are now witnessing the birth of a new world; it is very young, very weak – not in its essence but in its outer manifestation – not yet recognised, not even felt, denied by the majority. But it is here. It is here, making an effort to grow, absolutely sure of the result. But the road to it is a completely new road which has never before been traced out – nobody has gone there, nobody has done that!
It is a beginning, a universal beginning. So it is an absolutely unexpected and unpredictable adventure.
There are people who love adventure. It is these I call and I tell them this: “I invite you to the great adventure”.
It is not a question of repeating spiritually what others have done before us, for our adventure begins beyond that. It is a question of a new creation, entirely new, with all the risks, the hazards it entails – a real adventure, whose goal is certain victory, but the road to which is unknown and must be traced out step by step in the unexplored.
If that interests you… well let us embark. What will happen to you tomorrow – I have no idea. One must put all that has been foreseen, all that has been devised, all that has been constructed and then… set off walking into the unknown. And – come what may! There.
I would love to know in the comments below if you are keen for some of my future posts to include guided meditations – and what you thought about this one!
Be well and wishing you a great adventure for 2024.
Alicia