Letting Go of 2013

Today, the first day of 2014, is also the day of the new moon, and a Wednesday, the day my Mastermind group meets. Last Wednesday was Christmas Day, of course, and we skipped our meeting. We all wanted to meet today, so we decided to spend our time together in a ritual to set our intentions for this new year.

In our little group, we always share the progress we make in our businesses, and the challenges we face. We give each other feedback and pragmatic advice. But we are also all very spiritually inclined, and we believe strongly in the importance of our thoughts and intentions in creating our reality.

We know the Law of Attraction is not a linear process. As I wrote on Christmas morning, sometimes being alive in the world is painful. We’re attached to people and situations and we resist change. Events don’t unfold just as we would prefer. But we’ve had enough experience to know, without any doubt, that thinking and speaking positively, stating our preferences and intentions clearly, is powerful in bringing into being the things we desire. We had our notebooks at the ready, because we know writing down what we want has a magic all its own.

The other side of that, of course, is knowing that we don’t have to struggle and exercise our own will to force any outcome. Inside each of us – inside every person – is the Divine consciousness that loves us and wants only good for us. The more we release our own need to be in control, the more we trust God, the more our lives work.

The plan was that we would do a “burning bowl” to let go of everything we wanted to release from our lives, then we would spend most of our time focusing on our individual and common desires for 2014. We decided to use one of my favorite spiritual practices, John Randolph Price’s 40 Day Prosperity Meditation (link below). I’ve completed this meditation successfully a number of times over the years, and each time I do, it has been life-changing. Our picture was that our time together would be mostly about the future.

It turned out to be quite different, in fact. We sat together around the fire pit, each with a pen and our notebooks, and we wrote down our individual lists of what we’d like to release from our lives. We wrote down the things that had been hard in 2013, the situations we wanted to go away. We wrote down health challenges, and money challenges, and uncomfortable aspects of our relationships. We wrote and we wrote and we wrote.

As we shared with each other, we noticed we were still feeling some attachment to the baggage of 2013. Yes, we wanted to get past the stuff we were writing about, but some part of us was still resisting. To me, it felt almost like pulling off a bandage that had stuck to my flesh. Those situations I so much wanted to let go had attached themselves to me – or me to them – and it hurt a little to pull away. On some level, I had to consciously work my way through to a willingness to move on from those situations.

To some degree, we all wanted to let go of “playing small,” not living up to our fullest potential. In a couple of cases, we weren’t quite ready to forgive someone whom we felt had injured us. Ultimately, each of reached a place of peace. We tore out the notebook pages we had filled, and one by one, we crumpled them up and threw them into the fire. As we watched them burn, we felt lighter.

Creating the life we want is a two-part process. In order to make space for all the good we imagine and desire, we have to let go of what no longer serves us. We have to pull off the bandages, gently and carefully. Sometimes it takes a while. I’m so grateful for the love and support of my mastermind partners in both parts of the process.

Afterwards, I came home and slept three hours. When I awoke, I could feel a space open inside my chest, free of the burdens I didn’t even realize had been weighing me down. Today has been about letting go and creating the vacuum into which all the new good will flow.

Click here to find the 40 Day Prosperity Plan.