This week I want you to focus on burning away your anxiety and negative thoughts.
By developing the visual practice of burning away your anxiety and negative thoughts you get a chance to free yourself from feelings that are holding you back. You get the chance to watch those feelings literally burn away and turn to ash, and then suddenly get swept away on a gust of wind. You get the chance to practice lettings go, which can be an exhilarating experience.
By developing the practice of physically burning away your anxieties and negative thoughts you get to make a conscious choice that is coupled with a physical action and strong visual representation. Choice + Action + Visual = Healing. By replacing the wet blanket of feelings, that keep you from moving forward, with this bold visual ritual you are empowering yourself with the energy of the crackling fire before you.
Start by writing your anxieties or negative thoughts on a small piece of paper. Or write “I am not my ______” and fill in the blank. You can also write this down on a bay leaf with a sharpie (PRO TIP: a silver sharpie looks most inspiring on a bay leaf), or any other kind of dried leaf. In a heat safe container light your anxiety or negative thoughts with a candle or a match and then watch them burn away, crumbling into nothing.
Take that sight in. Really feel the weight of the emotional pain lift as it turns to ash. Make a mental note of how you feel in that moment when your anxieties and negative thoughts have turned into ash.
Its empowering to watch a real representation of what ails you be lit on fire and turned to ash. Just make sure you do this in a fire safe container and keep watch over it as the things your wrote down burn into nothingness.
Things to Remember:
1. it might be hard to face your emotions and write them down.
2. remember that is it OKAY to feel this way.
3. use a heat safe container.
I know that this is going to be hard at times, but you have a choice and have taken the first step by clicking on this Weekly Spirituality Tip.
By developing the practice of physically burning away my anxieties and negative thoughts I have discovered that a sense of calm washes over me in the moment of watching them turn to ash. I have also found that the next time I experience the memory of those anxieties and negative thoughts that I am able to think about this memory that I just created. And call up that image of the paper burning away and crumbling into nothing. Then I am able to tell myself that my anxiety is nothing and that those negative thoughts that are plaguing me, are nothing. And then I think about their ashes being buried in my garden or taken away by a gust of wind.
This week I want you to focus on becoming willing to surrender.
By developing the willingness to surrender you get the chance to meet your true feelings. You get the chance to submit to the universe and let it take over for you. You get the chance to practice letting go, which can be an exhilarating experience.
By developing the skill to surrender you get to not have to make a choice about anything. And lets face it, the world we live in in full of choices, too many some days. By replacing that bombardment of choices with practicing being willing to surrender you are lightening your load and giving into the “grace of god” and the winds of chance and change.
Start by letting go, its that simple. But also impossible… I know from experience. This is a difficult habit to build, especially because we have so much choice in our modern world. But there is a way to move forward. Try leaving little things to chance, like the flavor of your tea or coffee, let the barista pick for you or close your eyes when you’re getting your drink ready at home.
Take stock in the present moment of discovering this new flavor, or revisiting an old one that you forgot about. Notice what you like or don’t like about the flavor. You can also let your waiter select your meal after you’ve narrowed it down to a few dishes. Let them surprise you. Or just say, I like these types of things and not these, can you pick something out for me?
If there is discomfort in surrendering to this little change, that’s okay. What you’re feeling is actually the excitement of the unknown. Lean into that feeling.
In my personal experience I have found that it was really nerve racking at first to actually say “yes I’m going to leave it up to chance” and close my eyes or let someone else pick for me. The difficult part was saying “surprise me” out loud, instead of putting if off for weeks or months.
But what I also found was that I was rewarded with the surprising act of curiosity. I would always approach my drink with the wonder and examination of a child or as if I was encountering it for the first time. Seeing a color I wasn’t expecting, trying to decipher the smells and aromas of what was placed in front of me, and my favorite was being surprised with the colors. It’s the feeling you get when you try a new cafe or restaurant. Are you going to like the food? Is their dirty chai latte going to be as creamy as you like it?
This happens to me all of the time. I am always willing to surrender to my regular order of a tall dirty chai latte with almond milk at a new coffee house or restaurant that has a full coffee bar. We have a lot of new cafe’s opening in our area right now and that order is my barometer. And honestly, it doesn’t always go well. The last new coffee house I tried, it tasted like they forgot the almond milk even though I watched them put a generous amount in. What I learned from surrendering to that brand new tall dirty chai latte, was that I’m going to order tea at this place from now on. I also learned that I looooooooooove the vibe of this place and that the chai wasn’t that bad after all, it just wasn’t what I was looking for, but it still did the job of caffeinating me.
Things to Remember:
1. you might feel discomfort.
2. lean into that discomfort and surrender to the moment.
3. you’ll discover something new every time.
I know that this is going to be hard at times, but you have a choice and have taken the first step by clicking on this Weekly Spirituality Tip.
By developing the practice of becoming willing to surrender. I have found that I experience more new sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and experiences. By stopping the monotony of the same choices, day in and day out, and practicing this I feel more in the moment and and more curious about the food, drink, establishment, and curiosity about the person who is helping me. I also get the built in bonus of new inspired and genuine conversation with those I’m around.
In the Northern Hemisphere the full moon of February and the holiday Imbolc corresponds with signs of life returning to the frozen Earth, new lambs being born, and crocus flowers peeking through the snow, but also with the heaviest snow of Winter. Farmers & Gardeners are beginning to prepare seeds for the coming Spring while keeping an eye out for early babies being born as it begins to warm up.
The Hunger Moon is the second full moon of the year and the full moon that happens on the date closest to the holiday Imbolc. This is the moon that told our ancestors who lived off the land that trapping and hunting was going to be difficult and to prepare for a food shortage. The most common signs of The Hunger Full Moon are food stores running low, new lambs being born, heavy snow, and crocuses. The Colonial Americans called this moon the Trapper’s Moon, I’ve heard this growing up on a farm in Midwest Illinois. The Sioux call this moon the Moon of the Raccoon, a great totem animal for anyone needing guidance through the darkness.
The Late Winter Full Moon Names:
Hunger Moon Trapper’s Moon – Colonial American Budding Moon – Chinese Bony Moon – Cherokee Little Famine Moon Choctaw Moon of Ice – Celtic Storm Moon – English Medieval Snow Moon – Neo Pagan, Algonquin, Deborean Clan Moon of the Raccoon, and Moon When Trees Pop – Sioux
Growing up on a Mid-Western farm, this was still a rather cold time of year. We would spend recess outside in the snow and play king of the mountain with our friends before it was time to head back inside. In school we would keep busy with homemade valentines for our friends and loved ones. As for our farm, we would still need to be sure to lock our animals up tight at night away from the scavenging predatory wild animals of the Mid-West, in our case coyotes. If our animals weren’t protected, then they would be eaten, leaving us with little or no chickens to eat and gather eggs from for the spring and summer months.
This week I want you to focus on letting go of a grudge out loud. You don’t have to talk to anyone, except yourself. Just make sure to say it out loud to yourself.
By developing the practice of letting go of a grudge out loud you bring compassion into your life. By developing the skill to let go and forgive out loud you get to hear the words of forgiveness, letting go and compassion.
You actually get to hear what that sounds like. And the most powerful thing about this is that YOU are the one setting the example for yourself. How amazing is that?! By replacing silence with verbal out loud forgiveness and letting go, you are establishing a new positive habit grounded in compassionate energy and emotions.
This is an especially hard habit to build when we feel that we’ve been wronged by someone. But there is a way forward.
Start by forgiving the person you were holding a grudge against (even if its yourself) by verbally forgiving them or just forgive them out loud while you are alone. If you can’t physically go to the person, just saying that you forgive them out loud, to yourself, is enough to lift the grudge and bring peace and calm into your soul.
In my personal experience I have found that it was hard to start this practice for two reasons, 1) I felt silly saying it out loud and 2) I wasn’t always ready to let go of a grudge. The difficult part was convincing myself to say the words out loud especially when my heart wasn’t behind them. But I found that the premise of “fake it til you make it” really worked here. I wasn’t always ready to forgive someone and let go of a grudge. But by saying it out loud to myself served as the first step on the road to letting go, forgiveness, and being grudge free.
Things to Remember:
Letting go of a grudge out loud may not be easy if you aren’t ready.
You might have to fake it, but that’s OKAY.
You gotta say it out load.
It may be really hard to let go of a grudge out loud, but you have a choice and have taken the first step by clicking on this Weekly Spirituality Tip.
By developing the practice of letting go of grudges out loud I have found that I hold far fewer grudges, if any. This practice, even though it makes me feel silly or stupid at times, also makes me feel at peace. Which is far more important. I can get through feeling dumb for a second or two, if what I’m doing is going to bring me peace.
Every new moon I like to set a short term goal for the next 28 days which is one lunar cycle. Instead of picking out one intention out of thin air, I like to use tarot cards to help get my creative juices flowing. I don’t believe that tarot cards can tell us our future, but I do think that they are some pretty beautiful miniature works of art that can inspire us with their stories and help prompt us to look at our lives through a different lens.
I use the Practical Tarot New Moon Journaling Prompt pages in my Lunar Bullet Journal to inspire me to identify my hopes, dreams, challenges and goals for the coming lunar month. Since my purpose is not to tell my future, but to assess my life and ascertain my goals I like to use a more in depth tarot spread that helps me focus.
You might recognize this from my February Plan With Me. I like to use this spiral layout because it gives me multiple prompts for the different areas of my life that I want to focus on. We start here in the middle with a card to represent where you stand, then move over here to what to leave behind and then move up to, what to receive, and then over what to learn, and then a card that will represent things to give, and then back down for a card that represents your hopes and dreams, and then over to the final card a secret skill that will help you get through this new moon cycle.
I’ve gone with “plant the seeds of your desires” as the theme for this lunar cycle. On the opposite page I have a section for challenges, goals, and how I’m going to accomplish them. I also have a little tracker down at the bottom of the page that I fill in with a new leaf each day when I say these mantras to myself.
The tarot deck that I felt pulled to today was The Illuminated Tarot deck by Caitlin Keegan. I start by just shuffling cards, I usually do this about three times or whatever feels good and then I cut the deck.
Fill in what each card was starting in the middle and working my way around keeping in mind the theme of “plant the seeds of your desires.” Before I even check to see what the cards mean I’m going to think about the challenges that I could be faced with in the coming lunar month. I’m using the guide book that goes with this deck, you can use any type of tarot deck or book that you want you can even just do your own intuitive reading of what these cards mean based on their drawings. I always make sure to write down the main theme of each card listed in the guidebook, then anything from the description that speaks to me. I also take notes of what the card might be prompting me to think about in connection to my current life situation.
The next thing that that I do is take a look back at what the cards and what they have prompted me to think about, and pull out any themes that I see or anything that’s popping out at me. These are going to be the ideas that I need to focus on in this coming lunar cycle. Keeping in mind the theme of the lunar month which is “plant the seeds of your desires,” I’m going to be thinking about the challenges that might pop up and then the goals that I want to make sure that I am working toward to be accomplished.
I wasn’t really sure what to make of this spread. It was the first time I was using this deck with this layout and it just felt off, which can happen. However, I did like how simple to descriptions of the cards where in the guide book, it left a lot of room for interpretation, which is what I am looking for. I don’t want something specific because it usually bogs me down and doesn’t let me come up with the analysis for my own life. It just feels like descriptive tarot guide books put too much meaning and muddle my view of my current life situation. But Hey, that’s just me. You might really enjoy a descriptive guide book and be left wanting more from a short description like the ones that go with this deck.
This spread has prompted me to create stronger foundations in my body health, morning spiritual routine, and letting go. The challenges that I’ll be facing in the coming lunar month are scheduling my time, waking up early and letting go, which is something that I am always working on. for-ev-er!
My goals are to focus on taking care of my body first by scheduling that time into my calendar, ease back into my early morning routine, even if its just waking up early and watching videos until I get use to waking up early and starting my spiritual routine. And finally, letting go of my past mistakes that haunt me and focus on learning from them, saying thank you for the lesson, and then set them down and move forward. Always forward.
Under the How I’m going to do it section, I turned these ideas straight into mantras for myself. If you want to see the process of determining to write this section check out my 13th Moon Video. I’ll leave a link in the description below and up in the cards.
My three mantras for the 2nd lunar cycle are:
I take care of my body first.
I get back into my routine to create stability.
I learn from my past mistakes and move forward, always forward.
My tracker is the same as always, little sprouts that come up during each week of the lunar month, which you can see at the bottom of my page. Each day I create a little leaf and color it in.
First I combine the mantras into one intention for the whole lunar cycle, “I plant the seeds of my desires to take care of my body first, get back into my routine, & to let go of my past mistakes, learn from them, & move forward, always forward.”
Either by the moon or in the morning of each new lunar phase, I set a positive feeling based intention for each of the eight lunar phases. For this new moon I wrote:
“I set my intention to purify my spirit, I feel my intention in my body.”
Then at the beginning of each moon phase for this cycle I will come back to this spread and write a new positive feeling based intention. If you’d like to see a video on filling out each section during each lunar phase, let me know in the comments down below.
This journaling and goal setting practice is something that I do the night before every new moon or the morning of every new moon. This practice of short term, achievable goal setting via the lunar cycle, has grown really dear to my heart. It’s something that I can’t imagine not doing.
Using tarot cards in this way gives me a new lens in which to look at my life. It’s also given me a lot of inspiration and closure by looking at my life through a different perspective. This practice has also helped me hone my focusing skills and has enabled me to quit second guessing myself. With this practical tarot new moon journaling prompt, I look forward to each lunar cycle and the start of a new chance to achieve my goals.
If you want to catch the next new moon practice, be sure to subscribe.
It’s time for my February Plan With Me for my Lunar Bullet Journal & Spiritual BUJO.
For February I decided to continue the tree line theme for my monthly overview that I have been using for a the past few months. I am really enjoying reflecting what the trees look like in my journal as the months change.
In the upper left hand corner I have a section for my monthly goals, and in the lower left a section for my future plans. My Monthly mantra for February is:
“the ox eat grass”
I chose this because this month one of my goals is to eat vegetarian and I wanted to remind myself that you can indeed be strong while eating a plant based diet, just like the ox.
Then I add in the lunar phases to my calendar. I’m using silver metallic markers this month along with the black supertips marker from crayola. Each tree is an important date or appointment. I’ll be filling in the rest of my tree line calendar as more dates and appointments come.
On the next two pages I have my letters to the universe spread. This can be a daily gratitude log, but what I like to do is just use it as a place to open a dialog with the universe and with my inner self to say thank you for various things or just to write out my feelings. This can be a daily practice that uses one line, or it can be an as needed practice that is less frequent but take up more lines in your journal.
Now for the Lunar part of this spiritual bullet journal. I begin with my practical tarot new moon journaling prompt spread. If you’d like to see how I use this spread click here.
On the opposite page I am writing out a section for Challenges I will face in this second moon of the year and next to that my Goals for the second moon.
Directly below I have a section called How I’m Going To Do It. And at the very bottom of the page I have a range of dates that span the lunar month. This is my tracker for the mantras that I will come up with after filling out the Practical Tarot New Moon Journaling Prompt. My tracker is a sprout of leaves that come up every day I say my mantras and roots that grow as my practice goes on for the lunar month. Be sure to check out how I use this spread here.
For this second new moon of the year I wanted to use pink and gold to give my layout a light and bright feeling. I was also inspired by Sailor Moon when I was planning this one out. I start off with a section for my intention for the lunar month, which I will determine in my 2nd New Moon Lunar Goal Setting video.
I’ve left eight spaces for each of the moon phases to write the mantras that correspond with each phase and how they relate to my intention. The inner ring is left for more tracking throughout the lunar month.
And now I’m going to wrap up this lunar journaling section with two very simple pages, my monthly action steps to achieve my goals and my mid month check in.
Next I am going to continue the Hygge Challenge from my January Plan With Me. Each time I complete one of the items off the list I’ll use a stamp marker to tick is off and also draw it on the day it was completed.
The next two pages are my end of the month pages. First I have the Unravel Your Month check in and my Lunar review to look back at what worked, what didn’t, what to improve, and what my biggest wins were. And a little reminder at the bottom of the page to review my spiritual goals so they are top of mind.
By developing the practice of paying attention to your dreams you get more in tune with how your subconscious works. Our dreams can be either pure random entertainment or they can be our subconscious working through something that has been effecting us both positive and negative.
We are constantly trying to process and understand the world around us; so its no secret that our brains never stop working. Our brains use dreams as a way to clue us into what we really want and how we really feel which is a great help when cultivating your spirituality.
Start by taking a moment after you wake up to reflect on your dreams if you can remember them. If it seems like your mind was trying to work through something, write it down. This can be a difficult habit to build, especially because we are usually jumping right our of bed or jumping straight onto our phones to check our email or notifications. But there is a way to move forward. Try jotting down notes in a dream journal, or type up a quick note on your phone, or record an audio note on your phone of your dream.
In my personal experience I have found that it was easiest to write an outline of my dream and then write down any major players, themes and emotional feelings instead of writing out a detailed account of the dream. The difficult part for me was remembering to take a moment right after I wake up to reflect on my dreams. You could try writing yourself a reminder on a sticky note and putting it on your phone, since this is usually the first thing we all grab for in the morning.
A few years ago I started keeping a dream journal again, something I haven’t done since my teens. It has helped me understand what I’m looking for and wanting when its comes to the path of my spirituality.
Things to Remember:
Not every dream is trying to tell you something, in fact, most aren’t, and are just what I call entertainment dreams. It will be obvious when your subconscious is trying to work through something. The dream will have strong emotions which can be positive or negative and will also have a lasting impact on your emotions when you wake up. Also remember that its not easy to remember to record your dreams let alone paying attention to them. But you have a choice and have taken the first step by clicking on this Weekly Spirituality Tip.
By developing the practice of paying attention to what my dreams are telling me I have found that I feel more aware of what I’m working through psychologically and emotionally. I’ve also developed an understanding of what dreams are worth paying attention to.
Find or create an inspiring mantra or affirmation that you say to yourself daily. Some of my favorites are:
“I am worth it no matter what anyone says” “I am awesome” “I am a spiritual being” “All is well with my soul”
Starting your day with an inspiring mantra or affirmation opens your intuition and is empowering. Mantras and affirmations are also effective when you are down or if you find yourself stuck in a bout of depression that you can’t seem to crawl out of.
Things To Remember…
Just say your positive mantra or affirmation weather or not you believe it, until you do. Or at least until you can see the light to come back from an episode of depression or sadness. You can even have an app deliver these positive words to you every morning.
This past lunar month was all about resting, reflecting and purifying my spirit with the first moon of the year. I knew that this month was going to be about resting and reflecting after the holidays, but I had no idea how much I was actually going to need that time. I’m so grateful that I decided to take the month to just chill, and be in the moment.
Mid lunar cycle our household finally caught the seasonal winter cold that always comes around. I thought that we might miss it this year since we made it through the holidays with a clean bill of health. My husband was home for a week and a half, sick as a dog, but some how, miraculously I didn’t get sick.
Then my period came and knocked me out and on the third day I was hit hard with the cold that my husband was on the tail end of. And as I write this, I’m still in the thick of it, on the bright side, my period is over, and it seems like I am moving through this cold faster than him. So, fingers crossed, I only have a few days left of a croaky voice that comes and goes.
As for my new years resolutions, I’m still figuring them out. This year I tried something different because I wanted to be kind to my mental state. I took the whole month of January to test out my resolutions to see if they were realistic. I was also looking to see if they were things that I actually truly wanted for myself or if they were things that I thought that I just “should” do.
As the moon wanes and we come closer to the end of January, I’ve found that most of my resolutions are things that I honestly want for myself because they make me a better person. I’m also seeing where I need to readjust my schedule to make time for my new habits and goals. And to be totally honest, since the sickness has hit our home, my routine has gone to shit. I’m really looking forward to getting back into my routine after I’ve recovered from this cold. I have just felt like there was a big chunk of myself missing since I wasn’t making time to do the things that make me happy every morning. Instead my time was devoted to taking care of others and then taking care of my basic needs and sleeping once I was hit with the cold.
The theme for this first lunar month of 2019 has been “purify your spirit,” along with the much needed post holiday R&R. I started off on the new moon with my 1st Lunar Goal Setting session with my practical tarot practice. Through the tarot journal prompt I decided that I wanted to focus on the following this lunar month:
Letting go of my need to know the unknown.
Waking up to this beautiful fulfilling life.
Slowing my pace.
I also wanted to take these ideas and use them to purify my spirit by letting them help me open up myself to their lessons and gifts.
What does “purify your spirit” mean to me?
I looked up purify in the thesaurus, and found a bunch of words with religious overtones or cleaning sanitization words. So I wasn’t sure how I wanted to approach this theme for the lunar month. And then it occurred to me that purify coupled with spirit made me feel and think of the word light in the sense of weight. I kept thinking about lightness and lifting.
So for me, “purify your spirit” began to slowly evolve into the practice of finding activities, motions, daily rituals, things, and ideas that lifted my spirit and nudged it towards that place that I ultimately wanted to be, closer to my true self.
I have been working with the mantra “I let go of my need to know the unknown” for a few months now. And I am just now starting to see that I am giving myself over to the chaos of life in good and bad moments. I’ve always wanted to have a plan, but recently I have been able to lean into the unknown and just go with the flux and flow of what comes.
My second mantra, “I wake up to this beautiful fulfilling life,” was a new one for me this month. It’s been helping me be present in the moment and open my eyes to the good and bad of each moment while I am in them.
The mantra, “I slow my pace,” is helping me stop burning out. As the holidays ended and the new year came up on me, I wanted to make sure that I didn’t throw myself into the deep end and take on more than I could handle when it came to resolutions, work, and the sparkliness of a new year. I was worried that I was going to fall deep into G.S.D.’ing, (getting shit done) and that I would be going crazy fast, too fast. And boy was I right, the temptation of needing to burst out of the gate every morning was there. And every time I sat down to work my fingers flew over the keys for hours on end as my mouse zipped across the screen. I wasn’t taking time for myself because I had to G.S.D. as hard as I could.
But fortunately I had the foresight to write this little mantra that I said to myself every day “I slow my pace.” And it helped me. I ended up only having two afternoons of crazy back breaking pace, until I remembered, “slow your pace, you don’t want to burn out.” Then the rest of the month followed with pacing myself and making SURE that I didn’t burn out.
And let me tell you, I am so glad that I found this mantra, “I slow my pace,” because as the moon and month waned and this cold came on, I’m not sure that I would have been able to care for my husband while he was sick, and then myself as my period came on and the cold hit me. I would have crashed and freaked out as soon as the household routine was interrupted and then proceeded to spiral down into a really poor mental state.
By slowing my pace and making sure not to burn out for the whole month, I actually built up my stores for when shit hit the fan and things fell apart. But in reality, shit didn’t hit the fan, the world didn’t fall apart, and I didn’t fall apart either. We just happened to finally get the seasonal cold that we know comes every year without fail. Which gave us a chance to slow down literally, because we couldn’t move at the normal pace because of sickness. And we got to make our favorite soup and binge watch our favorite shows while we recovered. So, being sick wasn’t so bad after all. And I believe it was all because I paced myself, which allowed me to be able to care for us when we needed it most.
