It is always interesting to look back at what you've learned in a time period. 

The year... it's 365 rotations of sunrise to sunset. 

And we are most defintely not the people we were, when we started on this journey back at the beginning of 2016. 

So.. how have you changed? HOw have you grown? How are you different? 

Here are some questions to ponder, especially effective if you work with a journal and/or meditation, to help you review and understand: 

1. What is the one thing you spend the most time doing? The second most? 

2. What worked best this year? Name everything you can think of

3. What made you happiest and gave you the most joy? 

4. What did not work at all? Do you know why or not? 

5. What life goals did you accomplish? Was it a "buidling" year or a "resting" year? 

6. What was left undone, or what do you still need to work on? 

7. What soul lessons did you learn? Name as many as you can think of. 

We move into the new year with hope, trepidation, uncertainty. 

It's going to be a year of more big change. It's okay. The Uinverse is in charge. We are eternal souls on an infinite journey. No need to worry. 

Soon it will be New Year’s, and our year will be tucked away in the memory box, a past that is complete.  
 
Consider at this end of the year, how you will inhabit next year. You get to choose, with your intention and your awareness, how you will inhabit this lifetime.
 
You get to choose how you will inhabit this new year.
 
As you celebrate and mark the passing of this year, tucked away into the past, never to be revisited or returned to, do so with heart brimming:
 
• For all that went well.
• For all that simply was.
• For all you learned.
• For who you have become.
 
The day after tomorrow is next year.
The sun will rise. 
And the Light will return again, to illuminate us all. 

The longest night of the year is here. 

Darkness turns to Light. 

We begin again. 

Our soul  journey continues. 

Listen to your FREE Winter Solstice meditation below. 

There will come a magical moment this winter, when you will see something, or you will experience something, and your heart will quietly unfold.
 
Everything will become sacred, holy, still.
 
And in this moment, in which you are not doing anything in particular, not having any big experience, something will shift and you will understand yourself as soul in body, Divine being having human experience.
 
It might show up as part of your religious tradition.
It might be a secular moment.
It might happen with family.
It might happen in community.
You might be by yourself.
 
This is a moment between the moments: a time when you observe yourself being your true soul Self.
 
It doesn't matter how this moment between moments finds you.
It just matters that when it does, you stop, allow it, and let it open you.

Some of you read of the sad demise of our little dog Elton last year. 

For the past year, we have been searching for that right soul to join our family. 

It takes time to grieve, and it takes time to be ready to add a new addition. 
And, it takes time to find the right soul. 

At first, I just didn't do anything: I wasn't ready. Then, a few months ago, I started getting signs from the Universe that it was time look for a new dog. 

I am open to signs, synchroniciites and strands, and I try very hard to pay attention, when this information arrives. 

Thus, I dutifully visited our local animal shelter, weekend after weekend. There were lots of lovely dogs... but not the soul that I was looking for. 

Finally, after one particularly heartbreaking day last week, in which we'd visited many dogs and found not one that was correct for us.... I gave up. 

As we drove away from the Humane Society, I said outloud in the car "I give up!" 

"I've been looking for a dog, as instructed, for months now, Universe!" I continued with my frustrated rant. "I give up, I surrender!" 

And then finally, with absolute passion and power, out of sheer confusion because I knew I was being directed, but I was unable to find the answer,  I said "If you want me to have a dog, you're going to have to find it and deliver it to me. I am not going to lift another finger. And if you don't want me to have a dog, I surrender to that, too." 

Not out of lack of willingness to serve, mind you!  But sheerly out of frustration. when we receive clear guidance to do something, such as look for a dog, and then we do look for a dog, and nothing happens... it can get very confusing.

I'm sure you've been there too. 

We follow guidance, and yet we are confused: what we seek doesn't  happen, or materialize, or we go on many dead ends. 

When this happens, it is time to let go, and completely surredner to the Universe. To let go of all attempts to control, or force, or make happen. To stop pursuing, and stop pushing. To let go of all attachment—even to the understanding that we are being guided. 

And... the result? 

Two days later, a woman from my husband's wellness center said she knew of a friend's friend who was trying to rehome her Lhasa Apso.

You know, the little sturdy Tibetan dogs that once were the companion animals to Buddhist monks? You know, the Buddist monestaries that I continue to see in my dreams and visions, as a place I knew well, as a place I once lived in past lives or ancestral lives long ago? 

So... that dog... Abby Das, arrived to our home yesterday. She was delivered to the door. I did nothing. No thing. I just surrendered, and trusted, and the Universe took care of everything. 

When you're working to manifest, and it's not working... step back. Let go.

The Universe has everything well in hand. 

Even when you're frustrated, or confused, or simply can't understand where you're being led... just relax, trust, stop pushing, and all things will happen as they are destined for your Highest Possibility. 

 
For several years, we lived with our lovely, joyous dog, Elton.
 
He was a Bichon, which means he was small and white and fluffy; a fancy dog living in a rustic environment, and he needed constant protection from the eagles and coyote that live out here in the woods.
 
Elton saw us through many life events, from my youngest daughter’s scoliosis surgery, to the passing of my husband’s mother, to many other trying times in our lives: we were much comforted by the generous spirit of this loving little dog.
 
And then one day, he started walking funny, and the next day he couldn’t walk, and we discovered Elton had spinal degeneration, a problem so far advanced, surgery wasn’t an option.
 
For a month he got better, and then he got worse. He lost the ability to walk, his pain started to increase, and we knew the end needed to come.
 
And so it was that at 2:00 a.m., on a black stormy night in October, Elton’s pain crescendo’ed to a point where it was no longer bearable.
 
The trees waved in the wind, thunder rolled and lightening flashed practically on top of us as I drove across town to the emergency vet. as if the Universe was showing me my pain.
 
The vet was kind, and things went quickly. Elton was wrapped in a warm towel, and I held him close, my mind in sync with his.

Thank you, my friend, I said. Thank you.
 
And then, at the moment of his passing, something happened.
 
His soul leapt out at me.
I don’t know how to explain it better.
 
His eyes were locked on me, and in the moment of his transition a light leapt out of him, and it was pure love.
​
I don’t have more words for this, I can’t explain it better.
 
It was one of the most beautiful things I have ever experienced. 

When I am working with people in person, I will often start our session by holding their two hands in mine.
 
We’ll sit that way, sometimes for a while.
 
What I find is that the whole person comes forward, when you touch them. For me, in that moment of touch, the whole Soul is understood.
 
This happens in other ways too: I also find it happens in the voice, in the vision, and simply by holding that person in meditation.
 
But there is something about touch that is so immediate, such a clear read.
 
When you hold someone’s hand, and by this I mean anyone’s hand, not just someone you love… you feel what the other person feels. You connect not just in the warm, fuzzy, human way that we love, but you also connect at a Soul level.
 
What happens is that there is this rush of comfort, of relaxation, of fondness, of safety, of love… and this heals us.
 
It heals the person who is holding the hand.
It heals the person whose hand is being held.
 
Upgrade from a handhold into a bona fide hug, and you have some serious healing going on!
 
Consider as you’re going around your day, how much you touch people, and how much you allow touch.
 
In western culture, we’re often pretty reserved, and we only allow affection for lovers, or children.
 
But the simple shoulder pat, the side hug, the arm reaching out to pat the forearm?  All of these heal.
 
Not just the person getting the affection, but also the person giving it. 

There are two kinds of people out there: those who walk around with no skin on, feeling everything. And those who do whatever they possibly can to never feel anything.
 
Sometimes, we’re both people in the same day.
 
This idea that we have to be afraid of our feelings, whether we are an “over feeler” or an “under feeler”, just isn’t true.
 
Feelings come on like a wave: if you really start to pay attention to how they show up, you will start to see that they are not unannounced. They build in the body, slowly and with small amounts of tension or emotion, and after a while they build enough, just like a wave building, so that we are able to identify them as feelings.
 
If you’re a person who feels “too much”, you sense the wave and you notice it building, and then you have an emotional response to the feeling. You feel it all.
 
If you’re a person who blocks feeling, you sense the wave and they you very quickly distract or attempt to distract yourself from this feeling.

There are lots of ways to do this: getting busy, getting angry, running away, various addictions. They all work to block the building wave of feeling.
 
The thing is, just like a wave, feelings dissipate pretty quickly.
 
If you’re a person who feels everything, all you need to do is breathe, hang on, and wait for the wave to build, crash and recede.
 
If you’re a person who tends to block feelings, all you need to do is resist the urge to distract yourself, and know that this will all be over soon.
 
We don’t have to be overwhelmed, or run away from our feelings.
 
Like a wave, they crash and recede. They are transitory, and not something to be afraid of. 

When I was a kid, we moved around a lot: we lived in Washington, California, Hawaii, Switzerland and Norway to name a few, living in furnished homes with all the possessions of the real owners.

We sat on other people’s sofas.
We used other people’s china.
We bathed in other people’s bathtubs.
 
This is just how life was: my parents were crazy for travel, and we were always heading  out somewhere, or coming back from somewhere.
 
Thus as a young adult starting my own family, it felt natural to pack up every few years and start fresh.
 
You never get bored. Your stuff doesn’t accumulate. You don’t get habituated to routine. It’s exciting, it’s dramatic, and it’s very, very distracting.
 
Which is why I am surprised to look at where I live, and realized I have been here eleven years.
 
The same house, for more than a decade.
The house filled with my stuff.
The house I’ve stuck with.
 
Here, I have lived through more than 42 seasons: twelve quartets of summer, fall, winter, spring, each passing in sublime glory from one to the next.
 
Sunflowers to autumn leaves to blustery rain to the greenest spring woods you’ve every seen.  
 
I never imagined living in the country, and it was a rough start at first: I felt trapped, a prisoner in the woods, and it is not underestimated to say I was afraid of everything.

Bugs. Mud. Weather. Dark.
 
It was only slowly, over time, that I began to understand that living in this hermitage is a gift.
 
There is nothing boring about allowing yourself to stay in one place for a while: to stop moving, hold steady, and watch the leaves dance in the breeze around you.
 
I live here now.
 
For the first time in my life, I hold a sense of place. And I am starting to believe, this place also holds me. 

When we work with fengshui, we work to energetically balance a space or place, so that all of the aspects of life are represented.
 
We attract abundance to one area.
We open the flow of health to another.
We create the aspect of love in another.
And so on.
 
We open the flow to these beneficial energies, by creating intention in the space as whole, with intention given to each particular aspect that we wish to realize.
 
We can also fengshui our time.
 
In our lives, we are allowed and given permission to use our time exactly how we please.
 
You might say: oh, I have to work at a particular job for this many hours, or I have to do this task for this many hours. But if you really get down to the truth of it, you are in charge of your time.
 
You decide what job you will do or not do.
You decide what activities you’re going to do or not do .
It’s really up to you.
 
And so, you can begin to fengshui your time.
 
You can spend time that attracts abundance.
You can use time to create the flow of health.
You can inhabit time in creating the aspect of love.
And so on.
 
Take a look at how you spend your time, and how you think about time, and how you might want to live. Fengshui your time, so your life is balanced and in flow.
 
And of course, remember that everything is Now, so it’s all happening simultaneously. That means time can’t really be “spent”. There’s always more available. It’s infinite.
 
Fengshui your life.
Live how you want.
There’s always enough time. 

Do you remember phone boxes? The tiny little building set in the middle of nowhere, that would allow you to make a phone call for a dime, then a quarter... 

If you do, you might have had the eerie experience of walking by a phone box, and the phone was ringing. It rang and rang and rang, even though nobody was there to pick it up. 

You might have been tempted to answer the call—but you were embarrassed, or unsure, or what if the call was something you didn't want to hear? 

Often we don't answer a call from the Universe the same way. 

We can hear it ringing and ringing! It's driving us nuts, the call is so loud and clear! 

But we're afraid.
Or we're unsure.
Or we don't know how our lives will change, if we dare to answer the call. 
Or we're sure our lives will change, and this terrifies us. 

Here's the thing: the Universe is always moving us toward our Highest Possibility. Toward more expansion, more opening, more soul growth. That's just how the Universe works. 

So you can stop fearing change. 
Instead, think of change as expansion. 
The Universe continually calls us to grow. 

If you've been hearing a call for a while... I invite you to answer it today. Simply say: "I hear you" to the Universe. Simply say "I hear, I accept, I'm willing, I surrender." 

And then see what happens. 

How do you know if the people in your life are the people you're supposed to be with? 

Mostly, you can tell by the particular energy of your karmic crossing. 

There are three ways we experience karma (which I define as soul lessons learned over time) with others. These are: 

• Karmic crossings that are neutral or over quickly
• Karmic crossings that are complex and resolvable in this lifetime
• Karmic crossings that are deep and cooperative and meant to last

Neutral karmic crossings don't have much energy: we experience this all the time with people we are in contact with in our daily lives: the person we sit by on the bus by don't talk to;  the person we date for a short while, but never see again. These people are of course also souls on the path, but they aren't part of our immediate soul circle: we don't have a big soul lesson to learn with these folks in this lifetime. They're brief, don't have much energy, and are over quickly. 

Complex karmic crossings represent big karma, big soul lessons. These lessons are so big, so sticky, so dramatic, they usually can't be completed in this lifetime. Do your best... and if this relationship is tricky, ugly or unhealthy, let it go. This kind of karma shows up in abuse, anger, betrayal, anger and so on—if you come across a person where this shows up all the time, you're probably working through big lessons together. Again, this kind of karmic crossing usually needs more than one lifetime to complete.It is okay to let go, and end unhealthy relationships. 

Cooperative karmic crossings are relationships that have worked out most of the negative or lower soul lessons, and are now moving on to beautiful aspects such as support, kindness, patience and unconditional love. These are the karmic crossings to seek out and hold on to, for a lifetime.