Orientation Tools for a Fresh Start
Throughout life, you'll find yourself at transition points when one cycle concludes, and a new cycle awakens. Some of these chapter changes are personal, some are collective-wide, some are years in the making, and some are just part of the inevitable cycles of life. No matter what scale of cyclic shift you find yourself at, and no matter how personal or communal it feels, here are a couple useful questions to ask yourself as you set your course for the chapter ahead.
1. What is most resonant?
Dissonance happens, and you can't avoid it entirely. In the world, this shows up as war and conflicting interests of groups. In personal relationships, it looks like arguing or stewing resentment or guilt in private that are sure to erupt in the future. In oneself, it shows up as stuck emotional patterns - moods that linger over spans of days, months, years. Even when you find yourself in dissonant circumstances you cannot get out of, you can choose to increase your attention and energy where you find resonance.
How to recognize resonance:
What feels good?
Who feels good?
Where feels good?
What, when you experience it, leaves you feeling like a struck bell resounding over hills and valleys?
That's resonance. Lean into it when it's available. That will help you get through the unavoidable dissonance of life - and perhaps even coax it into a surprising new resonance.
2. What's the next level?
The next level is not always up. Sometimes the next level is deeper. Sometimes the next level is a necessary dis-integration and completion. But sometimes, ah sometimes, we get to rise in some aspect of life.
How to assess your next levels:
What aspects of your life are next-level up?
Are you ready for the stronger winds and brighter sun of those loftier spaces?
If not, what will help you strengthen?
What aspects of your life are next-level deeper?
What's the good soil your roots want to be nourished by?
Teachers?
Healers?
Processes?
Practices?
Research?
What aspects of your life are next-level dis-integration and completion?
How can you honor these completions with grace, gratitude, and appropriate grief so you can let nature - as it always does - take its course?
What rebirths might these endings make possible?
What helps you trust this process?
What supports might you need to help you through this tender process?
With great care, I wish you clarity, renewal, and wisdom in this next chapter of your life
- Rae