I stopped making new year’s resolutions a few years ago, I now set intentions because I find that these resonate more with my soul. Often these intentions come to me at the strangest of moments when I’m not actually trying to access them….while washing up, while walking, while I’m running on the treadmill, or while I’m in the shower.

The other day an intention came through so clearly

…‘Live lightly’…

The east coast of Australia is still ablaze with bushfires and I’m sure that most of what I’m feeling is due to a sensitivity and deep empathy for those people that have lost loved ones and their houses, as well as the total devastation of the bushland and wildlife.

Acknowledging that global warming is real and that higher temperatures and less rain will be very much a part of our future here in Australia, we obviously need to be thinking of new ways to live and survive, especially in rural areas. We are hopeful, that once the direct threat of these fires is over, the conversations and strategies will start to be implemented.

This national crisis has made me think about the things that I would save in the event of a fire and those things that I would be content to live without. Before I got married, I lived in the same house for 21 years and back then most of my belongings fit into my bedroom.

Then I met Cameron, got married and since then we have moved 4 times to different parts of Sydney. Our kids have lived in 3 of those 4 houses and boy do you gain more ‘stuff’ when the family grows.

One thing that moving does is force you to go through your belongings and purge the things that no longer ‘spark joy’.

Before I discovered Marie Kondo, one of my rules was that if we hadn’t used something within the past year, we didn’t actually need it.

I think that once you’ve moved a couple of times, you get less attached to things. The New Year is also a great time to have a cleansing of material possessions.

It usually starts when I go looking for the Christmas decorations in December and is completed by the time I’m packing away them away in January. This year we had two extended family celebrations at our house for Christmas, so not always the best time to be creating even more mess, fortunately we have a second storey where the piles could be stacked until sorted.

I tend to ‘go through’ boxes of things that are stored in various locations around the house, piles of paperwork and just yesterday my son gave his drum kit (he’s onto guitar now) to one of his school friends. That drum kit has moved from inside the house to the garage to our outdoor area, to a nook outside the bedrooms…we just don’t have the space for something that is not being used, especially something that big. Twas a difficult conversation to have with Ash because I always want to encourage my children to play music and I won’t lie there was a huge amount of ‘mum guilt’ connected to this one.

In speaking to friends in Sydney that back onto the bush, many of them have a couple of boxes of photos and special things packed ready to go in the car if they have to evacuate. One dear friend who lost everything in the Nymboida fire managed to save her pets and not much else..the fire was fast and ferocious. And I felt her pain as she talked of the art she lost that was irreplaceable. Art that she had made and also her mother’s art. Instruments that have gone and a favourite sundress.

But it’s not just living lighter from a materialist perspective..my intention for this year is actually more about ‘living lighter’ emotionally.

Another source of inspiration for this intention no doubt came from my re-reading of Michael S. Singer’s book ‘The Untethered Soul’. After gifting it to my dad for Christmas, I found it again on my Kindle app and I literally couldn’t put it down. I finished it in two sittings and have highlighted so many passages. Actually I been re-reading passages off and on for the past couple of weeks.

There are so many insights that I received whilst reading this book. The part that got me thinking about ‘living lighter’ is in Part 3, chapter 8 (Let go and never fall) where Michael Singer writes

“That which is blocked and buried within you forms the root of fear. Fear is caused by blockages in the flow of your energy. Fear is the cause of every problem. It’s the root of all prejudices and the negative emotions of anger, jealousy and possessiveness.”

Imagine the creative flow that could be generated and the joy that would fill our souls if we were able to let go of these emotions. How much lighter we would be!

Singer then goes on to talk about how it is possible to let these emotions just come up and pass through you without holding onto or ‘clinging’ to them.

“If you are sincerely seeking truth, you’ll let go every time. This is the beginning and the end of the entire path - you surrender yourself to the process of emptying yourself. When you work with this, you start to learn the subtler laws of the process of letting go.”

(Writing this blog, temporarily interrupted by a learner driving crashing into my husband’s work truck outside. No joke! It seems the lessons are all around us….everyone is ok..breathe…)

Of course, this letting go is a process. It requires maintaining awareness that WE are not the emotions we experience but we are the AWARENESS behind these emotions (thank you also to Eckhart Tolle who first helped me realize this). It also requires an openness and understanding that there may be times when you do fall…but this is not a call to perfectionism (thank goodness)

“If you fall along the way, just get up and forget it. Use the lesson to strengthen your resolve. Let go right then. If you feel shame, let it go. If you feel fear, let it go. All of these are remnants of the blocked energy that is finally being purified.”

As is often the case, I did receive an image at the same time the intention came to me and I’m in the process of creating an artwork to express it. Yesterday I made some batik feathers (floating throughout this post) one of which will feature in the artwork…

I’ll post the finished product (a mixed media collage work) on the blog this week.

But in the meantime friends, I hope that by sharing this intention with you and some of the insights from Michael Singer, Oprah & Eckhart Tolle, that you too may have a little soul stirring to ‘live lighter’ this year.