New Year Doors

2 years ago

Personal Tao : Casey

Aloha!

Happy New Year

Why is the New Year such an important holiday? Partly, because it’s a door, a gateway, and an opportunity for each person to begin again.

Upfront note: Julie and Casey co-wrote this newsletter so “I” is both of us interchangeably :) !

The first truth of a door is it’s important to embrace the journey to the door.

While the new year begins, take time to center and be ready for the extended year ahead. Rest. Choose to be stronger. Julie and I are taking time to be with family and preparing for the journey on the other side of the New Year door.

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Doors

Here is a video I made about taking this journey.
https://youtu.be/7VTkPx_ScF0

Once you go thru this New Year door, focus on building a new world and not recreating the old world.

Opening New Doors

“old keys won’t open new doors,”
-old proverb

New times means new doors ahead. Our old tricks and habits won’t help us cross through many of the doors we will face ahead.

The key to many doors is spiritual work, since doors can be spiritual. This leads to another interesting truth about doors: you have physical, mental and spiritual doors. People usually think of a door as a physical construct.

A mental door represents choices around your life’s narrative. For example a New Year’s resolution is the desire to change your story. However look at how many people fail to follow through with their New Year’s resolution. It’s not just about wishing a new year resolution into reality. We need to forge a new key with extra work to change a life’s narrative to realize a New Year resolution.

Old keys leave you stuck in old patterns.

Doors that connect you to insights, people and new places represent a spiritual door. Over the last few years, more people sought spiritual answers to improve their life. Expect this year to increase that trend! People are actively seeking spiritual doorways to get unstuck and change their life’s flow.

Spirit also includes connecting through community. Our community is learning to come together. Let’s protect each other as we cross into the new year.

This New Year’s door is a doorway to shift us on all three levels (Body, Mind Spirit). Take the time to create new keys of lifestyle improvements rather than embracing old habits.

I have to admit to feeling a bit of trepidation after staring at this historical change point for twenty years. However, I will push myself to use the opportunity to live a fuller and better life.

Gateways

One type of door is a gateway. A gateway is a door that opens up travel or a new world for you to explore.

I have written about gateways before:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/newsletter-2023-88715028

This New Year is a gateway into new times. Don’t let events and fear push you around this moment of history. Create space to dance around the events of our times. It is much better to dance than stumble your way through life. To embrace the spiritual side of the current door will help you move with the times.

Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from god.
-Kurt Vonnegut

Our spiritual practices such as praying, meditation, surfing, art, gardening and dancing often provide us with new doors.

One of my spiritual teachers, Gabrielle Roth, says this about doors:

“When you dance until there is nothing left but the dance, it is as if a door has been flung open; with one gentle push you fall into love, into the big, badass beat of the universe.”
– Gabrielle Roth

We’d often practice falling, sometimes falling in love. I was struck by the variety of motion and emotion displayed. Joy, Anger, Disgust. It was all there. Infinite shapes and expressions for infinite doors.

Once, when I was dancing at a Tribe workshop in NYC with Gabrielle, a door opened up and I went through. On the other side I saw a vision of my death. I was surrounded my several people as I died and it struck me that I needed to shift some things in my life if I wanted loved ones present at my death. And, so I began again. I stepped onto a new path, choosing new love and new ways to love. This door gave me new motion for a death worth living for.

Our Future

So here we are, facing the door to our future.

We shouldn’t avoid or worry what is on the other side. The other side will become our new home.

This new home will be missing many of the old comforts of our old life. Use the discomfort as motivation and inspiration in building a something new. Since it is new, no one can say what it will be like, rather together we will evolve into that new world.

More importantly we don’t need to be alone anymore. We are all crossing the doorway at the same time. Let’s be together. Let’s take the time to build a larger home as a temple together. It is in being together life becomes worth living. Yet part of being together is building and maintaining a home for us to grow, thrive and explore the world from that home base.

So our next step for this year ahead, build a better shared home base!