David's Desk is my opportunity to share thoughts and tools for the spiritual journey. These letters are my personal insights and opinions and do not necessarily reflect the sentiments or thoughts of any other person in Lorian or of Lorian as a whole. If you wish to share this letter with others, please feel free to do so; however, the material is ©2024 by David Spangler.
Editor’s Note: David’s Desk is on hiatus this month. This essay originally appeared in 2011.
Happy Mobile New Year!
A new year begins. As our solar system journeys through space, making its own millennia-long spin around the center of our galaxy, our own world has now completed a cycle of its own, returning after three hundred and sixty five nights and days to a position relative to the sun equivalent to where it was last January. Now it starts that same cycle again.
There is no law that says a new year has to be measured from this time of year. Any place along the circle of the year could be designated as the beginning of a new cycle. That we celebrate New Year’s Day at this time of year is a result of a combination of factors unique to the Northern Hemisphere of our world. There is the cycle of the moon’s phases which gives rise to the lunar calendar, the phenomenon of the solstice in which the longest night gives way to the return of the light in the increasingly lengthening day, and the nature of winter itself in which the world seems to take a creative in-breath in the silence and the cold prior to all the creativity activity of spring and summer. These and other elements conspire to give us a feeling of renewal and newness at this time in the earth’s journey around the sun.
But whatever the reason we celebrate New Year’s now, the fact is that we do so. The birth of a new year was heralded around the world with a succession of spectacular fireworks displays in humanity’s major cities beginning with New Zealand. Watching it on television, I could only marvel at the extent of this planetary event celebrated even in countries like China whose native calendar marks the New Year at a different time of the year. For one twenty four hour moment, humanity is united in its hope for a better future.
However, looking out the window of my living room at the snow-covered street and houses of our neighborhood, I see no evidence that a New Year has begun, though the day itself is dawning gloriously. The pine and maple trees that surround our house pay no attention to human calendars. The mountains on the horizon looked the same on January 1st as they did on December 31st. If I wanted to see the arrival of New Year displayed in my environment, I would look and wait in vain.
So where do I see this New Year? In the light in my wife’s eyes. In the sense of new possibilities in my own heart and mind. In the wishes of “Happy New Year” from our children. In the emails of good wishes coming from friends. The inner environment is alive with the spirit of new beginnings. I know from experience that there are always subtle beings—potential spiritual allies—who, though uncaring and even unknowing about human calendars, are more than willing to respond positively and supportively to our intimations of possibility and renewal.
Similarly, where do I locate New Year’s in time? Well, obviously it’s on the first day of the year, January 1st. That’s New Year’s Day, But when on January 1st is it New Year’s? Is it only during the first hour? Is it during the first minute? Is it the first second or even the first nanosecond after the clock strikes 12 pm midnight? By convention, it’s the whole day. January 1st is twenty-four hours long. But what about January 2nd? Does the sense of newness, of possibility and potential, suddenly stop one minute after 11:59 pm on January 1st? Is a new year like a new car, depreciating in value the moment you sign the contract and drive it out of the dealership? Does 2024 become a Used Year when January 2nd dawns?
How long does the energy of renewal and hope last? At what point in our lives does the New Year become just “the year?”
This is not a silly question. One of our most powerful human attributes is our ability to envision possibility and to act on that vision. We are creators of newness and transformation, honoring the past but not enslaved to it when change is important and necessary. What enables us to use this attribute? What gives us the energy to press forward to bring something new into being when faced with the inertia of the familiar and the habitual? We have unfortunately turned the idea of New Year Resolutions into something of a joke, making them with a sense of wink-wink, nod-nod that they will never be fulfilled once we settle back into the routines of our lives. Possibility then becomes a contact high that doesn’t survive long after January 1st becomes one of our yesterdays. This is a shame, for our ability to make a resolution and keep it is one of the bedrocks on which human civilization is based. But resolutions do require energy if we are to keep them alive and maintain our commitment to them. We feel this energy in the joyous and exciting spirit of potential that fills us on New Year’s Eve and Day, but how do we maintain it?
In this process, we are not served by identifying this spirit with a minute, an hour or a day on a calendar, that is, with something that has a beginning and an ending. Though it has outer points of reference in the environment, New Year’s is primarily an inner festival, a festival of the imagination. It is spiritual software which is as portable within our hearts as physical software is now increasingly a mobile part of our lives through our smartphones and I-pads. Any point on a circle can be its beginning. The spirit of New Year’s is as real and available at 4 pm on April 4th or 7 am on September 18th as it is at midnight on January 1st
So, what you want to do now is to “download” the joy and promise of New Year’s (which I hope you’re still feeling when you read this). You want to put this energy into your personal, inner “I-Pad” (where the “I” can stand for “Identity” or “Incarnation”). Here’s one way to do this:
If you saw the New Year in with celebration on New Year’s Eve, then remember the happiness and sense of promise and new beginnings that you felt. If you were with friends and family, remember the joy of those associations. Pay attention to how this joy, expectation, promise, and sense of newness and possibility feel in your body. Your body doesn’t know a calendar from a colander; it lives in the moment. The date doesn’t mean anything but what you’re feeling does, and your body will remember this felt sense.
Call this felt sense of the promise of new beginnings and the spirit of New Year’s your “New Year’s Self.”
Now go to your calendar and pick a day in every month. It doesn’t have to be the same day. It might be a Tuesday one month and a Thursday the next. It can be anytime during the month. On your calendar, write yourself a note that says, in effect, “Remember! Today you will be visited by your New Year’s Self.” Then when that day comes, take a moment to recapture the felt sense within your body of this New Year’s Self and welcome it into your life. If you want, say “Happy New Year!” to yourself! But whatever else you do, feel into the spirit of possibility and new beginnings and know that spirit is as much a part of you, as present in your life, on this day as it may have felt on January 1st.
This exercise lets you know that the spirit of New Year’s is not lost as the year goes on but is always accessible. And if ever we needed to know that we can access a spirit of change and potential as we face the challenges of our world, it’s now!
I’ve used this technique with participants in workshops to help them recapture later on the uplifting spirit they felt during the workshop itself. It’s always worked well, and I expect it will work well in recapturing the spirit of New Year’s, too. It’s just a fun thing to do, but behind it is a very real principle. New Year’s is one day out of three hundred and sixty five but the spirit it celebrates is timeless. It is mobile, not static, and is as available to us at any time in our lives as it is on January 1st. We can choose when we will open to new possibilities and invoke our powers to imagine, to envision and to change. There is no reason that any day you choose cannot become the beginning of a new cycle of possibility and accomplishment for you.
With that in mind, I wish you a very HAPPY MOBILE NEW YEAR! May its spirit no longer be confined to January 1st, but be alive and well and filled with blessing in the I-Pad of your daily life.