can we drop 2013 and move into 2014 lighter

My new years resolution for 2013 was to begin again in each moment with love and humility. 

It has been a real challenge, I'm not going to lie. This has been a year of immense solitude and often agonizing self-reflection. 

My kundalini teacher said that 2013 was a year of letting things go. We are all carrying around a lot of baggage and it has come to the surface this year, revealing itself so that we have the opportunity to see it, feel it, heal it and release it to the universe. When she was explaining this, every single person in the room, without exception, was nodding vigorously. 

No doubt it has been a heavy year for us all.

Thankfully, she said that if we can manage to release our 'stuff', 2014 will be fresh start (with a new moon on the 1st!) and will be a year of travelling more lightly, simplifying, going back to basics.

I am wrapping up 2013 in a way that befits both the release of the old and the embrace of what's to come. I'm attending a Vipassana meditation course from Dec 20-31. Vipassana is a ten day meditation course, which entails complete silence and meditation from morning to evening for the entire period. 

Maybe it makes no sense to most people, but it feels right for me. Solitude. It has been my enemy but now I choose to make friends with it. To enter it like a deep cave. To not scramble for the light in fear, but to anchor myself in my breath. To sit. To feel it. (Whatever it turns out to be.) To know that I will come out on the other side and when I do I will be more sensitive to who I am. Maybe I will find something in there that is worthy of love. Maybe I will drop some things that I've been carrying around. Maybe I will come out travelling lighter. If I can do the work I know I can get there.

As we wrap up another year can we take a moment to meditate on what we can leave behind forever? Can we empty our hands of whatever we are carrying and step into the next year with palms open, face to the sky?

My resolution for 2014 is to begin again in each moment knowing that at our core, without our baggage, we are all the same radiant presence. Light(ness). Love. Peace. 

Namaste, happy new year!