How I Rang In the New Year in a New Way Celebrating All the Good and Wonderful Things We Want to Share with You
We believe “The best is yet ahead” and “All things work together for those who love God…”We invite you to join us on the journey of love, attaining goals, and doing great things together in 2023.
I have spent the last hour of 2022 watching the minutes count down towards midnight and the birth of the New Year…and preparing to celebrate those first few minutes as we traditionally do here.
For many years, we have been living and working on this land in the country that we call Still Mountain Meditation Retreat, which is located in a lush valley surrounded by mountains, vast forests and wild rivers.
For the past 25 years, I am always standing on the front portico of our meditation hall when the clock strikes midnight on New Year’s Eve, eager for the moment when I would raise a large conch shell to my lips and send its wailing song echoing across the valley. The conch sounds like an elephant’s trumpeting, with long lingering blasts.
But this year, during our massive cleaning up ,clearing storerooms and moving things around, this magic conch has been misplaced. When I went to look for it tonight to greet the New Year, I realized that it is probably lovingly packed away beyond easy reach in one of the many tubs stacked in storage.
I was very disappointed.
With only a few minutes left to prepare, I suddenly remembered we do have a large triangle bell of the kind used on ranches and farms for ringing during emergencies or to call folks in from the fields to meals.
After getting the bell, tools and a ladder, I went out to the portico and hung it on a high spot facing the valley, with just one minute to spare.
At the stroke of midnight, I was ready….and started striking the bell with a long iron bar , which made the bell ring so loud I could hear echos far in the distance. I was literally ringing in the New Year with unbridled enthusiasm as I hit the bell hard and fast, building towards a crescendo.
All around me, folks on their homesteads, ranches, farms and homes were outside in the dark, blasting away with pistols, rifles and shotguns. These down home country people were celebrating by whooping and yee hawing while igniting fire crackers, firing off bottle rockets and sending up brilliant, beautiful displays of fireworks.
This cacophony of celebration went on for at least fifteen minutes and like any good symphony, swelled and rose in furious tempo before gradually dying down back into the usual silence of the night.
It is a beautiful feeling to know that at the same time as we are celebrating here in our high mountain valley, this New Year is being greeted in all kinds of ways by billions of people ,with similar enthusiasm and hope all over the world.
Here on Still Mountain, after all our struggles, challenges and breakthroughs during 2022, we see this New Year as our time to “make it or break it”. We are ready to put our hearts, minds and spirits in total, sustained focus on accomplishing all the things we feel divinely called to do and which have been in process for many years.
All of my life, I have known that this time of turmoil, challenge and change that all of humanity is now going through was coming…and that I was being prepared and trained by my teachers, my spiritual practices and life experiences to play my part someday in helping us make the transformation of consciousness needed to navigate it.
It is said that our talents and abilities are God’s gift to us and what we choose to do with them is our gift back to God and each other.
I started writing prolifically after having a sudden, unexpected major spiritual awakening one summer afternoon in 1964, when I was 14. I have been writing constantly and consciously everyday since, but did not begin publishing until launching “The Dawning Light” back in 2015 on a different platform.
In the past year we have been powerfully called in prayer to let go of every other focus of attention and to concentrate solely on writing and publishing this newsletter and our inspirational videos, books and other content.
We have steadily answered that call by closing our business, which had been absorbing most of our time and energy for far too long. We have been simplifying every aspect of life and choosing to live frugally on purpose in pursuit of what we call ‘simple living freedom.”
This has given us the most important freedom of all— time freedom.
We are now finally totally free to concentrate solely on the three most important priorities of our lives…our relationship with God through prayer, meditation and spiritual path; our relationship with each other as spiritual friends and allies and our service to the world through publications (such as “The Dawning Light”).
We are very grateful for you, dear one, for being here with us.
Thank you for being a subscriber, for believing in and participating in this journey of the heart with us.
We have many beautiful, inspiring and uplifting things to share with you, day by day, as this New Year moves ahead. We intend to exceed your expectations and help you achieve and sustain a loving, positive attitude.
On January 2, 2023, we will be launching our daily version of “The Dawning Light”, which will be sent to you every morning Monday through Friday before dawn. Each issue will be packed with short, totally positive and inspirational content that will be like a shot of spiritual espresso intended to help you jumpstart your morning.
How we begin the day determines how the day will flow.
Our goal is to help you rise up into a state of enthusiastic expectation and determination which will help bring positive and expansive results.
It really is true…OUR ATTITUDE DETERMINES OUR ALTITUDE!
If we want to have a happy and peaceful mind, we must learn to free ourselves from negative self talk, thoughts and attitudes. The best and most powerful way to do that is through consciously choosing to cultivate the highest, clearest, most loving positive self talk, thoughts and attitudes.
Our primary mission in publishing “The Dawning Light” is to inspire and motivate you to embrace the positive, the good, and the loving aspects and make them your daily reality.
Love the visual of you literally ringing in the new year!! Looking forward to your coming posts!