Lasting Change and Enduring Freedom

Each year, many of us participate in a burning bowl ceremony on New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day or the first Sunday of the New Year.  It is an opportunity to free ourselves from thoughts, resentments, beliefs, and situations that no longer serve our highest good; the things that we allow to keep us in bondage and prevent us from embracing our truth and living our dreams.  The ritual involves writing on a piece of paper the things we want to release and ceremoniously placing the paper into the cleansing and transforming flame of the burning bowl to be consumed by the fire, thereby freeing us from them.  Following this release, we then write down the things we choose to welcome into our lives.  It is a process of visualizing our lives in the coming year.  Many participate in this ceremony each year at Unity of Arlington and this past New Year’s Eve was no exception.

I was not there in body this year as I chose to join J in Oklahoma to be with his mother, Virgie, in the hospital; however, I was there in Spirit.  It is one of my favorite rituals and I love sharing it with my spiritual family.  Even though I felt an immediate twinge of envy when I heard the glowing reports of how amazing the ceremony was with Rev. Rebecca Rickey facilitating, the envy quickly gave way to delight and appreciation.  I am thrilled to know that the service was so well attended and was meaningful for so many.  I knew I was leaving you in very capable and loving hands.  I am also filled with gratitude for everyone who helped to make the service happen, including Bea Schindler for making sure we had a burning bowl and a lighted path to it; Glenda and Truman Thompson for readying the sanctuary; Janie Reynolds and Td Doherty for putting together the supplies for everyone; Debra Dickinson for doing all that she does on a daily basis; and, of course, Cornell Kinderknecht and Martin McCall for providing the music.  I wish I had already mastered bi-location so that I could have been in both places, but I was where I felt I needed to be.  I know it was an awesome event.  I am already looking forward to the next one.

There is another ritual many Unity churches and spiritual centers offer, the white stone ceremony, usually on the first Sunday of the New Year.  In the time of Jesus, when one was released from prison or bondage of any kind, they were given a white stone as a symbol of their new-found freedom.  The white stone ceremony is a ritual in which we symbolically release ourselves from our own internal “bondage” by means of guided meditation and imagery, and then open our hearts and minds to hear the voice of Spirit speaking a new name, a quality of the Divine Self, a new title, or other meaningful word or phrase that we write on a white stone.  The white stone is intended to be a symbol of who or what we are to become in the New Year.  We at Unity of Arlington will offer an opportunity to participate in the white stone ceremony during the 10:00 a.m. service this Sunday, January 5.

Both ceremonies can be meaningful, yet it is important for us to recognize that they are not magical. The burning bowl and white stone rituals are opportunities for us to use physical objects that assist us in grounding our awareness of powerful spiritual transformation taking place within our consciousness.  The ceremonies in and of themselves do not set us free; they only assist us in having an external experience of our inner process.

We engage in these rituals at the close of one year and the beginning of another because we have come to think of a New Year as an opportunity to begin again; a year represents a cycle of life.  We give ourselves permission to close the door on the past and open a new door to the future when we turn the page of the calendar from December to January.  There is nothing innately magical about transitioning from one calendar year to the next.  I have found that when I wake up on January 1, I am still the same person, in the same place, living the same life as when I went to bed on December 31.

 

No, there is nothing magical about the end of one calendar year and the beginning of another; however, it can be an empowering time if we choose to make it so.  We can make meaningful and lasting changes in our lives as we transform the way we perceive ourselves, others and the world.

Affecting enduring change in our lives requires our willingness to question everything we think we know – everything, no exceptions.  We can have no “sacred cows” in our beliefs if we truly wish to transform our lives.  Yes, questioning everything may seem frightening.  After all, what if we discover that who we think we are, we are not; what then?  What would we do if after questioning everything we think we know we no longer believe anything that Unity or any other spiritual path has taught us?  What if we discover that every belief we have based our lives on is not true?  Would we be lost?  On the contrary, we would find ourselves, and we would free ourselves.  When we question everything we believe to be true, we will discover what is truly true.  We will discover the Truth of who we are; the Truth that sets us free from the bondage of our beliefs.

We must be willing to be released from the past, the past conditioning of our minds which convinces us that we are something other than God in expression (please question that as well).  We must also be willing to be released from bondage of the future, the belief that at some point in the non-existent future we will be free and live the lives that we dream of.  The future is sometimes a stronger prison for our minds than is the past.

In order to know the freedom we seek, we must be willing to practice the presence of God in the present moment.  We practice the presence of God when we are willing to recognize that we are the presence of God.  In order that we may practice the presence of God we must be willing to be present now, not focused on some memory of the past or on some figment of an imagined future.  Freedom exists only in the present moment because the Allness of God is present in the moment and our conscious awareness of this truth is the totality of our freedom.

We do not find our freedom by turning the page of the calendar, or by closing the door on what has been and opening the door to what will be. We discover our freedom by opening our minds and hearts to the wonder of the present moment, and all that God is, in it and through it.  We embrace the freedom of our Divine Nature by accepting that we are the very presence of God right here, right now.

Rituals help us to affirm our decisions to claim our Truth and set ourselves free.  They are beautiful and meaningful outer expressions of our commitment to choose a new way of seeing ourselves, others and the world.  I hope you will join us on Sunday as we engage in the white stone ceremony and open to the voice of Spirit eternally calling us into a new vision of who we truly are.

Happy New Year!