POTENTIAL IN NOTHINGNESS
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Welcome to beautiful 2023. The theme of this whole year is Integration. We've done a lot of work. We've done a lot of healing. We've gone deep down into the shadow. We've done a lot of clearing, and so for the beginning of this year, the theme being Integration and just taking time to integrate all the healing work that we've done. Integrate who we once were with who we are now. Integrate all the practices that we've engaged in... For the beginning of this year of integration, I want to bring forward the theme of the pure Potential in Nothingness. I'm coming to you from the North country and it's just beautiful stillness and darkness, and yet there's light everywhere with the reflection of the stars on the snow and the moon on the snow and the sun in its soft pink snow-filled sky hue, and in this time of winter, there's a silence that is just quite inviting and encouraging. And I think that the seasons and the Earth, they give us this energy of silence for us to be able to begin to feel the potential in nothingness, for us to begin to feel the potential in stillness, even to feel the potential in aloneness. I think that we naturally run away from the feeling of nothing. We run away from the feeling of stillness and silence. Perhaps because it feels too close to death for us. And if we're always running, we're always busying ourselves, we're always consuming more and more and more, perhaps then we feel a little bit less alone. Perhaps then we feel a little bit further away from the death that we are guaranteed for. Birth and death and life are things that we go into alone, and so maybe we spend so much time on a screen because it helps us to feel less alone. But I think if you're in a place of feeling a little bit uninspired, if you're in a place of feeling a bit alone, if you're in a place of feeling that silence and stillness that comes with winter, rather than running away from it, I want to encourage you to lean into it, to go into it. Because there, in these spaces that are uncomfortable for us, there is pure potential. Before life sprang up from the Great Mystery, perhaps there was silence. Perhaps there was nothing. Perhaps there was stillness. Perhaps there was darkness. But in that silence and stillness and darkness, there was the pure potential for everything to become what it is. Nature encourages us to go into these places so we can feel that energy of pure potential, like going deep within the silence and darkness of the womb or the caves that are surrounding this beautiful Mother Earth. So to begin this year of Integration, I want to encourage you to just start with silence and nothingness. Let's sit together just for a moment here. Go ahead and close your eyes. Take a few deep breaths. And allow yourself to just rest in silence, stillness, and the pure potential of the darkness that lies behind your closed eyes. May this year bring forward all the wishes of your pure heart. Blessed be.