EVEN THOUGH WE designate certain times to begin afresh (like New Year’s Day), each sunrise and moon cycle offers that chance as well. Every season and cycle, we can welcome new beginnings, new goals, and new opportunities to evolve and un-peel what no longer serves us.
These past months, many of us spent the full and new moon cycles clearing off the sludge from 2020 and transmuting the toxicity into opportunities for real transformation in 2021. With spring approaching, we feel the need to clear, clean, cleanse and move forth with new projects, birthing our dreams.
These past months, many of us spent the full and new moon cycles clearing off the sludge from 2020 and transmuting the toxicity into opportunities for real transformation in 2021. With spring approaching, we feel the need to clear, clean, cleanse and move forth with new projects, birthing our dreams.
For example, in our casita over the last few days, my family and I have been busy clearing out, filling two truckloads full of items to donate to our local thrift shop, one truckload to take to the dump, plus a barrel full of papers ready for a bonfire. Our home feels lighter and ready to receive the mystery of life, helping us love one another and make new memories filled with laughter. Personally, the pandemic has given us insight, moments of contemplation, and lessons in being PRESENT.
I am a person with a lot of energy and on the go 24/7. I tend to multitask and overextend my energy, at times forgetting to just sit and hold my partner’s hand and listen to his guitar playing. Both the pandemic and being diagnosed with terminal cancer have given me pause, brought on the brakes, and placed many projects on hold. So I am reaffirming the RELEASING of the past with all its shades of toxicity, and I open my heart to RECEIVING the present with all its mystery filled with love, hope, and memories.
I share with a humble heart a few simple rituals that you can do anytime you might need a boost towards a new beginning or wish to cleanse the energy no longer serving your path.
Thoroughly clean the house to release and receive
Sweep with a broom from the door to the street when you want to drive out bad vibes, troubles, and negative things from the home. I make a rosemary tea floor wash and use it to sweep my floors or mop them. Then I leave the broom across the outside of my doorway until the first week of the next month. This practice is not an everyday kind of sweeping; it is a sacred ritual of creating peace and order, and refilling our homes with love by letting go that which is ‘at war’ with our spirit. The broom represents the winds of change bringing us the bright energy of hope and the promise of a fresh new start. Sweep away.
Throw out a glass of water
Throwing a glass of water out towards the street symbolizes the expelling of tears, worries, and negativity. I hold the glass of water and release my sorrows into it and then toss the water onto a tree or flowerbed. I experienced many losses last year, and I honored them by placing the energy into a vessel of blessed water, and then allowing them to flow back to Mother Earth.
Make some noise
Making loud noises drives away spirits that do not belong in your home. Put on some fun music. I like Celia Cruz’s “El Yerberito Moderno,” “Rie y Llora,” or “Aché Para Todos.” Ring bells, play a singing bowl, beat a drum, play a flute. I keep wind chimes outside by my portal porch for this purpose, but even just ringing your doorbell several times works. This year, my five-and-a-half-year-old granddaughter has been drumming the sacred huēhuē.
