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The Yes Magic of New Year’s Resolutions

Posted on:  Dec 20, 2022 @ 10:00 Posted in:  Path Basics

With the Winter Solstice, the new solar year has begun, followed closely by the turning into a new calendar year.  Now is a time of endings that mark new beginnings, and the tradition of New Year’s resolutions.

With yes magic, your New Year’s resolution aligns the potent powers of desire and will through a specific intention to guide your spiritual pathwork in the year ahead.

New Year’s resolutions can be a catalyst for profound, soul-sourced change, drawing on the Path of She practice of yes magic. Yes is the most powerful magical word in our vocabulary. It’s a word that the Universe pays close attention to. Say ‘yes’ and doors of possibilities open. Say ‘yes’ from the depths of soul, and you can transform your life.

Right now, at this very moment, the power of yes magic is at work in your life. Every choice you make and action you take, consciously or unconsciously, is a yes spoken in the language of the material world that weaves the fabric of your everyday existence. This is powerful magic: you are, in effect, spellcrafting your life.

Yes magic is a form of spellcrafting that aligns the potent, twin powers of desire and will through a specific, consciously chosen intention. Desire is what you want, will is your ability to make things happen, and intention is the spark that ignites the magic between them, and sends this magic outward into the listening Universe.

When you make a New Year’s resolution, you’re focusing your will by setting an intention for the coming calendar year. This is a perfect opportunity to use yes magic in service of your personal and spiritual growth for the new year.

 Making Your Yes-Magic New Year’s Resolution

1. Heed Your Soul Desire

Yes magic operates in the domain of soul, not surface-level needs and wants. To use yes magic for your New Year’s resolution, you start by turning your awareness inward, and seeking out the soul desires that are reaching for expression in your outer life at this time.

Take out your journal book. With a few full, slow, grounding breaths, settle into your body and empty your mind. Then focus your attention on heeding your desire for profound, transformative change in the new year.

Start by exploring your existing thoughts about change in the new year. What healing and personal transformation are you hungry for? What are your fears and hopes at this time? What new skills, knowledge, lifestyle enhancements and resources would you like to cultivate?  Why do you want to make these changes in your life?

Then take a few more deep, grounding breaths. Let go of everything you’ve written, and imagine yourself slipping beneath these things you know, and the wants and whys you can readily name. What is beneath these things? What soul-based longings are trying to make their way into your conscious knowing at this turning into the new year?

When your journaling feels complete, put your writing to one side, and let your insights and discoveries percolate inside of you.

  1. Connect With Your Will

Yes magic is also about being grounded in your everyday life, and working with the impetus for change that’s already present in your outer environment. Desire turns your awareness inward, seeking out what you want to change. Will’s job is to focus your awareness outward, and to drive change in relation to your existing life circumstances.

Now that you’ve heeded your soul desire for change in the new year, you next turn your attention to your will, and its connection to what’s happening in your life at this moment.

Place your hands on your abdomen, and anchor yourself in your will by tracking the movements of your breath in the rounding and flattening of your belly. Then expand your awareness outward to your greater environment, and the energies and events of your outer life.

Ask yourself: what’s up for me right now, and demanding my attention, positive or negative? What opportunities and challenges am I facing?  What unusual or synchronistic events have come my way? How are these things revealing the personal change that’s ripe for me at the beginning of this new year?

Answers may come to you immediately, or you may want to let them brew for a day. When this activity feels complete, move on to step 3.

  1. Align Your Desire and Will

Yes magic sources its immense, transformative potential from the alignment of the twin powers of desire and will. When you say yes to your soul desire, and fire up your will to make this desire manifest in your outer life, you’re tapping into the deep, foundational roots of spellcrafting magic. It’s like sending up an intense, focused beacon into the listening Universe, and activating its mysteries of manifestation in service of your personal transformation.

Close your eyes, and put one hand each on your heart and belly. With several full, slow breaths, imagine yourself connecting to your heart with its inner knowing of your soul desires, and your belly with its outer knowing of your will. Open to the meeting and mingling of the insights that came to you in your step 1 and 2 activities. Feel these energies come into alignment in the core of your being, with your will primed to service your soul desire.

From this powerful place, ask yourself: what is my intention for the coming year? How do I want to heal, grow and transform my life?  Be specific and concrete. Know you can choose to change in big or small ways. What matters is not so much the size of the change, but more the depth of the vision and energies that you’re tapping into when setting your intention for the new year.

Move directly from this activity into step 4.

  1. Craft Your New Year’s Resolution

From the insights and information that came to you in the prior steps, craft a specific, yes-magic New Year’s resolution.

Words matter. Your soul, will and the mysteries of the Universe heed the specifics of your intention. Speak in empowering terms, naming what you want to bring into your life, rather than what you want to get rid of. Keep your resolution simple and brief, yet also use words that have power and meaning for you, and that make your soul sing. Make sure there’s an action element to your resolution, something that you’ll do to help manifest your intention. Leave lots of room for the unexpected and the unknown, so the Universe can weave its manifestation magic.

An ideal New Year’s resolution would support and nurture the new direction of your personal and spiritual growth, without being overly directive or goal-oriented. For example, you could set a resolution to develop a new skill, knowledge area or lifestyle choice that would support and enhance your soul’s desire to take your life in a new direction.

Symbolic actions matter.  Design a simple ritual that can charge your New Year’s resolution, and send its message outward into the listening Universe. You can create sacred space, light a candle, and speak your New Year’s resolution out loud three times. You can charge a symbolic object, like a piece of jewelry, an altar item, or a written affirmation that can be a touchstone to your New Year’s resolution yes magic as the next days, weeks and months unfold. Or you can come up with your own ritual that speaks to your soul and intention for change.

It doesn’t really matter what you do, as long as it’s symbolically connected to your New Year’s resolution, and anchors this intention in your soul, body and physical surroundings.

  1. Release Your New Year’s Resolution

With yes magic, like all spellcrafting, you don’t grip tight to your intention. Gather up your presence, commitment and power. Charge your New Year’s resolution through your ritual. Then release your intention, setting it free to work its yes magic, as it will, in your life.

Change will come, but not necessarily change that you can control or choose. The potent alignment of your soul-sourced desire, outer-anchored will, and the mysteries of the Universe will bring you whatever you deeply, truly need to heal and transform your life in keeping with your New Year’s resolution.

For example, if your resolution is to become a more loving person, this might show up as a big fight with your mother. As counter-intuitive as this may appear, on a deeper level your heart might be blocked because of an unresolved issue with your mother. So the Universe delivers to you what you truly need: a conflict to heal your heart with your mother so you can continue on your chosen path of becoming a more loving person.

Yes magic and your soul have their own timeframes which can manifest change in an instant, or take a long time to unfold. In practice, the work of your soul is all about process, not outcomes. What matters is the depth of your engagement, not the speed of your journey or your destination.

  1. Do Your Soul Work

Yes magic isn’t about words. What you do is your true yes, not what you say. Unless your actions back up your New Year’s resolution, nothing is going to happen, or more accurately, something will happen, but it’ll be in alignment with the yes communicated by your actions.

In the coming weeks and months, follow through on your New Year’s resolution by backing your yes words with yes actions. Trust that the challenges and opportunities for change that arrive on your doorstep are your work of soul.  Embrace the negative and positive, the light and shadow, and your beauty and wounding, knowing that all these things are the makings of your personal and spiritual pathwork in the coming year.

And remember to look for the unexpected. With your yes-magic New Year’s resolution, you’ve activated powerful manifestation energies, and these energies will reveal themselves in the insights, dreams, issues, challenges and opportunities that come your way. Expect to be surprised, to dig into places that you’d rather avoid, and to be led by mysteries that you don’t fully understand.

Do your spiritual pathwork to the best of your ability, and trust that this is enough. With conscious awareness and commitment to your New Year’s resolution, you can change in profound, transformative ways, and become ever more masterful at the yes magic of spellcrafting the blessed gift that is your life and the living of your soul desire.

Photo Credit: Gaia Orion

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