In case you do not recognise me

I know I've asked you this before, but you might have changed your mind. Do you make New Year's resolutions? If you do and you have, what are yours for this year?

I have made them in the past, but this time it's more to do with having my nose to the ground following a track.

There are three things running for me, and they are all connected.

Firstly, I think 2019 may be a turbulent year. There are themes connected with water emerging — which also means flow, which also means currency, which also means money, so it's important now (in my opinion) to be frugal and debt-free and live simply so as to stay afloat and bob on the waves like a napping seagull or feel at home and not lost or overwhelmed bumping along the bottom. It's a time of old structures being shaken, so it will be very convenient to be small and free and sitting light to things, unencumbered — as it always is. The flexibility of simplicity will be important in 2019, I think. I might be wrong, I often am, but that's what's drifted my way. "If in doubt, simplify" is part of my rule of life (the other items are equally useful. "Don't walk backwards in the supermarket" is one, and "Eat ripe peaches in the bath"). So we in our household have been vigorously simplifying, clearing out absolutely everything we think we can live without as 2018 crossed over into 2019, sending away everything that does not actively beautify our home and enhance our lives, all the junk we don't regularly use and can find a way to make redundant. I'll take some photos for you if you're interested. And I have set in place for 2019 a simplifying down of my budget, living on radically less, giving more away, paying better attention to frugality.

Secondly, in 2018, starting in February, I began a process of clearing out accumulated and clogging illness. I've got on well with it and seen off a lot of problems. But the more issues I clear, the more are then free to come to the surface. Recently I've got down to where sadness and anger and sorrow and old grief have got trapped in my liver, and now I'm clearing, clearing, allowing them to evaporate off because their time has passed. This has also involved addressing a few old relationships — in different ways according to the particular paradigms —because 2019 is a year for setting the new in place, and that's what I'm doing; re-drawing the lines of engagement, because in the past some have been uncomfortable and disadvantageous to me. 

Thirdly, I feel an emerging theme of letting truth appear. There's no need to be harsh or mean, but I have come to a place of declining to cramp or accommodate who I am in the hope of pleasing people who are hard to please and who export personal discomfort as blame. I do believe every person is doing the best they can with the information they currently have, and you can't fruitfully ask anything of someone who is unconscious, can you? So God bless them every one, but I am no longer willing to dance to their tune. This year — bit by bit, quietly and cautiously like snow starting to fall, not like turning a fire hydrant up to full whack without notice — I am going to let truth appear, and find a way to live my truth truthfully in this world. And my truth belongs to God, and my perception is that a great deal around me has sold out to Mammon, so that may cause conflict and limitation, but we'll see. On the shelf over our telly there used to be a row of DVDs and recipe books, but we have removed those and put them in a cupboard we emptied in all the end-of-year clearing, and instead set a block of slate into which our Alice cut the letters: THE TRUTH SHALL SET YOU FREE. It's going to be a useful reminder all through 2019. I'll put a photo here to show you when the day has come and I'm no longer in bed writing this.

So those are my three things for 2019 — a minimalist level of simplicity, clearing, letting truth appear.

In 2018 and intensifying as it passed into 2019, an old and tired phenomenon began to occur. There are two odd and contrary abiding dynamics in my life: 1) I am curiously invisible — people tend to literally not see me, and rarely recognise me. But, 2) I often attract a powerful adverse reaction — resentment, rage, hate, jealousy, fear. 
   I try to slip through like a shadow, disturbing my environment as little as possible, practising quiet from the physical right through the subtle to the spiritual. But sometimes I attract attention, and when I do it is often negative. Towards the end of 2018 I began to attract a certain amount of negative attention, and when I talked this over with our Hebe she had some advice for me: "Lie low like a flat fish," she said: "lie low until it passes. It will soon be gone."

That is such excellent advice. I do have a strong fishy component to my nature as it happens, and can rest like a speckled trout in the dappled shallows almost invisible. So if you see me in 2019, this will be what I look like:

Nothing to see here. No starry flounder on the seabed. This is my year of becoming quieter, quieter, simpler, simpler, less . . . less . . . less . . . 

Not this cat —

This cat —

Oh — and at the end of 2018 I got an Advance Directive all witnessed and signed, and at the beginning of 2019 I sent my doctor a copy for my files. Basically it expresses my wishes that, though I am in good health at present, when the time comes I want no one to get between the burglar and the door. You gotta leave when the Spirit says "Leave", and that's how I want it to end when it does. No interventions, no resuscitations, no prolonging, no curtain calls and no encores. When my work is done, I'm out of here.

And one more thing — right on the end of 2018 a dear friend of mine died, a strong and spiritual woman who could always see me and loved me most generously. Pearl. She is still hovering near just now, and helping me prepare what is needful for the committal of her body, which I am honoured is my role in her funeral. She is also exerting some gracious influence on the flow of energies around me, which is dearly welcome because she was a healer, and a sparkling fountain of crystal clear truth and kindness. I am grateful for her life and her friendship, and for the beauty of the wake of her passing as her little barque heads out into open sea.

So. Thank you for patient listening. How about you?