Does a New Year = a New Self?

[Michael Winn]

Please share with friends interested in the Tao of New Year resolutions.....

Dear Celebrants of the Way of Calendars,

 

First, take 1.5 minutes and have some FUN. Mop up your Holy Days with 45,000 pulsing Xmas Lights video...half way through it, a staid Amazing Grace tune turns into a very Over the Top light show. It took three people just to manage the traffic jam of onlookers:

 

http://www.flixxy.com/best-christmas-lights-display.htm

 

Now you're ready to get serious about the skinny on New Years. This New Year has a lot of lunar forces at work - it coincided with a New Moon, which amplifies our sense of new beginning, and the hope for a New Self. We'll discuss why those New Year resolutons mostly fail. That "New" Self is very elusive, despite billions of people pledging to change it.

 

Most people know the New Moon at night is hidden behind the body of the Earth, so it cannot reflect sunlight back to us. Where is that Dark Moon by daytime? The Dark Moon rises at sunrise and sets at sunset, but we don't see it because of its proximity to the sun. But it's still beaming energy into our lives, a different frequency than the Sun. Some cultures worship the sun more than the moon. China has a dominant lunar culture, and the changing lunar phase suits the Taoist philosophy of finding a Way to naturally harmonize with Change.

Pop Quiz: Can you find the dark moon in this photo of the night sky?

 

Now for some esoteric astronomy. There are two Super Moons this January (1st and 30th), moons within 90 percent of their closest approach to Earth. Super Moons look larger, except that you can't see a Super Moon when it happens on a Dark or New Moon, which is the current case. But maybe the sensitives will feel Lady Luna's Presence more clearly on this January's two Dark Moons. Or maybe everyone will just go slightly mad this January, drunk on Double Dark Moon Qi, a kind of cosmic expresso.

 

Or we may need the double dose of Dark Yin Qi in January to fortify us before the Yang Year of the Wood Horse begins on Jan. 31. My last wife Joyce Gayheart was a Horse, so I know them well. Horses are fun, stubborn, active manifestors, so get ready to charge in new directions -- or be tossed off your horse if you're not willing to go along for the ride. We also know the Planet is galloping faster and faster towards some major completion of a 36 year cycle by 2015 Winter Solstice. But there could be big surprises in those two years.

 

Why was January 1st Chosen as New Year?

 

Right now, in 2014, everyone is full of cheer and hope, and promising that things will get better. That's great - hope springs eternal. But why should we feel this Way in particular on January 1st?

 

I could point to the Anglican and Lutheran churches that believe January 1 was the Day of Circumcision for baby Jesus. But that implies we're celebrating the sexual pain of being mortal, not a popular topic after those New Year parties. Perhaps big with the Woody Allen crowd of sexual neurotics.

 

New Year's Day is January 1 in the modern Gregorian calendar as well as the older Julian calendar used in the Roman Empire. In 46 B.C. Julius Caesar introduced a new, solar-based calendar. It was a vast improvement on the ancient Roman lunar calendar that had become wildly inaccurate over the years.

Julius Caesar was subsequently murdered (Shakespeare immortalized it: "Et tu, Brutus?"). The Roman Senate voted to deify Julius on the 1st January 42 BC in honor of his life and his institution of the new rationalized calendar. The month of January owes its name to the deity Janus, who had two faces, one looking forward and the other looking backward. Or was Janus really all about a Western left-brain vs. right-brain split?

 

Janus was also known as the God of gates, doors, and beginnings. This suggests that modern New Year's celebrations are founded on pagan traditions. January 1 is probably the largest publicly celebrated pagan holiday in the world.

 

Natural New Year vs. Imperial Calendrical Decree

To my let's-observe-Nature-and-learn Taoist mind, the Solar New Year starts with the growth of new light on Dec. 22. The Lunar New Year starts on the second New Moon after Winter Solstice (January 20 to February 20), ensuring that there has been a full month of the growth of lunar energy. I celebrate both solar and lunar New Years - they both have power.

 

I also celebrate January 1 New Year as a powerful spiritual opportunity, even though its clearly a governmental (Pope & Imperial) decreed holy-day, and not part of any natural New Year cycle. But billions of humans are opening their hearts and pouring their Qi (chi) out in the form of Hope of Renewal. I do movement qigong ceremonies and meditations to capture that collective burst of Hopeful Qi and put it to work in accomplishing my own destiny here on Earth. It's not too late to do a ceremony to capture some of that vast field of human Qi floating about. But it will gradually disperse, so don't delay.

 

Using all the Qi available from nature - sun, moon, earth, stars, humans - will really help you gather enough focus and power to really manifest what you truly need this lifetime. The Life Force wants to support us humans, but most of us are emitting a signal that is pretty weak or diffused by mixed thoughts and emotions.

 

The Way of Inner Alchemy is to capture the Macro-cosmic forces of Nature and channel them into our personal Micro-cosmos (the inner zodiac of our body's 12 organ spirits & their Qi channels). In higher alchemical formula practices we learn to concentrate Cosmis Qi into our soul's core channel. For more on One Cloud's Nine Formulas of Inner Alchemy:

 

http://www.healingtaousa.com/one_clouds_nine_tao_alchemy_formulas.html

 

Inner alchemy can intensify and quicken our evolution, for those willing to practice daily and train how to concentrate their consciousness. Many meditators just want to de-stress and relax, which is an important first phase of attuning and listening. But it's possible to go beyond that.

 

Humans are part of Nature, so gathering Human Qi is as equally valuable as the Qi of Heaven or the Qi of Earth. Alchemy is always about harmonizing these three forces. This reflects the Life Force itself is split into a trinity (essentially postive, negative, and neutral streams of Qi flow).

 

Why Did China Switch to Gregorian calendar?

 

Every culture has its own calendar, and the most significant traditional date - the New Year - varies widely from September through March. But globalization has meant that the Roman calendar has gradually usurped or marginalized all the traditional calendars.

The Western Gregorian calendar arrived in China with Jesuit missionaries in 1582. In 1912, the weak New Republican government of China officially recognized New Year's Day as occurring on January 1. The Chinese had been invaded by Western powers and so weakened by forced distribution of opium that the Chinese had devalued their own lunar culture. Again in 1949, Communist Party leader Mao Zedong (1893–1976) forbade celebration of the traditional Chinese New Year and followed the Gregorian calendar. He wanted to be "modern" - his biggest crime was possibly the Cultural Revolution to destroy China's traditional culture and its wisdom.

 

The irony here is that the Chinese invented gunpowder and fireworks used today to celebrate the Jan. 1 New Year. The Chinese only used fireworks for celebratory and peaceful purposes. But after Marco Polo wrote about how advanced Chinese culture was in the 12th century, Westerners were soon using gunpowder for weapons and blasting down the massive walls of castles all across feudal Europe. It was that wave of aggressive militarization using gunpowder that ultimately led to the spread of the Gregorian calendar in China centuries later via economic, political, and colonial domination.

 

By the end of the 20th century, Chinese leaders grew more willing to accept Chinese traditions. In 1996, China instituted a weeklong vacation called Spring Festival – giving people an entire week to travel home and celebrate the lunar new year. Jan. 31, 2014 will be start of Yang Wood Horse Year, until Feb. 18, 2015. This is a sign of growing acceptance of their own culture.

 

All of Taoist philosophy, ritual, and practice (movement or meditation) is ultimately a celebration of the potential for humans to change themselves. The recommended Way of Harmony is to change in alignment with the larger cycles of Nature, to internalize them. Those changes in the collective Qi field are embedded in the Chinese calendar as 12 Animal/Earthly zodiac cycles and Heavenly 5-phases of yin-yang change. It is not a calendar that is imposed UPON nature by Popes or Emperors. Rather it tracks the cycles of natural change.

 

I hope everyone is able to both relax and to grow their ability to focus their consciousness in order to manifest their highest worldly and spiritual destiny.

Edited January 3, 2014 by Michael Winn

[joeblast]

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[SonOfTheGods]

[Marblehead]

I really don't see any problem with the OP. No where near as off the wall as some of my posts are.

[BaguaKicksAss]

He changed it, into a real post . A good one too.

[Nungali]

IMO it doesn't equal a new person ... unless you make a dummy out of your old clothes, pack it with things that represent what you want to get rid off ... attach a Bull's heart to its chest ... put it on a pyre, do an invocation ... stab it in the heart and torch it.

 

But that works on any 'eve'. What does change into something new every year on that date, regardless, is my calandar

Edited January 4, 2014 by Nungali

[BaguaKicksAss]

Actually, I feel like I change into a new person, each and every single day...

 

Er not quite as drastic as Nungali is speaking of perhaps, but some of that medical qigong homework seems just as dramatic (but on a non-physical level) some evenings lol.

[Nungali]

Actually, I feel like I change into a new person, each and every single day...

 

Er not quite as drastic as Nungali is speaking of

 

I imagine that would make your local butcher rather suspicious ?

[Marblehead]

Actually, I feel like I change into a new person, each and every single day...

I don't go quite that far. Sure, we change over time, but I see it as simply evolving through our cyclic of life. But each and every day? Yes. Some days we don't see the changes because they are so minute, but they happen none-the-less.

 

However, I have many times said that 'today is the first day of the rest of your life'. So from this point of view, we can create a new life for ourself anytime we wish to do so.

[idiot_stimpy]

Each moment is just a shift into a new perspective. That new perspective is a new you.

[joeblast]

each moment, another moment to be aware