A Year in the Box
52nd Edition
Happy Spiritual Monday!
52 editions, 52 weeks, what a year it’s been! Today in Australia it is Boxing Day, a day once celebrated for giving gifts to the poor who couldn’t afford the Christmas rush. Mainly, families who had much and who didn’t need everything they received would offload the extras to those in need.
In the spirit of giving, I felt called to give a breakdown of the year that was.
Beginnings
For many years people asked me to share my thoughts more on social media, blogs, etc. I navigated around this as there were already so many others sharing out there, surely someone else was saying the same stuff I would share! And to be fair, there certainly are many out there sharing the same or very similar ideas. I suppose I just decided I wanted to share with no real motive for who wished to tune in. So on January 2 of this year, the first Spiritual Monday was released.
It was a big day… I wrote, recorded and uploaded my first truly personal piece. I emailed it to 15 close brothers and sisters to peruse, then sat into a beautiful sacred mushroom journey. In this journey, a melange of emotions swirled through me and with my lady next to me I felt love and joy.
Towards the later stages I felt that perhaps I should share this with others and I hopped onto ye olde Instagram to share my newsletter with the people. It had been many months since I used the platform, and there were hundreds of unread messages, notifications and the like, but one in particular stood out. This message was from a woman who I had reached nearly a year before after 20 years of attempts, and who had, after making contact, told me to give her time and some other not terribly comforting words.
After much time, she had responded with a beautiful message that was unexpected to me. The context here deserves its own full edition one day, but the succinct version is that 20 years prior she had birthed a beautiful girl who was borne out of our short, but deep love affair, and I had not seen them since.
Her message was warm and kind, and among other things, she shared that she was living a great life, and our daughter was a brilliant, kind, beautiful young woman on an incredible life path. It warmed my heart and brought tears to my eyes.
I share this brief tidbit here, as it pertains to how the year transpired following. This message that they had gone on with their lives was a sign that after 20 years in idle, it was time for me to get on with it as well. This day marked a tremendous stepping stone into a new chapter of life, as it would appear it was also the day my beautiful lady’s egg would’ve been released into the womb…
Following on from this event, I felt a renewed zest for life and living, as though I had woken up from a Rip Van Winkle-esque coma I had somehow self imposed to keep myself contained. Caroline and I conceived our beautiful son and bought a one way ticket into this new chapter of life. Throughout the pregnancy, I wrote, I shared, I supported my Queen the best I could, I prepped as I could to enter the next chapter of initiation. Spiritual Monday became a new, bigger ritual than it once had been.
Goings On
Looking back, there seems to be almost one big blurry whoosh that was 2022. With this mindset, I have found times where I felt like nothing happened, no forward momentum occurred. Thankfully, I have an amazing woman who reminds me of all that we have achieved this year. I pray for you all to have or find someone like this in your lives, as I find it so valuable to have such a grounding pole for reality. She reminded me how we, you know, made a baby and a family and such not so trivial things. How we managed to get through some of the darkest days and nights. So much has happened, and is happening, I felt to simply share on some of the achievements of 2022. Before I do, I wanted to share a bit of why I am doing it.
I have always been one to celebrate humility, and sometimes to the point of detriment. What I mean by that is that I have seen how humility - for me - can sometimes take an ego turn and become self deprecating, depletive and in a way, can actually be a form of putting myself down. I have often found that I don’t want to celebrate anything, or share anything good about myself for fear that it would stoke the fires of the ego and cause me to become a worse version of myself. So, with no sense of pride or arrogance, I thought a good exercise would be to list some major achievements in my life, so that I may reflect on them and see what a wonderful year I truly have had! If the process vibes with you, I may suggest you give it a go, make it a New Year’s ritual to end strong and begin with wind in your sails.
In 2022, I:
Started this newsletter and maintained its publication for 52 straight weeks
Conceived our son, supported my woman and cared for our family
Created new offerings and journeys, and facilitated them with positive reception and outcome
Co-created new events and ran them with ease and grace
Taught over 450 classes for more than 15,000 students
Moved into a beautiful landing pad for my family start off
Watched my woman navigate the toughest 9 months of her life
Supported her as best I could
Shared space and facilitated space with some beautiful brothers
Experienced some powerful, sacred ceremonies and journeys
Surfed (maybe a little less than usual) and got barrelled in some of my favourite places
Celebrated my 40th birthday with my love at my favourite place on Earth
Ate some damn tasty food, and cooked some of it too!
Shared song and prayer, learned new instruments, refined old ones
Connected more deeply with close friends
Whittled out some old friends and acquaintances
Made space for things and people I really wish to have in my life
Witnessed the miracle of birth and my woman being an absolute goddess in delivering our perfect little Ember
Made art out of time, space and vibrations
Planted and grew veggies, flowers, trees
Sold my beloved van, and bought a family friendly vehicle
Saw some incredible live music shows
Wrote a lot
Spent as much time as possible with my newborn son as he stared into my soul
Laughed
Cried
Felt solid, and felt unstable
Learned, every day
Grew wiser (as measured by a new crop of grey hairs coming in)
Grew closer to source
Ouroboros
This practice feels good just to write onto paper and I can assure you the New Year’s festivities will involve a few ceremonies around putting these events back into the mix to fuel the next cycle. As there is no real end or beginning to any of this, I wish you all a beautiful changing of the months, a reseting of your year or your life or whatever you choose to reset.
May you experience love in its most profound, joy with those you love and presence through and with the souls of those you surround yourself with. The ancient symbol of the Ouroboros is the snake in a circle eating its own tail, indicating that we are on a perpetual loop of existence, time and experience.
This year has been a big chunk of time with a lot of events having transpired.
For myself, next year’s Spiritual Monday will be different in some ways. How? Find me in a week and I’ll tell you.
May your life be a constant celebration of the exquisite opportunity of life which we have been given.
Sending so much love to you and yours, may you receive it, reciprocate it and be in love with all life.
To all who have been here for whatever length of time, thank you so much for following along on this journey with me. 🙏🏽
And so it is.
A Year in the Box