Turning and Returning in the New Year
In the film classic, It’s a Wonderful Life, when Jimmy Stewart’s character, George Bailey, returned to his life, it was also a return to all of his problems and concerns. They were as they were when he left them.
When we wake up on January 1st we will wake up to our world still in the middle of a political chasm, racial inequality, families struggling in poverty, our personal difficulties, all the challenging and frightening unknowns.
The tradition of making a New Year’s Resolution may have lost much of its meaning. Among the many things we are learning is that there is little over which we truly do have control.
What if what we carry forward into the new year is not a resolution. There is something about being resolute that feels heavy handed and unmoving. We judge ourselves and feel we must be in control. We make rules and then feel we are failures when we can’t keep up with the inner taskmaster...and we end up feeling alone...on our own. These are all harsh ways we can be towards ourselves...all ways that the soul is not.
Working with our dreams encourages us to turn towards the inner. In a moment of fear…in our outer life and in our dreams…we may turn away. And then this is what can be so meaningful……our dreams invites us to keep turning. They invite us to turn towards the inner support…to feel all of our feelings…to turn again and again towards the sacred...this simple embodied willingness to keep turning towards...we re-turn...feeling our pain we return to love, feeling our sorrow we return to joy...space for all of who we are
.Rodger Kamenetz, founder of Natural Dreamwork, shared that the Hebrew word, Teshuveh, usually translated as ‘to repent,’ really means ‘to return.’ I find this so beautiful, an open-armed welcoming us home to our true self. Nowhere in our dreams does the divine come and tell us what to do, tell us to repent, tell us to be resolute and white knuckle our way through life’s challenges.
Our dreams simply continue to show us, in ways that are tender, challenging, painful, laugh out loud funny...always with love...where our inner self and outer self are not in alignment, how we developed skillful ways to be in the world to protect ourselves and to not feel the feelings that need and want to be felt...the very quality of soul. The way back is neither easy nor linear...it is more of a labyrinth, which unlike a maze which has dead ends and trickery...the labyrinth is the constant turning of outer towards the inner and back again. Even in those moments when we are turning away...the movement continues and as we can turn again...we return.
When we get out of bed on January 1st this year, may we feel into this kind of turning…this turning towards self…towards soul…towards the sacred…this return.
Mary Jo Heyen, M.Ed., was an author, founding member and certified practitioner of Natural Dreamwork until her death in 2022. She had a diverse private practice working with dream clients of all ages and backgrounds. Her practice included her volunteer work with the dreams and visions of those in hospice, their families and grief groups, honoring the gift of their dreams at this most important threshold.