Wow, can you believe that it is already the second month of the year!
January just flew by, didn’t it? It did for me.
My month was full of lots of tiny moments of heart connections, laughter and joy. I also spent a lot of energy on sorting, de-cluttering and re-committing to simplicity and a less-is-more way of life. It works well for me. I am doing Project 333 again and enjoyed toning my wardrobe down to 33 items for the next 3 months. Yes, 33 is enough.
January also gave me an opportunity to reflect deeply on what 2014 would be to me. My choice of my three words, commitment, forgiveness and creativity, have set the tone for my year. Expressing my desires and intentions is a powerful practice that helps to keep me true to my personal goals. I am grateful to be able to explore them here with you and to have you along on the journey. Perhaps you would like to share yours below. Thank you for being in this together!
Stop for a moment. Breathe gently. And commit to life.
Enter February. Love. Valentine’s day. Red roses and hearts all over. We cannot forget. We are not allowed to forget. But despite the commercialism of it all, and if you can put that aside, it still allows us to focus our thoughts even more strongly on love. With all that focus and energy on love worldwide, we can only grow more love together.
February has already brought me happy love news! My (soul)sister N. and my soulbrother T. have decided to deepen their relationship and commit to a life together. I wish them a happy, loving and gentle engagement. This is a time to enjoy all that happy love that is bouncing and floating around you both. I hope you both dance fully in the love and the light of this time together.
So, with all those red hearts out there and their happy news, the idea of love has been very present in my own musings and journal writings. I have asked myself about my own choice of engaging with commitment this year and exactly what it means to me. Well, I know that it means committing to my self and to life fully, but now I have been asking myself more about what I choose to commit to and how.
Definitely love on all levels, and that starts with self love. And it is about my love for each aspect of my self; the light, the dark and the shadow side of me. A whole being. So 2014 will start with commitment to all that is me and makes me me. Very apt and a little challenging, I feel. We don’t always like all those aspects of our self, do we?
An important aspect of commitment is also my commitment to others and to my connections and relationships; and ultimately it is a full circle back to my commitment to love. I believe there is only love and that all else is a lack of that one precious thing, love.
Sometimes in the day-to-day moments, I find it hard to bring it all back to only love, but when I make the time to sit with something, I can feel that it is all only love.
Unconditional love is what I strive to live each and every day. Max has brought me a lot of unconditional love over the last months and she is a perfect example of loving all aspects, the light, the dark and the shadow side. Independently strong and wildly loving! Yet cute and cuddly; and even a little needy when she wants to be. Oh boy, how I am missing her dearly at the moment. It makes it a little easier knowing that I carry her love with me each and every day.
But back to February and commitment. I commit to myself, to life and to love in order to understand more of what commitment means to me. Bring it on, 2014!
My gypsy soul is smiling and doing a happy dance as she knows just how deeply I commit to all of her too.
Stop. Breathe. Commit.
I commit to taking a very big mouthful of (my) life and savouring it slowly and mindfully while walking my talk.
What are your desires for the month of February? What do you commit to? Share it here and commit to deepening your intentions.
with love, Delicia x
Beautiful post! Beautiful words! And Beautiful cat! I choose “gratitude” for February. Pay attention to the small things and moments in my life that make me happy for few moments. I’m trying to absorb happiness little by little, to better understand myself. Thanks
Thank you so much! Gratitude is a wonderful practice and I love the small moments of joy it brings to my life. May it bring you many small moments of joy on your journey too. x
Hi mdSSD
Thanks for your thoughts, and thought provoking questions.
The new year has started busily for me, and the Chinese new year of the Horse had just added momentum.
So time to slow down and chat a while. Tiny miracles and kittys remind me of this story.
A few weeks ago when leaving the boxing club at the church hall I noticed the minister’s little dog acting strangely so I went over to investigate. Normally Snowy comes to me when he sees me at the gate, but he was so transfixed on something else that he paid me no attention. In the half dark of the evening I noticed it was a tiny kitten that had his attention. Worried that he might bite the kitten I spoke to the ministers wife Margaret, who told me that it was a new addition to their family and Snowy and the Kitten slept curled up together at night, so there was no need to worry.
Last week we saw Margaret outside the church handing out pamphlets, she gave us one and as I looked down at it I saw that it was a picture of the kitten and that they were asking if anyone had seen it, as it had gone missing. My heart broke, it was so small and defenceless and Margaret and Snowy were in a state.
And so the story goes….. Apparently the vagrants in the area saw a woman steal the cat and take it into a block of flats opposite the church, when Margaret went over to enquire they refused to return the kitten, so Margaret called the police and the kitten was then returned.
So Snowy and the kitten ‘Nugget’ are once again playing in the garden together.
The funny thing is that a short while ago Snowy was also stolen and returned.
So 2 small miracles.
They are so cute and I love to see them when I go to the club they give me a lot of joy.
Hope you liked my happy ending story.
YssGilli
X
Thank you dear Gilli for sharing your happy ending story and those two miracles. It’s a great way to remind me of just how important those small miracles are in our day to day life. It’s so important to notice and recognise them. I am happy that Snowy and Nugget can cuddle and play together again. May you slow down and continue to chat and notice the miracles my dear friend.
YssD
xxx
I am always very behind with your posts because they are so rich, so thoughtful, there is no way I could comment lightly. I have been decluterring a lot over the past two years, but yet, I have still be gentle and I have as a goal to change this during 2014. I have looked at Project 333 and found out it could not work for me as I am mixing to much my clothes even over the seasons, but I have committed myself to reduce my whole clothing possessions to 150 pieces… It is a huge challenge for me, as I have been a shopaholic and I have accumulated tons of cloths/shoes. I have done great progress as I have nothing more in storage, including my skiing gear!
I love reading about your 2014 words and about commitment. I have been thinking quite a lot lately and I might come with one word for 2014…
I wish you well.
Steph
It sounds like you have made a lot of progress towards your goal already. The key I feel, like you said, is being gentle about it and not forcing it but flowing with it. Well done on your continued progress towards your goal.
When and if you do come up with a word for 2014, I would love to hear about it, if you would like to share it.
Best wishes to you and thank you for your kind words.
Wow, can you believe that November is already over and we are approaching the year end?! That was really quick… So it is time that I comment on your wise words that have inspired me all these months.
Commitment to life makes a lot of sense and since there is only love… yes, commitment to life is commitment to love 🙂 Then again, you cannot love others without self love… oh I know, we don’t always like all those aspects of our self! We are too afraid of showing our imperfections not realising that it is precisely these that make us unique and (as you pointed out) whole. Thus I was pleased to read that you were starting from there and I have been happy to see all your steps. As you admitted in ‘Soul musings : let go’, I think you are still too hard on you, putting yourself under pressure, but you are inspired by light and shadows of ‘yin yang kitty’ and have started to ‘Sink deeper into chair’ even if you really do not like it 😉 Well done! Here I want to share something I recently read in the book of Stephen R. Covey, which might inspire. ‘Love – the feeling – is a fruit of love, the verb.’ So if you want love… love, serve, listen, empathise, appreciate, affirm.
My commitment has been, and is, to Oneness. I stepped into 2014 with the words of Brené Brown you shared with us ‘we’re all in this together’ and with a new awareness of our interdependence. I tried to listen with the intent to understand and not to reply (imposing myself, or talking about me instead of you, or us), and value the differences instead of convincing others of my views or pretending to shape others and all on me. It is tough, but this is what unconditional love is about and I feel I made important new steps towards it.
So the circle of commitment, life and love closes. Well… the circle of our upward spiral 😉 Breathe. Commit. And commit again. Namaste