Out With The Old, In With The Alchemy!
It’s 2022. A new calendar year…an exceptional time for making new intentions and resolutions for the year ahead. A time for self-evaluation and self-promises. A perfect opportunity to let go of the old, and manifest the new. A chance to reinvent yourself—start from scratch—commit to creating the unique path that will be the map of your journey for the next 12 months. Looking back to review and take stock of your progress, and gearing yourself up for moving forward into ‘Next Level You.’
I used to make New Year’s resolutions, and almost always ended up overwhelming myself with too many goals on my checklist to accomplish. Throughout the year, things would change, priorities would shift, or I’d overshoot how long a goal would take to complete, so at the end of the year I couldn’t help but feel disheartened and disappointed for the things I didn’t check off.
Last year I decided to take a different approach and instead of making 2021 resolutions, I made 2021 intentions. I wrote a document of who I wanted to BE, as opposed to what I wanted to DO, in all areas of my life (personally, professionally, spiritually…).
At such a transformative time in my life, this approach seemed relevant and necessary to my growth. I wrote these intentions as statements. Some were: “I am confident. I am open and honest with my communication. I believe in myself. I am patient with myself and others. I love myself, and all of my thoughts and actions reflect this truth. I trust myself and in doing so, I trust others. I am strong in my boundaries. I am abundant in creativity…” etc.
On my awakening journey I’ve learned that everything comes back to self. As within, so without. We create our lives from the inside out. So if I wanted to manifest certain things/accomplish specific goals in the external realm, the first step was doing the inner work to make sure I was operating from a place of alignment with my highest self in the internal realm. These intentions served as loving reminders of who I was creating myself to be/maintaining the Me that I wanted to be, and I revisited them almost every month(ish) during a New Moon to remind myself of who I am.
I have to say, this practice served me well in 2021. I was able to keep myself in check and when fears or antiquated habits showed up, I’d go back to my intentions and ask: does this align with who I am? The answer would be pretty clearly spelled out (I mean, literally there they were saved on a Google Doc), and I’d adjust as needed.
Sometimes I think we can get so focused on the “doing” that we forget about the “being” part. What good is it if we check off a goal, but the road to meeting that goal was full of stress and resentment? We are human BEINGS after all. If we focus a little more on who we are being while we’re manifesting instead of just what we’re trying to manifest, it stands to make sense that the ‘what’ will effortlessly follow the ‘who.’ The ‘doing’ will bloom from the ‘being.’
Another New Year’s practice I adopted last year was choosing a word for the year. The word I chose for my 2021 was “Perseverance.” I was on a mission to show up as “Next Level Katie” in all areas of my life, and I knew it was going to take some dedication and tenacity to carry out my objective.
Looking back on my 2021, I stayed pretty loyal to my mission (with perseverance indeed), honoring my intentions as I continued to show up in the way I wanted and committed to. There were so many gifts that showed up for me in return, and I’m thankful for the journey for sure. I even started this blog, Creative Owlchemy, in January, 2021. A space where I can share my mulling over creating the alchemic process of finding the light within the darkness, and accepting all of the versions therein.
At the end of last year, I started to make my plan for 2022 and I decided to combine methods of setting intentions, goals, affirmations, and a key word into a succinct summary for the year ahead.
I’ll keep my intentions and goals private for now, but I will share my word. After feeling inspired by a New-Year’s-Eve tarot reading, the word I came up with for my 2022 is Expansion. That is my intention for the year ahead: expand my mind, heart, connections, experiences. Reach beyond any deceptively cozy comfort zones and touch new parts of life I’ve never grazed before, welcoming it into my ever-shifting journey.
When I decided on this word and declared it on my 2022 Intentions document (yes, I used a Google Doc again, mkay?), I felt excited, revitalized, and ready to take on the new year with enthusiasm. As a lot of us can probably relate to, it’s easy to get carried away with this New Year, New Me mentality. You know, the vibe of, New year, who dis?
While I was very much fired up with the excitement and energy of Expansion for my 2022 intention, I found myself mulling over the concept of letting go of the old in order to manifest the new—another prevailing New Year’s notion. Perhaps it’s impossible to step into new pastures without shedding the been-there-done-that parts of our lives first. I mean, how can we ever reach the new without walking away from the old, right?
Expansion card from the Soul Trees oracle deck.
We tend to look at the closing of a year/beginning of a new year as the perfect time to purge the old and adapt the new. A linear process. Going from this to that. From there to here. From outdated to upgraded. But the definition of expansion is, “the action of becoming larger or more extensive.” That doesn’t say anything about shedding an old skin in order to become something different. It suggests we keep what we had and add more to it. It’s not so much about a transition, but more about an increase. Building upon something we already have. So I started to think, which practice is right? Which way is best?
Standing on the brink of a new chapter pushes us to discern which things we’ll need to bring with us, and which things are better left behind. Sometimes that’s an easy decision, sometimes…not so much. And easy or not, do we ever really leave something completely behind? All of our experiences become a part of us in a way—they continuously mold us on our journey of becoming.
I think this is the part of expansion that so many of us glaze over (including myself) a lot. We’re so used to compartmentalizing things and viewing our journey as a timeline dotted by significant occasions, we tend to lose sight of the bigger picture. That line of time is connected. We couldn’t get to dot B without dot A. Even if dot A was horrifying, it brought us to beautiful B, in which case surely we can never truly leave A completely behind. We bring some A with us to B too. Otherwise, how could we connect the dots?
Upon reflection, I’m starting to question the whole “out with the old, in with the new” concept. In fact, beyond questioning the validity behind it, I wonder if the real truth (at least in the context of the awakening journey) is actually the very opposite. Perhaps you cannot truly move forward by leaving parts of your experience behind. Your experience shapes you. Your experience becomes part of what makes you, You. If you leave parts of your Self behind, how will you sincerely and legitimately GROW? In other words, how can you genuinely expand to the new without accounting for the sum of all of you, which naturally includes the old too?
Looking at my own life, I’ve discovered the main obstacle that has prevented me from experiencing progress in times of wanting to move forward has been not honoring the parts of myself that didn’t want to move forward. The parts that wanted to keep me safe and sound, protected from the fickle unknown. The parts that were sad or scared to leave certain familiar things in the dust. The parts that merely wanted attention, to be understood or even just acknowledged, when meanwhile all I was doing was abandoning them in the midst of my eagerness to run full speed ahead.
That’s when resistance happens. We try and force things without giving full presence to certain parts of ourselves. Being in alignment doesn’t mean just recognizing some parts of our Self—it means honoring our wholeness. Only then can we truly expand who we are.
This is alchemy after all—honoring both our light and dark parts in order to create the life we want. Lately, I’ve been hot on the trail in the edges of my mind of how it all applies to expansion. In my case, if I want expansion, I must also recognize and attend to any murmurs within that are saying, “Expansion? No thanks.”
Playing around with lights and shadows…
I’d say alchemy isn’t a one-time prescription, but a practice that requires regular maintenance. An ongoing check-in, just like I did last year with my monthly meetings to revisit my 2021 intentions, and allowing space to adjust as I went. And maybe expansion is just the natural result of conscious alchemy. We don’t have to try to expand. Expansion simply happens as a product of the seeds we’ve sown by deliberately aligning with our truest self—the whole self.
A lover of tarot, I follow a couple of tarot readers online who I resonate with and enjoy watching their card readings on a regular basis. One of them is @thecrucial_tarot on Instagram, who I highly recommend checking out if you’re into tarot—she’s amazing!
Anyway, I was mulling over alchemy in relation to expansion when one day (of all days it was January 11, 2022, which translates to 111/222 in numerology…ugh I love the synchronicity!!), I watched The Crucial’s video reading and she started riffing on a magnificently kindred message. I was so inspired by what she said, as it felt like she was speaking right to me (or as the tarot community would put it, she read me to filth!), I started writing down what she was saying…and I’m glad I did because she often cleanses her timeline by deleting old readings, so I believe this post has since been taken down. Here is some of her reading, either quoted or paraphrased:
“Maybe things didn’t come from your past to be eradicated, but to be utilized. Something about yourself you’re trying to get rid of—you don’t like it. You see coal, but inside there is a diamond—your power. The diamond of how far you can go. No pain, no gain. The same pain that was the seedling to your pain is the seedling to your power, specifically your intuitive gifts. Because of the pain you went through, it heightened these properties. Proper training was in the dirt, so don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Don’t try to eradicate or create a trauma that actually made you who you are. You can’t have both. Pick a struggle. Do you want to get rid of it, or do you want to use it? The pain is in the power, literally. You don’t heal by getting rid of, you heal by putting it to use.”
I mean!!!! Is that not the most beautiful and powerful description of alchemy you’ve ever heard?! Love. Love. Love.
Along my personal growth journey, I have come to discover the transformative process that The Crucial is describing, and have written a lot about it in this blog (maybe not so eloquently as her!). But the linear pressure of leaving the old in order to attain the new has become such a popular belief that it’s sometimes so easy to get pulled back into that bullet-point thought process (and anxiety!) of I must, I must, I must, get rid of A before I can move on to B, that moving forward can end up feeling like a struggle instead of a celebration. Forcing instead of flowing. Being stuck in the mud instead of progressing.
Really, it’s kind of impossible to expand into new areas of your life without taking the wisdom you’ve gained from old experiences. So why fight it? Why are we so quick to throw out parts of us that may actually serve our advancement when utilized with conscious care? We can only turn wounds into productive tools when we acknowledge and love our scars in the first place.
I just finished a book called The Energy Codes: The 7-Step System to Awaken Your Spirit, Heal Your Body, and Live Your Best Life by Dr. Sue Morter. In it, there are many precious insights and one in particular sticks out at the moment.
We often hear about the dark verses light parts of ourselves—the ego verses the soul—the subconscious verses the conscious. With these labels though, sometimes a connotation can form that’s a little like bad verses good, or wrong verses right. But Morter refers to these aspects as the “Protective Personality” (our ego) and the “Soulful Self” (our spirit). Same things, different names.
While I’m aware that the ego acts in ways to protect us and keep us safe (sometimes in our interest and sometimes to our detriment), I don’t think I’ve heard it referred to as the protective personality before this book. Giving it a different name instantly put it into clearer perspective for me. The inclinations of the ego are just nurturing impulses of your Self, doing its job to love you in its own (albeit sometimes frustrating) way.
At times it can be obvious to acknowledge certain things best walked away from—the things that don’t serve us well, like outdated habits or behaviors that we’ve picked up along our trek thus far. But even if it’s easy to recognize and name those things (ie. self-sabotage, staying in comfort zones, issues with intimacy, etc.), it can be difficult to completely reprogram who we are, especially with the quick flick of our wrist when flipping a calendar page. And besides, true reprogramming (growth) doesn’t really mean overriding what we were—it means encompassing all that we are.
Art by Rachael Day.
And so I’m discovering…while we may desperately want to race ahead to the new, our growth unfolds in always staying in the tender embrace of the present moment—wrapping our arms around who we are, which is a walking beautiful dot on our timeline of where we have been and where we are going. It’s up to us to hold ourselves and gently pull away any bittersweet weeds that are draining necessary nutrients, providing space for new blossoms to take root and grow. It’s up to us to water and shine light on the present moment in order to expand ourselves.
Hmmm… Perhaps transition and expansion are not that dissimilar concepts after all. Without change, we cannot grow. The heart of expansion may be in our willingness to change—not in the sense of giving up one thing for another, but in terms of changing our perception of ourselves. Choosing to see the diamond inside the coal. The power in the pain. The old in the new. Not disregarding where we’ve been, but honoring where we are. Cultivating the wisdom that has sprouted within, and adding to it as we step into the wide open space between the dotes on our timeline.
In fact, maybe the sentence above, “The heart of expansion may be in our…” should really be altered to, “The heart of expansion may be in US.” PERIOD. Circling back to the Law of Attraction creed at the beginning of this blog, “As within, so without,” it makes sense that expansion starts with us, just like anything else—from the inside, out.
The more we commit to expanding ourselves, the more room we allow for our manifestations to expand into our aura. As we use our wisdom to honor all parts of us, and our discernment to discard what needs shedding and to use what’s in favor of our growth, expansion is not only our reward, but our divine right.
After all this rock and mull, I still choose Expansion as my 2022 key word that I will use to unlock my goals and desires. But now more than ever, I understand that it’s up to me. In order to expand in my life, I must expand the space within myself to honor the complete medley of who I am, not just a select number of bullet points written on a Google Doc.
New Year’s resolutions aren’t for speaking fluffy words into the air, just to watch them get carried away on wind sails, praying you’ll see them make their way around to you at some point. They’re for taking inspired action. They’re for a good ol’ kick in the ass. A choice. A decision. Making a vow and commitment to ourselves: I will make my dreams a reality, and it all starts with me.
Fellow Alchemists (Owlchemists!), we create our world by creating ourselves. By building bridges from our hearts to our 3D environment—not by building walls. Living instead of holding our breath. Loving our wholeness instead of resisting pieces. Trusting fully that the diamonds in the coals are there for our greatest growth, and handling them with the upmost vulnerability and care.
Essentially, the world we want to create for ourselves really stems from the world we create OF ourselves. Ambitions in all things then require discipline in the alchemic process. Electing Expansion as my 2022 word might be somewhat of a tall order, but I’m up for the challenge.
What about you? Did you choose a word for this year? What about your own New Year’s strategy? Feel free to share…I’m owl ears.
