Today I want to introduce guest author Jay Linden. Jay is an expert in the Tarot and past life regression, and she offers a variety of sessions in these areas.

I love Jay’s work so I asked her to write a guest article on the theme of welcoming in the New Year.

Where Is Your Power?

By Jay Linden.

The only constant is change. This is a wisdom taught in many spiritual traditions. As this year comes to an end and we embrace a new one it seems appropriate to reflect on how well we deal with change. Do you find yourself clinging to what you know and fearing the future? Or are you racing ahead, certain that better times, a better you, more important achievements, are just around the corner?

Of course, the problem with this is that our power lies in the present. When we live in the memories of the past or a dream of the future we give our power away.

In the Harry Potter series, Dumbledore, the wise mentor, says to Harry that the happiest man alive would be able to look in the Mirror of Desire and see himself exactly as he is. Now that is living in the present.

Living in the present is the spiritual equivalent of being a skilled surfer: riding the wave of time, the wave of your life, following the energy, being in that wonderful state of balance, embracing the adventure.

So what keeps us from living in the present moment?

Letting Go of the Past

Several years ago I ended up spending New Year’s Eve alone. It was the best New Year’s I’ve ever had. I was house sitting with the owners’ collie dog for company. All my friends were either away or with their families. I cooked myself a lovely meal. Then I sat in their spacious lounge that looked over the sea. It was very peaceful and meditative, and, since I was in New Zealand, warm with a golden light from the sun, close to the longest day of the year.

In this very calm state, I decided to go with the meaning of the season – to let go of the old and welcome the new. I asked myself the following questions and then wrote down the answers:

• What resentments am I still hanging on to?
• Who am I still angry with?
• Who am I blaming and for what?
• What are my regrets, what do I wish I had done differently?
• Who have I not forgiven?
• What have I not forgiven myself for?
• What are the losses, the sadnesses, the coulda/shoulda/woulda beens, I’m still clinging to?

I then looked at each answer and allowed myself to fully feel the feelings, allowed the images to float up. When there was no more resistance to feeling exactly how I felt, I then said, “I choose to let go of this, it is no longer serving me. I choose peace instead of this,” and I burnt the little bit of paper it was written on.

The process took some hours. Many insights came at the point where I had felt the situation to its essence. To fully feel an experience to its core is to get to the jewel, the wisdom. It is much easier then to let the experience go because it is no longer needed – you have found the lesson hidden within the package.

After I had let go of all I was hanging onto from the past I felt so much lighter and more peaceful. From this heart–centred place I was able to make a vision board, expressing in visual form the experiences my heart longed for in the coming year.

Trying to be other than where you are

Last year my mother came out from England to stay with us for six weeks. It was a trying time. I have a long karmic history with this soul, most of it experiencing jealousy, trickery, malice and frequently ending in my death. This was the first time we had incarnated as mother and daughter. It is an attempt by our souls to resolve the karma and let go of the karmic patterns that have repeated themselves over many lives.

I was trying to create a lovely time for my mother, setting up nice things to do, encouraging her to develop her art which is a new interest for her. She was doing a brilliant job of sabotaging my efforts. It was very frustrating and the tension rose. Finally, I checked in with my Higher self to ask what I could do? The answer was unexpected. My Higher self suggested I stop trying to take my mother’s experience away from her. Allow her to have the experience she was creating, even if it was one of being disappointed, unhappy or angry — that she needed to experience what she was creating in order to learn from it.

Amazingly, when I let go of trying to give her a nice time and let her be responsible for her own creation, the tension eased. I felt a lot better and things did begin to flow a little more.

We can do this to ourselves also, try to be other than where we are. It is so tempting to force ourselves to move on before we are ready, before we have learned the lesson buried in the experience we are creating right now.

Wholeness Not Perfection

Through my work with past life regressions, I’ve come to understand that our souls are not seeking perfection. Our souls are interested in wholeness.

I’ve cleared over thirty of my own past lives and several of my clients have cleared ten or more. For each person, a pattern has emerged of a soul exploring a theme, over and over, in different lives and from different angles. One man’s soul has been exploring leadership and authority. His lives include those where he is responsible for many people, in some his decisions lead to good results, in others, they lead to disaster. As part of this theme he has also had lives experiencing what it is like to have no authority, to be under the leadership of someone else and to have to endure the consequences of someone else’s decisions. Many of these lives are centred around conflict and war or defending territory.

Our souls are more adventurous and curious than we realize. It makes sense – if you want to understand something fully, to explore a theme from all different angles. Take the theme of love for example. How can you really understand love without experiencing lost love, love betrayed, love unrequited, false love, guilty love, obsessive love, love as sacrifice, etc.

Our souls want a variety of experiences. On this earth they can experience both suffering and happiness; they can experience bringing both love and cruelty to the world. To the soul, this variety is all valuable experience that enables the soul to grow in both wisdom and compassion.

A way of understanding this is to think of actors and films. An actor who might in ordinary life be a very kind and generous person may choose to play a villain, a really nasty person, one whom the audience will feel no sympathy for — why? Because playing that part is interesting. How did the character get to be like that? What would have made a difference? Can that character turn his or her life around and find redemption?

The Turning of the Wheel

The Wheel of Fortune card from the tarot deck is a wonderful and ancient symbol of earthly life. Bound to the wheel we experience the natural rhythms of increase and decrease, youth and age, the seasons, success and failure and everything in between. In some decks, a beggar rises to the top and a King falls to the bottom.

Trying to stop the wheel turning; striving to be at the top; falling into despair if you are at the bottom and fear you will be there forever — does any of this sound familiar?

One of my own patterns through many past lives was to give up when things got difficult, often allowing myself to become a vagabond and die of cold and hunger, occasionally helping the process along. However, part of the past life regression process is to rescript. We find the choice points and ask the Higher self to show us what would have happened if the person had made a different choice. Time and again, in my own and my clients’ past lives, we find that things would have got better, they would have found a way through, that by following inner guidance they could have created a life where they felt good about themselves and made a valuable contribution to those around them.

The key is to follow inner guidance, which is always available, but never imposes itself. It is a quiet, subtle voice, easily drowned out, but which leads us to the place of inner peace. Looking at the Wheel of Fortune image we can see this means letting go of the rim of the wheel and moving to the hub, the still centre.

What Can We Do to Return to Centre?

• Let go of being too attached to the material world and someone else’s vision of success or failure.
• Connect to your heart and inner guidance.
• Let go of trying to impress others or wanting their approval.
• Follow your own dreams and what it is that brings you joy, regardless of how it is met in the outer world.
• Ask what is really important and let go of the rest.
• Choose to treat life as a grand adventure.
• Remember that it is not what happens or fails to happen that is important so much as how you respond to the situation.
• Love and accept yourself exactly as you are right now.

Living from your centre means not becoming too identified with this life. It is to remember you are an eternal soul whilst also making the best of whatever this life has to offer. It is to give yourself fully to your life and yet hold life lightly.

Once we are able to find that place of calm centre, the eye in the storm, it is much easier to enjoy any successes without making them too important or trying to cling to them. It is also easier to deal with the difficult times, to discover the wisdom and growth they offer and know that this too will pass.

Blessings for the New Year,

Jay Linden

The tarot card images are from the Renaissance Tarot deck by Jane Lyle, illustrated by Helen Jones.