The New Year

The Cabbalah teaches that each day is a living, sentient being which bears the record of all our physical and psychic acts. You might say that the 365 days of the year are like a magnetic tape on which each day, with all that it has brought of good and evil, happiness and unhappiness, is recorded. Each separate year of our lives is like a separate tape recording. The New Year is new and yet, at the same time, it is already old, aged by all that each one of us has already gone through in our lives. The new year is like the pure water of a mountain stream as it mingles with the stagnant waters of the lowlands; it is new and yet it is not altogether new because it is lived by human beings who are burdened by their past. This is why, although all is new, men and women never manage to live an entirely new life. The New Year is a spotless virgin, but who knows what shady resorts it will get into or what kind of company it will keep. The past, by which I mean all the states that human beings have known and all the events that have marked their lives, is recorded and engraved within them, and it takes a great deal of knowledge, patience and determination to erase these imprints and free yourself from the stereotypes of the past…   (continued)          Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov  The New Year

Top photo: Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov in his garden with a young child

I’ve been looking for passages to post on the New Year and found a lengthy extract from one of the master’s brochures on the site of Prosveta USA. The link to their site is at the bottom of this post if you would like to read it all- it is really thought-provoking. I found the text very motivating in the sense that it made me reflect on what sort of a ‘clear out’ I need to do in order to make as fresh a start as possible to the New Year and also encouraged me to think about what I want to ‘plant’ for future realization.

Here is a bit more, anyway:

The year that we call “new” is old from the very beginning because the human beings it encounters are old in their way of thinking and feeling and all their habits. They have never thought to wash out their vessels, jugs or saucepans, before filling them with the pure waters of The New Year. And yet, isn’t this the first thing we learn in our own kitchens: before pouring clean water into a container, we have to wash it and sometimes even to scour it thoroughly, otherwise the clean water will be dirtied by the container – even a child knows that! But when it comes to filling their hearts and souls and minds with pure water, people never think of cleansing themselves first. Although they apply this lesson every day in their kitchens, when it comes to their own inner lives it is as though they had never known it; they forget that they have to apply the same rules to themselves and discard all that is soiled and grimy and retain only what is pure. Innumerable details in our daily lives can help us to understand this truth: in our houses, for instance, we treasure paintings, beautiful furniture or valuable jewelry for years, sometimes for centuries, but we soon get rid of things that have no value; or again, we keep cut flowers in a vase for three or four days, but then we have to throw them away and get fresh ones. And yet people think they can keep all kinds of old, dirty, rotting things within themselves!

Yes, we must understand the new year better; we must go out to meet it in the deep conviction that it is a highly gifted living being and that it brings us valuable presents; we must learn to prepare a lot of space within ourselves so as to be able to receive this abundance of gifts; we must continually sweep out all the old junk that litters our hearts and minds, and make room for the new year even before it comes.

The Cabbalah also tells us that The New Year is influenced by the stars. The birth of a new year is like the birth of a child: it is the beginning of a life that will last just twelve months. When a child is born, one can draw up a horoscope based on the date and time of birth and thus foresee the principal events of the child’s life. And we can do the same for the birth of a new year; in fact you should know that the first day of the year determines the first month, the second day – the second month, the third day – the third month and so on. So you must try to live, think, feel and behave as well as possible, at least during the first twelve days, so as to ensure an intelligent, luminous start to the year and thus influence and determine it favorably.

Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov       The New Year

You can find the full extract on The FBU USA

Happy New Year! Susan