Just like yesterday’s thought that you should keep all your passions and that consistency is best held lightly, here’s another one I’m reposting from Lucian James’ 24th Kō Strategy:
The natural world is always changing, always in process. And so are you. You are not a thing, you are a process, a magnificent kind of process. And in some way you already know this. But when you really consider it, it can set you free from regret, from stuckness, and from hanging on to things.
We get broken, we can start again, bruised but better.
We get complicated, we add too many things, we can let go.
We can always rebegin. To set everything back to zero. The whole cycle renewed. The soul moves in circles, says Plotinus. It’s not in a hurry.
In Japan there is a phrase “issun saki wa yami”. It means “One inch ahead of you is always dark”. We don’t know where even the immediate future will go. Just this moment. You’re better at improvising than you realize.
Every moment is an opportunity to rebegin.
Perhaps the most useful shift that you can make in this 2024 turn of the world is to reign yourself in slightly. Stay anchored to values that hold you solid. Know that all mastery is self-mastery.
As that great dharma bum Jack Kerouac once said
“Everything is ecstasy, inside… Close your eyes, let your hands and nerve-endings drop, stop breathing for 3 seconds, listen to the silence inside… and you will remember.”
Rebegin is not just another turn of the wheel, but a recommitment.
I can’t think of a more fitting approach to start the new year.
For more from Lucian, check out Make some impossible magic.
Comments welcome!