I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned this here, but New Year and New Year’s Eve are my favorite holidays.  I love hitting the reset button and creating myself anew every January.  It’s a chance to step back, see what worked, scrap what didn’t, and try to make some improvements. 

Naturally, me being me, I’ve started making plans for things I want to try for 2019 already.  

Also, me being me, a lot of my goals will be spiritual in nature.

I was reading a friend’s blog recently (see the lovely Danielle’s words here), and while I have some different ideas about the usefulness of ritual, it made me start to think about HOW I practice ritual, as well as WHEN and WHY.  For the longest time, I only did ritual or spellwork when I needed something.  But in the past few years, I’ve started to focus more on a regular spiritual practice with elements of ritual.  I find that it grounds me in time a little more, and sets a more spiritual tone for my life overall as I seek to reach greater self-knowledge and peace.  

I’ve had some success with small daily practices, like praying, daily meditation, clearing and cleansing, and repeating affirmations, but I took a little bit of a break from those practices as I hit a fibro road block in October.  When the weather turns cold and my body and brain rebel, everything usually gets scrapped and rebuilt again in January.  And though we’re in the thick of the holidays right now, I’ve been thinking a lot about some daily, weekly, and monthly practices I want to try starting January 1st.

First, there are daily practices.  Again, praying and cleansing with my smudge spray every evening before bed were really helpful.  I’m going to keep those.  Meditation every morning also set the tone of my day, and I want to get back to that for sure.  But I feel like I need to ground daily as well.  When would that best fit into my day?  Should that be part of my meditation?  Should I do it before my meditation?  Should I take a few minutes in the afternoon to ground and center?  I’ll have to think about that.  I also know that tending to my altar will be more of a practice once we move and I have the altar space to tend.

I know that I definitely want to go back to a daily tarot pull, as that was really helpful for the few years that I did it.  Again, I was inspired by Danielle on that.  

What I’m really spending a lot of time thinking about, however, is a weekly spiritual practice.  What would I like to do weekly?  I think that cleaning my office/tarot space/spiritual space will definitely be a thing, again when we move and I have my own space to bother with.  But I’ve been thinking about what else I would like to do on a weekly basis.  I feel like a weekly chakra check-in would be good, and I’d also like to set some sort of weekly time to connect to nature.  Maybe a regular nature date at a local park or something along those lines?  

I haven’t really focused on a weekly practice before, and I think it would add some cool structure into my life that I’ve been missing.  I think a weekly journaling session would be a good practice too.  And I’ll most likely create a sigil at the beginning of every week to create a focus for my goals as well as choosing a phrase to keep in mind.  ‘Creating space’ is one that recently came to me as a good start for the year.

Should I also choose a stone to carry for each week?  An herb to study?  A deity to commune with?

Now, what about a monthly practice?  I feel like I have this part covered, as I focus on the phases of the moon and have specific activities for them.  I set intentions on the new moon, and celebrate/integrate what I learned on the full moon.  This has been an ongoing practice for years, and it’s not going anywhere.  But I also feel like a deep cleanse of my altar, as well as changing it for the season is a good start.  I also may start giving myself a regular monthly reading and recording it.

Oh right, that’s the other part of all of this.  A lot of this will be taking place in my new Passion Planner.  I’m really excited to work with it this year in a mundane and spiritual context.  Is there anything worse than the last few weeks of the year when you have a new planner you want to start using?

I’ll be decorating it a little, mostly with watercolors and an occasional rubber stamp or drawing, but I don’t want to pressure myself to make it perfect.  That’s a sure way for me to lose interest.  I feel like that’s important with my regular spiritual practices too.  If I bog myself down in details, I’m setting myself up to get bored and quit.

So I’m curious, is there anything that you think I’ve missed?  What are some of your regular spiritual practices?  Do you have a daily or weekly practice that you’d like to share?  I’m always up for inspiration.  

Blessed be!  🙂