Set Yourself Free
Each year, many of us participate in a burning bowl ceremony on New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day, or the first Sunday of the New Year. It is an opportunity to free ourselves from thoughts, resentments, beliefs, and situations that no longer serve our highest good—the things that keep us in bondage and prevent us from embracing our truth and living our dreams. The ritual involves writing on a piece of paper what we wish to release and ceremoniously placing it into the cleansing, transforming flame of the burning bowl, where it is consumed by fire, symbolizing our freedom from these limitations.
The white stone ceremony is another ritual offered by many Unity churches and spiritual centers, usually on the first Sunday of the New Year. In this ceremony, we symbolically release ourselves from our own internal “bondage” through guided meditation and imagery. We then open our hearts and minds to hear the voice of Spirit speaking a new name, a quality of our Divine Self, or another meaningful word or phrase, which we write on a white stone. This stone becomes a symbol of who or what we are becoming in the New Year.
Both ceremonies can be deeply meaningful; however, it is important to recognize that they are not magical. The burning bowl and white stone rituals provide physical symbols that help ground our awareness of the powerful spiritual transformation taking place within our consciousness. The ceremonies themselves do not set us free; rather, they support our experience of an inner process.
We engage in these rituals at the close of one year and the beginning of another because we tend to see a New Year as an opportunity to begin again. A year represents a cycle of life, and turning the calendar from December to January gives us permission to close one chapter and open another. Yet there is nothing inherently magical about the transition from one calendar year to the next. When I wake up on January 1, I am still the same person, in the same place, living the same life as when I went to bed on December 31.
While there is nothing magical about the calendar itself, this season can be empowering if we choose to make it so. Meaningful and lasting change occurs as we transform the way we perceive ourselves, others, and the world.
Enduring change requires a willingness to question everything we think we know—without exception. We cannot hold “sacred cows” in our beliefs if we truly desire transformation. This may feel frightening. What if we discover that who we think we are, we are not? What if we question everything we believe and find that the beliefs we have relied upon no longer hold true? Would we be lost? On the contrary, we would find ourselves. When we question what we believe to be true, we discover what is truly true—the Truth of who we are, which frees us from the bondage of limiting beliefs.
We must be willing to release the past—the conditioning of our minds that convinces us we are something other than God in expression (and yes, we should question that as well). We must also be willing to release our attachment to the future—the belief that someday, in an imagined future, we will finally be free and live the lives we dream of. For many, the future becomes an even stronger prison than the past.
True freedom is found only in the present moment. We practice the presence of God when we recognize that we are the presence of God. To do so, we must be willing to be present now, rather than lost in memories of the past or projections of the future. Freedom exists in the present moment because the Allness of God is present here and now, and our conscious awareness of this truth is the fullness of our freedom.
We do not find freedom by turning the page of a calendar or by closing one door and opening another. We discover enduring freedom by opening our minds and hearts to the wonder of the present moment and to all that God is, in it and through it. We embrace the freedom of our Divine Nature by accepting that we are the presence of God—right here, right now.
Rituals help us affirm our decision to claim our Truth and set ourselves free. They are beautiful, meaningful expressions of our commitment to see ourselves, others, and the world in a new way.
Claim who and what you are. Set yourself free.
Happy New Year!
