There is a saying that one should not try to put old wine into new bottles or old cloth on a new garment. This is a great metaphor for me, as I move into 2020.

My last month of the year was filled with so many losses of loved ones. It was filled with demands for important decisions in our Center that took courage. To the last day of 2019, I was challenged to remember who I was and what I stood for. I am grateful.

So now, as I enter this new year and this new decade, I must decide what I want to keep and what I want to discard. When I say discard, I mean discard in consciousness. I am not a victim, so I know that everything that I experienced during the December months was a reflection of my consciousness or I wouldn’t have been present for all of it. So, what do I want to discard in consciousness and what do I want to embrace?

In regards to the metaphor about wine skins and garments in the first paragraph, Ernest Holmes, author and mystic, writes in the Science of Mind, “This does not mean that we should cast away any good that the old has to offer, but that we convert it into a greater good. Accepting the lessons and experiences of the past, and taking the best of everything, we should press boldly forward, looking ever for the Truth and ever ascending higher and higher into the heavens of reality.” (439)

This idea assists me as I enter into the new year and the new decade because I know that as I weigh and measure all that I hold in consciousness from the past, I can sift through it and decide what I have gained that has expanded me and what has depleted me. I can now covert it all into a greater good because, I have turned it into wisdom that will assist me as I move forward into new experiences.

I am knowing for all of us that, should we choose, we can do the same. We have all had experiences in the past that have molded us into our present self. If that present self needs to change, we have the opportunity to cast off the old garment and put a totally new one on. What do we want? That is the question. How do we want to live? What do we want to contribute to this beautiful planet home called earth and all its inhabitants. As we decide the answer to these questions, we are backed by the force of the Cosmos.

Last night we had a labyrinth walk at CSL Kaua`i. As I presented the intention, it was to release anything within ourselves anything that was not love. As we do, and as we focus on loving ourselves for all that we are, as we focus on forgiveness and as we release fear and replace it with love, we can’t help but raise the magnetic field of our planet. It’s already been proved through scientific studies that when two or more are gathered in meditation for peace that the Energy for all shifts.

What we require right now is more than just a meditation here and there. We call for as many of us as possible to raise our own vibration every day and to walk in that vibration to the best of our ability as we meet this experience called life on earth. The Divine Intelligence that flows through us will lift us up and assist as we turn to it. We can’t do this if we continue to hold onto the old. I invite us to put on a new garment of consciousness today and let’s move forward and upward.

Love and Aloha and Happy New Year!

Rev. Rita