New Years Evolution

Happy New Years!

I love this transition time - it’s a great time to shed old snake skins, and move into new possibilities. A great time to renew commitments and abandon the ones that no longer fit. A great time for looking back, with gratitude, on the past year. My dear friend Carly Stasko loves to ask herself: what are the three things I am grateful for today? She does this at meal times, but on New Years, she looks back over the year and asks - what are the three big things I’m grateful for this year? We shared this practice at a dinner party together this week, and it was very moving.

Don't tell Carly, but after she left we did a round of complaints - just one each. That was kind of satisfying in a different way, but left me feeling like I had eaten too much MSG or greasy foods or something. :)

May your coming year be blessed, blissed, and rampant with possibilities, transformation, and joy. And may you have the wisdom to catch those curveballs the universe throws us on occasion, hold them as long as need be, then throw them right back, with glee.

It’s also that time of year when we’re supposed to be making a bunch of New Years resolutions that we’re never going to keep and that are just going to make us feel bad about ourselves for the next year.

Well my first New Years Evolution is to stop feeling bad about myself for any of my shortcomings – just let that go. But first I have to do a very un-male thing and accept that I actually have a shortcoming or two. Let me have a peek….yikes! I do. I gots some. Damn. So much for that mask of rigid perfection I thought I had to wear.

Hey – its actually kind of relaxing to drop that. Let’s you breathe a little easier. So- I herby accept my weak spots, I hereby see my blind spots, I hereby love my broken bits. I accept them, love them, and love myself. It’s okay ego – you aren’t perfect. You got spots. You got dots. You got some work to do.

So my next New Years Evolution is to shine a light into my shadows, light a torch into my unconscious, and see all of me, the dark and the light, the good, the bad and the ugly, and allow myself the room to grow. I hereby renew my fierce commitment to evolution. Spiritual evolution.

I renew my commitment to moving from a place of Love – and letting that Love come from the deepest well of my being, from a place of absolute freedom – freedom for myself, and freedom for everyone who comes into my path.

I want to give from my heart, and receive with my heart.

I want to continually ignite in myself a lived understanding of the true masculine, the loving masculine, the giving masculine, the healing masculine, the empowering, powerful, free, connected and spacious masculine. Free me from Glen Beck, George Bush and Osama Bin Laden as male role models.

I want to become aware of my power - stepping into my true power that never needs another’s power, or needs to power over another.

I ask to be free from the hypnotizing lies of domination and destruction, of fear and manipulation, so we can reclaim our souls, our selves, our lives and our planet and walk again in creativity and wonder, in collaboration and delight, in hope and inspiration, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, for this incredible world.


This Space Free.

I commit to inspiring and awakening the highest truth in myself and those that care to join in, to being a solar powered bio fueled love bug bringing light and wonder to this world of turmoil and transformation.

I commit to stop using the phrase “in this world of turmoil and transformation” all the time.

I commit to clearing, and re-clearing, to creating true spaciousness so I can to allow the divine in, moment by moment, day by day, year by year. I commit to serving with all my power, from a place of loving power, helping to be a source of radiance in this world of turmoil and... (damn! I almost broke that one already.)

I commit to loosening up, to laughing a lot more, to not making so many commitments all the time, especially on New Years, when it’s such an obvious thing to do, instead to cover it all in one foul swoop and say: I commit to coming from the deepest place of authenticity I possibly can, at all times, and when I forget and my ego takes over, to bouncing back as soon as I notice, or until someone I love tells me to wake the f~ck up. I commit to saying, “thank you” when they do, unless it gets over the top and too damn much in which case, in the interests of self love, I commit to walking away, with my heart full of love, from any situation, relationship or scenario which is just not good for me.

I commit to opening my heart wide, to being truly spacious, to letting go, to not holding on, to not taking, to not grasping, to not clinging, to allowing what is to be, and what isn’t to not be, to allowing what wants to be to manifest without trying to outthink, double think, or triple think the divine, to getting out of my own way so the universe can do it’s part, to doing my part, to loving the process, to seeing it all as a process, to not obsessing on the goal, to lighting my bonfire and burning down the house, till there’s nothing left but love and ashes, and building it all up, over and over again, each beautiful castle nothing more than a glittering wedding cake to the divine, offered with love to the whole party, no guest list needed, with fearless surrender and profound willfulness, secure in the knowledge that all is good, all is good, all is good.

I swear I’m not just making idle promises here, but really laying it on the line – the time has come to let loose the full potential that I was gifted with here on this earth, to really live it, seize it by the cojones and dare to stare into the sun with my eyes glowing fierce and uninhibited and reverently irreverent, fearless and truthful, joyous and mournful, tasting the agonizing ecstasy that is life on earth with every pore of my body, mind and spirit sizzling, sizzling, sizzling. Let nothing stop me, not even the cynics and the killjoys who would piss on my parade, not the gatekeepers who have locked their own gates, not the gates I myself have locked, let me blow up them all to smithereens with divine inspiration, smash down the old altars, tear down the walls, gleefully, lovingly, unstoppable. Sizzling, sizzling, sizzling.

~Velcrow Ripper, New Years 2010

(Updated - first released in 2009)