Imagining Your Own Soul Feast Days

Published: Mon, 12/08/14

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December 8, 2014
Imagining Your Own Soul Feast Days


Feast Days are present in all sacred traditions. A Feast Day is a day in the year dedicated to the celebration of a particular person, event, quality, thought, feeling or activity.

It is a feast for the soul, an opportunity to raise, deepen and broaden consciousness. Perhaps, even to heal, liberate and empower consciousness.

Soul Feast Days

Inspired by my new questions about Inner Advent ( yes, I am always finding new questions), I’ve been spending a lot of time imagining a calendar of my inner year. I feel compelled to design an Imagine Self circular calendar (like the Inner Year Mandala) that visually represents the sacred soul-culitivating seasons and the great festivals of inner development. To this I want to add Soul Feast Days.

I’ll be sharing more about the Imagine Self Calendar project as it develops, but in this post I want to encourage you to think about the soul feast days you would want to celebrate every year. Please post here the person, event, quality, thought, feeling, or activity your soul longs to celebrate, to dedicate your thoughts to one day each year.

You might want to look at the Holy Days of Dedication in the various religions to find inspiration for your soul feast days. The idea would be to seek within your own self the focus of the feast.

It seems to me that inner celebration requires both a wisdom-seeking question and a self-compassionate observation. For example…

My Thoughts of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception

Today, December 8, in the Catholic Church, is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. It celebrates the conception of a female child whose soul is without original sin because she is destined to give birth to the male child that will redeem the sins of the world, Mary, the Mother of God.

I like the idea of this feast when I free it from the burden of church dogma and let it live in the realm of universal archetypes of the feminine, the womb, the mother, conception of thought, of feeling, of intention, etc. (As an esoteric Christian and one deeply aroused by the feminine archetype of the Virgin Sophia, this Feast of the Immaculate Conception and all the other Marian Feast Days really call to me.)

Now I can come up with a thousand questions and just as many observations in regard to the archetypes in the image of the Immaculate Conception. Inner overload! But if I choose this as a yearly feast day and therefore know there will be many years when I can feast for a day on these archetypes , each year I can focus on one question and make one observation.

So this year, I will choose the question: What is sin? and I will observe my sense of “stain” (immaculate comes from “without stain.”) in my relationships. And I will write down my thoughts and feelings about my quesiton and my observation. Perhaps I will want to do a painting or write a poem.

I will give this feast 20 minutes of my dedicated attention. Maybe 1 hour. Maybe I will think about it before I go to sleep and in the morning write down what I find concieved in my morning thoughts. Or I will take a walk and think about the question as I move through nature. What are the ways you imagine celebrating, feasting and dedicating?

Create your Soul Feast Days and nourish your sense of self as an extraordinary being.

Here is a Guide to Imagine Your Soul Feast Days

Choose 12 Soul Feast Days…one for each month. Obviously we could have 365 Soul Feast Days, but start with 12. Perhaps you will choose 3 persons to venerate, 3 qualities to contemplate, 3 feelings to deepen, 3 thoughts to illuminate. (These can change over the years or you can add more.)

Write a paragraph or two on why you want to dedicate a feast day, a holy day of dedication to this person, quality, feeling, thought.

Choose the month and the day for this celebration.

Put it on your calendar.

Buy yourself a journal or sketch book to devote to your Soul Feast Days.

Imagine how you will design and do this inner work regarding amount of time, type of activity, the setting of your celebration. Maybe you will build an altar with certain objects.

Be creative…your devotion to your own soul will make the whole world more beautiful.

 

THE INNER YEAR MANDALA

The Mandala is 24" X24" but can be ordered in other sizes.  Put it up on a wall and use it to record your inner life of thoughts, feelings, and deeds.I use different colored stickies for each soul functions.  I love it as it reminds me that I am inwardly evolving! I ask myself did I think a thought worth noting...feel a feeling...or do a deed.  

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You Can Still Experience Inner Advent


Inner Advent is an embrace, a conscious embrace, of your unfolding life. It’s a responsibility to your self, maybe even a spiritual or moral duty to yourself. We are different from animals in that we have the moral ability to be self-conscious and self-creative. We are not just about drives for survival or desires for being happy, we are about freedom and growth.

Freedom comes from knowing yourself. Self-knowledge is a spiritual practice.  Rudolf Steiner teachings guide me to a right relationship to my self.  He writes in his book, How To Know Higher Worlds, “You can only sacrifice that which you have fully possessed.” Self-knowledge is self-possession. Possess your year so you can let it go.

Know what your inner year. Know how you emotionally experienced the year.  Know how you grew and evolved over the year.

Know your year to know your self!

Possess your year so you can let the stories go and find the meaning, the sacrifice of your 365 days, your 29000 breaths, your efforts and struggles, your dreams, your joys, your sorrows.

How do you begin to do this? How do you organize your recollection of the year? How do you analyze what happened? How do you intuit the meaning? What are the questions that will lead to the insights, the self-knowledge, to a new you, a wiser you, a freer you?

I designed the Inner Advent course to help you find deeper meaning in your year.  To support you in this powerful season.

I want Inner Advent to be a relaxed and aware experience for you. I will guide the process, but you will do the work.  No one can do it but you. This is the gift you give your Self.


Here are  two comments from Inner Advent participants:

Lynn, thank you so much for this. this audio content is as a vessel through which flows profound healing; it encourages me in an inviting way to live the processes of releasing the inner year gently and with love. I am so thankful for the way in which even small steps, beginning gestures - whatever had been possible - are actually far-reaching in effect... The work of celebrating, mourning, attending to regrets and awakening self-forgiveness are described so beautifully. I also cherish the inclusion of the shadow in a 'just right' way - in an honouring way. Lynn that you have deeply meditated and pondered on anthroposophical insight such that it bears fruit in this way moves me and awakens wonder and thankfulness. It is living. It is as grace. It enables my inner process. Anne D.


I've learned through this process that what happens in my "outer world" or contexts is important and is fun to reflect on but that the rich stuff is what's been going on in "the deeds" or my inner world :) I'm really enjoying creating my mandala. I too am using photoshop for the work. I love this class Lynn! It's excellent!! Melissa M




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An Advent Gift for You

If you want to know more about the season of Advent and the wonderful rituals that can enrich and deepen your Advent experience, I have a gift for you. It is an audio about an hour long.  Download it to your phone and take a nice long late Autumn walk.

Advent - A Beautiful Preparation



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