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Week 1

prepare

In December 2009, I had a burning desire to have a magical year like the one I'd had in 2006. I wanted so much. I wanted to write more books. I wanted a powerful literary agent. I wanted marketing and administrative support. I wanted to teach at renowned spiritual centers. And I wanted prosperity to come home to roost, this time for good.

I began as I begin everything, with a chat with my wise loving Voice. What made 2006 so magical? I asked. The first word that flew through my hand was Advent. Advent? I wrote, “I haven't thought about Advent for years. Why do we have to talk about Advent?”

I learned why. Advent was a big deal in my childhood home. In December, we did not get a Christmas tree. We did not go on shopping excursions. We did not decorate the house. Instead, my mother laid on the dining room table a simple pine-branch wreath with three purple candles and one pink. Before dinner, she lit a candle for each of the four weeks of Advent and read a prayer. Advent, she said, was a season of preparation. If you wanted to receive the Light of Christ on Christmas, you had to spend four weeks getting ready.

You can imagine how thrilled we five kids were with Advent. We didn't want to pray. We wanted to sing Christmas carols. We didn't want a bare living room. We wanted a sparkling tree. We wanted to make lists for Santa Claus and eat Christmas cookies. But Mother was in charge, and we were having Advent. There was one small delight. Each day one of us was invited to open a tiny door on a special Advent calendar. Behind it was a picture of a dove or an angel or a Christmas tree—some symbol of the joy to come. Those little pictures spurred our anticipation to even greater heights.

So what did my childhood memory of Advent have to do with creating a magical year? Well, in the course of my conversation about Advent, I realized 2006 was spectacular because I had spent the previous December preparing. I spent long hours in divine dialogue, dissecting how my life was unfolding. I wrote about the past and all its pain. I wrote about what I was learning and all the gifts in my story. I forgave everyone I felt had harmed me. Then I wrote in detail about what I wanted next in my life. After all that preparation, on January 1, 2006, I could write in a firm hand with total confidence: I am ready. I am ready for my marketing partner. I am ready for my publisher. I am ready to be in a relationship. I am ready.

The magic wasn't in declaring what I wanted; we've all done that and seen nothing happen. It was in being ready. I had given myself a rich Advent. I didn't call it that at the time, but looking back, it's clear that I had prepared my heart, my mind, and my soul to step into the next phase of my life. And because I was totally and completely ready, everything I wanted came effortlessly to me that year.

Preparation is a universal spiritual practice. In every spiritual tradition, a major feast or occasion is preceded by a period of prayerful preparation. Before Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, there is a week of preparation. In the Christian tradition, a month of Lenten fasts prepares the soul to celebrate Easter. Muslims fast, pray, and reflect daily for a full month of Ramadan, then end the month with a huge feast and festival of Eid ul-Fitr. In Islam, hajj is the sacred pilgrimage to Mecca, undertaken during five specific days of the Islamic calendar. All Muslims, whether they have actually traveled to Mecca or not, celebrate a great feast of Eid al-Adha when the five-day hajj period ends. The Hindu celebration of Diwali, the festival of lights, goes on for five days, each day honoring an aspect of the harvest; the festival culminates in a celebration of Lakshmi, the goddess of prosperity. Perhaps the longest, oldest, and most famous pilgrimage of preparation is the one that follows the Camino de Santiago (the Way of Saint James), an ancient trail that begins in France and winds across northern Spain to its destination, the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela (the Cathedral of St. James).

If you want a new life of abundance and joy, your first step is to prepare yourself for it. Give yourself the gift of preparation.

The First Wave: Intention

Begin this week standing still for a moment. Contemplate what you want to experience in this week of preparation and send that desire out into the universe on a wave of intention. At the end of the week, you will stop, look back at what happened, feel gratitude in your heart, and with a sense of celebration, send waves of gratitude and joy back into the universe.

I used to think of these two experiences, intention and gratitude, as two poles—a place to start and a place to end. But then I read about light. Light can be a particle, a specific point, like a pole, but at the same time it's a wave. In this soul adventure, we are becoming aware of our true nature as a spiritual being of light, so we need an image to symbolize how setting intention and expressing gratitude are both places at the opposite ends of a continuum and the waves of action that flow between these places.

The movement of a Slinky is a perfect image for the relationship between intention and gratitude. Like the two ends of the Slinky, intention and gratitude are connected and reciprocal. They flow one to the other and back again, and in the process, they move forward together, in the same way the coiling and recoiling of a Slinky moves it down steps. Intention begets gratitude, and gratitude flows from intention. And just as a Slinky won't move unless you give it an initial, intentional push, you have to set the waves of intention and gratitude into motion. Nothing happens until you give it that initial intentional push.

If you can get a real Slinky, play with it as you set your intention for this week. If not, hold out your two hands and imagine your virtual Soul Slinky. Lift your left hand gently to send your intention out in a coiled wave. Feel it flowing into your right hand, where it naturally produces an equal wave of gratitude.

What is your left-hand wave of intention for this opening week of preparation? Not sure? Good. This is a golden opportunity to begin practicing the true creative power of intention. It is not necessary, or even desirable, to have a sharp picture of exactly what you want to experience this week. And really, how could you possibly predict what will happen or what should happen? This week and all of the Lotus and the Lily is a creative experience. When you enter into a creative endeavor with a crystal-clear image of the outcome, you're not entering into a creative endeavor. You're controlling it or managing it or wrestling it to the ground, but you're not allowing it and all its gifts to come to you.

Artists of all kinds are intimate with the paradoxical tension of holding an intention to create while simultaneously releasing control over the result. I heard a rock star laugh when an interviewer asked him how he planned his newest album. The musician said if you know the songs you're going to write, don't bother going to the studio. Fiction writers understand the creative dynamic, too. They are constantly complaining that their characters won't do what they're told.

Now it's your turn. With a gentle wave of your left hand, declare your positive, beautiful, soul-expanding intention for this week of preparation. Then get out of the way. Heaven will take it from here. In seven days, you'll be amazed at all that happened. And you will celebrate by joyfully bouncing springs of gratitude in your right hand.