Spring Forward: Time for Change

Anyone who has ever read one of my books (or articles, or talked to me for more than five minutes) knows that I believe that spirituality isn’t something that should be limited to a few special days of the year. Like most witches, I celebrate the full moons and the Sabbats (the eight holidays of the Pagan Wheel of the Year). But I also try to find ways to turn days not usually used for religious practice into an excuse for stretching my spiritual muscles. This kind of thing doesn’t just work for witches, either. Anyone can do it.

Take tonight, for instance (or tomorrow at 2 AM, if you want to get technical). For most of the United States, this marks the time change, when we move our clocks for Daylight Savings Time. Since this can be confusing, at both ends of the year, people often remember with this mnemonic device: Spring forward/Fall back.

Look at what we’ve got here—Time Change and Spring Forward. If this isn’t a good time for changing our personal patterns and moving forward with those changes, I don’t know what is!

I decided to use this day as a springboard for making one positive change. In this case, I’m going to push myself to finally act on a goal I’ve had for ages. For months (OKAY, years), I’ve been saying I was going to get back to a regular meditation practice. I’ve had times in my life when I meditated daily, and it always made me feel calmer, more balanced, and more energized.

But for some reason (ahem—probably having to do with obsessively working on my writing—ahem), I haven’t managed to move forward with this goal. I’ve even gone so far as to take out my beautiful handmade mediation cushion and put it on the couch so I would see it every day, and be reminded that I want to be doing this. And periodically, I’ll notice it, and say, “Oh, yeah—meditation cushion!” But that’s as far as it got. [Please tell me this isn’t just me. It’s not, right?]

So here we are, at the Time of Change, Springing Forward. And I have made a commitment to myself that starting tomorrow, with the new time shift, I will make at least 10 minutes every day to sit on my cushion and meditate. Moving forward with positive purpose. The time change is kind of annoying, since at this point in the year we will be losing an hour of sleep for a night. But we will also be gaining more daylight, and therefore more “active” time. I intend to put that to good use.

If you decide to use the time change to move yourself into forward motion, what one thing would you pick to change or move forward with?