SANKALPA / intention

You don’t need to do anything in order to exist.

Dear friend, happy new year, wherever you may find yourself. I hope she treats you like a gift. Over the next 12 months, there will be letters, love-notes, tricklings of the heart. So grateful to have you along for this strange, sometimes tragic and inherently beautiful existence. This space is shifting, changing with the wind that has no rules (for free is she). I will be sharing a monthly snippet of yogic philosophy along with updates on my art process and projects on the land. As the old year exhales and the new one expands, I hope you will continue to dream. Remember: you don’t need to do anything in order to exist. You are already are, just by being. ❤️

Lately I’ve been expanding on the Now. That liminal, wide open space that the new year brings often holds no more, nor less mystery than the lick of dawn.

If I were born a different body, in a different land and life, maybe I would have less migraines, maybe the air would be more clean, maybe I wouldn’t wake up bathed in sweat, dream of drowning, maybe I wouldn’t have fraudsters hacking into my bank account, or a listless rumination (or rather, listed, for I’m not sure I could get through modern life and demand without them).

But I wasn’t, I was born here, now, with eyes that blink. In between breaths, or sips of air between sniffles, I am home.

Last year I tried to build one, but it got so heavy, so hard, so sore. I had to come to terms with the fact that certain broken relationships we have with our blood families are not meant to be remade. Some things are left unsaid, undone. There can be more self destruction done in trying to be loved and then not. In trying to detangle the threads, find forgiveness for past pains , wounds and wrongdoings, we may find ourselves only further entangled.

I wrap my legs twice round each other as I write. My eyelids hang heavy in their sockets. There’s a burning at the back of my breath. I’m grinding my teeth like wheels on tarmac. The flu that has been sitting in my body the past three weeks is slowly lifting, and I’m letting whatever light that wants to come in, come in. Come in, please, even for just a sip.

Life is nothing without flavour, without flow. I’ve decided that instead of thinking ‘there’s no point trying’ and letting fatigue and worry weight you down to the point it becomes the default, it’s better to simply refocus. Read books. Drink coconut soup. Find snails, reveal them. Remember: when life gets quack, there’s always ducks.

As a writer and artist, I often find myself riddled with the impossible task of balancing the sheer joy and whim of creation - spontaneous, unspoken, free - with the capitalist urge to share, market, shape, perfect. In other words, hustle. This hustle-bustle-grinding-striving cultural framework within which we find ourselves swimming is not conducive to wild, heart-felt creation.

I guess it all comes back to ‘Sankalpa’, a Sanskrit language term commonly used in yoga class which more or less means intention or resolution. Such an intention could be to ‘sit with darkness’ or to ‘make better use of the light’, to loosen up or to further contract. Your Sankalpa is yours for the choosing. Personally I set my sankalpa with my morning coffee or at breakfast.

But sankalpa is especially important in creating so as not to get swept too deeply into ‘good’ or ‘bad’. These terms hold nothing in the creative context. They are just words. Creation knows when it is right, but we need enough humbleness and pause and indeed perseverance in order to get the the ‘AHA!’ - that soaring sensation when the world makes sense again, because we put something in it that wasn’t there before and it made our heart rest and sing at the same time.

In other words, I’ve started painting again, and I don’t know what it is, my wrist too tight or my back too sore, too tight or I’m putting too much pressure on the Now, I’m too afraid of wasting paper or getting it too wet, but it has taken a while to loosen up my art again. My sankalpa, moving forward is to have fun. Art sings when we have fun. It has a certain edge. It doesn’t need to be perfect, it just needs to expand us, to open our experience.

This is the New Year. This is your year. My year. Our year. It will hold us, take us down many roads and trains of thought despite ourselves, it will feel heavy and at times scary and lonely, but as long as we have our Sankalpa, no matter what it is, we will always find our golden arrow, and we will always be home. Even and most especially in the dark.

And all that’s just to say is that last year 2024 was one of the most emotionally and mentally draining on a personal and interpersonal level. So many ruffled feelings and financial wells.

I’m so glad it’s 2025, if I’m honest. Because though they may be just numbers, it means we are entering a ea cycle of seasons too, and with them comes new meanings, layers, and most of all New Hope.

I love you and hope you enjoyed reading this. If you haven’t already I hope you consider subscribing. It means everything, really. There is one free and one paid newsletter per month.

There is much bounty to come. Promise.

Ailbhe

Xxxxx