Today is New Year’s Eve and this day always gets me excited. Not just for the parties and watching the ball drop on TV, but for the annual New Year’s Eve service held at my local Unity church. What’s so special about this service, you ask? It’s the Burning Bowl Ceremony, which enables participants to let go of the old and to make room for the new, much like the passing of one year to the next.

Unity is a movement that emphasizes a spiritual path for positive living, and today, Unity churches worldwide will be filled with congregants participating in this tradition, along with other people of various spiritual faiths. Rather than the usual tradition of making resolutions, the Burning Bowl Ceremony sets the stage for participants to use denials and affirmations.

Denials are statements of release. When denials are used, we do not deny facts or feelings or emotions, we deny that those facts, feelings, or emotions have power over us. We are not “in denial” that challenging events occur; we use release (denial) statements to remind ourselves that no matter what is happening, we are always free to choose our response to that experience,

Affirmations are statements of Truth. We do not say affirmations to “make things happen”. We use affirmations to help re-train ourselves into more productive thought patterns. Most of us have inherited a great deal of negative mental “programming” as we have gone about our lives. Affirmations are a basic tool which helps us to create more efficient and optimal ways of thinking.

If you have never experienced a Burning Bowl Ceremony, this is how it goes:

Everyone is given two sheets of paper: one sheet of flashpaper is for writing down the old things we want to release and the second sheet of paper is for writing down the new things we want to attract into our lives to replace the old things we are releasing. The paper with the new things we desire in our lives is folded up and put into a self-addressed envelope that the church mails back to us later on in the new year as a reminder. As the meditative music plays in the background, the participants line up, walking to long tables at each end of the front of the sanctuary that have burning bowls on them, and are lit. Each person takes their flashpaper and allows the flame of the bowl to burn away quickly those things being released. The fire, in this sense, is a cleansing and purification agent.

While Burning Bowl Ceremonies are done on New Year’s Eve, they can be done at any time of the year. It is a great thing to do as a party with friends or family to symbolically let go of the old together and make room for the new. It’s wonderful to share this kind of gesture with loved ones.

So, as we see this year come to a close, what would you write on your flashpaper at your Burning Bowl Ceremony? What is it that you would release from your life—and why?  What would you write on that second sheet of paper, the one that would remind you of the intentions you set at the top of the New Year—that you would receive later in the year? What new ideas, actions, behaviors and habits will you need to possess, take, and develop that would be in alignment with those new intentions?

What will you be willing to do to release the old and embrace the new in your life—starting today?

Your partner in setting intentions for your new (and best) year,

James

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