2016: Year of the Fire Monkey

Happy New Year of the Fire Monkey everybody ... well, let's hope so anyway.

I went up to the local temple on Sunday night to see in the new year and plant a ribbon on the temple's wishing tree.

I just got back from a weekend in the Byron Bay/Ballina area and after driving about 200km back to Brisbane I had an hour break after driving to grab a Chinese meal (duck and plum sauce), hop in the shower, change into a red shirt and then head up to the temple.

The Ballina big prawns

Funny thing was, when I was driving around Ballina on Saturday morning, I stopped into the visitor centre in Ballina and bought a calendar with the big prawn on the front cover and lots of beautiful shots of the area inside.
That morning driving around Ballina I decided that sometime during this year I would move down here to live, whether that meant renting, or buying a place to live in down here (at the moment renting is probably the only option I have, barring a windfall from somewhere, but I'm renting at the moment back in my hometown, so it wouldn't make too much difference where I rented at the moment, since I have nothing really tying me to my hometown anyway).

I placed the prawn calendar on my stand in the living room as a way of motivating myself to prepare for a move to Ballina and see if it felt the right thing to do over the coming weeks, even though it felt right when I thought about it over the weekend.
I was hoping for some kind of sign when I went up to the temple that this move would be the best thing for me in the long run and lo and behold, I stumbled across the last one of these that was for sale in the temple shop.

A lucky prawn?

From all my years of coming to Chinese New Year celebrations at this temple I have never noticed them selling prawns.
Prawns aren't even part of the Chinese horoscope, so of course I saw this as a sign from the universe that a move to Ballina was probably my best move to play in the game of life this year.

My gift from the temple on
Chinese New Year, 2016.

Oddly enough, over the weekend I had thought back to the three I Ching coins I had placed in the concrete slab under the front door of the first house I ever owned and had built from scratch, which also happens to be featured in a framed photo of my two boys at the house as it was being built, that sits on the same stand that I put the Ballina calendar on.

A couple of I Ching coins in a clear gold ingot

I had also been reading Chris Mackey's book on synchronicity over the weekend where he mentions Jung and the I Ching, which was what got me started thinking about the three I Ching coins I put in my first house's slab, and that I should make an effort to read Jung's Red Book and study the I Ching, as well in the coming year.
One of my gifts in the red packet from the monks this year was a couple of I Ching coins in a clear gold ingot purse, which I couldn't but see as another sign of building something new, as far as a "home" goes.

I have to say that this post took a different direction to where I was going to head with it, as I planned on a more global commentary on what I thought the Year of the Fire Monkey might hold for the planet in general, not that I'm any great psychic, or anything like that, it was just going to be based on my observations and hunches for the year.
So, maybe I'll have to write another monkey post soon, since I hogged this post with my own personal stories of what I think the year ahead holds for me instead of looking at the wider world events around me.

I have to say though that even though this post may appear rather positive on a personal level, changing addresses is one of the easiest things I could do in my life this year, on other levels I know this year could prove to be one of my toughest years yet on a personal level, but I think this year will be no less tougher on the rest of the world either, not that it will be the end of the world, or anything as bad as that, but it will be a year of hurt and major changes I think and not all for the better. 

 I think it will be a "Tale of Two Cities"  kind of year.

 It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.