Quick lil PSA: This is a long, in-depth, from-the-soul blog post. I suggest saving it to come back to and read when you definitely have the time and space for it - it’ll be worth it for the stories and insights I’ve shared, I promise!

Collectively, 2023 is a 7 year (2+0+2+3=7), which means that together, we’ll be moving through a lot of deep internal, introspective, and spiritually transformative energy. 

In line with my personality and my (ego’s) desire to always be one step ahead of the curve, my personal numerology year is always one digit ahead of the collective’s, so I just experienced my personal 7 year in 2022. To calculate your personal year cycle, add up the digits of your birth month, birth date, and the current year. 

For example, with my bday being August 11, here’s how last year and this year look in numerology: 

8+1+1+2+0+2+2 = 16 … 1+6 = 7

8+1+1+2+0+2+3 = 17 … 1+7 = 8

I have to admit that I’m very excited to be moving out of my personal 7 year and into a personal 8 year! Humbly, I also must admit that while I expected to *thrive* in my personal 7 year, given my true love for spirituality, self-reflection, and inner growth, it turned out to be a lot more challenging, intense, and honestly, confusing, than I anticipated. For that reason, I’m also very curious (and a bit tentative tbh) to see what this collective 7 year will look like and bring. 

In the interest of helping prepare others who may be heading into their own personal 7 year or those who are wanting to intentionally work with the collective 7 year energy, I wanted to share 7 (of course!) of the most significant lessons and insights I gained from the year. If you’re wanting to dive deeper into numerology and the meanings of each year’s number, Creative Numerology by Christine DeLorey is my personal favorite resource to rely on. 

As a brief overview, 7 in numerology is linked to spirituality, wholeness, intuition, inner strength, and resilience. To me, the energy of 7 feels very aligned with Aquarius energy in astrology (although I know that technically 11 is the number of Aquarius since it’s the 11th sign in the zodiac) - it represents unique parts coming together to form a whole, like the 7 colors of the rainbow or the 7 chakras aligning within the human body.

With that, and with the naturally introspective energy of a 7 year cycle, if you’re looking for tools and resources to get the most out of the 7 energy, I’d recommend spiritual and self-discovery tools that help you better understand and integrate your many different parts. Astrology, Internal Family Systems, Shadow Work, Human Design, or any type of archetypal system or psychology are all great places to start. 

So without further ado, here are 7 of the biggest lessons, insights, and gifts of wisdom I received from my own person 7 year in 2022: 

1. HOW TO LIVE THE QUESTIONS

This quote from the great poet Rainer Maria Rilke pretty aptly sums up the entire experience of my personal 7 year: 

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

Oftentimes throughout my 7 year, I felt a subtle yet unavoidable restlessness surging within me. I knew I was on a journey and I knew I was seeking something, but I had no idea what I was seeking, what to look out for, or if anything even existed that could quench this unidentifiable thirst that nagged me. 

While deeply uncomfortable at times, my 7 year taught me how to hold space for a sacred yet unfulfilled longing, how to seek without needing to know what it is I’m seeking, and how to live the questions of my life that can’t be answered yet or even necessarily put into words. 

If that resonates with you and you’re not even sure why, let me save you some unnecessary guilt and self-judgment at this point in your venture…there will be people and spiritual gurus who tell you over and over again to ‘just be grateful’. They’re right in that gratitude is one of the most powerful medicines that exists - AND it’s equally important to honor your internal nudges of frustration and discontent, especially within a 7 year. 

They’re pulling you on a journey just like they did for me. You probably don’t know yet what you’re even frustrated or discontent about, or where this journey is leading you - and that’s exactly the point. Let it not make sense, let it be an unsolved mystery within you for now, and let yourself be pulled by the flow of living the questions. 

For me, I ended my 7 year not having solved or answered most of the questions within me, but I did end up feeling much more clear about what the questions actually were and what it is my soul is deeply seeking (more on that in #5). 

2. WHAT SURRENDER + NON-ATTACHMENT MEAN TO ME

I used to understand surrender as giving up and admitting defeat. That perspective totally shifted during my personal 7 year, and I learned that actually, surrender means to hand whatever is on my heart over to something bigger than myself. For me, the lesson of surrender had everything to do with realizing how little I actually have control over - and while sometimes that led me to feel disempowered, ultimately, I always ended up back at the feeling of relief. Relief that I don’t have to be the one who is always perfectly poised and in control, who always knows the answers, and what to do next; because something bigger than me is steering the ship, even when things seem totally out of control from my perspective. 

Similarly, my viewpoint of non-attachment evolved and changed quite frequently as I wrestled with my understanding and integration of it throughout the year. I started out viewing non-attachment as a spiritual ideal to strive toward, the image of a calm and centered Buddhist monk, unaffected by the world’s turbulence, central on my mind’s vision board. 

But as I came to meet different parts of myself at deeper levels throughout my 7 year, the more I came to deeply love the completely messy, vulnerable, and human side of me that is inextricably affected by the world around me. In astrology, I’m a Leo Sun, Sagittarius Moon, and Scorpio Rising - some of my greatest gifts are my passion and my intensity. I don’t devote my energy to caring about everything in the world, but the things and people I do care about, I care about a lot. Does this lead to unnecessary suffering and disappointment sometimes? It sure does. 

But I learned from my 7 year that I’m not willing to sacrifice those messy, human parts of myself in order to feel less affected by and vulnerable to the world around me. Actually, I believe it’s part of the entire reason I came here to Earth in the first place.

Maybe the combination of surrender and attachment seem paradoxical, but as you’re probably already seeing, the lessons of the 7 year aren’t intended to soothe the mind via structured understanding; they’re meant to speak into and awaken the soul.

3. I AM MORE THAN MY PERSONALITY TRAITS OR MY CURRENT EMOTIONAL STATE

Bringing it back to my astrology again, as a Leo Sun / Sagittarius Moon, I’m a very naturally cheerful, optimistic, hopeful, and upbeat person. So much so that I had come to define a big chunk of my personality and my value in the world based on those traits. It was an incredibly humbling and deeply comforting gift of my 7 year to realize that I can actually still be loved and accepted by those closest to me even when I am not those things; even when I am lost in life, a bit depressed, and moving through a major death cycle of who I once was and not yet quite sure of who I am becoming. 

I don’t think that the type of Dark Night of the Soul / ego death that I went through in my 7 year is necessarily characteristic of every 7 year for everyone, but I do believe that one of the gifts of the 7 cycle is a deeper and purer understanding of your own essence - and oftentimes, that does require a stripping away of some crutches that you may be over-relying on to define yourself with (like a relationship, a job title, or an external perception you’re trying to uphold). 

The other gift that this experience gave me was that it clarified some of my deepest personal values in life. Previously, one of my core values in life had been joy - and while, of course, I still deeply value joy and want to seek it and create it in my life as much as possible, I took it off my list of top 5 core values because I realized that my access to it isn’t always within my control. Instead, I replaced it with soul aliveness (I’m still working on the exact phrase to perfectly capture its essence, ok? If you’ve got a better word or phrase for this, please let me know! 😂).

In my combo 7 year / Dark Night of the Soul, I cried a ton. I learned how to truly feel my emotions, and I felt them all deeply and forcefully. Truthfully, I think I processed and felt emotions that had been trapped within me after lifetimes of suppression and bypassing. I dove into my fears, I wept oceans of grief, I lay on the floor in a puddle of existential crisis questioning the meaning of life, I sprinted out my rage on athletic tracks and beaches. It was not often pretty or comfortable, but I ended up feeling incredibly proud of myself for being so willing to sit with the full spectrum of human emotion and experience - for my willingness to be so fully alive and feel it all, including the ‘negative’ and scary parts. 

In embracing this about myself, I returned to a quote I read years ago that’s always stuck with me and pinpoints the essence of this value of soul aliveness for me. This is from the FAQ page of the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows: 

“I think most people instinctively think of a spectrum of good or bad emotions, like a spectrum from blue to red. But I think there’s another axis that’s more important: blankness to intensity. At one end is depression, in which everything feels dead, even the big things. At the other end is wonder, in which everything feels alive, even the little things.” 

When I think about who I am and how I see myself more fully now after my 7 year, I think of this - not just the highs and moments of joy and celebration, but the full intensity and aliveness I’ve signed up to experience and haven’t shied away from. 

4. HUGE SHIFTS IN CONSCIOUSNESS REQUIRE EQUALLY HUGE COMMITMENTS TO GROUNDING + INTEGRATION

One of the defining signatures of my personal 7 year was the gigantic shifts in consciousness that I experienced. Some of these came within or as a result of the plant medicine ceremonies I participated in, some of them came as ah-hah moments while reading books, and others came as new understandings within relationship conversations and conflict. 

Grounding is a huge component of my work already - in connecting intentionally with the Earth and with my body on a regular basis, I clear external energies that aren’t mine, like from working with clients or from traveling and being around large groups of people, and I recenter myself. Especially when I started working with psychedelic plant medicines like ayahuasca and psilocybin more in my 7 year, grounding became even more essential to help me integrate all of my new insights and experiences within different states of consciousness back into my day-to-day life. 

Even outside of altered states of consciousness though, the theme of integration was clear and consistent within my 7 year. After any sort of ‘ah-hah’ moment or realization I had, no matter how small or ‘basic’ it seemed, I began to more easily identify the ways in which life would pop up opportunities for me to put it into practice. 

For example, after a conflict with a friend where I suddenly came to see just how imbalanced the power dynamic between us had grown (I hadn’t realized how I had been placing her on a pedestal above myself, believing that she knew more and was more ‘spiritually evolved’ than me, and we had both been unconsciously playing into this dynamic), I noticed a slew of similar mini-lessons with this same undercurrent come into my life. Multiple people were reflecting this message to me of “I know what’s better for you than you do,” all to give me the opportunity to better honor my boundaries and cement in my self-trust. 

To me, grounding and integration is all about using our evolving and ascending spiritual wisdom to actually improve and affect our daily lives as human beings. We’re not meant to live in altered states of consciousness 24/7 or only feel connected to Spirit while sitting in meditation. In my 7 year, I learned that this mission we’re all on to ‘bring Heaven to Earth’ is just as much about the little, seemingly inconsequential moments of our lives as it is about the peak experiences we’re so often seeking.

5. CONNECTION IS THE MOST IMPORTANT INGREDIENT ON MY SPIRITUAL JOURNEY

One of the most impactful books I read this year was Evolutionary Relationships by Patricia Albere. In it, she shares: 

“One of my friends had the privilege of being invited to a special gathering of some of the world’s most revered spiritual teachings, including His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Depak Chopra. My friend was humbled and honored to be in the presence of so many radiant and luminous souls, spiritual leaders who inspire thousands, if not millions around the world. One might assume that getting a group of people together of that caliber would ensure a powerful emergence of something new, and that the meeting would have a transformational impact of some kind on the world. Nevertheless, my friend was disappointed by the gathering. Speakers took turns expounding their own wisdom (and some were deeply inspiring), but no new way of being together collectively occurred. Nothing new was created. It was like a group of great soloists playing one after the other, but never becoming an orchestra. 

My friend’s story has stayed with me because it demonstrates so clearly that individual spiritual development does not automatically translate into an awakened way of being together or collective transformation…Our individual awakening is not enough, nor will it allow us to move into humanity’s next era of connectedness - an era that must be founded on the reality of unity.” 

Man oh man did I live the questions of a true spiritual seeker in my 7 year! I worked remotely, traveling between 7 different countries; I sat in 4 ayahuasca ceremonies, opening myself to the Spirit and wisdom of Mother Earth herself; I read countless books about all of my favorite things from astrology to energetics to the afterlife. There were even multiple experiences where I felt like I had “touched enlightenment” in some way. 

And yet…that relentless longing within me for something deeper and something more persisted, unimpressed by my growing resume of spiritual quests. Just as Albere mentions above, my personal 7 year helped me awaken completely on an individual level, but it wasn’t enough to all of a sudden shift my reality into the era of connectedness and unity my soul was actually seeking. 

In a hilariously ironic way, my spiritual journey to ‘enlightenment’ ended up feeling like that classic meme: “Maybe the real treasure was the friends we made along the way.” 

Here I thought I was seeking a deeper discovery of myself and a paradigm shifting view of life and God (casual), yet I came to realize in looking upon the year as a whole that, as with everything in life, enlightenment aint shit unless you’ve got good people to enjoy it with.

6. HOW TO LET THOUGHTS GO UNANSWERED + DROP INTO THE BODY

With all of the questions, seeking, confusion, and yearning of my 7 year, there naturally came alongside it a whole lot of thoughts and anxiety. I hadn’t previously realized just how much of a chronic over-thinker, over-analyzer, and over-worrier I’ve always been, and I had always assumed that I needed to ‘solve’ the thoughts that were persistently on my mind - they’re there for a reason, right? 

Through a few key experiences and resources in my 7 year (shared below), I really learned the meaning of that saying, “The mind is an excellent server, but a terrible master.” Meaning, no, I actually don’t have to solve and follow every thought loop and potential future scenario that comes up in my mind, and instead, it ends up being way more helpful and productive to drop into feeling the sensation in my body and to breathe through it. 

This is a practice I’m still working on for sure! Here are 3 tools and resources that helped me fully understand why this is so important and how to actually put it into practice: 

• “Relax, Release, Receive” - This is the mantra that our medicine man gave to us at the start of my very first ayahuasca ceremony, and it ended up guiding me through a lot of my entire 7 year. Whenever I’d start to get lost in my thoughts or anxieties - whether in ceremony or not - I’d repeat this phrase to myself and follow it, relaxing my body, exhaling on the ‘release,’ and inhaling on the ‘receive.’ 

• The book Anxiety Rx by Dr. Russell Kennedy - This is one of the top books I read all year, and it’s one I recommend to a lot of clients and friends. There are so many good nuggets of wisdom and ‘ah-hah’ moments I had that explained what I was often cycling through in my head. His basic premise is that anxiety is not actually just the stressful thoughts looping in your mind; anxiety in the mind is actually fueled from a deeper source of alarm that is stored in the body and hasn’t yet been fully processed. We can’t ‘solve’ anxious thoughts on their own turf, in the mind; we have to go into feeling in the body (and he gives tools and ways to do this with breathing and offering loving compassion to yourself) in order to address the deeper roots of the alarm-anxiety cycle. 

• The practice of Breathwork -  Breathwork was one of my saving graces throughout my 7 year, my Dark Night of the Soul, my deep phases of emotional processing, my bouts of anxiety…essentially a lifeline through my most stressful times. I love breathwork because it gives me something to do and focus my mental and physical energy on. In meditation, I can easily become distracted, unfocused, or overwhelmed by my thoughts, but breathwork feels like a more anchoring practice for me when I really need to move through some big energy.

7. THE IMPORTANCE OF CONVICTION + SELF-TRUST

Like the 7 of Wands card in tarot, the journey of the 7 year often holds experiences for us about learning to stand on our own and trust more deeply in our inner wisdom, even when it defies conventions or authority. 

The gift of this lesson was handed to me most succinctly within one of my ayahuasca ceremonies in Peru. At the start of the week, before our series of 3 ceremonies began, our facilitator team set us up with preparation and suggestions, which my mind interpreted as specific ‘rules’ to follow: 1) During ceremony, try to drink as little water as possible, as it may invoke more vomiting; 2) Inside the malloca is where the ‘work’ happens. Go outside and enjoy nature as you need breaks, but keep coming back inside to where the true work is happening; and 3) Let others be on their own journey (or, as my mind interpreted it, don’t talk to other people or interrupt their process while in ceremony). 

Well, in my third and final ceremony of the week, I broke all of those rules. I spent most of the night outside the malloca, battling in my mind for quite a while between the ‘good girl’ who wanted to follow the rules (“I need to go back inside or else I’m not really doing the important work!”) and another voice within me that was guiding me based on what I truly needed in the moment, reminding me that, “No, I know that I’m exactly where I’m meant to be even though it’s not where I think I’m ‘supposed to’ be.” I drank a lot of water too, and the highlights of my night were the moments of ‘rebellious’ connection I had with my fellow journeyers, laughing, comforting each other, and supporting one another. 

In our integration session the following day, I shared with the group about the different parts of my experience and how much it strayed from the rules we were given. Someone in the group pointed out how much I kept using the phrase “supposed to” - I was over-explaining myself and preemptively defending my experience because on some level, I felt guilty for my defiance. The facilitators reminded me that what they had shared were pieces of guidance, not necessarily hard and set rules, and the understanding of one of Grandmother Ayahuasca’s lessons for me began to sink in: I realized just how much energy I expend - that ceremony night and in my day-to-day life - trying to conform to the unspoken rules and expectations of society over my own inner guidance. 

That experience was important for me because it gave me a template to rely on - the feeling I often had that night of ‘I know I’m not ‘supposed to’ do this, but this is what I feel called to do, so I’m going to trust that’ had been imprinted as a new pathway in my psyche. I’ve felt it come up since then in big and small ways - like when conventional marketing advice says that I ‘should’ be posting more reels if I want to build my audience, but my heart says ‘nah, that feels really draining and unfulfilling to me.’ Or like when a well-intentioned friend tried to point out to me how I was self-sabotaging my desire for a romantic partnership by not committing to online dating, when my intuition told me to continue trusting that I was doing and following what felt energetically aligned for me, external perceptions be damned.

One key way I integrated this deep wisdom I received was to start viewing the word ‘should’ as a curse word. Every time I noticed it come up in conversation or in my own mind, it was like a little red flag went up alerting me that I was placing someone else’s (or society’s) expectations and unspoken ‘rules’ above my own. I learned that my intuition never speaks to me in ‘should’s’ and how to trust in my own inner conviction when my truth runs counter to everyone else’s ‘should’s.’

My personal 7 year was one of deep inner transformation and journeying, that I ultimately feel very grateful for and humbled by. I hope that my insights and stories have resonated with you in some way, to make you feel less alone in your own struggles and questions, or to help make sense of what you’ve felt along parts of your own journey. If so, I’d love to hear from you! Send me an email at chelsea@chelseajewel.com or a DM to @chelseajewel33.