It is a natural tendency in human beings to want to start afresh, especially with a new year.  The dawning of a new year fills us with hope and possibility, and a desire to try yet again, to meet our goals and fulfill our dreams.  For many of us, the goals are things or activities that will make us more physically fit or attractive, more outwardly organized or on time, or better people.  Some set new year's resolutions or intentions, yet many have given up on them because they haven't seemed to work.  Those are the ones that are human-powered.

This year, consider a new kind of resolution - a spiritual intention.  Everything in the outer first begins in the inner, as consciousness.  Therefore, try rephrasing your resolutions in spiritual terms.  If your desk is habitually messy, and you long for a more pleasant workspace, focus your intention on divine order, not on obtaining the best new how-to book on working smarter.  How will focusing on divine order make a difference?  

When you sit at your messy desk focused on divine order, contemplating the order of the universe, the transition of seasons, the movement of planets, the cycle of life in animals and plants, and how spirit has worked things out in your own life, you realize that you are as much a part of the order as any of these things.  You are no less than the trees and the stars.  The divine order is within you, within the very blood flowing through you and within your consciousness, which is God consciousness expressing as you.  In time, sometimes immediately, sometimes more slowly, ideas and solutions will present themselves effortlessly.

Spiritual intentions using the 12 powers revealed by Unity's founders: Faith, Imagination, Willingness, Understanding, Power, Zeal, Love, Wisdom, Divine Order, Strength, Renunciation, and Life, can be the basis for revealing solutions in any areas of your life upon which you would like to improve in the coming year.

So look inward, embrace one or more of the powers that are within you and transform your new year's resolutions into spiritual intentions which will be powered by the consciousness of God within you.  These are the ones that work!