January 2026 - Indoor Gathering

Written By Ancient Hearts Collective .

01/04/2026

January Message: Connecting to Your Higher Self

✧ Featuring Heart Leader Angie Grandt, Generational Healing Specialist

Angie is a Certified Human Design Specialist with certifications in Family Coaching, Relationship Coaching, and the Quantum Alignment System. Through Human Design, EFT Tapping, and trauma-informed coaching, she gently guides you out of survival mode and back into alignment, clarity, and embodied truth.

✧  If you are interested in connecting with Angie to explore any of her offerings, check out her website, or follow her on Facebook, Instagram, and her YouTube channel - where she offers weekly videos.

2025 REFLECTION | 2026 LOOK AHEAD

✧ As we reflect on our founding year, our hearts are full. In just seven months, together we held 14 gatherings, expanded into our new home at Atria Hall, welcomed 10 Founding Members and 10 Heart Leaders, launched Sacred Listening Circles, formed our Heart-Led Works Committee, and brought music alive through our band. What we created wasn’t just growth—it was trust, presence, and shared stewardship.

As we step into our first full year in community, we are moving with intention—deepening our spiritual roots while expanding our circle. In 2026, we are focused on:

  • Expanding our spiritual growth offerings and events

  • Introducing new Heart Leaders and welcoming back beloved guides

  • Growing our musical expression

  • Creating more opportunities for meaningful connection and community service

    Here are a few ways to connect more deeply in 2026:

  • Join us twice a month. Save our 2026 gathering dates so you never miss a chance to connect and grow.

  • Follow us on Facebook and Instagram and help spread the word by liking, sharing, and commenting.

  • Join our Founding Circle - we are welcoming 30 new Founding Members this year.

  • Sustain our gatherings with a recurring donation.

  • Invite friends who are longing for community and connection.

  • Become a Heart Leader and help co-lead our gatherings.

  • Join the band — we are seeking a drummer, guitar player, and keyboardist.

  • Volunteer at gatherings as a greeter, announcer, or part of our take-down crew.

  • Join one of our community service projects and help us make a real impact locally.

  • Attend our monthly Sacred Listening Circles and walk alongside others on the spiritual path.

GATHERING MESSAGE

✧ We began by acknowledging that we are now officially two weeks into the season of winter – a time of rest, reflection, and renewal. It is a wonderful time to deeply listen to the guidance of our Higher Selves.  For some, this connection to their Higher Selves is well established, for others, it is just beginning to be established, and for others, it may feel like more of a longing to connect.

So, we began by framing what we mean by Connecting to Our Higher Self with a passage by Mark Nepo. The passage describes this inner place, a place of many names - depending on the tradition- as the source of peace and wholeness, contrasting it with the "filmed over" self of worldly expectations. He talks about how our lives get "filmed over" by external layers of the world – our family, roles, and cultural expectations, along with the experiences we have that create more layers, whether that be praise for doing the thing the world wants us to do or the traumas of embodying a human experience. He notes that our spiritual task is then to begin to "unlearn" and remove these layers, and return to this essential Self, and how moments of wholeness, or enlightenment, awakening, occur when this film is worn away, connecting our inner world to our outer lived experience.

Here is the passage:

“Each person is born with an unencumbered spot, free of expectation and regret, free of ambition and embarrassment, free of fear and worry; an umbilical spot of grace where we were each first touched by God. It is this spot of grace that issues peace. Theologians call it the Soul, Hindus call it Atman, Buddhists call it Dharma, Sufis call it Qalb, and Jesus calls it the Center of Love.

To know this spot of Inwardness is to know who we are, not by surface markers of identity, not by where we work or what we wear or how we like to be addressed, but by feeling our place in relation to the Infinite and by inhabiting it. This is a hard lifelong task, for the nature of becoming is a constant filming over of where we begin, while the nature of being is a constant erosion of what is not essential. Each of us lives in the midst of this ongoing tension, growing tarnished or covered over, only to be worn back to that incorruptible spot of grace at our core.

When the film is worn through, we have moments of wholeness, moments of clear living when inner meets outer, moments of full integrity of being, moments of complete Oneness. And whether the film is a veil of culture, of memory, of mental or religious training, of trauma or sophistication, the removal of that film and the restoration of that timeless spot of grace is the goal of all therapy and education.

Regardless of subject matter, this is the only thing worth teaching: how to uncover that original center and how to live there once it is restored. We call the filming over a deadening of heart, and the process of return, whether brought about through suffering or love, is how we unlearn our way back to God.” ~The Book of Awakening by Mark Nepo

Angie then led a discussion about how our unique human design is like a roadmap, which can help connect us to our Higher Self.

Jen closed with Perennial wisdom about remembering and reconnecting to our Higher Self with the Sufi tradition, Celtic, and Divine Feminine wisdom.

SPIRITUAL PRACTICE

✧ Next, Angie guided us through a heart-opening experience designed to unblock our energy meridians using the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), or tapping. She offered affirmative tapping scripts to reclaim our lovability and guided us through the tapping experience that gently transitioned into a guided lovability meditation. The tapping affirmations were:

✧ I now release anything and everything that stands between me and my lovability.

✧ I now release anything in my mind, anything in my heart, anything in my body that stands between me and my lovability.

✧ I deserve to feel this lovable. I deserve to feel this loved any time I choose.

✧ I created this wonderful feeling of inner love in my body, heart, and mind, and I can recreate this wonderful feeling anytime I choose.

✧ SPIRITUAL INVITATION FOR JANUARY

Begin or continue a daily practice of connecting with your Higher Self, whatever that means to you.

Find a practice that resonates with you. Here are several options:

  • Create a time of sacred stillness to deeply listen to your own inner voice through meditation or journaling.

  • Explore your own Human Design to learn about your unique energetic blueprint. See Angie’s website for your free chart.

  • Integrate tapping to support you in unblocking your connection to your Higher Self.

✧ QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

  • What does the term “Higher Self” mean to you?

  • Remember a time when you felt you were connected to your Higher Self. Were you aware of it at the time, or did awareness come later?

  • What layers of film, or conditioning, have you unlearned in your life, and what would you still like to unlearn?

PERENNIAL WISDOM SOURCES

✧ INTERSPIRITUAL/INTERFAITH

✧ SUFISM

✧ INDIGENOUS

✧ DIVINE FEMININE

MUSICAL INSPIRATION:

 

NEXT GATHERING:

  • Sunday, January 25th, 10am-Noon

    • Location: Rock River Heritage Park

    • Map link: 5801 N River Road, Janesville

    • What to know/how to prepare:

      • Join us as we explore the park and connect with the land

      • Bring water and wear comfortable shoes and protective clothing.

✧ MONTHLY COMMUNITY EVENT: One Heart: Sacred Listening Circles

Each of us has a unique story to tell, and we each long to tell our stories - to bring them out into the light to be seen and heard.

Yet, too often, we keep our stories inside, and we miss our chance to speak our truth and share our authentic selves. Not just because life moves quickly, but also because it's not easy to find others we feel comfortable sharing our story with.

💗 That's why we are forming One Heart: Sacred Listening Circles for Ancient Hearts Collective community members.

One Heart circles are a form of group spiritual companionship where we get to practice "walking each other home," as Ram Dass once shared. These monthly circles are an opportunity for deeper, authentic connection with others in the community and companionship on your spiritual path.

🪶 Facilitator: Jen Carew, Certified Interspiritual/Interfaith Spiritual Director

🪶 Frequency: One Heart Circles will be offered once a month. Attend every month or when you can.

🪶 Open Seats: For our first meeting, our maximum registration is 12 people. We may expand this based on the interest from the community.

🪶To Register*: Please donate between $5 - 20 (sliding scale- pay what you can) to reserve your spot here: https://givebutter.com/1heart

Thanks to Karla at Atria Hall, 100% of your donation will support Ancient Hearts Collective.

* To ensure this experience is open to all AHC community members, no one will be turned away for lack of funds - simply send an email to contact@ancienthearts.org. to reserve your spot.

Ancient Hearts Collective . https://ancienthearts.org
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Winter Solstice Gathering