|
 |
|
Is Your New Year REALLY New?
It's easy to check this question out, as it has now been three weeks since the official
start of the Gregorian Calendar's designated New Year of 2010 A.D.
Do you experience these past three weeks as NEW or is this year beginning to look
and feel a lot like last year? Are you experiencing the flow and freedom to BE, and
creating your life newly with each person and circumstance that arises, or are
you experiencing the same old sensations, fears, stress, points of view, thoughts,
beliefs, memories, behavior patterns, and sense of who and what you are as you did
in 2009?
Webster's New World Dictionary defines "new" as: never existing before... appearing,
thought, developed, produced, etc. for the first time... not yet familiar or accustomed
...not previously used or worn...beginning again...making another start...refreshed in
spirit, health, etc. (a new man or woman).
To live a NEW year is to relate to all of life unburdened and free of past limitations,
including thoughts, beliefs, and decisions (about the world, others, and yourself),
emotions (including feelings of guilt, shame, regret, apathy, grief, fear, greed,
resentment, anger, jealousy, and pride), reactive patterns of behavior, and
negative past/future mental images.
To live a NEW year is to relate to the people and circumstances in your life (including
what you call "I") with a new freedom to welcome and allow what is to BE what it is,
free from fear of not getting what you want, free from fear of losing what you've got,
and open to creating a life that is unfolding intentionally in each moment.
To live a NEW year does not mean that you are oblivious to the past; it means that you
are dis-identified and unstuck from it. It means that you have released back to the
formless all negative, reactive, and limiting energy attached to past incidents so that
energy is once again available for creating your life NOW. The past no longer distorts
and colors your view of what is and what is possible. You no longer experience life being
shaped by resisting, enduring, or tolerating what feels beyond your power to change,
or by futilely striving to fix or improve what you hope can be changed based on past
decisions and beliefs.
When is the "New" in New Year supposed to kick in? That is up to you.
It is worth recalling that the whole idea of a "New Year" is an invention of cultural
agreement. Different cultures have determined and designated different beginnings,
endings and dates of a New Year. Some cultures base it on their relationship with the
sun, others with the moon.
The universe itself does not know about years, old or new. It knows nothing of months,
weeks, days, hours, minutes, or seconds either. These measures, like the human
measures for distances, do not exist in reality, but are made up, existing only by
agreement.The cycles of the seasons, the arising and destruction of mountain ranges
and oceans, or the birth and death of a person, star, or galaxy --- forms beyond
number through which the cosmic unfolding of creation, manifestation, and dissolving
that is called "Universe" is expressed. It is a human enterprise to artificially divide the
unfolding of creation into arbitrary numeric divisions which have no direct relationship
with the Universe itself.
If this moment of NOW is going to show up as NEW, it will not do so as a function of
a number designation or the circumstances or a mere improvement in one's past
conditioning. It will only be truly NEW as a function of a shift in Awareness; a
transmutation of one's experience of the universe and what one calls, "I". When that
shift occurs, it allows for the spontaneous arising of perceptions, thoughts, feelings,
actions, circumstances, and possibilities that resonate in harmony with that state of
Being that has always been your true nature.
If you are committed to living a NEW year, fulfill the following:
1. Discover for yourself the answer to the question, "What is the purpose of living and
of life itself?" (Hint: "Avoiding pain and gaining comfort and pleasure" may be the answer
for an amoeba or for one stuck in the inherited conditioned state, but not for one who
has awakened to their true nature).
2. Generate a burning commitment to let go of identifying with past stories, thoughts,
beliefs, conclusions, decisions, points of views, attitudes, and patterns of behavior that
keep reconstructing the reality of the past over and over again.Then act on that
commitment.
Without the intention to dissolve and transcend the identification with past
programming, we are left with only three options---doing more of the same, doing the
same thing better, or doing the same thing differently. That is not NEW. That is called,
in musical terms,"variations on a theme."
3. Dissolve the fundamental conditioned illusion that what you are is a separate
finite mind/body personality, and allow the Core Wisdom that is your true nature to be
illuminated as the Source and guide of your life.
Right NOW, if you choose to do so, you can intentionally create this moment as the
initiating step in the unfolding of a NEW year rather than merely a year that is a re-run
or predictable improvement on the past. Begin by observing, allowing, and dissolving
the past limitations and conditioning you have identified with, resisted, dramatized or
suppressed. All the rest will naturally and effortlessly unfold from there.
OBSERVE what is. ALLOW what is to BE. Allow what is to DISSOLVE back into the
infinite formlessness from which it came. NEW possibilities of Being will awaken and
arise, and creating your life will truly be new in every moment, rather than a repetition
of the past doing yet another cycle around the sun.
-- Hal
From Core Wisdom On-Line Number 110 - Jan. 21, 2010
541-488-7687 |
