Beyond New Years Resolutions that Don't Work

Welcome to this New Year. This is often a time of reflection, a time of closure and a focus on new beginnings. Often it is a time when we resolve to make ourselves better or happier in some way. In this last Blessing for YOU ezine of the old year I want to suggest certain ways that will allow you to be more creative, more present and more at peace in this coming year.

The first resolution is that you promise not to divide yourself against yourself.

You promise not to judge yourself in any way. You allow yourself to be as you are and your life situation to be as it is. If you do judge yourself then you resolve to become aware if you judge yourself for judging yourself! In this way you become like a Russian Doll. Inside you shrink. Inside the heart shrinks. See how long you can practice this loving kindness to yourself during this New Year. Real change arises from awareness and insight. Nothing really changes through judgement except increased division and the creation of a harder ego shell. With a divided will you are like someone trying to increase the light (de light) in a room by turning down the dimmer switch. Happy New Year  WISHES

Your New Years resolution might be to change what you call a bad habit. You make it your intention by using will power to rid yourself of this so-called bad habit. This is in one sense doing violence to you. There is the one with the bad habit. Then there is the one with the intention of overcoming by force of will the one who indulges in the habit that is judged bad. The question then is, "Which one is the real you?" In this way you become what has been called in the Bible 'legion.' When you use the will in this way you may well achieve a 'successful' outcome. Usually, however, the root cause of the so-called bad habit remains and given enough stress in your life situation the bad habit will return.

Resolve to create some space in your life.

This is space for the arising of Love. This Love that arises is not what has been called 'shopkeeper's love.' This kind of love is ego-based. It arises from our sense of feeling separate and is the result of being solely identified with our mind, body, emotions and memory that we call our personality. The 'shopkeeper's love' gives love in exchange for something. It gives to friends, family or others of like mind provided that they meet certain of our needs for companionship, security or belonging. When our needs are not met then we quickly go shopping for love elsewhere. This love of 'me' or 'mine' then often turns into jealousy, resentment, anger and sometimes hatred.

This New Year give yourself some real space.

Giving yourself space is a great kindness. This is not merely physical space but deep internal space that gives freedom and allows for creation anew and for a sense of heightened energy. This sense of space creates a gap that in the Zen tradition is called 'no mind.' This space allows Love to arise in this world of form. This is not the 'shopkeeper's love,' which seeks the best bargain. This is Love that seeks no return for itself because it is in no sense separate. It is Love that rains on the just and unjust. It is not the love of 'little me.' Where ego is involved love does not really flourish. Do not be afraid of the idea of no mind. No mind is not an idea. It is the most intense and alive experience because it is pure experience. Within the experience of no mind there are no opposites and divisions of thought. There is no ego to be divided against itself.

What is this thing called Ego?

I call it the Ever Grasping One. It is that in each of us, which grasps experience in all its forms and calls it 'mine.' It can be described as the total collection of thoughts, emotions, memories and experience that when gathered together forms what we then call 'me' or 'I.' It is what we call personality, which means 'the mask.' It is the role we play in the world and how people recognise who we think we are. All religious teachings have one thing in common. They all tell us that when we are solely identified with this collection of thoughts, this often frozen life force of emotions and past experiences called memory, then Love cannot be.

Of course, most all of us do not wish to give up our sense of persona that we consider to be our true self.

Most of us cannot imagine what it would be like to be in the world without our personality and without the psychological mask we don in order to face the world. We ask, "Who would I be if not 'my' personality, thoughts or emotions?" We think that we would appear as nobody and as a nothing. Better, we think, to go and engage with practices of self-improvement. Better, we think to engage in learning to become a better person. This learning only serves to change the mask but does not reveal who you are beyond the mask. It can only really help one to learn to be more comfortable in the world of shopkeepers love. At least for a time it makes one feel more attractive and less of a beggar for love in the world of form.