New Year, New Directions
Each new year begins with hope and anticipation toward new directions. Maybe it will be better than last. Maybe it holds adventures, and surprise, gifts and blessings. We all wish for those things, and for peace and health. We cannot, however, know what the year has in store, plus or minus. All we can do is be as accepting of each moment as it comes and allow it to roll through us and through our lives as gracefully as possible.
There is always suffering in life (until you get to sainthood or bliss consciousness) so the thing to do is greet suffering with equanimity and aplomb. If you allow it to enter in and see it for what it is — being out of control — you can lessen its impact by not having it overtake you and become who you are. Sometimes this takes considerable work. The easiest thing is to get stuck in the sorrow and make it your reason to exist. It is possible to build a world on avoiding your suffering by making others suffer. In fact, most of what doesn’t work in the world is based on those attitudes.
We are living in a very frightening time but we do not have to add to that fear by being afraid in our own lives. We can reside in a mode of personal peace and gratitude, address the various kinds of discord that arise as they do, and release whatever is not serving the present moment to make it calm and peaceful. Sometimes great sorrow is the best way to learn and grow, to see things in a new way that ultimately brings you to greater wisdom and insight.
If there is only one energy here in this universe (as we understand currently) and it is all energy and matter, sub-atomic particles and waves of light, and nothing is outside that universe; if we are made up of star-stuff; if our DNA is closely related to that of some other species (it is) and if we know that babies do not come into this world full of hate, then we have plenty of reasons to focus on that which we share and to ignore that which makes us different, except to honor those differences and see them as a thread in the infinite tapestry of human being-ness.
So my wish for those who read this post in 2016 is that you have the blessings you desire, that you sing from your heart, that you honor all life on this planet – human, animal, and planetary – and that life opens to you 362 more days of amazing, fantastic discovery.