Hello and Happy New Year!
We intended to start the newsletter by addressing the importance of making resolutions. But, as usual, the newsletter is a week or so late. I mentioned my concern about that to Nancy, and she said, “Don’t worry about it. Most people have already forgotten their resolutions, if they made any at all.”
Don’t take it personally! It’s true for all of us, really. One of my resolutions is to get to bed by 11:00 (by all accounts, it really should be by 10:00), and as I am writing this, it’s almost midnight.
Our resolutions get lost in the busyness of life. We often forget our best intentions and our best interests. In The Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in Our Busy Lives, author Wayne Muller mentions a South American nomadic tribe that would go on a long trek day after day and then abruptly stop, make camp, and rest for several days.
Why?
Tribe members explained that they needed to stop to allow their souls to catch up with them.
Perhaps you have been so busy these past few days, weeks or months that, like those nomads, you got ahead of your soul.
Then it’s time for you to stop and allow your soul to catch up with you.
In this month’s teaching article, Spiritual Living, Swami Nirmalananda writes:
“Now is the time to make your plan! A new year, a new beginning, an opportunity to steer your life in the direction you want to go. Inward.”
Swami continues: “Keep your attention inward, even while you navigate your life, so you live in attunement with your own Self… Centered, grounded, established within, while being responsive to others… It is the experience of your own Self that makes you happiest…”
Happy New Year! It’s time for a fresh start with infinite possibilities… And the greatest possibility is achieved when you steer your life inward. That’s where you find your Self. That’s what makes you happiest.
When you get ahead of your Self, you lose the happiness that comes with being attuned to Self. Staying attuned to your Self does not mean staying self-involved and selfish. Staying attuned to your Self is being loving and generous, joyful and peaceful. That’s who you really are.
This month’s Practice of the Month is to reflect on the choices you made the past year and how they served you (or not), and to consider which of the infinite possibilities you want to pursue this year. What choices can you make now to get you where you really want to be? Better yet, what choices can you make to get attuned to your Self, the source of the greatest happiness possible? Resolve. Become resolute.
“If you are a yogi, you must make New Year’s resolutions.
If you want to be happy, you must make New Year’s Resolutions.
If you want to be a better person, have better relationships, accomplish things in the world,
you must make New Years resolutions.
Now is the time.”
Swami Nirmalananda