Look within for happier new year
Are you really ready for a Happier New Year? I pose that question because it is one that came to me in one of my morning meditations and it took me to a deeper place of intentions for the upcoming year. Well, it was upcoming; now we find ourselves halfway through the first month. Time flies.
In order for us to have a happier and better new year, we must ask ourselves what we are willing to change so that happiness and improvement can take place. What old habits and beliefs must be adjusted and, in many cases, purged? (As is often the case, one question leads to many more!)
This is the deep spiritual work that all the Masters engaged with and put forth in their teachings and it is the work that we, who follow in their footsteps, are called to do. I believe this means, in part, that we must open our hearts and expand our thinking as well as our capacity for compassion.
The ego, that guardian of our smaller self, tries to keep us as small as possible, diminished in our individuality, disconnected from each other and focused on our differences defined by the limits of language. Our Higher Power goes by many names. Each time that name is called, it answers and sheds grace on the common ground of shared beliefs. But the divides of human construct, fortified by the ego, keep us and the world entrenched in the suffering of false separation. Violence, fueled by competition, surges and we are the worse for it.
If we want a happier new year, let this be a year of keeping that small self in check; let this be the year for the Larger Self, the Essential Self, the Soulful Self. The Self that recognizes our interconnectedness to each other and to The Divine. The Self that seeks to expose the common, shared and sacred ground of abundance, often hidden in the shadows of smallness.
In a happier new year, let us take down the destructive walls that tell us that one side is completely wrong and the other infallible, the walls that create “outsiders,” the walls that say there is only one way. This is not an easy task. Eliminating, even reducing, our dualistic thinking is a daily practice. But practice we must. There is so very much suffering, so very much pain, that lies outside of our influence, let us change what we can — that which lives within us; which unintentionally might contribute to the suffering within our homes and communities.
Change begins within each of us. And so I wish, for all of us, the change that will bring a happier new year. Be brave! Let go! We can do this. Happy New Year!