Giving Up Hope As A New Year Resolution?

The Buddhist tradition teaches us that as long as we continue to wish for things to change, they never will. As long as we hope to improve, we won't. As long as we have an orientation toward the future, we will never just relax into what we already have or already are.

One of the deepest habitual patterns we carry is to feel that now is not good enough. We reflect and compare the present to the past or wish things to be different when imagining the future.

Even at times when we feel great satisfaction in our lives, we tend to think about what the future holds. We don't quite give ourselves full credit for who we are in the present.

It is easy to yearn for things to improve as a result of our actions. We create our New Year resolutions based on these hopes. Vowing to exercise more or improve our diet, we hope to feel or look a certain way.

Abandoning any hope of fruition does not mean abandoning our ambitions. Instead, it points to a path that focuses on the present rather than on results.

Whatever we do, it is usually done for a purpose, hoping to succeed rather than fail. That works well until our thoughts of success or failure begin to overpower the task at hand. Hopes and fears tend to go hand in hand and when we become result driven, we often miss the lessons presented along the way.

How is it possible to maintain our focus and work toward achieving our desired outcomes, without getting fixated on results? As we go about our activities, we must pay attention to the difference between having a goal and being taken over by our hopes, fears, and speculations.

I personally want to meditate more this year, but am not listing that as a resolution. My intention is to continue integrating more compassion toward others and myself. My methods to experience this include meditation and yoga, teaching and coaching, nutrition, and nurturing my relationships. By doing what I love, I tap into my natural strengths. In this way I can experience my ultimate result in the present moment and by meditating more, the experience will simply continue from what is already present rather than from what I feel may be missing.

As you work with your New Year resolutions, keep in mind that the root of healing is not in the premise that you are going to try to push things away, but that what you already have in each step of the process is worth appreciating. Enjoying the ride is how we ultimately find joy and gratification in our lives.

Yoga Sutras 1&2: Bringing the Mind to Rest

Now The Discipline of Yoga

Yoga is The Cessation of Mind

Patanjali’s first and second yoga sutras have been a great reminder, a mantra, to center and ease my recent experiences of a tumultuous mind.

I am fascinated by how much more the body can be affected by the stories of the mind than actual life experiences. Circumstantial events, such as my car accident this past summer, are not the worst upsets to the body. As people we are extremely adaptable in times of crisis. Although life’s events can be destabilizing, it’s the mental worrying about our imagined future or perspective on past that truly causes internal damage.

Yoga postures are not really concerned with the body, they are concerned with the capacity to be. It is only in the Now that we can understand the science of yoga, the scientific laws of being. Yoga is an experience, not an idea or belief. Such an experience can only be accessed in Now.

Discipline means the capacity to know and learn. But we cannot know unless we have first attained the capacity to ‘Be.’

Osho describes us as a crowded house of people filled with our various personas. As we currently are, there are many people in our house but we are not there. A disciple is a seeker, learning to feel his/her being, to be the master of self rather than a slave to the crowding desires. To Be is to learn to be alone in your home in silence.

Yoga is the state of no-mind. The mind includes anything thought related: All ego, desires, hopes, fears, preconceptions, philosophies, or beliefs.

I often confuse the mind with something substantial that exists within my body. I can physically feel the effects of its turmoil. The second Sutra reminds me that the mind is just a function. The mind is an activity just as talking is. If we stop talking, talking stops existing. When we stop ‘minding’, minding stops existing. The problem is we’ve forgotten how to stop. We have lost the capacity to Be in Now.

These two Sutras serve me as a reminder to recognize the turmoil of the mind and to simply remember that this “minding” can be put to rest.

It doesn’t matter how many times the mind wonders off or for how long. What matters is the moment we realize the wondering of mind and bring our attention back to the experience of now, feeling the breath. To recognize the wondering of the mind and to attempt to shift back to present is the ultimate act of compassion for our process and ourselves.