The turn of the New Year is naturally a time for reflection -- reflection on the events and choices of the past year, as well as a time for setting intentions for the year ahead. While many people ring in the New Year with wild celebration, I typically spend it in meditation and relative solitude. This quiet hibernation is a time for going within and pondering priorities for the next cycle.
As you reflect on your own resolutions for 2008, I'd like to pose an invitation. Rather than focusing on the mundane -- losing weight, kicking that smoking habit, or getting to the gym more often -- I invite you to be more audacious.
Commit to listening to the voice that stirs your soul.
Commit to living your highest calling.
What will it take? It will take something very simple, yet incredibly difficult. It will take laying down your personal agendas -- surrendering your story line, your illusory sense of control, your limited conceptions of what you should achieve -- and listening alertly to the deeper voice that whispers within you.
Restricted by conceptions and pre-dispositions about what is possible, your ego agendas are simply too small for you. At best, the ego can help you to acquire some expensive toys and moments of pleasure. But, no matter how accomplished you are, your little goals are only a tiny flicker of the divine splendor of your immortal Self. When your personal agendas fall away, the universal can enter.
For me, there is no higher calling than to listen to the deepest impulse stirring one's soul. To tap the inner currents and follow them without reserve or condition. To write a blank check to the Self.
And so I offer my personal meditation, and invite you on a similar journey:
I offer my life to this calling. I commit to it despite the terror. I tremble with the knowing that everything is irrevocably changed by this single commitment. No matter what happens to me - whether I am made to look the fool, whether my path is anonymous and devoid of grandeur, whether I am betrayed in the worst of ways - I serve no other master than this divine voice.
I die to myself. I am attached neither to life in this body nor to any picture of what I will be called to do beyond this moment. And in this moment I listen intently. I merge into the moment and flow with it. My individual identity, my personality, is no match for the consuming currents of the Divine Will. I surrender to that will. I am dissolved into nothing, at once becoming everything. The divine voice has seduced me from my self-imposed limitation, from the narrow sense of my possession of life, into the vastness of all Being. It has annihilated me, and I am free.
Come back for more from Stacey Lawson every Monday.
Want to reply to a comment? Hint: Click "Reply" at the bottom of the comment; after being approved your comment will appear directly underneath the comment you replied to
How excruciatingly New Age. It's as if the entire cultural atmosphere of L.A. has been condensed into one glistening droplet of gossamer effluvium.
hmmm?
seems like there are truths that lay between the lines.
but reading this article makes me feel like Hank Hill from King Of The Hill.
touchie feelie.
i think you could have dropped the attempts at eloquence and just stated that perhaps for new years we should resolve ourselves to get back to the basic wants and needs in life.
put down the ipod,walk outside and listen to birdsong.
Stacy, I feel like you've opened up my head, looked inside and are holding up a mirror. This is exactly the kind of thing I've been feeling for quite a while now--and I am surrendering. Slowly, bit by bit, but I am surrendering. Thank you for the beautiful reminder. If only I could put my thoughts/feelings into words like that!
"listening alertly to the deeper voice"
"follow them without reserve or condition"
"in this moment I listen intently"
"I am dissolved into nothing, at once becoming everything."
Stacey,
You have said a lot, and given a description of ... something. Where does this lead?
For me, this was a search for truth. The truth dialogue can be overwhelming, so a good starting place is to reject contradiction. Being an American growing up in a Christian environment, rejecting contradiction meets with some resistance, and you still end up facing something overwhelming. If everyone keeps their truth to themselves there is no problem, but I think that goes against the "follow them without reserve or condition" doctrine.
I think the breakthrough was to focus. Instead of trying to fix all contradictions, stick to one central argument, something that can't be reasonably opposed. This is a breakthrough because it can teach you people want to keep the discussion on a wide range of issues that can be argued from both sides so that everyone can be happy about the conclusions, and they absolutely will do anything to avoid having to face the one critical issue that they can't answer.
In the 21st century, things got much clearer and more polarized. The new issue is preemptive war. Christianity did make a small attempt to face the issue of their support, then ran away to avoid having to look too deeply into the "war religion" question.
I dedicated my life to showing Christianity preemptive war is wrong, and they are leading the world on a path of distruction. Everything you have said including vastness of all Being, annihilated me, and I am free applies. I am thankful for huffingtonpost because in the real world I can't express my ideas.
I'm right there with you, Stacy. I'm planning to become a meditation teacher and would like to study yoga with a view toward teaching that as well. I'm 61, so this is more of a challenge than it might be otherwise. Also, I need to earn money, and teaching yoga and meditation aren't exactly known as highly paid professions. So stepping out in faith, trusting that I will be able to make ends meet and that my studies and my work will feed my soul as well as my body--that I am making a life, not just a living--will be the main thing I have to keep in mind in the coming year. Surrender is key. The serenity prayer says it all for me: I have to accept the things I cannot change while taking steps to change the things I can. I believe this is a calling, and I'd like to spend my remaining years in this body on this planet living a calling rather than working a job--but I do have my fears. Thanks for reminding me that surrender to the One is always the answer.
Beautiful words Stacey.
(Nothing to add.......for once!)
Stacy - I love your articles. BUT... they can also be VERY frustrating.
When you say, "listen to the voice that stirs your soul" and "the deeper voice that whispers within you" etc. What do you mean???
**HOW** does one do this??
Why the mystery??
Oh no! I"m about to give away The Big Fat Secret!
It is called "Insight Meditation", or Vipassana. The meditation technique taught by the original Buddha, in India, 2,500 years ago. Look at dhamma.org -- this experience is available to everyone FOR FREE in the US and everywhere, in 10 days!
Also in books: "Insight Meditation" by Sharon Salzberg. "How to Meditate" by Kathleen McDonald, etc.
By practicing Vipassana you "dissolve the ego" and find the "real you" within -- which is to say, that THERE IS NO YOU at all. Sounds strange, but this is called achieving Enlightenment, or experiencing Nirvana, etc.
This is also how/where you "Find God".
All of this is actually "ineffable" -- a thing that can NEVER be adequately put into words.
If it sounds strange it is also because this is something that can NEVER be comprehended intellectually, it must be EXPERIENCED. Oh, and your interpretation of this experience depends on the context in which you have it. If you do the original Indian flavor (which we know you did since you wrote about a Swami before), you will find "Emptiness". If you choose the Catholic Christian setting (Father Thomas Keating), you will find "Jesus". If you choose a generic Christian setting (A Course In Miracles) you will find "God". If you choose a Native American shaman, you will "enter the spirit world", etc.
I hope you weren't trying to keep this a Big Fat Secret for some reason! The only reason anyone would ever do such a thing is if their reason is "bad".
SUMMARY: If you want to achieve Enlightenment or Nirvana, or Find God, go to a free Vipassana retreat and experience the dissolution of your ego.
(that wasn"t so hard, was it??)
Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects...
Loading comments…
Posted January 7, 2008 | 08:23 AM (EST)