Every year around this time countless people are still TRYING to keep their new years resolutions. By next week, countless resolutions will have already been broken at least once, practically guaranteeing their eventual failure. There is so much information out there as to why this happens, and how to prevent it. Goal setting is spiffy, habits take 2-4 weeks to form blah blah blah.
Instead of telling you how you can keep your resolutions, I ask a much more simple question. Why did you make them in the first place? The answer generally comes in many forms of the same word, success. Or more specifically, in the hopes that DOING this or that will bring success, and with success will come happiness.
The problem with this all too common reasoning is that DOING and BEING are two separate things. No amount of doing will ever lead to a significant change in being. Follow me here. Imagine a school boy whose life goal is to become a doctor. He works hard through his elementary, middle and high school “9-5’s.” If he can GET perfect marks each year, he will BE a success, that is until the next level or exam or presentation.
This situation continues through college and grad school, internships and finally as far as getting hired. Finally, after a life of hard work and striving our young stud-ent has finally “made it.” His life goal is accomplished and he can now consider himself a success right? And with that success will come the attached happiness, right? His ego may think so for a while, but then what? What does he do now? What does he strive for? What now will continue to give him those feelings of success and happiness? After his first week on the job, he will almost certainly start striving for some other pot of gold in which his success and happiness will once again lie.
The problem here is that he is looking for these things outside of himself. You’ve heard it before that nothing “out there” can ever bring true joy in here. This is the truth Gandhi tried to explain in his famous phrase “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” The key word is BE. It is also what Jesus tried to convey when he said, “Before the world was, I AM” Jesus’ state simply IS and even his death, and all of the emotions leading up to it were but waves on the surface of the oceans of his joyful peaceful state of I Am-ness.
That state of eternal being is what Jesus had, and tried to give us. The real you is not your socio-economic status or your race, political party, views, downfalls, clothes, music or thoughts. The real you, and only some of you will follow me here, just IS. And when one can tap into that ISness what follows is a state of true love, joy, peace, and yes happiness beyond comprehension. Eckhart Tolle describes this as the elusive source of life that science has yet to find. In his Enlightening books “The Power of Now” and “A New Earth” he does a wonderful job of describing this phenomenal state and breaking down the obstacles to “getting there” And he is not the lone champion of this philosophy, he is joined by Neil Donald Walsch, Tom Brown Jr., Ken Wilbur, Bill Harris, Gandhi, Jesus, Buddha, Lao Tzu and many other gurus, both now, and throughout the ages.
This doesn’t need to be some high-minded, esoteric idea though. We all have this blissful state of being inside of us. All that is needed to reach it is a disassociation with our egoic minds, and a connection to that quiet observer that we really are; Or more simply, by making every action a prayer. It is then that our full state of being permeates every thing we do. By the way, if you decide to do all this, and your New Years resolution isn’t scrapped, you’ll have all the power you’ll ever need to keep it, and yes success and happiness will be thrown it. “Aim for heaven and you get earth thrown in, aim for earth and you get neither.” -C.S. Lewis
Last 5 posts by RiTT da ReDD
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