Resolution

Resolution.
Happy New Year!

This is traditionally a time of resolution. Resolution, the quality of being determined, resolute in announcing our intention for the coming year.  The intention of how we wish to behave, to think, to act.  We use the new year as a marker of sorts.  How do we wish the coming year to unfold? How do we wish to act?  Who do we want to be?

Our behavior is the result of our experiences, our thoughts, feelings, emotions, our personality, beliefs likes and dislikes.  In meditation we touch the space beyond the mind, personality, beyond likes/dislikes and beliefs to experience the very source of all creative potentiality at its  most powerful inception point and in that, we influence what it is we see, feel, taste, touch in life.

Our practice permits access to what has always been there but just out of reach to authentic experience. regardless of what our subjective view is at the time.  We release our sense of identity, of who we believe ourselves to be; we rest and in that we are nourished.  Upon opening the eyes, clarification is increased and capacity up-leveled.  Regardless of what it is we do in life, we do it better connected to source.  We feel better about the outcome even if it falls short of highest desire because it is connected to our deepest values.  

When we first learn to meditate we receive what we need, this is always the case with learning. We receive what we are capable of holding and we make good use of it.  Then, in time, as in all things, practice deepens experience, and from this place we need to hear again.  It is not just, or only the case, that new information is now possible but, what was heard is now heard from a new perspective and thus is itself deepened, rendered new.

This is why we revisit again and again the information given when we first learned to meditate.  The place of theory is to support, quicken and comfort the mind, until experience can catch up.  Then as the saying goes, “wild horses couldn’t drag you away."

The power of Effortless, Innocence and Surrender.  There is so much to say about these three simple words both in the practice of Neelakantha Meditation and in life. 

Effortless: natural- we are not creating some mood or inventing some new fad. The currents we learn of jyetsha and vama have always been present.  The latter we know well. The former, the senior or prior one, must be pointed out and the way in learned.  Then there is the notion of recognition that must be brought to bear to increase our commitment.  Of course the tradition speaks of recognition, pratyabhijñā, of the highest, of our truest heart and nature and in that,  recognition that all is consciousness but it also refers to recognition of what is surging, changing, growing and of what is being released. 

Humans need measurement for this is what fuels commitment. This is very often subtle and so must be teased out. As our senses refine this noticing becomes ever more apparent.    

Innocence: we show up.  Yes, we have a preference, and hopefully it is a high auspicious one, for all we do.  But we also come to know that while we have our part to play, in terms of meditation, there is something to learn, and we must make the time to sit, it is not under our control.  Just as in life, we show up prepared with courage and hope.  Grace is in how we respond.  This doesn’t mean we do not educate, prepare, plan, but at a certain moment, if we are to truly be “in the flow” we must let go.  We all instinctively know this. Yet our human grasping at control, as loving as it may be, gets in the way of truly seeing what is the next best action.  

When we practice innocence in meditation, we permit the heart seed mantra, given at the time of learning, to do its job and spontaneously carry individual awareness to its oceanic source.  This release of our limited identity and control, has profound effects on our experience, not just in meditation but in life.  To be clear, we are not saying we do not have a part to play, only from what perspective are we enacting that part?  From a partial limited view?  Or from a deeper higher one?

Opening, increasing, deepening, refining  perspective is the natural effect of resting awareness in wholeness. 

Surrender: finally, part of our participation in this process is surrendering to its movement.  When we emerge from deep meditation, that simple act of surrender actually renders us much more capable of efficacious action.  This is the nyaya of the “bow and arrow.”   Mediation is the bow which permits awareness to be pulled back deeply into its potent source; when awareness is released it powerfully hits the intended target with strength and potency each and every time.  Wherever we place awareness we want it to go deep, to go to the heart of the matter.

How do you wish the coming year to unfold? How do you wish to act?  Who do you resolve to be?