as arbitrary as time is, the beginning of a new year causes reflection. to envision a more positive 2007 for your self and community is a helpful act. envisioning reality, as both quantum physics and yoga teach, is at least half the reality occurring outside you. in other words, being clear about what you want, how you want it, and what you do with it once it happens, helps to influence the events in your immediate vicinity, if not also those farther away.
that’s why i can’t help but mention the hanging of saddam hussein. it could just be me, fascinated by the immediacy of my experience of his murder. it’s everywhere, all over the web, in hard-copy newspapers, on radio, on TV. most people i know have participated on some level in his death. thanks to modern media, everyone has witnessed this event in a place, or in a way, intimate to them.
it is difficult to answer this question: how do we pursue joy when there is this much suffering? when yoga is the science of uniting the ego self with the larger, uninterrupted, universal self (in other words: saddam is in all of us), it is yogic to honor, if not also mourn, the death of this murderous dictator. and those he killed. and those still dying and suffering.
so here we are (or at least i am, and you reading this blog), contemplating self-improvement for the new year. there is joy in life, but how do we experience it? as the adage goes, happiness is not the goal, but the path. to set your own expecations and visions for a new year, which is nothing more than a mental label for a new chapter of your own experience, you dig in, look at your response to the world around you, and decide how you want to change it.
filed under: the boundless perspective, how energy works, yoga and politics, the community of yoga, yoga external, yoga internal, philosophy and religion
This entry was posted on Sunday, December 31st, 2006 at 1:15 pm and is filed under the boundless perspective, how energy works, yoga and politics, the community of yoga, yoga external, yoga internal, philosophy and religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
December 31st, 2006 at 1:25 pm
Yes, it is hard to slow down but at least you are aware of the need to do so. Hope to start every day with a bit of yoga and meditation in the new year. New year’s greetings to everyone.
December 31st, 2006 at 1:29 pm
oops, i was responding to the earlier note on driving on 270 and feeling how fast everything is.
Don’t know what to think of the whole Iraq war business any more, except hoping that things will be better in the new year for all concerned.
January 20th, 2007 at 11:48 am
for some reason i don’t find it difficult to ignore (sometimes completely tune out) the news and wasn’t exposed to it at all visually. i have the power to control what i take in visually and audibly. i find exercising this power makes me far less upset about current events and what world leaders think and say than that of my friends who are frequently stressed out and angry all the time because they are constantly ingesting every soundbite and piece of information that the media spews out.
my only thoughts are the barbarism of the us’s insistence on capital punishment and a prayer for Saddam’s many victims and even prayers for Saddam himself. may future far more enlightened generations end this vicious cycle.
as far as the pursuit of joy and happiness whilst there is suffering? there will always be suffering. it is the individual’s personal choice to focus and cultivate joy, love and happiness and take pleasure in the wonder and beauty to be experienced in this life. or we may instead choose to focus and cultivate the negative and be angry and feel helpless and bitter. trying to change the outside world is futile. there is no one to change but self.