Happy New Year

For some of us, 2010 was a year full of pain and dissappointment. We saw our savings depleted, our prospects for prospering dwindle and hope all but diminish entirely. A seemingly smaller sample of our peers may have looked upon the last four seasons as simply put “the best year yet.” Regardless of our point of view that may seem to change with the wind, most of us either openly or at a more subtle level, hold out hope that this next year will be better.

In my own body, I could feel the heaviness as I woke on 1-1-11 and my mind recapped my failures as my body weaped adrenaline from yet another dysautonomic hyperadrenergic flare. There is something to be said for that old adage … “wherever you go, there you are.” For I see my egoic self still here at the helm of the hell that it ostensibly creates.

I should think a Zen blog would offer hope to the hopeless, encouragement to the outcasts and inspiration to those suffering in silence especially on the first day of a new year. But anything trite that I might transcribe would be nothing more than fortune cookie dharma to appease a diabetic mind.

So there will be no empowering thoughts imparted from my pseudo-pen. As Paul Simon once wrote “I would not give you false hope on this strange and mournful day.” For anything that I could offer would still be a ripple in the pond of impermeance and to not see the surface of the lake for what it truly is would be tragic.

This week a net-friend of mine who suffers deeply and googles even harder gave his close circle of comrades an opt-out offer. If we so chose, we could request that he no longer include us on his research email-bytes of the day (or hour if it is one of those OCD days). I graciously took him up on the proffer, to which I immediately received an email back asking me WHY?! Had I given up hope for a cure? Was I now putting all my faith in God for salvation? Clearly answers are important to him. Unfortunately anything I would have offered would have been a poor substitute to the Truth only Silence can provide.

There is a tremendous freedom to be found in the non-seeking. Especially for us die-hard-old-school-new-age seekers. But this form of non-doing should not be mistaken for apathy and doesn’t carry the fingerprint of depression. While it is true that hope does not live in this space, neither does despair.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity; it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness; it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair; we had everything before us, we had nothing before us; we were all going directly to Heaven, we were all going the other way.” ~ Dickens, Tale of Two Cities (1859).

Such an excellent description of the egoic mind when the truth of our yin-yang existence sees that all of this is merely two sides of the same six pence — All One. So rather than fill my new year with resolutions to attempt to surgically alter Dicken’s verity … I resolve only to See what is before my Eye (I) in this moment and let that be enough to silence the mind and sooth the soul. Afterall it is 1-1-11 … how could anything but the non-dual experience of ONE be more clearly Seen for what it Is. And in that seeing there is (long pause and a raised eyebrow) … well now if I tried to tell you in words it would only be my experience and a misleading representation of Truth at that.

So in speaking to that which is already awake in each of us, I offer a deep bow and warm smile and to the egoic mind I add best wishes for a happy new year. 😉