“Each time you enter a new year,
Be determined not to bring
Your old self with you.”
– Sri Chinmoy
“Unfortunately, we do not pay enough attention to the new year which takes place every second in our lives. The new year is not just twelve months or 365 days. It is something that begins at every second in our life of aspiration.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Each New Year we make resolutions. Sadly, like turtle hatchlings emerging by the thousands, precious few of our resolutions make it across life’s perilous beach to the ocean of fulfilment. Year on year, the same story…
Why do so few resolutions survive? Because our human nature is stronger than our human will. For our resolutions to bear fruit, we must access our divine will and divine nature, which are one and the same.
So the only resolution worth making, is the one that can bring forward our divine nature: self-transformation. Transformation can never be forced or mandated: it can only grow and blossom naturally, from the fertile soil of meditation and spiritual discipline.
The New Year is certainly significant: yet in the spiritual life, every second, every moment is significant, for inside each moment, Eternity breathes; inside each breath, Infinity sings; inside each heartbeat, Immortality dances.
The old to be torn down and replaced is not around us: it is within our thinking, criticising, dividing, suspecting and limiting mind. The new – yearning eagerly to be fulfilled – is even now blossoming within our heart, nurtured by our all-loving, all-illumining, ever-expanding and ever-liberating soul.
To be sure your New Year’s resolutions translate hope and promise into action and fulfilment, before making any resolution, resolve to meditate. Your meditation will reveal the resolutions you need, along with all the guidance, means and assurance of their fulfilment.