Category: Zen Philosophy

NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS, FAITH, AND ATTACHMENTS

Flow with 2022

Today is the last day of the year. There’s not a lot of light and so it can be hard to see most of the day. This is kind of how I’m feeling heading into 2022, it’s dark and hard to see into the coming year. If the last 10 years are an indication of anything, it’s that no one has a crystal ball and the beginning of the year… Resolutions can be hard; sure setting a goal to lose 5 pounds is achievable, but there are so many things that could suddenly put that on hold.

I went to a yoga class this morning and the teacher told us that instead of setting goals this year that might be hard to predict, let’s instead surrender to our faith. She didn’t really delve into much detail about what she meant, but rather asked us to get in child’s pose and think about our relationship with faith while we breathe. What does it mean to you?

At first I had no idea… I don’t often think about faith. In fact, I’ve been so busy with my life and trying to be the best human I can be, I’ve totally forgotten about faith. Just like my breath began to unravel the muscles in my body, my slowing of thoughts began to give me clarity on my relationship with faith.

This past year, I have been focused on weaving non-attachment into every moment of my life. Non-attachment is a state in which a person overcomes their attachment to desire for things, people or concepts of the world and thus attains a heightened perspective. It allows a person to ‘just live’ and enjoy every present moment for it’s unique experience.

Living every moment with non-attachment eventually leaves you with nothing. So what is there to do when there’s nothing? Anything else of course. So you end up living your life because “what else is there to do?”. It’s my ever present mantra, you have to do nothing to do anything. It’s quite difficult to get to this point, but in my experience the results have been true bliss. I am free to love others and love myself all of the time. I am free to flow with life instead of trying to force my experience into a box.

So, this morning when I was on the mat I realized that faith and non-attachment are interwoven concepts. In order to fold non-attachment into your life, you must trust and have faith that you will not suffer as a result. It’s really difficult to have faith in nothing. Your ego constantly tells you to judge, or protect parts of yourself in order to live in this separated ego-centric world. But if you can ease your ego into harmony with the universe, you start to realize that you are one with everything and your faith is what holds you in that realm.

I’m certainly not saying we shouldn’t make a resolution… What else is there to do? Why not make a resolution, it’s fun. Try for a moment to remove your attachments to an outcome for now; relax, surrender, and float down stream.

Happy new year everyone!

Happy new year everyone!

OVERCOMING THE MUNDANE

Live in the present and experience a life of bliss.

I am a student of life. I was born wired to question everything and never make assumptions. I never really knew that this was unique growing up until I realized that I started taking a different path from my friends. I was noticing that I was able to pause and feel empathy towards our planet, towards others, and even our universe. This lead to a feeling of separateness which at the time became depressing.

It wasn’t until I started my intentional spiritual journey that I realized that where your focus goes, your energy flows. If you tend to focus on the yin and not the yang, then that manifests itself as your way of thinking. Instead, I began to pivot my attention on the true holistic nature of our universe. The duality of oneness juxtaposed by nothingness and creation. It changed my life forever, and to this day it shapes my way of thinking in everything I do.

Greed, laziness, resentment, you name it; it’s all caused by what I consider drama. My definition of drama relies on expectation of how things will be in the future and expectation of how things should have been in the past. These missed or false expectations are what breed negative types of feelings and oftentimes are results of things completely out of my personal control.

For instance, why should I work 40 hours a week? Well if it doesn’t make me happy, then I shouldn’t. But, the reasons it might not make me happy are based in a mindset that holds risk of drumming up negative emotions caused by drama.

Why is the present, the now, so important? The exact present holds no drama and thus cannot hold negativity. When I look inside myself, the present is all that exists. I am no longer the person I was 5 seconds, 10 minutes, or years ago. I am also not the person I am becoming 5 seconds, 10 minutes, or years from now. You and I are exactly this moment, and this moment alone.

So it’s simple, I live my life in the only place where expectation cannot be judged or cannot unfold. Right now I am a manifestation of the duality of the universe regardless of what I am physically doing. So as long as I am centered on the present during any of my actions, then there is no way around a centered blissful approach to everything I do and everything I do becomes blissful and centered.

When I think of working 40 hours a week, it’s not about if want to or I don’t want to, it’s that I’m here right now doing it or I’m not. As long as I stay present in what I’m doing, there is no room for the mundane to be noticed.