written by Reverend Paul Gonyea, The Spiritual Living Center of Atlanta
photo by kplus+
Ah, January . . . The month named after Janus, the Roman god with two faces, one looking backwards at the past and the other looking to the future. The month when some of us make resolutions, deciding to change our mediocre last-year’s performance into something new and different and exciting.
I’ve always been amused by the idea of New Year’s resolutions. Not so much because they seem to fade away by mid February, slowly but surely replaced by old habits and the demands of our unchanging schedule. I’m more curious about why it takes a year with a new number to make us realize that time is passing and if something is going to change in our life, we have to change it.
“When consciousness frees itself from its identification with physical and mental forms, it becomes what we may call pure or enlightened consciousness, or presence.”
-Eckhart Tolle
You see, the entire concept of a “new year” is something that exists in our mind. It’s an agreement at the societal level that days and minutes and seconds “belong” to one year or another. One second it’s 2008; the next tick of the clock, the balloons go up and it’s 2009. Finally, we think, after an entire year of waiting for this one “special” moment, we can now take steps to change our body, our job, our spending habits or our drinking habits.
My question is, why is one moment more special than another? Why do we insist upon waiting until January 1st to think or do something differently that might make us healthier, wealthier or more successful? What makes us think that a change in the calendar will give us more conviction, more power or more strength to keep our promises to our self?
The truth of the matter is, we can start a “New Year” any moment we want. Or an even better way of saying it is, we should be consciously aware that we are starting a new year with every breath we take. But as long as we are always looking ahead to see if our new thoughts or new habits will help us, we won’t be focused on the one place where change has to take place first — the present.
The calendar has it’s purpose. It helps us to make plans, to schedule vacations and to keep track of birthdays. But it doesn’t do anything to us on the inside. It has no real effect on our ability to shift our consciousness to a new belief about what we can do and what our life can be.
The calendar may appear to have an effect on our waistline, but it is our momentary decisions about what to eat or what not to eat that makes the real difference. We may measure our savings this year, to see the change from year end last year, but it is our momentary decisions about what to spend or whether to save that separates the rich from the wanna-be’s.
Many of the world’s great cultures and religions have completely different calendars. The Jews, the Christians and the Muslims all measure the year differently. So do the Chinese. That isn’t just because they have different priorities or cultural backgrounds; it’s because God is timeless. Spirit is always working in the “now.” It doesn’t get older, it doesn’t have a watch, and it doesn’t know what year it is. Maybe there’s a lesson there that we can learn.
The process of creation is always taking place, and in our life it takes place through us. This year, instead of making a New Year’s resolution, maybe we could try making a “New Thought” resolution. We can think something better no matter what the calendar says. After all, there’s no time like the Present.
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Reverend Paul Gonyea has been Senior Minister of the Spiritual Living Center of Atlanta since July of 1999 and is well-versed in many different religious and spiritual traditions, both conventional and contemporary. His speaking style blends the clarity of a deep intellectual understanding of New Thought with practical examples, while maintaining a delightful sense of humor. His spiritual idols are Ralph Waldo Emerson, the Sufi poet Hafez, and Dr. Raymond Charles Barker.
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