Resolutions

Jan. 1st, 2003

Aloha and Good Morning,

         Welcome to the first day, and the first morning of a brand new year: the one time that our culture actually encourages and supports our desire to learn to do things differently, to resolve to change, to resolve to grow, to make a space for what we desire for our selves.

         So let’s jump into the morning of the New Year with enthusiastic good cheer and with a genuine, reflective determination to discover realistic, practical, actually do-able resolutions that will renew our journey towards a closer alignment with our authentic life path and a closer realization of our true soul needs.

         We’ve heard the phrase: “God don’t make no junk.” How true that is. Yet consider this, have we not inherited our own divine nature, our own higher self?

Is that not a part of our birthright? Will we not rightly say: “We don’t make no junk!” Our lives are our responsibility and our joy and our opportunity. Let’s make this the morning, let’s make this the year we go for it! Our divine nature is simply a part of us, a splendid and magnificent part of us; therefore, we can always turn within for guidance and wisdom. When we turn within with a genuine desire for change, what we need to do will always come to mind. The more clear our intent, the more clearly we will know what to do, what resolutions to make on this New Year’s day which create the new me and the new you that we desire.

       So as we jump into the morning of the new year with enthusiastic good cheer and with a genuine, reflective determination to discover those few, tiny-little-first-steps that renew our journey towards closer alignment with our authentic life path, let us celebrate the beauty and joy that accompanies the evolution of our soul. Let us open up to a greater experience of the divine within ourselves and the satisfaction of self discovery, the joy of personal growth. This is the ripple that flows through everything and everyone we touch. Our families, our friends, our lovers and partners, wives, husbands and children will wake up amazed one morning with the realization that we have become “new and improved” people, and even more amazingly – so have they. We have the power to change, right now, how we think, act, react, respond and to realize the divine within us.

         May the new morning awaken this desire within us. May we take as long as it takes! May we truly make this year the year in which our resolutions enrich our lives because we do them!

         May the richest blessings and abundance flow into your lives and into your hearts and into your families. Thank you for spending this morning moment with me.

Peace, wellness and a Happy New Year,

Holman

Update May 25th, 2014

         I am struck by two thoughts as I read this over again for the first time in a number of years. The second thought has to do with ripples; the first with the twin pathways to the Divine that are really just one path: this Moebius strip of Spirit expressing. You know, you take a strip of paper and curl it around into a circle, but just before you join the edges with superglue, you put a twist in the paper. When you do this, you can trace the surface with a pencil and cover both "sides" without ever lifting the pencil off the paper. Freaky, right? What was once clearly two sided, lost one of it's sides. The two become one. But let's talk about ripples first and for the sake of brevity, I'll save the other for another time.

     
   Once, I lived with two beautiful women, Jennifer and Monica. I adored them both.Monica was my partner at the time and together, we were roommates with Jennifer. It was truly a lovely and treasured time in my life.

         One day, only a little while before Monica and I moved in with Jen, I was sitting on her couch and she was standing across the room from me, pouring out her heart and her confusion about a situation she was experiencing in her dating life.
       
           "Oh Holman," she'd cried. "Is there something wrong with me?"
         "Absolutely not," I reassured her and then went on to tell her precisely why there was nothing wrong with her. Life is just plain hard, and all to often we don't know how to walk through it with the grace and divinity that is our birthright.

         I only vaguely remember the details. Nor can I recall what it was exactly that sparked a moment of insight; but as insight goes, I instantly knew more that I had known a micro moment before.

         When I was a kid, bless his heart, my Dad yelled a lot. I quickly discovered that if I said anything to excuse or defend myself, he yelled more. As I write this, I'm realizing the hidden gold in that collection of seemingly unpleasant moments. I learned how to hold my tongue. I learned to be careful in my words. Since words matter; since words can hurt, or words can heal, learning to be aware of my use of them is truly a valuable gift. 

Finding hidden gold in difficult circumstances

         On the other side, I developed the mistaken idea that if I didn't engage, that if I didn't yell back, if I didn't say the snide and mean things that popped into my mind during conflict -- then I was  being the superior man. I mistook my self-righteousness for reality.

         So, I'm talking to Jennifer and suddenly, just like that, I know better. Monitoring and controlling my words, or even my body language is a valuable beginning; but ultimately, it's only half the ball game. To really win, I needed to learn to refine and monitor the energy that was flowing between me and my conflict partner (thought and emotions are made of energy). "If looks could kill," the saying goes. People can feel what we are broadcasting. Even if they are not consciously aware of it, people both feel and react to the energy of thought and emotion that we are projecting. If our thoughts or emotions are negative or violent, people know it, consciously or unconsciously, people know it. If our thoughts or emotions are loving and kind, well, people feel that too, and then they respond to it. 

         Think about it, our thoughts and emotions help determine and shape other people's behavior and response patterns. That's heavy stuff, man. This is the ultimate understanding of self-responsibility.

         We are stars and we burn bright! 

We are stars!

         We are unceasingly bombarding the energy of our being, the energetic quality of our thoughts and emotions in every direction, for good or for ill. And just like a star we can blast a concentrated beam of energy, our own solar flare, out into space. But unlike a star, we can project this solar flare directly at the target of our attention. In massage school, they frequently told us, "Energy goes where attention flows." There is no end to energy; it flows and flows and then keeps on flowing. Yet, for us, energy will flow where we direct it.

         If I am angry and I refrain from yelling mean and hurtful things, that is all to the good. Who wants to be mean  or hurtful? Yet, if I am angry and in my stony silence, I glare daggers -- I have formed my solar flare and shaped it into a nuclear missile and launched it, silent but deadly, at my enemy. When the hateful energy blasts over my conflict partner, it hurts them. They will respond to that hurt; consciously or not, their behavior will be altered. Their response to me  will be distorted. Even more sadly, that distortion might propagate itself in an ongoing cycle of negativity as the hurt I created is passed on as poison to others all around. People have within them all possible human emotions and all possible human actions. We call out, we invite emotions and actions as direct responses to the energy we project as we interact, as well as the words we say or the way we behave.

         My exchange with Jennifer that day taught me that I needed to take responsibility for both my words AND the energy of my thoughts and emotions. Both can be formed into weapons and prove hurtful. I don't wish to be hurtful.

         Obviously, it's taking the game to a new level and it's hard: this thing about being self-responsible. Becoming aware of the need to monitor and refine the energy I broadcast was the first step and all of life's experiences offer an opportunity to practice. I am grateful to you, my imaginary reader, for affording me a reminder. Reminders are good and necessary, lest we get completely caught up in the urgency of the game and forget the finer things of Spirit; lest we forget the greater value in refining the way we move through the dream of this world and slumber on. May we awaken to our finest being, the expression of Divinity that we truly are.