Beginnings

New Year's resolutions are for those who do not practice. If you are in practice for personal betterment and evolution, every day is the beginning and end of your practice in your consciousness.

Resolutions are for those who are drunk on substances and/or the delusion of personal immortality. Resolutions are for those who abuse or neglect their bodies and minds. When suddenly wakened by reality, their remorse sends them to altars and/or health clubs.

Practice can begin at any time of the day, month or year. Those who resolve to practice in a panic, seldom continue. Practice is difficult, but its rewards are inestimable, because practice has no end product to be tallied or weighed. It simply is as you are.

Security

The word 'security' has become commercialized and politicized to the point of having little or no meaning in common parlance. Yet, the word means something very important to me.

Security, in my world view, comes only in human relationship. And, it only comes in that rare human relationship in which two (or more) parties are loved and love with complete unconditional acceptance and openness. True wealth and fortune in life is experiencing that security.

If all people practiced mindfulness, compassion and generosity daily, we would have planetary security. That, in my cosmology, would be heaven.

Sun

Celebrate the Sun. This is the time we can appreciate more than ever in the Northern Hemisphere how much our existence depends on solar heat and light.

This understanding is the source of all Winter celebrations in the Northern Hemisphere. In these days of scientific and renewed concern about the planet's health, celebrating the Sun is very meaningful and, well, enlightened.

Family

Family is a concept, built on genetic reality. If human beings concentrated more on the genetic and less on the sentimental aspects of family, the species would advance greatly.

The sentimental aspects of family are based in primal fear and dependence. Family is the modern remnant of tribe. Tribalism gave way centuries ago in civilized societies to nationalism. The family became a day-to-day functional unit within the nationalist structures. Family was a vehicle for maintaining property, industry and wealth.

Family identity will gradually be superseded by social human identity as humanism and education erode confidence in superstition (religion) and hereditary wealth (oligarchy) as sustaining institutions of democracy and social well being. The advancement of science in the face of staggering environmental degradation will lead to an understanding that family identity is less important for the species to survive than human identity.

Sentimentality is the enemy of science and the enemy of practice. The first liberation of practice is the liberation from sentimentality toward family of origin. This is often called 'growing up'. Practice entails being equally responsible and compassionate to all human beings, including the practitioner's family of origin. This is difficult. Practice often is.

Terrorism

Yes, let's wage a war against terror.

Let us wage war against those who teach their children homophobia, sexism, selfishness, materialism, violence, elitism, brutality and hatred, whether they be Protestant, Catholic, Jew, Mormon, atheist or Muslim.

Let us wage a war against those who greedily accumulate wealth from sweat, fear and trepidation of those who actually do the world's labor in the Americas, in Europe, in Asia, or in Africa.

Let us wage war against those who poison our air, our food, our water with irresponsible child-rearing, huge cars, fast food, sewage, and toxins.

In other words, let us wage war against our own human laziness and fear of change. Let each of us become a practicing warrior against materialism, jealousy, indolence, greed, stupidity, gluttony, addiction, prejudice, rudeness, hypocrisy, mindless reproduction and indifference. Let each of us practice looking toward the light of right thought and right living. This practice colors everything with new light. There is no shadow in this practice where terrorism can breed.

Reality

This is the age of the virtual everything. I believe most people are living in their minds to the movie themes of their iPods.

There are 16 rain-saturated inches of new snow outside my house. I do not own a snow blower. I shovel. Lifting scores of shovelfuls of wet snow is real. Walking to the train or the market, which are only one mile away, in the cold and the muck to avoid using my buried car is real. Being wet to the skin with rain and exertion is real.

I focus and cherish these realities and their accompanying difficulties as part of my practice. It is the practice of being human, a small, mortal animal on a large planet in a larger Universe, subject to its actual elements and their effects.

Snow

I thank the snow for its weight, its cold, its pure whiteness.

I thank the snow for slowing the mechanized inhumanity.

I thank the snow for bringing me home to my human scale.

Choice

You are either part of the problem or part of the solution. This is the choice each person makes when embarking on conscious adulthood. Some make the choice passively. Some embrace the choice and firmly commit to one path or another.

When pressed, most people will admit quickly where they stand on this choice. One might say, "I chose to work in banking because I want to be rich. That's all that matters to me." Another may say, "I joined the army because I had no other option to get away from poverty." Yet another may say, "I chose to enter teaching because I want to help build a better future."

These choices in sum determine the future of the human species and the planet. Practice is a way to maintain one's commitment to chose being part of the solution and to bring about peace and happiness in the world.

Deceit

The greatest deception is self deception. It is the root of all deceit. In a materialistic, youth-obsessed, death-phobic culture, self deception is epidemic. Television offers plastic surgery as entertainment and promotion, for example. On these shows, people in their 30's are proudly having cosmetic surgery to satisfy their narcissistic self deception. This is the height of the deceit culture. Plastic surgery does not modify genes or personality. It only redecorates them.

Is there any question as to the source of corruption and lies in our political and social structures? Self deception has become a religion in itself in modern capitalist societies among the wealthy who control society. Creating a self myth to earn celebrity is a venerated form of deception.

The natural balance to this culture of narcissistic deceit is the inevitable unrest and violence which will boil up from the increasing hordes of poor and disillusioned. This is simply the cycle of human history, since human beings have yet to master honesty and the acceptance of their true place in the Universe.

Commitment

Commitment is not complicated. Commitment to another person is being there for that person in mind, body and spirit, when being there for that person is needed and wanted by that person. It is not simply hanging around in a prespecified role and half-heartedly going through the motions. In too many cases. this is called 'marriage' or 'family'.

Commitment is a living, creative and conscious decision. It is not a name on a deed or a bank account. In these materialistic times, commitment is confused with financial contract. They are not the same. The financial contract may indeed be a mutually decided upon symbol of an ongoing commitment. However, the commitment itself is only as good as its regular renewal and verification by those partnered in it.

My practice involves serious maintenance and clarification of commitments. This is a process, alive in the present in each relationship which entails commitment. In an existential sense, every transaction in my life entails an openness on my part to commitment to honest and compassionate interaction. This applies to daily business transactions, contacts with strangers and contacts within my social network. When a society maintains this kind of practice, it is considered truly civilized.

Shadow

I watched a shadow move today. It is a tremendous meditative exercise, which helps define your place in the Universe. Sitting on a planet, rotating on its axis and orbiting a star. Find a shadow on a sunny day which you can see in relation to a background, such as a building, a rock, a tree. Focus on an edge of the shadow. Note its relation to a fixed object in its background, such a a window in a building, a leaf on the ground, etc.. Now simply relax, get comfortable and meditate on the shadow until you begin to perceive its motion. Of course, you must then experience the realization that you and the object are in motion, while the shadow is relatively fixed by its relation to the sun. Feel the earth rotating beneath you. It's a great ride.