It’s true. They are. Especially those most often made (and, very shortly afterwards, broken) at the turn of the new year. For amateurs.
What you really want for this anxious and most impossible-to-predict new year of 2021, what will really make a difference, perhaps and if I may humbly suggest, is a deeper and more potent flavor of devotion.
Devotion to possibility. Devotion to less psycho-emotional rigidity. Devotion to something other than what you think you know about yourself, your story, this ridiculous and brutal, gorgeous speck of a planet.
Devotion, in short, to what you already know, in your deepest Self, to be true, at the expense of all that distracts and shames your spirit, whatever grinds down your soul and makes you, sometimes, just maybe, far too anxious and uptight for anyone’s good.
Do you know the difference between a resolution and devotion? Simple: One seeks (almost always unsuccessfully) to fix something you think is broken and/or to back-fill some part of your life you think is lacking. The other merely seeks to brighten and strengthen the complete, calm and totally un-fuckable-with sacred core you already possess (tho perhaps have left unattended for far too long, because spiritual work is fucking hard, yo). Which is to say: One sputters forth incessantly from the ego’s furious gyrations, and the other… does not. Yoga humbly reminds you: Your choice.
So. Resolve all you like. Lose ten pounds, do more yoga, drink less, get more sleep, don’t spit in the street, read more books, buy a yak farm in New Zealand, be nicer to trees. Absolutely.
But if you want any of it to stick, to be of real benefit to yourself and others, it’s gotta come from a stable, devotional, sacred core. It’s gotta be in service of something deeper and truly aligned to Self. Otherwise you’re just blowing smoke up the ass of the gods. And no one wants that.
