A New Year Starts

Monday morning. A new start to a fresh week. A day of rebirth. Time to put the ultimate absorption of the holidays behind us and head forward into an unwritten year.

I like beginnings. They’re hopeful and I, a generally hopeful person, feel at home with that energy. I’m not that keen on endings, and transitions are tough, but give me a good, fresh start any day of the week. I love the reflective process of looking back to see where I’ve been and then looking ahead to see where I might want to go.

I’ve even come to love the surprise of life, the dreadful, wonderful inexplicableness of it. Even as I make my plans, I know that they’re likely to go awry in ways I can hardly imagine. I know from experience that I am quite capable of achieving everything I set as a true intention, but in an unexpected, slightly warped way. That’s how wishes always come true in the fairy tales, isn’t it? You have to be careful what you wish, and how you wish, because when it comes true the results are sure to be something you didn’t bother to fully conceive.

For example, I should have been writing this yesterday, if not last week. I thought I would be. But my husband was able to leave work early. Consequently all my good intentions of working went out the window. So it is. I enjoyed the extra vacation time with him immensely.

My husband asks me repeatedly why I don’t write about him more often. It’s complicated. Really, that says it all. I simply don’t know what to write, how to say the incredible mixture of emotions he evokes. He and I go so far back in each other’s lives that nothing between us is simple or clear or clean. We have love and anger, devotion and insecurity, faith and disappointment, often, like yesterday, all in just a few hours. I suppose I think maybe he doesn’t really want me to write what I might say, and I may not want to share it with the world. That part of my life tends to be private and guarded.

One of my intentions for 2009 is to embrace yoga more fully. That means more of the physical, of course, a more devoted practice of asanas. But I’ve also found myself focused on yogic spiritual principles – the Yamas and Niyamas. Sauca and Satya float at the surface of my mind – purity and truthtelling. I’ve done a lot of truthtelling over the last few years, and more over the last few weeks than anyone would expect. I seem to be burdened in life with an extreme need to be open and truthful with others, even while knowing that such a goal is a near impossibility because Truth as we think of it hardly exists. If it does, it certainly doesn’t exist in a way that we, with our small and active biologically driven minds and incredibly strong egos can access easily. So ironically, I live my life trying to respect Truth that I don’t even believe in. Yeah, that’s me.

Anyway, at this point in time, my life is as truthful and as open as I’ve been able to make it. That’s not easy for me (or anyone probably). Like most of us, I learned that lying and covering up unpleasant aspects of life would make everything easier. But I’m a terrible liar. I just don’t believe in its energy. Long term, secrets and lies eat your purity away. The insidious energy of the concealed becomes a potent obstacle. Thus.

Thus. At this point, I stand open and honest. For all my flaws of selfishness, stubbornness, inconsideration, insecurity (I could go on, but you get the idea), at least I honor others, Life and God by striving to adhere to a moral code. I want a foundation upon which I will build the rest of my life. I refuse to build that foundation out of shadows and sand.

Teacher trainer S interprets the Yoga Sutras for our class. He says that if something you’re doing isn’t working, you should do the Opposite. A very good idea, and one that makes strong intuitive sense to me. If only I could figure out which parts of what I’m doing don’t work, and then figure out exactly WHAT the opposite is. Then I would do it.