My New Year Lost It's Shine

It's only the 7th of January and I feel weary, as if my brand new Christmas clothes were worn and threadbare. Mind you, I'm not a big fan of the Roman calendar new year, it's just a tidy date chosen to keep everyone in line. I'm a Chinese new year person, when the ever changing new moon decides when we begin the shiny, bright new year. Yet, subconsciously I still fall aslumber on December 31st with hopeful sugar plums in my head, expecting to wake up the next day in Pleasantville. All will be better this year just because the New Year fairy waived her wand and spread her magical dust. Which could be true if the dust contained LSD.
Why did I lose the fleeting hope so quickly? Don't I know that only I can enact positive change in my life? When did I become so jaded? Shouldn't I be grateful for each day and have that be enough?
Admittingly, we were steamrolled into a deep, dark crevice by the real estate meltdown. Clawing our way back to mediocrity is no enviable task, and it gets wearisome at times. Many of us are work weary, burned out from too many working weekends, afraid to take vacations lest our clients go elsewhere and searching for our power sticks.
Rekindling my sparkle feels like trudging through a knee high mud bog on a blazingly hot desert summer day, but I slog on. Hope melts into my dimmed soul as I lazily soak in the warm winter Arizona sun during my first day off in three weeks. The sobering news of a friends' new battle against cancer whiplashes me back into everyday gratitude. Restarting my daily meditation practice fires up my brain's limbic system, sparking positive thinking.
In yoga, tapas (no, not the delectable spanish appetizers) is one of our ethical observances. It translates into fiery discipline, commitment to spiritual learning, heating up our practice. Burning off the dullness to reveal a shiny, improved self.  There's my New Year''s inspiration after all!

Soulfood is What We Need Right Now

Feeding the mind through books is a delightful way to relax, escape reality and recharge our batteries. Head to your local library and expand your mind by reading books on self-help, religion and all flavors of philosophy. It is also an opportunity to improve our knowledge of ourselves and divinity by delving into subjects we aren't familiar with. On my night table, I have a translation of the Dhammapada (considered by many to be the cornerstone of Buddhism), "The Creation of Health" by Carolyn Myss, PhD (a book on energy (chi) and how we affect our health through it) and "Light on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali" translated by B.K.S. Iyengar (the bible of yoga philosophy).
One of the three yogas through which to achieve enlightenment is Jnana Yoga, the yoga of knowledge. Bhakti Yoga, the yoga of devotion, is encompassed in jnana yoga. Followers of organized religion would generally fall into bhakti yoga. The other two are Karma Yoga (discussed in older posts) and Raja Yoga, the yoga of meditation.
Enlightening our soul by exposing it to the light of other religions and philosophy can only widen our understanding of others and encourage unity. There are threads and traces of the Dhammapada and the Yoga Sutras in the Bible. We are more alike than we are different.
Where we banish the darkness of ignorance, the light of knowledge will lead the way.