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Ah, the New Year. It’s fresh and innocent and undefined. Except for the things you already have scheduled for 2023. And everything you have already set into motion that is likely to continue to play out in the coming year and beyond. But besides that, it’s an empty canvas!
Last week I recommended keeping your resolutions simple – just choosing a single thing. This week I want to encourage you to put that into a context you define for this year by choosing a theme for 2023.
If you have our Dreambook, there’s a section on Theme of the Year and you can write it in there. If you don’t have the Dreambook, or even if you do but wish to make this a bit more special, I encourage you to write your theme on a nice piece of paper with a good pen and frame it or keep it in a place where you’ll see it every day.
Here are some questions to help guide you to your theme as you visualize a wonderful, productive, peaceful, playful, successful coming year.
Who do you want to BE this year? What aspect of your potential do you want to cultivate this year?
What will you bring to your community? How will you be a positive influence on your environment?
What will you be a channel for? How will you speak intentionally?
How will you grow this year? How will the world respond to your love and light?
Take plenty of time with this and consider writing your answers down to see what comes through. Out of all these inspirations, which feels like it’s coming from your Highest Self? Which feels the most compelling? Which would benefit both you and your community? What is the emerging theme?
Here are some examples: The Year of Loving Myself Completely. The Year of Living my Purpose. The Year of Learning to Trust. The Year of Shining my Light Upon the World. The Year of Owning My Power. The Year of Healing my Body. The Year of Playfulness. The Year of Lightheartedness. The Year of Remembering We’re All Connected. The Year of Forgiveness. The Year of Great Healing. The Year of Simplicity. The Year of Living Through My Heart.
After you refine your theme and write it down, try to read it ever morning, and if you’ve got a minute, feel into how life will be as you embody this theme, tell yourself, “I’m already on my way. Today I choose to stay conscious of this theme and to find ways to live it.”
Wishing you your best year yet,
Peter
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Although we weren’t thinking about it while writing it, our life planner, The Dreambook, is very much aligned with ideas of the Human Potential Movement (HPM). The movement focuses on helping people attain their full potential through numerous avenues, including self-awareness, honesty, openness, optimism, self-acceptance, mindfulness, and a willingness to be outside of one’s comfort zone. Wikipedia says a central premise of the HPM is that “people can experience a life of happiness, creativity, and fulfillment,” and that this naturally moves us to uplift our community and assist others to actualize their own potential.
Although it’s often seen as having developed from the 1960s counterculture, the seeds of the HPM were planted much earlier. Close influences were psychologists such as William James, Carl Rogers, and Abraham Maslow. In particular, Maslow’s famous Hierarchy of Needs elucidated how humans are motivated. He claimed that we have tiers of needs, and that foundational tiers – e.g., food, shelter, safety – have to be managed before we can dedicate ourselves to higher tiers such as relationships and achievement. Maslow called the top tier self-actualization, the full realization of our potential.
Well before these modern thinkers, Greek philosophers such as Socrates and Epictetus were teaching about human potential through the cultivation of virtue. Confucius, too, (500-ish years BCE) was a great champion of personal development and spoke of the relationship between one’s individual growth and the benefit to society, similarly to what is echoed above by the HPM. In The Great Learning he wrote:
In ancient times, those who wished to make bright virtue brilliant in the world first ordered their states; those who wished to order their states first aligned their households; those who wished to align their households first refined their persons; those who wished to refine their persons first balanced their minds and hearts; those who wished to balance their minds and hearts first perfected the sincerity of their intentions; those who wished to perfect the sincerity of their intentions first extended their understanding; extending one’s understanding lies in the investigation of things.
And “the investigation of things,” according to twelfth century philosopher Zhu Xi, means, “to exhaustively arrive at the principles of matters, missing no point as one reaches the ultimate.” Some would say it means to perceive the true nature of reality.
I find this view beautifully holistic: that even for worldly aims (“to make bright virtue brilliant in the world”), we start with our basic orientation to reality, then bring this forward to the “sincerity of our intentions,” the balance of our hearts and minds, then to personal refinement, the alignment of our household, and then outward to our community.
Depending on your disposition, these statements can feel inspiring or unreachably lofty. If making bright virtue brilliant in the world feels daunting, let’s look at the ideas of living to one’s potential in simpler terms.
Confucius speaks first about the investigation of things – understanding the world. Doesn’t it make sense that in order to really grasp our potential we must understand the context in which it is expressed?
This isn’t work anyone can do for us, and it requires humility, innocence, and openness. It means, in my opinion, approaching the world as a student would approach a master teacher – willing to be wrong and open to having our mind blown. If we look to cultures who live in close connection with nature (including Confucius’s culture), they’ll almost universally assert that it’s the sacred in us, interacting with the sacred of the world, that is the essence of life – not the masks and stories we’ve superimposed upon it. What is the sacred? That which can’t be depleted, exhausted, or diminished.
What about the sincerity of intention Confucius mentions? We hope to nudge our readers toward sincere intention through the exploratory questions in the Connect section of the Dreambook. Figure out what brings you joy and gratification, regardless of what others might think. What raises your vibration? What makes you feel alive? What opens your heart? What makes you feel you’re aligned with the purpose your Highest Self wants for you?
From here, establish structures to support the actualization of these intentions. Integrate them into your everyday life. Set goals, break them down into tasks, and put the tasks in your calendar. Practice integrity by honoring your agreements with yourself. Be reverent of the powerful words they are constructed from. Make sure your agreements are clear – always know what you’ve agreed to and where you stand on them. Notice what you accomplish and celebrate these achievements. Don’t complain. Be flexible. Maintain a clear inner vision of what you intend to bring into being. And routinely express gratitude.
If this sounds like a lot to remember, that’s what a planner like the Dreambook is for – to keep you on track with the actualization of that incredible potential within you. We’re honored to witness you.
Be well,
Peter
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As a young adult I often stayed at the beautiful Marin Headlands hostel just north of San Francisco. I was there one weekend while a large group of missionaries was passing through. We were all sharing the same kitchen space and I was chopping some broccoli when a cute young woman around my age approached me. We started talking and I thought it was going well. I have always enjoyed conversing about spirituality and religion, even with people of different beliefs than my own.
At the time I was immersed in learning about Advaita – nondualism – which was blowing my mind. Nondual philosophy asserts that, although we perceive many things that may feel separate, in reality everything is an expression of a single Oneness experiencing itself in infinite ways.
Some people call this Oneness God or Goddess or Source or Divine or Dao. What’s important isn’t the name but the experience of this connection, and how it redefines how we see reality.
I had in my suitcase a book called Aghora in which an eccentric spiritual teacher explains that since everything is God, both sex and eating are simply acts of “putting God into God.” So, when this missionary woman asked me what I was doing, I guess I thought I was being clever by replying, “Oh, just chopping up some God.”
She was clearly taken aback, so I explained that if the whole universe is an expression of one God, then broccoli was of course included, and therefore I was chopping up some God to put into God (myself). She was speechless for a moment, then said – a bit louder than was called for, I thought – “God is not broccoli!” and walked away.
There were several lessons for me in this story, starting with (1) nobody likes a smug person pushing their buttons, and (2) if you truly want to make a difference in the world you need to meet people where they are. But aside from my social failure, maybe the most important lesson was that there’s often a huge difference between the description of an experience and the experience itself. In other words, to understand something intellectually tells us nothing of how we’d be affected by experiencing it.
In lectures, I used to explain how physics seems to “prove” nondualism, hoping that even the nonspiritual types in the class would be won over. I’d point out that while each of us feels we’re separate from everyone else in the classroom, we and the world around us are all just different configurations of the same fundamental stuff – subatomic particles or even more fundamental fluctuations of energy. It’s a powerful idea, but I doubt it’s caused many people to conduct themselves differently towards their neighbors.
For me and most people I know, life changes have come through direct experiences of this Oneness in non-ordinary states of consciousness facilitated mainly by meditation, yoga, ritual, self-inquiry, immersion in nature, music, acupuncture, art, pain, dance, conscious breathing, interpersonal connection, and entheogenic substances. Ordinary reality (even with impressive-yet-unactualized spiritual concepts) appears random and soulless by comparison.
I didn’t have the chance to ask, “If God is not broccoli, what is broccoli?” We tend to draw vague, subjective lines around life and then deem one side worthy of our reverence and the other unworthy, but the abolition of such lines isn’t automatically liberating. I’ve seen people, myself included, latch onto the idea that everything is Divine and then fall into nihilism. Because, if it’s all God, why try? Why care? Why choose one path over any other?
This kind of thinking is a sure sign that we’re operating from a mental concept and not actually experiencing what it represents. It would be similar to take a psychedelic mushroom and hold it between your teeth, telling yourself, “So this is what psychedelic mushrooms are all about. Meh.”
Your homework is to determine whether or not broccoli is God. Since “God” is a spiritual concept, it can’t really be assessed in ordinary reality. Everyday thinking needs to fall away. You can get there using any of the approaches I mentioned above.
Be well,
Peter
P.S. I’d like to share one of my favorite quotes on nondualism from Tantra scholar Christopher Wallis in Tantra Illuminated (slightly abridged for space):
“Since reality is One, and everything is equally an expression of the one divine Light of Consciousness, every experience by definition is an experience of God… If we propose that some things are more God than others, like concentrated orange juice versus watered-down orange juice, then we must propose the existence of something that is not God that waters down divinity. But no such thing can be found, at least in this philosophy, because 1) the definition of God here is the unbounded Light of Consciousness, 2) everything that is known to exist is an object of experience, and 3) every experience is by definition pervaded by consciousness. Therefore, this – whatever is happening right now – is as God as it gets. Now, if you are in a miserable or banal life situation, you may be disappointed by this announcement. But notice I said, ‘This is as God as it gets,’ not, ‘This is as free as it gets.’ Freedom means actually experiencing the divinity in each moment.”
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Ah, the New Year. It’s fresh and innocent and undefined. Except for the things you already have scheduled for 2023. And everything you have already set into motion that is likely to continue to play out in the coming year and beyond. But besides that, it’s an empty canvas!
Last week I recommended keeping your resolutions simple – just choosing a single thing. This week I want to encourage you to put that into a context you define for this year by choosing a theme for 2023.
If you have our Dreambook, there’s a section on Theme of the Year and you can write it in there. If you don’t have the Dreambook, or even if you do but wish to make this a bit more special, I encourage you to write your theme on a nice piece of paper with a good pen and frame it or keep it in a place where you’ll see it every day.
Here are some questions to help guide you to your theme as you visualize a wonderful, productive, peaceful, playful, successful coming year.
Who do you want to BE this year? What aspect of your potential do you want to cultivate this year?
What will you bring to your community? How will you be a positive influence on your environment?
What will you be a channel for? How will you speak intentionally?
How will you grow this year? How will the world respond to your love and light?
Take plenty of time with this and consider writing your answers down to see what comes through. Out of all these inspirations, which feels like it’s coming from your Highest Self? Which feels the most compelling? Which would benefit both you and your community? What is the emerging theme?
Here are some examples: The Year of Loving Myself Completely. The Year of Living my Purpose. The Year of Learning to Trust. The Year of Shining my Light Upon the World. The Year of Owning My Power. The Year of Healing my Body. The Year of Playfulness. The Year of Lightheartedness. The Year of Remembering We’re All Connected. The Year of Forgiveness. The Year of Great Healing. The Year of Simplicity. The Year of Living Through My Heart.
After you refine your theme and write it down, try to read it ever morning, and if you’ve got a minute, feel into how life will be as you embody this theme, tell yourself, “I’m already on my way. Today I choose to stay conscious of this theme and to find ways to live it.”
Wishing you your best year yet,
Peter
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