A Different Kind of Resolution

New Year’s resolutions so often have to do with self-improvement. But what are we actually trying to improve?

As long as you link your identity to your collection of thoughts, beliefs, and tastes, your body type and hair color, clothes and kitchen devices and real estate, you have an endless field for self-improvement. You will never achieve satisfaction or fulfillment, so you can go on improving forever. But is that hamster wheel existence really appealing?

Your essential self is eternally radiant and holy. It needs nothing. It is self-defined, unique, pure, exquisite. And it was created to express its uniqueness in this field of duality that we call life on Earth. Your life is meant to be a medium for your soul’s expression.

Your soul is infinite, so it loses nothing when in shares itself. And it loses nothing when it is suppressed. It does not despair or self-criticize, lose its potency or experience failure. It waits patiently and joyfully for the next opportunity to express its unique treasures, its beauty and grace. It is full of love for self and love for all that is, full to bursting.

The soul is eternal, not bound by time. The experience of “I was”, and “I will be” is a trick of perception created by the ego to build a container for its individuality within form. There is no continuity to the surface being, just a string of thoughts that link themselves into an illusion of permanence. The ego, the mind, the surface self naturally experiences fear when this illusion starts to break down. So we naturally cling to the illusion. The habit is strong, and hard to break.

But maybe that’s a place for a resolution. Maybe we can focus the power of our intention, instead of on improving the surface self, on loosening the habitual clinging that obscures our eternal radiance. Perhaps instead of a resolution to become something, we can resolve to be and express what we truly are.