This is supposed to be a big year. Yesterday I turned 50 which is supposed to be some pinnacle birthday. My birthday is always somewhat axiomatic because it falls right between Christmas and New Year's and the worry is that everyone will be partied out from Christmas, getting ready for New Year's Eve, so my birthday's bound to get passed over. That idea is a fiction. What generally happens is because of when it falls, friends and family remember the date and essentially overcompensate. My parents did forget my birthday once when I was a teenager, but that was the year my grandpa Pettito died on Christmas Eve, and even then, my dad felt so guilty about forgetting it he wrote me this huge check the day after. Teenagers are always happy with huge checks.
This year on my birthday the moon was super full; it was a special day of meditation for lots of folks, as was December 21, the official beginning of the Year of the Miracle. Lots of my students expected the world to end; they came to school in pajamas (the world's about to end anyway) or in suits and ties (the kid who started that one told he wanted to look good going out). I still made them turn in their homework. School still happened. We meditated on the kids and teachers who got shot in the recent gun violence, and talked about people on the globe struggling with war. I explained to them the meaning behind the words "fiscal cliff" and how there isn't actually a cliff - it's a metaphor of course.
December 21, Christmas, the full moon on my birthday - it's all happened. Lots of people went out of town. I wanted to go somewhere, but I wasn't sure where or with whom. Then everyone started phoning, e-mailing, looking out there for some sign, some big tumultuous conflict, or at least an obvious resolution. Everyone looking out there...
But of course we've got to make it happen - this Year of the Miracle, because what's out there is only a metaphor for who we are inside. We've got to agree to give up the dangerous, glamorous, ego- ridden inner struggle that leads to so much suffering on our planet. We've got to realize it's not about the agony and the ecstasy, but about what's left when we let go of all that. The clinging, the neediness, comes from a fear of what will be there when we aren't bolting away or scheduling a trip or a party or rushing to something big to fill in the gap. Meaning will come when we can sit alone in the quiet of what really is and recognize ourselves.
In short, only when we take out the metaphorical trash, can we realize the truth about what's left. What's left feels like love.
It seems like time to do that. Surrender, surrender, surrender. Release conflict and wake up now.
Why not?
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