A new year has dawned and hopefully all the resolutions of us needy folks, are holding strong. For once my resolution like many others I am sure, was to lose something; rather than gain something. It is my perennial smoking ban on tobacco in all forms, and my personal dragon rears his head, and blows fire and devastation all around, and drives everyone away. Grumpy and anxious I checked out what may be causing these symptoms. What was taking me riding anxiously through an emotional and psychological roller coaster, is this withdrawal pain, from a life time of habits; which should never have been started, in the first place.
Then I looked around and I recognized the symptoms in a few more people around me. What surprised me was that they were not even smokers or ex-smokers, so the cause I felt must be different. There were clear cases of anxiety and depression and so many stressed friends were all around me that my own withdrawal seemed minor to theirs. I realized that they too were suffering from unfulfilled desires just like I had been when I was trying to fulfill them through smoking. My desires remained unquenched but my smoking grew to monstrous proportions. Some of theirs seems to be tied around money and keeping up.
Money does not necessarily make us happy but the lack (or even the perceived lack of it) can lead to a different trauma, which can cause severe anxiety and depression; in some cases. The outcome of which may result in behavioral actions of avarice and greed which in turn leads to hoarding. We are unable to enjoy what we have, and continue to seek more. It is the ego telling us that we will magically reach a tipping point, where all our possessions will turn us overnight; into a state of bliss, delight and happiness.
This also results in extreme cases into kleptomania, where one steals even when one has enough means to pay for the object in question, many times over. If the lack of money can do this to us, imagine what a lack of love or affection can do to a growing child or a loved one. We squander our most precious resource of time and compassion in fruitless obsessions, overcoming perceived shortcomings in ourselves. To step into the clear light of reality, we have to also step out of these dark places; within ourselves. These unfulfilled desires have not uplifted us, or brought us closer to the bliss that is our birthright. Instead they have warped our world and kept us from our true path.
So my resolution is to unchain myself, from this clinging desire. I walk alone, and yet am filled with the universe, as we are one. My search for greatness outside will never be fulfilled. I need to only light the tiny temple lamp within and burn it, for the greater good. Make my light stronger day by day, and soon it will throw light on that hidden desire; which takes me away from reality. I find this needless feeling of inadequacy, fear and anxiety is not for me; but instead filling me with love, warmth and compassion is a better path. So in the end just be, and let all these clinging desires; fall away by the wayside. Smile as it is a new me, with a whole new life ahead of me, to be peaceful and blissful. Resolutions work not when you look back on them, but when you move forward with them.