Resolutions

It is a new year and this always feels like a new beginning. I have no doubt that one of the most common resolutions made on January 1 is to finally lose that nagging 10, 20, 30, 40, 100 pounds that keep us from being the perfect, happy human beings we know we have the capacity to be. Nothing wrong with the impulse, of course. To set an intention is one of the holiest things we can do, to place our feet on the path to something that transcends the suffering we currently experience.

But we have been here before, haven't we? We have made these same resolutions over and over and yet we seem incapable of keeping them, of finding their fulfillment. (Not this year, though, this year I am stronger, surer, want it more completely). I suspect I have quoted before the old saying that one definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, each time expecting a different result. A corollary is: another definition of insanity is finding the same explanation for getting the same result each time. Because we know, don't we, that it is our weakness, our lack of will power, our self-hate, our mothers, our upbringing, our disappointments, our fears, our losses (take your pick of one or more) that cause us to persist in our self-destructive behaviors despite all of our determination to have it otherwise. Where does it all fall apart, this resolution of ours?

I would assert that, having begun from faulty premises, we cannot help but reach erroneous conclusions. Having determined to do something that cannot be done in the way we propose to do it, nor by the person we have decided will do it (us, ourselves), there is no possibility but that we will fail and in failing fall into the same pattern of self-recrimination followed by renewed effort to do the impossible followed by inevitable failure....

So, do we give up? Do we just remain fatties (or junkies or drunks or sexpots or compulsives)? Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we shall have type II diabetes? Hardly. But the so-called "problem" and the so-called "solution" are the same thing, really, or at least derive from the same source, which is a basic and complete misunderstanding of who and what we are. Don't get me wrong, I am not speaking from some spiritual hilltop as one who has incorporated these truths into my everyday life. But I am pretty sure that the truths are out there to be comprehended if we choose to go about addressing our lives through that lens rather than the self-defeating one we have been using ere now.

Resolutions fail at their inception because of the inherent emphasis on reinforcement of the ego as the active agent of change. When we reinforce the hegemony of this strong sense of self, when we give it the power to determine how we view the past, present and plans for the future, we are stepping directly into the very source of suffering. Odd, really, like escaping snakes by jumping into the snake pit. Isn't there a better way?

When it comes to food, we really can't hope to change our attitude toward what we eat with the same mind that led us to have our current attitude toward it. Sure, for a while we may fare forth with great confidence and the bold impulse of abnegation, thrusting aside every danish and pizza in our path. But that inevitable day will come when we are weak, tired, grieving, sad, depressed and that same mind we have been using to deny ourselves those foods will resort to the same patterns it has always known to assuage bad feelings, which is to eat those very same foods, in direct proportion to the level of negativity contained within the feeling states. Why would it not? When the monkeys are mad, throw them bananas. It may not solve the problem, but at least it will distract them long enough for us to escape.

What we can do is treat each morsel of food as a meditation. As has been repeatedly emphasized here, the awareness aspect of our beings is external to and encompassing of the mind. When we ask ourselves, with gentleness and love, what this feeling means and what this food means to it, when we investigate in this way, only then can we find a sustainable change of heart and mind that leads us, not to new, sleek bodies or the ability to resist sinful impulses, but to a new way of viewing the world, ourselves and everything around us. That the new bodies may come, that we may feel better in them is something to which we cannot cling, for it is that very clinging that is the nature of suffering to begin with. This, too, will arise and pass away. What will not arise and pass away, not ever, is our realization of what is true at depth in all we do and are.

So, by all means, make those resolutions. There is wise effort in that, in determining the path and lacing up our boots and beginning to walk.