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Wishcasting Wednesday

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from Jamie's post

Today’s Wishcasting Wednesday question from Jamie Ridler is: “What is your wish for the New Year?”

I am spending this week doing my own “Review, Reflect, and Resolve,” cobbling together pieces and parts of various annual review and resolutions strategies, worksheets, and practices from around the web. I am adding pages to the front and back of my new 2012 Weekly Planner to formally record the process, and to have something I can keep with me throughout next year, as a reminder and an inspiration. There are lots of personal wishes there, just for me and my life, made solid by the mindful and measured way I’ve put them together, and through my resolve. So my wish for the New Year isn’t a personal one, although it is for me as well.

This New Year, I wish for all of us a letting go and leaving behind of the habits, emotions, expectations, fear, self-hate, stories, grudges, hurts, attachments, addictions, misery, grief, suffering, thoughts, memories, and even the hopes that no longer serve us. We will let them know that they are not invited into 2012.

We will release them and be free.

Picture by Erik Sagen

This is my wish for the New Year, for freedom and a fresh start, for all of us.

P.S. Right after I published this post, I checked my email and there was this image from gapingvoid.com. The artist, Hugh MacLeod (one of my favorites), explains that “So much human suffering is tied to hanging on to things; material, emotional, or otherwise…If you’re unhappy, nine times out of ten it’s because you’re clinging onto something…Nine times out of ten, happiness and letting go are synonymous.” So, I suppose that means the secret wish under the wish is for our shared happiness in the New Year.

art by Hugh MacLeod

Wishcasting Wednesday

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image from Jamie's post

Today’s wishcasting question is:

What is your winter wish?

My winter wish is to discover and honor my middle path.

In Buddhism, the middle path or middle way is a life lived between the extremes of self-denial and self-indulgence. I wrote about this the other day, how difficult it was for me to find balance. I find that I am either too tight or too loose, rather than resting in that natural center. I push to get more done, make improvements, keep working, harder, faster, better, perfect–but this is too tight. I burn out from this way of being, and I slip into sickness, exhaustion, numbness, laziness, and depression–and this is too loose.

I’m guessing the truth is that “finding” my middle path has not so much to do with going somewhere else or being different or making changes, as it does with sinking fully into where I am, the “now” of the moment. Realizing that I already am exactly where I am going, I am perfect as I am, I am already awake and have everything I need. This is enough. I am enough. Content.

I need to learn what balance is, where the middle way is for me, and honor it. This is my wish.