As the New Year approaches, it is a good time to look around at what’s left of the old. Old magazines that never got read are piled in the corners. Throw them out! Here are some boxes saved from last Christmas that didn’t get used this Christmas. Throw them out! And look, here is the list of resolutions I made last year and never kept. Throw them out!

Hey! Here are all last year's unsolved problems running in a thought tape loop through my mind. Let them go! And here are my old labels that I hung on all my friends and family that prevented me from seeing them as they truly are. Let them go! Now, look at this! Here are my points of view, my rigid beliefs and uncompromising values that created so many conflicts last year. Let them go!

Now, this is fun. Wow. Here is the actual concept of who I am. My story! What a burden that is. Let it go! Okay, lets look around......Oh, there’s a doubt. Grab it! Throw it out! See that fear hiding under the couch. Out!

It is good to start the New Year with a clean mind, a mind that can be original every moment, and see the present as what is instead of through the filter of what was.

Once your house is clean, it is easier to keep it clean. Meditation is the best vacuum cleaner you can get.
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These last days before the New Year are great for yoga and the path of liberation. For those of you who have been hanging out with me since our yoga began in Blackstone, the thought should be creeping in under the doors of the mind that yoga is more than just a bunch of exercises. Of course, yoga can be that for us if that’s all we want— a bunch of good exercises I might add. But that is only a label we have put on yoga as it is being practiced in the shopping malls of America. Beware, whatever we get in a shopping mall has a label on it.

Yoga teaches us how to live without labeling everything to death. When we see a tree, a flower, or a person, do we unconsciously reach out with our conditioned mind and look at the label we have made or been given by society? We can watch our mind meet someone new and to the computer inside creating a label, so the next time we meet them....all we see is the label, which is our knowledge of the past. And, they do the same to us, so our relationships become very predictable, and in time, boring. What should we expect when there is nothing but labels talking to each other. Nothing new can happen under a label.

Yoga is living without labels, so every thing is always fresh and full of potential. Without a mental label, our world can change, and what was once dull can be beautiful. What was once known can become an unknown and release its potential. Once labeled, our world stays the same. A situation, once labeled, becomes a problem: a situation without a label, stays a situation and we deal with it, correctly, I might add. Wrong action, guilt, fault, and “I shouldn’t have done that,” are all labels. Without labels, there is only expansion.

Without labels, the world is what is, and it can’t be any different than what it is. If we argue inside with what is, complaining about a reality that shouldn’t be what it is, we are nothing more than a labeling machine going down the aisle of experience putting our value on everything. When we see through labelsl, our action is conditioned and dictated from the past. When we don’t see a label, our action is creative, and our old world becomes a new world. Right here in same old Blackstone!

Yoga is seeing the labeling machine in our hand and putting it down. The eye that sees the label is meditation. If we could see the process of meditation, one would see a hole in the top of our heads with labels flying out like a volcanic eruption of paper.
When we see a label, we are seeing with God’s eye. He never created them in the first place. Labels are our dream. A label is not real, because when you see one, it disappears.
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As our yoga unfolds into a new year, if you haven’t been able to come to a yoga session, that is okay. Don’t put that in your labeled box of “should haves.” What a burden that box is. If you want to come to some sessions but can’t find the time, that is okay. Get rid of that box of stuff for which you have no time and blame yourself for.

Let us start this New Year..being okay. Try this...see if it works...it won’t hurt. Just say in your being, “I am as I am, and I’m okay. Oh, I can make changes, but I am okay if I don’t. No matter what I do or don’t do...I am okay.”

If you do this simple shift in the way you see yourself....you will be practicing yoga. And something good will happen to you.

Thank you,
Om Peace
Ed Conley

12/28/06

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