We have arrived at the end of the year and are being moved unceremoniously into the next. We have no choice in the matter – we are pushed forward by time – away from the past and into the future. For some, they can’t wait until the year is over. For others it’s been the best year of their life.
Entering a new year is always a good time to reset – to clean the closet of our heart and mind and decide how we want to live the next year differently. For so many, instead of living life, life lives us. I just saw a man waiting for his dog to finish his business. He had the kind of blank expression his face that said – ‘Here I am, with a big house in a wealthy neighborhood, waiting to pick up my dog’s poop. What am I doing with my life?’
In the 16th Century, a great scholar of language, philosophy, and science, later known as Sanatan Goswami, became famous in the Bhakti tradition for asking the simple question – ‘Who am I? I know so much, am considered one of the greatest scholars, and yet I cannot honestly answer this question.’
As we move into 2016 let’s take this who-am-I question with us and make time for it in our life. Let it pop up in all the wrong places and make us uneasy. Let it seep into our thoughts in the middle of our work and pull our attention. Let it greet us first thing in the morning and challenge us to respond. Let it guide our meditation. Let it power our search for meaning. Let it be the question we come back to again and again to nourish us, inform us, educate us and ultimately cure us from the disease of illusion – the disease of not knowing.
“The highest truth is that which distinguishes reality from illusion for the welfare of all,” Srimad Bhagavatam says.
When we ask the question ‘Who am I?’ we begin the process of distinguishing reality from illusion. We question the status quo and we can listen to a deeper consciousness trying to speak to us. We open ourselves up to the possibility of a completely different take on our individuality and our place in the world. As we keep asking, the question becomes a friend and a guide. As we keep asking it leads the way.
The highest truth, like the highest mountain, is not easy to attain. There are all the pitfalls of an earthly climb. But we are made for this journey and will remain here in this world, celebrating new year after new year, until we complete it. It is our ultimate challenge and, when successful, our ultimate fulfillment. May we enter 2016 with an earnest desire take this road less travelled, and let it make all the difference.
Comments
Srila Prabhupada has taught us how to answer this question, at least intellectually. Finding the spiritual realization of this answer might take a few more lifetimes. I am an eternally predominated part and parcel of Krishna. Hare Krishna.