Inspiration, Illumination & Sacred Intention: A New Year's Day Contemplation

This episode of The Conscious Classroom with Amy Edelstein invites us to explore the power of setting meaningful intentions and to learn how to let go of will-based resolutions as the most effective means to create lasting transformation.  

By uncovering our deepest values and nurturing inspiration from within, we can align our actions with what truly matters to us and engage in positive change, both personally and collectively.

Amy will delve into:
• Identifying the value of intentions rather than resolutions
• Reflecting on our deeper cares as we set our trajectory for the New Year
• Overcoming feelings of disempowerment and frustration
• The significance of inspiration in maintaining motivation
• Addressing cultural norms the negatively impact youth and how to positively support young people
• Embracing stillness and reflection during meditation
• Recognizing our capacity for goodness and positive change
• Encouraging a supportive community through shared intentions

Chapters

• 0:01 Setting Intentions for the New Year
• 15:03 Cultivating Inspiration for Life's Journey
• 29:49 Embracing Inspiration for Positive Change

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

I'm really excited to be here together with you to start this new year and what keeps us on the path, what keeps us inspired, what keeps us ready to engage and to lean in, and that's really what I wanted to do today. That's what I wanted to talk about together and definitely do some meditation together as well.

Speaker 1: 0:47

It's always nicer than you think to sit in meditation. Even if you love to meditate, the experience is always more mysteriously restoring than you think it might be. It's a good thing to remember, especially on those evenings when we've had a long day, or those mornings when we're wondering how the pace of life is going to unfold. This time of year is a special time. It's a time when, as a culture, we have the opportunity to think about the sacred and, of course, new Year's. Our cultural habits or rituals are to create intentions, and intentions. They've often been co-opted as a way to market us more products and gym memberships and nutritional supplements and Fitbits.

Speaker 1: 2:06

But really, what intentions are? It's a time to reflect on our deeper cares. Is my life oriented towards what is most important? Oriented towards what is most important? Am I really tuned to that North Star of what I hold is most sacred, or am I kind of vague about it and a little bit more frustrated with how things are, which is easier in some ways If we're not awake to the consequences of our thoughts and our context and our orientation. It can be easier to be a little bit grumbly about the way things are or the way we are, the way our life is, or the way the people in our lives are, or the way our government is, or the way important things like war and poverty and the environment, that North Star, so that we're really looking into the future for what we want to happen. No-transcript, there's always more to go. Even the Dalai Lama spends many times a day reminding himself of his most sacred intention, which is to have all sentient beings liberated. Well, that's a big deal. We're not really there yet. We can't even really imagine it. Nelson Mandela spent, you know, 27 years in prison envisioning the end of apartheid.

Speaker 1: 4:39

And when we really reify our intentions, it's not magical thinking, it's not some sense that, oh, if we envision it, then we don't have to engage. When we envision what we most aspire to see in ourselves and in the world around us, it starts to exert a tractor beam on ourselves and it starts to pull us towards it. So it pulls us towards where we want to go and it aligns our actions so that we can help create the conditions to bring that about. The other thing that it does is, rather than being this passive, I'm going to sit back and just visualize and then it's all going to come to me. There are a lot of people who live by that and I think miraculous things do happen for some people. If you happen to be one of those people where that doesn't work so well, no-transcript.

Speaker 1: 6:13

Part of the frustration that many people experience is a sense of disempowerment. How am I ever going to lose the weight I need to lose? How am I ever going to get back in shape? How am I ever going to clean up the environment? How am I going to solve this unbearable polarization and violence of speech in our culture? How am I going to clean up the environment? So all of those things plague us and we feel a sense of disempowerment when we get frustrated or angry. So when we engage with our intentions and our resolutions in a way where we start leaning in and going, how can I create, or may I or may the conditions manifest so that the tyrants around the world awaken to the errors of their ways. So amazing solutions happen and we clean up the environment. Something extraordinary is happening in the nuclear disaster site in Japan, in Fukushima. There are these microorganisms that have generated out of no one knows where and they're ingesting the radioactive material and neutralizing it. It's unbelievable, it's amazing. How could that be possible? Miracles can happen. We want to allow and make room for them to happen while aligning ourselves with our higher intentions. So this is a very interesting posture where we can't sit back and do nothing, but we're not being animated or motivated by willpower.

Speaker 1: 8:03

Some of you may be very disciplined and have a lot of willpower. I grew up in the seventies. Those were my formative years in high school and I was kind of a rebel. The most popular bumper sticker was question authority. So nobody told me what to do. If anyone told me what to do, I would do the opposite. So discipline and willpower doesn't work very well for me, and what does work well for me is inspiration. So when I'm inspired and I love something, nothing can stop me from doing it. If I feel like I have to do something because somebody else is telling me what to do, that will probably inspire that 1970s, go against whatever anyone's telling you in you.

Speaker 1: 9:11

I would suggest that, in approaching the start of the new year with intentionality, would. It will help to identify what you love the most and set your sights there and allow what you really want to see happen to change the way you interact, the way you move, the way you identify with other people, the way you relate. What it also does is it will show you that you're not empty handed, because when we can start visualizing the conditions that we want to see, we realize we know a lot more than we think we know, and that knowing is an empowerment. So those moments of boredom, scrolling through social media or channel surfing I did a focus group with 12, 22-year-olds a couple nights ago just to find out what their college experience is, what the mental wellness supports were, what they might need, whether I can expand my program into college, what it would look like I can expand my program into college, what it would look like and what I found very revealing and interesting. They were a lovely group of young people, really really lovely, really special. They were very candid and they talked about things like mindlessly scrolling and one young woman said for like two hours, and the other ones laughed and said you really mean for six hours and she said yes. Or cheating in college, using chat, gpt to cheat.

Speaker 1: 10:58

And these are norms in our culture now, where we're looking outside ourselves, without that sense of being pulled from the inside, to want to learn not to cheat, not be, not just because it's a lack of integrity, but because one cares about one's learning. One cares about one's learning, one cares about one's own development, one wants to make that noble struggle to get somewhere. The mindless scrolling is the same thing. We're looking for some easy fix or numbing outside to calm that restlessness. It never really works and that's why we do it for hours at a time. Some of us don't, but the younger generation, everyone's doing it. We went out and did other things, everyone's doing it. We went out and did other things.

Speaker 1: 12:16

So this way of engaging with our intention brings the inspiration and motivation from outside, that thing that we want to shift, that we want to help us shift the restlessness. It brings it inside and then we're going wow, what are the conditions I want to create? What do I want to see happen? What would it look like? What are the mind shifts that need to happen? I wonder, if these conditions arose, would people wake up? Would people wake up? Then it starts moving from within, so that you're pulled by something you're fascinated by, by something you love, by something that you're inspired by, by something that you really want to do, and that shift of perspective is something that can become permanent.

Speaker 1: 13:15

Now, some people who have a lot of willpower, they can become very disciplined and that does become permanent. But all the great athletes that I've known not that I don't know any like super elite athletes, but really good athletes they do it because they love it. They work out they, they refine their craft because they love it. Same with musicians the great musicians I know you can't stop them from playing the engineers, you can't stop them from doing things and inventing things and processes. The discipline I think for you know especially people like that who are really accomplished it does come from passion, not just willpower.

Speaker 1: 14:03

So, as we approach our orientation to this cultural moment that marks, okay, the last year's past, this is 2025. What do I want to see? What do I want to do? What do I want to bring into my life? Resist the temptation to make a laundry list of all the things you're going to change and put your attention on what you care about and what are the conditions that will help that flower. It's a harder contemplation because it's not. There isn't a single answer. There isn't the 10 resolutions that you can list and put on your automatic reminders and check in with yourself February 1st and March 1st and April 1st, and by May 1st they may be a little bit far in the background.

Speaker 1: 15:03

Put your attention on what you care about and keep leaning into that and then you're going to find that your conversations are around it the people you have in your life. You start being connected to people who care about the same thing, care about the same thing, and you start feeling like there's more goodness and updraft in the world than you thought. We need that and our world needs that. We are in a difficult time. Let's be real. It's a difficult time, but difficult times we get through by leaning in together and not by withdrawing back, and the inspiration that we have is what allows us to feel engaged with life, not like we want to just retreat retreat from the people we know, retreat from people we haven't met yet, retreat from projects, retreat from the possibility.

Speaker 1: 16:16

And withdrawal is understandable. We do that when conditions are so harsh around us, when conditions are so harsh around us, but imagining how things could be different and leaning into that is what will one keep our positive boundaries, because we don't want to engage in an unhelpful way in toxic environments. It really doesn't help. If we're inspired, we need to fan the flames of our inspiration. That might mean long meditation retreats, but long meditation retreats aren't withdrawal, they're retreat, they're intentional, they're leaning in and, as we know as meditators, meditation's hard, it feels easy, but the transformation out of what we become aware of takes courage, takes stamina, takes backbone, it takes intentionality, bone, it takes intentionality.

Speaker 1: 17:42

That's why, when we're what we've reflected on, I know for myself something always comes that is unexpected. And as I was writing, I was seeing one of the things that I care most about the manifestation in this world from a different angle and it almost surprised me what I was articulating. So you may have had something like that, or maybe it was what you expected, and if it's what you expected, that's also good Means. It's close to you, what you care about, what you want to see imagined in the world, and when we engage with it in this way, it brings a freshness to it, partly why I wanted to do this today is so that we really put our attention on so it imprints in our being, so it gives us that stamp of direction, so that we have that compass pointing to our North Star. And it's in our being and it's not vague, even though it's constantly changing and even though it's sometimes more clear, sometimes more misty, but we know it and we know when it's misty or cloudy. That's also a part of our evolution.

Speaker 1: 19:15

That's also a part of our unfolding. We go through periods where there's a sprint to the finish and then we go through periods where something's cooking inside or outside. Sometimes there are external conditions that need to come into play. Letting ourselves take these moments to reify our intention and our direction also allows us to relax and rest during those times of in-betweenness, when it's foggy. It's a natural stage of unfolding. It will occur at different points.

Speaker 1: 19:59

It doesn't mean there's a problem. Things don't always have to be in crystal clear focus. It doesn't mean we're not heading in the right direction. But there's a difference between walking through the mist and being lost, and we want to know that. So that's why taking time like this is important. Since we've just reflected, let's sit till the top of the hour and in this meditation, give yourself really the opportunity to let go. So there isn't more thinking you need to do, there isn't more analysis you need to do right now. Have that trust that what you started to gestate is being nurtured and nourished by being still, by letting go of effort, by letting go of thought, by letting go of striving, that our intentional being is what creates that nurturing womb-like atmosphere for our sacred intentions. Last night I sat with a few other people to bring in the new year and it was so deep and silent. It's also nice sometimes meditating in the middle of the night and I could feel the power of being very awake and very still and open to goodness.

Speaker 1: 22:08

To emerge from within and without Inspiration isn't a feeling outside of us. Inspiration isn't something that lives externally. Things catalyze inspiration. For us for sure. There was an extraordinary sunrise this morning and I was standing on my little porch it's all very damp where I live and it was really beautiful burnt orange and magenta and purple clouds and the sun was coming through and it catalyzes that sense of beauty and goodness and wanting to be worthy of this beautiful world that we're in. But inspiration doesn't live in the sunrise that catalyzed it. Inspiration lives in us, in us, and when we understand that, when we deeply recognize that inspiration really dawns from the recesses of our own hearts, we also find that inspiration is not something that necessarily comes and goes or is catalyzed by something else.

Speaker 1: 23:57

Inspiration is a posture, it's a position, it's a perspective that we take or that we orient our lives around for a certain narrow range of human emotion. That is what we've decided to call inspiration, and it depends often on beautiful sunrises or feeling that burst of love for someone we care about, or hearing a dharma talk by somebody who we really admire and respect, even who has that transmission. And those things do catalyze and they're important, and it's important to put ourselves in spaces and places where that catalyzing element is there. I try to go on a sort of pilgrimage as often as I can to places in the world where I feel I can let go With my program. Those strips are fewer and far between than I'd like them to be, but still. But it's more important and more sustaining to think about inspiration as how we orient our lives. And so any moment is an opportunity for practice, and by practice I don't just mean this is my practice and this is my life. But by practice I mean leaning in to the process of self-development and awakening and transformation and purification, holding ourselves to a higher standard standard, and the higher standard of not of willpower and conformity but of inner unfolding, of deeper care, deeper compassion, deeper wisdom, deeper equanimity, deeper recognition of the interplay between emptiness and care, not grasping for anything and being able to care without attachment. So inspiration is being able to hold ourselves to that orientation to life. So when we're feeling like we're pushing the boulder uphill and we might not have enough support and we're slipping backwards and the boulder is heavy, the orientation of inspiration, that commitment to our intention to develop, means pausing and letting the boulder rest for a second and seeing if we can shift how we're relating to the situation that feels daunting and uninspiring to one that can catalyze our growth, can allow us to reach into the well of our own resources and draw out more. Feeling that posture of inspiration again is an emotional high, but it is the same sort of ease and let go that we experience when we feel that excited sense of exuberance. So that inspiration that allows us to be confident in the path that we're on, confident in our commitment to develop, confident in our aspiration to awaken.

Speaker 1: 28:54

I might have mentioned this. I got in a nice way told off by the great Buddhist scholar and practitioner Bob Thurman, when I was interviewing him about a month ago, because I used the word awakening and he said nobody wants to use the word enlightenment anymore. Everyone uses the word awakening, but you can awaken to anything. And he gave some sort of negative political examples. I don't know if I agree with that, but now when I use the word awakening it makes me laugh. I always stay away from the word enlightenment these days because it to me is so attached with so many misconceptions and misuses of the word. So it came to mind I thought, oh, if he was listening he would tell me off again.

Speaker 1: 29:49

But I think we do want to awaken and open our eyes to different perspectives and different ways of seeing that are inherently strengthening and inherently challenging. Inherently strengthening and inherently challenging. And challenging not because we need more stress in our lives, but challenging because we really do have more potential, we really do have more wisdom and we really do have more capacity for goodness and purpose and really creating a momentum of positivity in our own circles, in our own lives and in the world around us and for those of us who have had the privilege of being meditators Not just the five-minute meditators who discovered it last week because we decided we had to reduce our attention, but we've had the privilege to practice and to explore Our capacity to bring in positive momentum in this world is much greater than we give ourselves credit for, is much greater than we give ourselves credit for. So we want to awaken to this posture of our own capacity, which is awakening to that posture of inspiration that's not dependent on something external but that appreciates the catalysts that catalyze the experience of inspiration anew. But we recognize that current and draw towards goodness that we sense as an inherent part of the fabric of being is something that we can contribute to and we can bring into being, and then we align ourselves with it.

Speaker 1: 32:01

So, if anything, I see this New Year's period as a time of alignment and refining our alignment and sensing our capacity to calibrate our alignment in more and more precise ways, so that we're not vague. Even though that goal is still a mystery at its heart, it's unknown, it's hard, it's magic. So we're not trying to calcify it, we want to leave it open. We want to leave it open for those mysterious microorganisms to emerge that can ingest and neutralize toxins Go figure and allow those moments of magic in our lives to sustain us and allow conscious boundaries without withdrawal.

Speaker 1: 33:24

So allow our own retreat or boundaries to be a leaning in, not a removal from, because there will be challenges in the year ahead. We have wars, we have natural disasters, we have species that are suffering, we have teenagers filled with angst, we have issues, and our inspiration and orientation to life can catalyze a way of being that will really support ourselves and those people around us in a way that is generative and that is constantly renewing, and that is constantly renewing and that feeds us and makes us strong as much as it uplifts those around us. So that's my wish and my direction for the year and I hope that you've also helped through your reflection in the meditation. Clarify what's stirring in your own heart and let's take our last minutes and let's close with a short meditation and dedication, allowing our own intentions to perhaps carry more import and more gravitas than we even recognize now.

Speaker 1: 35:38

Eyes now, letting this time of of conscious reflection to amplify and Amplify and reify those values. As we sit in the stillness, let your deepest cares imprint that North Star, that direction in your heart, and allow yourself to be contained within that aspiration, rather than you trying to contain that immeasurable aspiration into a more limited sense of self. Thank you, allow yourself to soften the edges of yourself around the future or around what the bigness of your care might lead to. Thank you, and allow the stretch of your own heart and the ache of a profound care and love to extend across the cosmos. And extending this wish, may I be well and guided by care beyond measure. May all beings be well and safe from harm and safe from harm. May the cosmos be illuminated by love and compassion and may we come to see the world as we most want to live in it.