What’s Really Coming?

New Year Reflections for 2024

The year of the Wood Dragon

As we get older, the long days of our childhood seems to appear more like the movements of the hour hand of a clock.  One hour or one day feels the same.  We work and before we know it, we are again going to sleep.  As many of us know by now, the experience of time truly depends on mind just like everything else.  A journey of 15 hours can go by in a flash or seem like an eternity depending on our mind set.  Another thing that effects time is its relation to space and our perception of space.  According to the tantras, beings abide within the space wherever it is available and suitable.  But our perception within time can be felt as tight and claustrophobic up to totally expansive.

When we are under pressure or feel we have no opportunities, a minute can seem like hours. 

Technologies coupled with the negative and positive tendencies of human beings, has brought us into some very challenging positions as well as opportunities.   Since humankind of late has focused itself more on method than wisdom, we have created many useless and harmful things that have negative effects on our beings.  We have developed and chased technologies that are designed to help us or make life easier or even just more entertaining and distracting from the pursuit of wisdom.  But in other ways, some of these technologies will actually help people to come into contact with more evolved ways of thinking and Dharmas as well.  The result is that time has sped up and space and its matter partner has become more dense.  

One day maybe forty years ago, while on retreat under His Holiness Dungse Shenphen Dawa Rinpoche, I had a meeting with him where I revealed that my retreat was going very poorly and that I could barely even stick to the least part of my retreat schedule.  My mind was completely filled with wild distortions and upheavals and I found no spaciousness in which to to liberate any thought. 

Rinpoche looked up into the sky, reflected and said:

“This is called the simultaneous arising of blessings and obscurations”

“What should I do?” I asked.

“Face the music.” he replied.

Today we have the ability to pursue any and sometimes it seems like all information without filter in an instant.  The main agencies who we thought were apparently somehow deputized to bring us the truth, but became usurped and now spew what amounts to propaganda paid for by the highest bidder who become the owners of our shorter and shorter attention spans.

The information we get is largely unreliable and inactionable unless we are trying to click and buy something in which case technology works overtime to put products into our view.  We go to sleep with more images from the internet than from our day and our plans for tomorrow are often made last minute under duress.

We are told so many theories and many of them are called conspiracy theories in order to dilute focus on those who actually conspire to achieve their own selfish and distorted aims.  We don’t see the emergency bunkers the super rich build for themselves and we prefer not to believe what we are witnessing since we cannot get a real grip on reality.  Our body chi wanes as we slowly lose our ability to put conviction into our actions.

In fact this and more are all predicted not only in Buddhist traditions but predictable when using common sense of observation.

What has come from this is nearly a desperation to find the way back to sanity.  This is probably a good inspiration to find and enter into a regular practice of some kind with some amount of requisite diligence.  Many of us have come to recognize that excitement is as good as Häagen Dazs ice cream which means, only in limited doses with minimal expectations. What excites us if taken to its ultimate pursuit, will be the same thing that harms us.  But our desperation also pushes us to try things and to rely on our own system as a witness.  This may function well in some cases and for others, there’s nothing quite like hard lessons to encourage transformation or evolution as the Darwin awards suggest.

There is no doubt that 2024 will push us probably as hard as other years but in new ways.  Many people will develop a natural proclivity to seek truth rather than knee jerk or to simply pass on what they take in.  They may even develop a sense of awe or gratefulness to be alive in these exciting times.  But most of all, the days of gauging everything by externals will be forced to die and many people, practitioners in particular, will dig into their practice with vehemence to find that they are the ones who can stabilize and purify their own minds and no-one else.

I believe that a new level of taking responsibility can dawn for many this year and as a result entirely new spheres will open for them that they only vaguely remembered as possibilities when they were young.  Meanwhile the youth among us is beginning to really engender compassion and apply it in their way forward recognizing the interconnectedness of all things.

Having been severely punished for compliance with the systems being imposed upon us by our so called oligarchy overlords, a new era of seekers will be born, some vocal and some more introspective but none the less effective in finding the language of navigation through a recognizable dumbing down going on all over and the extreme shallowness of representing and selling cheap externalities as inner virtues.

This slow process is in fact probably the only revolution there is because any external fight will be cleverly orchestrated to use each and every issue to divide us from each other rather than to unite us. Those able to prioritize on doing positive things with passion will surely achieve their goals.

The year we are entering into is the wood dragon year.  This year will be marked by the slow steady growth of the element of wood and therefore supply of the fire element of activity and transformation.

Those who are not on economic positive tracks may find themselves finally knowing what they want and taking action that will yield actual financial results.  In spiritual terms the same principles apply.  Sincere practice will arise as priority and the results will feel tangible for a change.

One only need a slight adjustment in head position to have completely different view of situations and this year will certainly encourage that.