Resolutions

New Year's resolutions.  Hmm.  There is a problem with resolutions.  If you are resolving to act or behave in a particular way, then it indicates there will be a conflict.  If there is a need to resolve, then there must be something to resolve against.  If you are feeling the need for a fresh start, feeling the need to make a resolution to either do or not do something from this moment forth, then there must be something inside you which has caused you to act or behave in the opposite way up until this point.  So, you have a battle on your hands.  You have a conflict.

The scientist Emil Coué referred to the Law of Reverse Effect.  In other words, we do things in such a way that they bring the opposite result of the one intended.  We collide with the very thing from which we are trying to save ourselves, because our consciousness becomes focused only on this.  Driving a car, there will be one small obstacle in the road, we have plenty of space to pass, no problem whatsoever, but we become focused on this obstacle, determined to avoid it, so what happens? We hit it.  We diet.  We resolve to eat no more cake.  What do we begin to crave in a way we never did before? I ask you absolutely not to think about (the classic) a pink elephant...please, absolutely, on no count whatsoever think about a pink elephant...

Beware of anyone who has to swear or utter an oath against anything.  There must be something more profound inside them against which they are having to swear.  An oath or resolution is a surface, conscious mind, thing.  The thing against which it is being made is inside, in the labyrinthine powerful sub-conscious.  What happens when we restrain or suppress a thing? The moment the (exhausting) control is relaxed, the thing surges up.  Remove a dam, the river gushes forth, as it always was.  The dam does nothing to the river.