According to the ancient Chinese wisdom teachings, the highest goal for humanity is harmony.
Harmony between all humans, and harmony between humans and nature. We are still far from it. Why? Where does harmony start? And how can we help create harmony?
Harmony starts with ourselves. Harmony within yourself is incredibly important. How can you feel joy, peace, contentment, or happiness, if you are not in harmony with yourself? If you are instead fighting with yourself? If you think negative about yourself?
How can you be in harmony with others and with nature, if you are not in harmony with yourself?
Do a review to see where you have made progress and how you want to move forward.
As we have come to a new year, a good thing to do is a review. Looking back on your year, to see what went well and what can be improved.
In Ren Xue the suggestion is to look at the following areas: health, happiness, sense of wellbeing, growth, and contribution. You can look at harmony as well, harmony in the relationships with yourself, others and the environment.
If you want to know if what you have done has been successful, then look at these areas.
We often look at external achievements instead, and these can be important. But they are only there to help improve these far more important goals of life.
When looking at health, look at the health of your overall life.
This includes your body, your Qi, your consciousness, and your heart. It is important to not only look at the health of your body. You are so much more than your body. One way of looking at health is to see if you have been able to be more relaxed, calm, and natural. The more relaxed, calm, and natural you are, the better your Qi flows, the more your physical and mental health benefit.
When looking at your heart, look at the heart qualities. Have you been able to grow trust? Acceptance and openness? Love, gratitude, and respect?
The second area to look at is happiness.
Has your happiness improved this last year? Happiness is a natural quality of your heart. It is present inside your heart, whether you are aware of it or not. But it is common for it to be buried so deep that it is not our usual experience. It is the patterns of our consciousness that obstruct happiness to surface.
Have you been able this year to uncover the layers that hide it a bit? Have you had moments or glimpses of true happiness? Have these moments become more frequent?
The third area is a good sense of wellbeing.
Have you had a good sense of wellbeing this last year? Has it been better than the previous year?
Just look at it and see what has been in the way in the moments that you didn’t experience a high sense of wellbeing. See how you can improve it.
Have you been growing this year? Have you felt more peaceful, calm, and relaxed? Even a little bit is progress.
Maybe you have felt that, when you do Yuan Gong practice, unifying the body, Qi and consciousness and at the same time unifying with the universe, causes a truly beautiful feeling. There can be moments during practice that it is so pleasant to be in the body and to feel the good feelings in our hearts. There is a calmness, the body and mind are relaxed, we feel so natural.
It is a wonderful feeling.
This state is not dependent on external circumstances. We can choose to bring ourselves back into that state all the time to experience that in every moment.
The moment you loose that wonderful state, an unhealthy pattern has kicked in.
Have you been able this last year to be more in this unified state? Have you felt the benefits of it on your health, your happiness, your wellbeing?
Have you been able to see that it is patterns that disrupt this state? Have you been able to change maybe one or two of these patterns?
Growth is mainly about the fixed patterns that our consciousness operates by and that run our lives. When doing review have a good look at your patterns. Have you transformed some unhealthy habits and patterns? Are there still habits and patterns you want to make more progress with? Which ones of your patterns are causing you most grief? Would you like to understand them better so that you can replace them?
The fifth area is contribution.
Here you can look at how you have been helping others. And how you would like to help others in the coming year. Contribution includes working on yourself. When your trust grows, it helps many people around you. Your growth has a positive ripple effect on others and the environment.
To understand this, you can think of how you feel when someone in your environment is the opposite of calm and relaxed. That not great state of others does influence us. It is so nice when others feel well. It helps us to feel good too.
When doing review, it is important to note that there is no good or bad, wrong or right. You are not judging yourself!
You are just making up the balance, so you can move forward in a positive direction! You ask yourself, where have I made progress and how can I keep making progress?
Hence, you don’t judge, blame or guilt-trip over anything. Instead, you look at it from a loving place in your heart, to help yourself move forward.
If you haven’t done your review yet, I wish you joy in doing so!
My very best wishes for this year to you!
With love,
Aiyanna Sophie