My dear and beloved students, once again I draw near to Earth so that I may greet you at the beginning of a fresh year. As you welcome 2018, set an intention that peace and equanimity will be realized on Earth. May this year be a year of gaining inner peace and strengthening your basic goodness and compassion. Mindfully plant the precious seeds for the spiritual experiences and evolutionary outcomes you seek to realize this year. Call yourself to your very highest level of functioning, and raise the bar for what you determine to accomplish in 2018. In all things, consciously align with your inner Buddha nature.
If you are paying attention to the transformation playing out in the world, you have likely noticed that this is a particularly noisy time on Earth. Some of the loudest elements competing for your precious attention are likely coming from voices promulgating chaos and confusion or from forces that seek to exploit by propagating fear or inciting violence and anger. Unfortunately, such experiences tend to stimulate feelings of mistrust, insecurity, and even anger, as well as an overall malaise or discontentment. My question to each of you this month is this: Without denying such feelings, can you rise above them? While the world might be undergoing crisis after crisis in this planetary transition, can you be grounded in an abiding sense of inner peace?
Life on Earth has been exceedingly intense the past few years, a trend that is likely to continue throughout most of 2018. Given this scenario, it is probably no surprise that collective and individual stress levels now appear to have hit the top of the psychological Richter scale, and the net result is that the quality of life so many people experience seems to be steadily decreasing. Anxiety and depression rates have been trending up for several years, and more young people than ever before in this global family lack hope for their future and the future of the planet. Recent natural disasters around the world, resulting in vivid images of suffering, have left indelible marks in the minds of both young and old. What’s more, recurring human catastrophes such as bombings, hostage takings, gun rampages, and threats of nuclear war have fostered a steady decline on the baseline for the collective security level.