Springtime and the new year are the traditional times each year to let go of old, unwanted habits and to embrace new and positive changes in our lives. At least that’s the basic idea. But many of us have had the experience of resolving to change our habitual patterns, only to fall back on them once again. What are we missing in the ritual of making our new resolutions? Or in trying to break away from unwanted tendencies at any time? 

In the following essay, Spiritual Master Adi Da Samraj reveals the secret (or higher psycho-physical mechanics) of how real change actually happens. His words are wise and eminently practical. He speaks with a certainty and compassion born of his great love for humanity and his blessings for our enduring happiness, not only in this life and world, but always hereafter. 

True change and higher human adaptation are not made on the basis of any self-conscious resistance to old, degenerative, and subhuman habits. Change is not a matter of not doing something. It is a matter of doing something else, something that is inherently right, free, and pleasurable. Therefore, the key is insight and the freedom to feel and participate in ways of functioning that are right and new.

The tendencies and patterns of our earlier adaptations are not wrong. They were appropriate enough in their own moment of creation, and there is no need to feel guilt or despair about them. Likewise, efforts to oppose and change them are basically fruitless. Such efforts are forms of conflict, and they only reinforce the modes of self-possession.

What is not used becomes obsolete, whereas what is opposed is kept before us. Therefore, the creative principle of change is the one of relaxed inspection and awareness of existing tendencies and persistent, full feeling orientation to right, new, regenerative functional patterns. If this is done consistently and in ecstatic resort to the Living Divine, free growth is assured. 

Have no regrets. Resort to the Divine in Truth and in the present. All that has been done by anyone had its logic in its time. Only God avails. Whatever is your habit in this moment is not wrong. It is simply a beginning. No habit is necessary, but it is only tending to persist, because it has not yet been replaced by further growth. Here the Teaching of Truth, and understand what is the right, ultimate, and regenerative pattern of each function of Humankind. Feel free of all negative judgments about what you have done and what you tend to do. Turn with full feeling-attention to the creative affair of new adaptation in most positive Communion with the God who is Life, and who is Alive as all beings. 

(from Love of the Two-Armed Form. Copyright © 1978 Vision Mound Ceremony and the Dawn Horse Press. All rights reserved.)  Please see our event listings in this months issue.