Given 12/31/06
by Robin Mitchell

I'm going to ask you to trust me here for a few minutes - first, to take you through a brief guided meditation, and second that this will eventually get around to time. So please, if you're comfortable doing so, find an alert but not effortful posture, close your eyes if it helps, and take a few seconds to just become aware of your breathing, of the physical sensations as you breathe in and out.

. . .

Now imagine that each breath you take is your very first - you've been a marble statue all these years, but suddenly you have the miracle of breathing. Explore each breath with the intense curiosity of a newborn being; feel its wonder, its immediacy, its absolute freshness.

. . .

Now stay with your breath but imagine that each breath you take is your last, not with a sense of fear or loss, but with a sense of anticipation and trust in what comes beyond. Feel yourself releasing, letting go of your attachments, good and bad, and opening into a future whose shape you don't know but whose promise you trust.

. . .

And now combine both, breathing in for the first time and breathing out for the last, being born, letting go, and being born anew.

. . .

 I think that what you're visualizing now is very close to the truth. Some Buddhists say that reincarnation is a constant process, that we're born anew each moment. The person you are taking this breath is not the person who took your last breath - tens of thousands of cells have died and been replaced in your body; billions of neurons have fired and subtly changed their patterns. There is no constant "self" to experience the passing of time; everything you are is fully alive right now, in this moment, and only in this moment. This moment contains the seeds of all of your possible futures that could ever be, and with each breath you choose to water some and wither others. Choose well! And so instead of wishing you a happy new year I will wish you all a vibrant, joyful, and mindful right now.