Now is a good time to check back in with our January resolutions and/or intentions for the year, and a time to reflect on renewing our commitments to ourselves and each other.

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Please enjoy the following excerpt on Metacommitment from Sally Kempton, author of The Heart of Meditation.

Practice suggestion:

At the end of the excerpt are a list of questions that may be helpful in your meditation practice. “What is a Metacommitment? A metacommitment is a vow you make with your own soul, with that part of your being that underlies your personality. In yoga the soul is called the jivatman—the spark of consciousness. If a commitment is a truly soulful compact, you’ll find that it can withstand any amount of chaos and remain in place even when your external commitments are dissolving around you. The following are some examples of metacommitments: * To love in all circumstances * To be of service * To make your first priority your ongoing transformation and growth * To make community * To be compassionate * To help make the world better * To ensure justice You’ll see immediately that metacommitments are related to values, principles, and intentions. Like an intention, a metacommitment needs at some point to be stated formally. But a commitment goes a step beyond an intention, because it is akin to a personal vow. A metacommitment stands regardless of how the people and situations in your life come and go, because it is the key to your personal integrity. Knowing and keeping your metacommitments is what makes you trustworthy to yourself and others. Your relationships, job description, and day-to-day commitments may change. But metacommitments don’t change, though their expression in your life may morph. And in the end, your metacommitments define you. Here, it’s important to understand that a metacommitment isn’t the same thing as an unconscious drive. Our unconscious drives come from personal wounds or weaknesses, from “programs” or limiting patterns lodged in our subtle body. Our metacommitments, on the other hand, are expressions of our highest aspirations, our deepest sense of soul. They come from what is sometimes called the “authentic Self.” The authentic Self includes the ego but also holds the capacity to witness and transcend the ego. When you’re in your authentic Self, you can recognize, honor, and work with your unique temperament, your skills, gifts, and wounds. You have the clarity to recognize and act from your highest values—yet without denying the tendencies and preferences that help create your particular perspective, your unique way of being in the world. To determine your real values, ask yourself these questions:     * What do I tend to be doing at the times when I feel happiest? * Which of my gifts mean the most to me? Which feel most like “me”? * What do I love about myself? * What do others love about me? * What am I good at? * What really matters to me enough that I am willing to sacrifice for it? Friendship? Creative work? Inner peace? Kindness? Creating positive change? Helping people? Getting to the truth? * Finally, ask yourself, “What threads of metacommitment can I see running through my life? How have they served me? How have they changed?” * Given all this, what are three metacommitments that I can make right now—commitments that I can keep regardless of where I am or who I’m with? Which of these is likely to deepen my relationship to life? As you take yourself through this process, you’ll find out a lot about yourself, about who you are and what you value. Above all, you’ll start to see what it means for you to live deeply, authentically. Making commitments and keeping them is critical to our self-respect, our ability to rely on our own steadfastness. Yet because your commitments do indeed define your life, you want to be sure that you’re making them from the deepest place you can find in yourself. Those are the commitments you can hang on to. Those are the ones you’ll keep.” –       Sally Kempton