2012 was a big year for me. I thought I’d get personal & vulnerable for a quick second and share a short list of some things I learned in 2012. 

1. You can love two people (or more) at the same time.
2. Giving is more important than receiving. Having a ‘service’ mentality is more effective than a ‘sales’ mentality.
3. Getting your own needs met is not the most important thing. Treating others well is the most important thing.
4. Loss is inevitable in love.
5. Everything in this world is transient, everything is coming and going. You can meet that with fear (“here comes something” and “there goes something”) or joy (“here comes something!” and “there goes something!”). It’s your choice, and your choice determines your experience.
6. The future doesn’t exist. The past doesn’t exist. Now is all that exists. What time is it? Now. Everything is always happening, right now.
7. We’re all walking a Critical Path at all times; most of us just don’t realize it.
8. The integrity of the individual on their Critical Path is all that counts.
9. The important work you have to do is: Magnify Love into Every Moment and Give Your Gift in Total Integrity. That’s it. No matter what you’re doing, you must do it in the spirit of these two things, no matter how mundane or grand it seems to you or anyone else.
10. You always have a choice; even when it seems like you don’t.
11. As you get involved in the world, remember to play your Role from as Big and as Light a place as possible.
12. Between two people in this world, there is only Light.
13. Giving is giving away what you have to others. Giving brings wealth.
14. Ethics is doing good to others. Ethics brings a good world.
15. Effort is joy that increases all good. Eminence comes from effort.
16. Patience is giving up feelings of anger. Patience brings beauty. Avoid drinking from the cup of acid that is anger.
17. Concentration’s one-pointedness, free of bad thoughts. It brings peace.
18. Compassion is a high kind of intelligence, mixed with love for all beings. Compassion achieves everything we all wish for.
19. The World will throw at you much Drama and Suffering and Excitement and Danger and Change. The practice is to remain completely Present and centered in the face of all this distraction. When you achieve this, you are the candle flame that does not waver, the unbroken mirror, the eternal stillness. That is the Home to which you always return.
20. Death is present in every moment. You are always dying and always being reborn. This moment is always ending. Existence is always slipping away, and always surging back. To Live this without fear is to be Trustable in the very Highest kind of Freedom.
21. Don’t take reality too seriously.

(Astute readers will have noticed that items 15 – 18 are actually cribbed from Nagarjuna, The String of Precious Jewels, which is a Buddhist wisdom text from Tibet, written 18 centuries ago.)

That’s my list. What’s yours?

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