New year a time to begin a fresh start

McClatchy Newspapers

RALEIGH, N.C. — The human need to start anew was no more evident than at Raleigh’s Kadampa Center for the Practice of Tibetan Buddhism, where hundreds of people stood under umbrellas in the steady rain on New Year’s Eve and tossed sesame seeds into a roaring fire.

Burning the seeds, symbolizing negative karma, was intended to cast off harmful actions that participants might have indulged in during 2009 and, at the same time, to purify themselves for the new year.

Geshe Gelek Chodha, the spiritual teacher at the Kadampa Center, told of how people in his native Tibet start the new year by taking showers and wearing new clothes.

“We all like the idea of becoming clean,” he said. “We want to begin the new year with a clean mind and a clean heart.”

Like Buddhists, Christians and people of other faiths use the new year as a wake-up call, a time to look inward and accept responsibility for the state of their souls. Accompanying these reflections is a host of new routines they hope might help them reach the next level of consciousness or faith.

Debbie Davis, a business development manager for Kraft Foods in Charlotte, N.C., is starting a monthly lunchtime Bible study with a friend who also works in a large, corporate environment.

“We have busy lives,” said Davis, a member of Charlotte’s Holy Covenant United Church of Christ. “We need to be intentional in carving out time for developing our spirituality and our best selves, so we can share our faith with others more fully.”

Bill Rote, a service adviser at a Durham, N.C., car dealership, took a series of classes on mindfulness meditation in 2009, a practice he discovered at a Unity Church near his Raleigh, N.C., home.

He said the practice helped him cope with stress and to give up his tendency to control things.

This year, he wants to start practicing meditation outside the context of the classroom with other people committed to the technique.

“I miss meeting with a group of people on a regular basis,” said Rote, who has enrolled in a Zen meditation group through the Web site, www.meetup.com.

Rob Morrell, a Raleigh physician consultant, spent New Year’s weekend at InterPlay, a retreat in Greensboro, N.C., designed to help people discover ways to express themselves through movement, storytelling and song.

“We tend to filter everything through our cerebral faculties,” Morrell said. “But there’s wisdom carried in our bodies.”

Morrell plans to follow up on what he learned with another InterPlay workshop later this month.

Spiritual director John Hilpert of Cedar Cross Retreat Center in Louisburg, N.C., has one bit of advice to people seeking a new spiritual practice: “One size does not fit all.”

“There are different stages of life,” said Hilpert, who has been helping people reconnect with God for 20 years.

Working with the poor or fighting for social change may be the right spiritual stage for some. Centering prayer or painting landscapes may be a spiritual stage for others.

Hilpert also helps with career guidance. He’s a fan of a Quaker tradition called a “clearness committee,” in which two or three people gather to help a person discern through deep listening and conversation the direction a person’s career should take.

As with all spiritual quests, patience is key, said Raleigh meditation teacher Andrew Weiss.

Weiss said it takes at least two months to establish a new habit, such as mindfulness meditation, which is why he often teaches eight-week classes.

“Be kind and forgiving of yourself,” said Weiss, who has written a book called “Beginning Mindfulness: Learning the Way of Awareness.” “Any message you give yourself that says ’I’m not good enough’ — there’s no God in that.”

Sharing frustrations with someone on a similar journey is often useful.

The Rev. Nancy Ellett Allison of Charlotte’s Holy Covenant United Church of Christ said she recommends that people making a new faith commitment partner up or at least engage in frequent phone conversations.

“Accountability is important,” Allison said. “Find someone who will listen well to you.”

But probably the best advice Allison gives is for people to know their own needs. Sometimes, caring for oneself means taking time off.

Allison recently counseled an ambitious, professional couple whose child was having psychiatric problems.

“One of the things I said to them,” Allison said, was, “’You need to give your brain a rest.”’