I guess my question is this: how do we overcome the past year, especially when it was so tough, and move on to the next one with hope and faith?

We work for that which no work is required.

sadly editing is no longer allowed

Believe yourself to be Purpose and everything you engage with will be a experience of being alive.
Life in this moment is as it should be. Seeking purpose outside oneself is like trying to grasp air with your hands.
You are where you should be in order to take the next step.

Everything experienced needed to be experienced so never wasted time.

“You can’t test your courage timidly. You have to run through the fire, arms waving, legs pumping and heart beating, wildly with the effort of reclaiming something vital, lost, laid aside or just plain forgotten. When you do that, you discover that we shine most brightly in community, the whole bedraggled, worn, frayed and tattered lot of us, bound together forever by a shared courage, a family forged in the heat of earnest struggle.” – Richard Wagamese

would not let me edit the bad

What is the point of prayer and meditation?
Old woman: To bring you closer to the Great Mystery.
So I can understand it?
Old: woman: No. So you can participate in it.
Richard Wagamese

Feels like Time is passing too fast

“Time is what prevents everything from happening at once.” – Einstein
“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.” – Einstein

This is only aside and likely not helpful. Our experience of time colors our world but what is it.
We tend to experience time objectively – ego consciousness, linear – a something that prevents everything from happening at once.

Subjectively,  the past, present and future can happen all at once. Experience filtered through our past,  what we think we know, and our hopes/fear for the future. We measure and compare the present moment based on the past and hopes/fears of what might happen next.

To say then that Time is passing to fast begs the question, where are you? Time cannot be separated from space. Are you accurately measuring your objective experience of time or are you measuring time as feeling and or expectation.
Its good to have goals and to work towards them which may include a time line. But if your going to measure out a time line its best to be be clear about them. To take ownership of it or you will easily slide into the subjective experience of time, a feeling, of shoulds, if only , what if’s, that we usually don’t take the time to answer. A exercise that serves no purpose other then making us feel as if we are failing.

Question Are we born with a Purpose or do we create our own?

My 2 cents for what its worth. Yes but its not what you might think.
Born you are the answer to the question, you are purpose, every breathe you take, every move you make, purpose.

As Campbell noted Life does not give you meaning or purpose you give meaning to Life

Dear Berta

Which practices you engaged with?

Before one practices, mountains are mountains and waters are waters; after a first glimpse into the truth, mountains are no longer mountains and waters are no longer waters; after enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains and waters once again waters.

We are not meant to live on top of mountains. Thus all spiritual experience and practice must incorporate the return. The return to Life as it is. In my opinion that is something most traditions don’t do well. My Experience with Buddhism is that the challenge of the return involves the practice of detachment. Healthy detachment, healthy boundaries where one accepts things as they all while remaining fully engaged in life .

From your post it sounds like you have fallen into the trap of Indifference.  Its a fine line between detachment and Indifference. One of my observations with the Buddhist practice is it often involves a loss of energy to engage. The unskillful detachment from ego, goals, relationships, identity, hope… leading to indifference. If I am not my ego, my experiences, my emotions, my memory why engage, what’s the point = loss of energy.

Sitting by a calm lake in meditation and or contemplation nothing touches us and we think what bliss. Then life interrupts, we need to eat, relive ourselves, work, the stuff of life, everything touches us. The goal of the practice is to take the experience of the lake with us as we engage fully in the stuff.

We return from the mountain/lake and see for the first time. Nothing has changed, everything has changed.

 I have smacked myself many times but I only get dizzy.

🙂 that sounds like Zen to me. Begs the question what is enlightenment and how we would notice when a moment of enlightenment was achieved?

My observation is that its kind of like happiness the moment one thinks… ah their it is I have it… it disappears.  Enlightenment like trying to grasp and hold on to air with ones hands. The problematic word in that sentence being ‘grasp’ as it tends to be attached to the word ‘I’. In Zen thier is no I so no-thing to do the grasping.

When I picture the stone being thrown at the student (or slap) in that moment thier is the stone and body labeled student. The body spontaneously ducks. No thoughts like… Why did master throw the stone, The stone is a illusion, the body is a illusion, what does this mean, why, why me, not fair, vengeance, anger, fear… If such thoughts did arise the student is going to get hit and its going to hurt.

The body/mind/spirit, labeled student, “knows” this and engaging fully in the moment as it is  moves. The rock flies past. A moment of enlightenment. A moment not measurement in time or space and so infinite -“Some infinities are bigger than other infinities” 🙂 (The Body and rock are not illusions the  ‘student’ is)

In Zen a act of Free Will is the act of letting Will go, (In my opinion the only act of free will possible) , Doing by not doing. A state of being where one is fully Engaged in Life as it is and at the same moment fully Detached.  I’m reminded of those infomercials selling the some slow cooker or something. ‘Set it and Forget it.

My experience of Zen is that it seems to be a practice intended to ‘break’ the mind. Break the habitual thinking, thoughts, memory’s that we believe/feel is a I. One returns from where one started and ‘sees’ it for the first time (the mountain becomes a mountain)  We work for that which no work is required (doing by not doing) “You” are/were always buddha

Thanks for humoring me letting me play 🙂