Beginner's Mind and the Spiral Nature of Spiritual Growth

January is a time when we let got the old and welcome in the new; a wonderful time to practice what Zen Master Shunryu Suzuki calls Zen Mind, Beginners Mind. He recommends a daily practice of releasing our minds to the winds, cleaning the slate, a mental state he calls "not-knowing". This puts us into clarity no matter what comes up (on a good day, that is). And what comes up, we recognize, is often something, pleasant or not, that we have dealt with before, because all our issues seem to recur in cyclic fashion as we grow older, and thankfully a bit wiser. Our growth happens in a spiral fashion--we don't just leave behind the issues that we have worked on before, as they keep coming back for more refined processing. And that processing is most efficiently done by addressing the matter with "beginner's mind". We have some practical suggestions for help in doing this. Please join us as we start our path anew in 2014.