So much has happened to us in one year! Can we say we've assimilated it? Hazrat Inayat Khan said, "To assimilate is the most difficult thing there is." What is the sign we've assimilated the lessons of the past year? That it's become so much a part of you that you can't think of it.

Sometimes a person says they've forgotten something, but it's just under the surface, and it reappears in meditation or when touched by some event. To really forget something is very difficult.

Do you have a strong digestion system? Can you take any food and turn it into nutrients? Very few people can. A lot of what we eat gets passed through without complete digestion, or sticks in our skin, fat, blood and organs in unhealthy ways.

Similarly, what we experience in life we take into our heart, and this has to be absorbed and digested into life's wisdom. This process is called "assimilation", and it is generally as inefficient as our physical digestion.

The importance of assimilation is two-fold: First, it is necessary to keep the psyche healthy. If we do not assimilate something, we hold it as a regret, a resentment, or a confusion. "How could that person have done that?" "I cannot tolerate what has occurred." "I wish I had never done that." But when we have assimilated something we have truly learned it; it has become a part of us.

Second, assimilation is the process by which the whole universe learns through the experience of each of us. The One Being assimilates what we have each assimilated, and in this way humanity progresses.

Assimilation is done by breath. Therefor, we offer you this meditation on the depth of the heart, a region that performs emotional digestion, very close to the stomach that performs physical digestion.

Heart Rhythm Meditation for the New Year

Step One:
You want to put 2006 behind you?
You can't just blow it away; it's working on you.
Draw your breath into your Solar Plexus,
the sensitive spot just below your rib cage.
Hold your breath here in the depth of your heart
and digest all the emotions you feel.
Breathe out and send the incense of your experience
to infuse into your cells,
propagated by your heartbeat.

Step Two:
There were many lessons in the past year -
valuable lessons not to be forgotten.
The All needs all of your experience,
to disseminate it throughout the One Being.
So let your breath carry your life-learning
as it is drawn out of you.
Breath carries the combined new wisdom of all life
as it is blown into you.
Your heartbeat is gently tuned
by the world-wide rhythm of life.

Step Three:
Now be active, not passive.
Be the One that breathes the universe.
Breathe in as the All-Pervading Being.
Assimilate into your heart all that has been
experienced by any being in the past year.
Breathe out to fill the hearts of all
with an update in wisdom and love.
Your heart beats in all hearts, by reflection.