A Spiritual Short-Cut to Emotional Tranquility, Less Stress and More Happiness

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Please note: the following post contains a spiritual practice that you should only attempt if you are relatively stable emotionally, self-aware and not under psychiatric care.

Also, remember to join us for tonight's Spiritual Life 1: Foundations teleseminar / webinar at: http://InstantTeleseminar.com/?eventID=21310599

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As you already know, we'll be examining the meaning of that nebulous phrase, "spiritual life", in my upcoming teleseminar series on the subject.  Whatever it means to you personally, though, there's little doubt you're interested improving your emotional life and increasing your subjective feeling of well-being.  

And that's a key point because it shows us that whatever spiritual life may mean to each of us, one common denominator is that it is somehow intimately related to our emotional being and, through that, to our very core as human beings.  

So what can you do TODAY to calm your mind, settle your emotions, shed your stress and remain increasingly tranquil no matter what's going on around you?  Well, there is one simple practice you could adopt that will do all this for you.  In its best articulated form, it's a Tibetan Buddhist practice, although elements of the ancient Christian mystical tradition and later Taoism both have equivalents.  Please note that you don't have to be a Buddhist to practice this - the results speak for themselves.

The Practice

Choose a day to start your practice.  It should be an ordinary weekday with nothing too unusual happening.  Here's what you'll do:

1. When you wake up, sit up for a few minutes in a meditative posture and focus on your breathing to calm your mind.
   
   
2. Once your mind is as calm as it will get, say to yourself, "Everything I encounter today is simply a projection of my mind.  Pleasant or unpleasant, everything I experience is no more real or substantial than a dream.  If someone acts in a way that is hurtful to me, I can simply remember this is just a projection of my mind so that a negative emotional reaction on my part would make no sense.  If something wonderful happens, I can simply remember that pleasant and unpleasant occurrences are always alternating, so there's no point in getting too excited."
   
   
3. As you take your shower, just say to yourself, "Here I am, washing this dream body with this dream soap."  And when you're getting your breakfast, realize you're pouring dream coffee into a dream mug.
   
   
4. As you go through your day, remind yourself continually that what you experience is a product of your mind.  And remind yourself that the more positive your emotional state now, and the more positively you can affect the state of other people, the more you are planting the seeds of positive experiences for yourself in the future.
   
   

This Spiritual Practice Has Several Advantages...

1. It reminds us that nothing we see or experience in our world exists in the same way that our senses suggest to us.  For example, all "material reality" is largely empty space and fields of energy.  There is no solid "matter" at all.  As Einstein once said, "Reality is an illusion... albeit a very convincing one."
   
   
2. It quickly severs the link between what happens to us and our habitual emotional responses, thus building our inner freedom.
   
   
3. It allows us to maintain a much calmer emotional life while at the same time building positive emotional content throughout the day.
    
   
4. In other words, events will no longer control how we feel.
   
   
5. We naturally find ourselves in the "place of the observer" - one of the principal goals of meditation and of deep prayer.
   
   
6. We find ourselves happier, with less stress and a lot more joy, all for very little effort.

Is there a catch?  Just one: this is a discipline and a practice - it doesn't work unless you do it.  One hint for you before you start - take it easy and begin with few expectations.  It's pretty common near the beginning to feel a sense of "Wow! This is SO cool!!" and then, a day or two later, to feel, "Damn, this is harder than I thought!"  

No worries, though.  That's all totally natural.  Just give it a try and feel free to share what you discover by commenting on this post or dropping us a line.  Enjoy!!

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger :-)

OMG - a Spiritual Practice that Actually Works!

Early this month I spent a week or so in the Toronto area to attend a conference, as well as to see some friends and relatives. 

So it meant train rides, rental cars, hotel room, racing to get to the conference sessions on time, meeting a ton of new people and trying desperately not to be late getting to my friends 'n relations.  Lots of fun, to be sure, but also really hectic and full of unforeseen challenges. 

And when you have that combination of a hectic schedule, constant changes of plan, events you don't control, new people, great people, and difficult people, it can take you on quite an emotional roller coaster ride.  And, indeed, I was aboard that one, and not always to my liking!

At one point I just felt like yelling, "STOP the world and let me off!"


A Common Delusion...

We often think that if this would just stop, if my boss were different, if my spouse weren't so self-absorbed, if this person just liked me, if...if...if... then my life would be peaceful and joyful. 

Fortunately, ancient traditions know better.  In both Tibetan Buddhism and Orthodox Christianity, they tell us that our real problem is never "out there".  Rather, it's our tendency to view reality from the ego's perspective.  And the ego always divides reality into 3 categories - I love it, I hate it, or I just don't care.  These can be thought of as attachment, aversion and indifference. 

Think of anyone you know and your thoughts will tell you immediately which bucket they're in today!

Buddhism refers to these 3 attitudes as "poisons", and it's easy to see why - they cause you constant suffering and keep you chained to your tiny egocentric self.  We instinctively know this and that's why we tend to react to the strong emotions the 3 poisons bring in one of two ways:

- we repress the emotion, or
- we act out the emotion

...and neither works at all.  They just continue our slavery.  The poison just gets worse.  And we think, "if only the poison didn't exist, all would be well."  So we resist, we try to control our world, we repress some thoughts and accept others, all without understanding what's really happening, and so we suffer more.

But what if....  what if there was a way to transform this very poison into healing medicine?


A Spiritual Path that Actually Works!

Once we realize the poisons are within us, we can take ownership and even relax a bit! 

Now, when we feel strong attachment emotions for someone or something we see as desirable or strong aversion emotions, or complete indifference, we can simply say to ourselves, "Oh, here comes that heavy emotional stuff again... ho hum."  We can relax and watch the movie without feeling the need to repress the thoughts and feelings or to let them take over.

Suddenly we feel this huge spaciousness all around us.  Everything's calm, even though the situation hasn't changed.  The boss can still be a jerk and my neighbor can still be drop-dead gorgeous, and the emotional reactions associated with these still come over me, but there's a huge difference.

For the first time, I've truly surrendered.  I'm willing to just be with the emotional energy.  I'm willing to accept what seems unpleasant, as well as what feels pleasant, and watch it all.  So, for the first time in my life, I've gone beyond my old default setting of running toward what I thought was pleasure and running away from what I thought was pain. 

Now, at last, I'm breaking free.  I can simply BE. 

And what used to strike me as uncomfortable, as messy, as pleasant or painful, I now relate to as the richness of life, as the raw material for my emotional growth and spiritual development.  In a metaphorical sense, I've learned you really can transform lead into gold. 

And from now on I know that there's nothing I can't handle, because I no longer need to "handle" or control anything. 

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger :-)

How to "Live Each Day as Your Last"

You'll remember from last time that we said the biggest advantages to living each day as your last are:

1. If you live each day as your last, you'll never succumb to petty emotional reactions


2. You'll do nothing carelessly ever again - your actions will be increasingly filled with power


3. And because you're increasingly conscious of the eternal consequences of your choices, you'll stop wasting this precious life and start making spiritual progress



You may have noticed there's a big difference between "remembering your death" and "living each day as if it were your last".  It's easy to remember intellectually that your time in this world is limited.  Everyone of us 6+ billion people is aware of that fact.  But that's a far cry from the power that comes from living each day as your last.

To harvest the benefits of "living each day as your last", you have to commit to training yourself to do just that.  There are no short-cuts here.  This means focusing all your efforts on living deliberately, on disengaging the autopilot of habit and taking full responsibility for even the smallest decision you make. 

Spiritual traditions, like Orthodox Christianity or Tibetan Buddhism teach this principle so that people will avoid self-destructive actions and use their limited time for spiritual advancement.  Martial traditions, like the Samurai, promoted it because this practice gives you greatly heightened situational awareness, and in the Samurai's world, situational awareness was just about the only thing standing between you and your last day. 

The bottom line, though, is this practice is central to developing your resilience.  Back in 1982, a certain British soldier on the remote Falkland Islands watched in horror as a massive  Argentinian force invaded.  As he tells the story, his initial reaction was sheer terror.  Then, for some reason, he experienced a sudden inner shift.  He accepted the fact he was about to die, and from that moment on he was able to take positive action.  Of course, he ended up surviving the war, but having learned a priceless lesson that no classroon could ever teach.

Some lessons in life can't be taught; they can only be learned.  And living each day as your last is just such a lesson.  For more information, go have a look at pages 247-8 of The 5 Pillars of Life.  Great info?  Yes.  However it's nothing more than an interesting read unless you put it into practice. 

So go try it out and have some fun.  Fun??  Yes, fun!  Make a game out of it.  The same way you change your physical diet to see if your stomach feels better, you can change your mental diet to see how adopting a different focus, like "living each day as your last", makes you feel.  At first it'll be hard to stay focused, of course, so don't beat yourself up.  Just have fun with it and see what happens. 

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger