“Some of us think holding on makes us strong, but sometimes it is letting go.” ~ Herman Hesse
Traumatic events leave an indelible mark in a person’s life, and if it involves the death of a loved one, it always changes something within you. When I was 17 my father passed away, and 18 years down the line my mother is still struggling to fill up the emptiness in her life.
A major reason for this state of mind is when a person holds on to past negative emotions, feelings, thoughts and doesn’t let go.
I often tell her to let go of all that doesn’t serve her but words aren’t enough when it comes to describing the whole situation. She’s a tough person to deal with due to her ideologies and limiting beliefs that stops her from enjoying the present and instead of dealing with her emotions, religion is what she resorts to as a temporary escape.
When you think about it, don’t we all struggle to let go, whether its related to a person, situation you are in or injustice, emotional abuse, etc.
Like the tight grip of an infant when it finds an object in its palm, we hold on to emotions and feelings without realising the debilitating effect it can have on us. Hence letting go becomes such an important and essential thing, if we don’t, we never will be able to elevate our minds and raise our consciousness.
Its far easier to talk about different spiritual experiences, or read about spirituality and self development, but it all becomes useless until its put in to practice.
Letting go is a cathartic and liberating act. If you are bottling up anything that is a hindrance from achieving your true potential or higher self, then here are 8 ways to let go –
1) Change your perception about a situation through cognitive reframing
“Sometimes letting go is simply changing the labels you place on an event. Looking at the same event with fresh eyes.” ~ Steve Maraboli
What if you can change your past? Yes, you read it right, cognitive reframing is a psychological technique that helps identify and confront negative or irrational thoughts and view it from a different and positive perspective. It will take a lot of practice to retrain your mind, but if you keep trying you will begin to view things differently.
2) Let the tears flow
“Suffering is not holding you. You are holding suffering. When you become good at the art of letting sufferings go, then you’ll come to realize how unnecessary it was for you to drag those burdens around with you. You’ll see that no one else other than you was responsible. The truth is that existence wants your life to become a festival.” ~ Osho
Crying is not a sign of weakness but of courage. Dr. William Frey II, PH.D., biochemist at the Ramsey Medical Center in Minneapolis, found that emotional tears contain stress hormones which get excreted from the body through crying. When you cry, the tears shed these hormones and other toxins which accumulate during stress.
Additional studies also suggest that crying stimulates the production of endorphins, our body’s natural pain killer and “feel-good” hormones.” Don’t repress your feelings, cry it out.
3) Writing to Heal
Pour your heart out in a personal journal or a public blog. Writing about traumatic, stressful or emotional events has been found to result in improvements in both physical and psychological health.
I use to write in my journal quite frequently about my innermost thoughts, fears and absolutely everything I perceived as unpleasant, during my early 20s. This process turned into a cathartic release that helped in healing.
So allow yourself to feel. Write about what hurts you, what you have lost, or what you are afraid of. Let it go.
Disconnect to reconnect with yourself. Disconnect from everything, your mundane activities, your phone, social media, work, play etc., everything that you use as a tool to distract your mind from facing your thoughts. Generally time spent in solitude or in nature brings more clarity in thinking.
We know the effect of nature on the human mind. Nature is a wonderful teacher that shows us the link between letting go and growth. Just like a rose bush requires pruning to make it strong and facilitate new growth, similarly, we have to let go of the painful memories to be transformed.
5) Use Positive self-affirmations
Words and thoughts have the power to change our reality. The words we use shape not only our belief systems, values and feelings but impact our physical bodies on a cellular level; shaping the foundation of our reality.
How many times do we find negative thoughts finding home in our minds. By using positive affirmations you can occupy your mind with positivity. Retraining your thinking and speaking into positive patterns will change your life.
An affirmation is a beginning point on the path to change. In essence, you’re saying to your subconscious mind: “I am taking responsibility. I am aware that there is something I can do to change.”
When you consciously say positive things to yourself, you will learn to realise your self-worth, and be aware of your thoughts. This will help you eliminate things from your life that no longer serve you.
Write down affirmations on a paper and hang it next to your bed where you could see it every morning, and every night before going to sleep.
I am loved.
I love and accept myself.
I choose to forgive myself and others.
Every day I feel and connect to the beautiful spirit that I am.
I choose how I feel, and I feel amazing.
I am able to change my life for the better.
I see the miracle in every day.
I give up the negative emotions that have created a comfort zone for me — they no longer serve me.
Try these affirmations and see if it resonates. Research has supported the feel-good habit of self-affirmation, showing that it can boost well-being and also increase self-compassion.
The ancient Hawaiian practice of forgiveness, Ho’oponopono, is a beautiful way to restore harmony within and ‘clean’ anything in our life that isn’t how we want it to be. Repeating the words, “I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you,” allows us to take responsibility for any problem and enables us to express love and gratitude for the solution.
This makes us realise that the answer lies within us instead of ‘out there’ and our acceptance of this clears the damaging beliefs we have carried for so long.
6) Shamanic experiences
Experiences that take you out of your mind and into the deeper realms of your own consciousness, where everything seems crystal clear like a spotless mirror, such intense journeys helps you ‘let go’ and surrender to the divine source. It takes courage to open up closed doorways in your mind that you fear to enter, and only when you surrender can you witness the magic unfolding.
During one of my ayahuasca journey, I had a breakthrough experience where I could finally forgive my father for the turbulent/difficult childhood that I’ve had. It was a huge epiphany of sorts and at the end of it I let go.
I realised what it really means to finally let go, I felt light as a feather, as if a huge burden was lifted off my shoulders and turned out to be the most liberating experience that I’ve ever had in my life.
7) Meditation
“If you let go a little, you will have a little happiness. If you let go a lot, you will have a lot of happiness. And if you let go completely, you will be free.” ~ Achaan Chah
Meditation is one of the best ways to practice letting go. When you meditate, you observe your thoughts and sensations, when your mind wanders, you acknowledge it and Let It Go.
It is difficult to meditate with all the emotional baggage and debris we carry with us all the time wherever we go, but when you get into that zone and manage to elevate your consciousness, all the excessive garbage begins to disappear.
Let go of fear. Let go of control. Let go of all concerns. Let go of all your responsibilities. Let go of all your needs. Let go of attachments, let go of all the grudges and negative emotions you might have against people who don’t deserve your attention.
Its not affecting them, its affecting you. Don’t resist, open your heart, give in and surrender completely to the universal energy/divine consciousness that is waiting to embrace you…allow yourself to feel the joy from within. Plant a seed of love instead of hate.
When you let go rather than holding on to it, you become free to live in peace.
“It would be wonderful if you could recognize that your own attachment is the cause of every single problem that you experience.” ~ Lama Yeshe
Here’s a guided meditation to help you to let go –
8) Deep breathing exercises or Pranayama
Whenever your mind goes wandering during meditation, use a breathing technique like Nadi Shodhana to bring your mind to the present moment.
Do you know any other way to facilitate the process of letting go that has benefited you? Post a comment below –
“Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.” ~ Dr. Seuss
Sadness, often the emotion most shirked and wriggled away from, has amazing powers. As a child experiences the concentration of this emotion, along with anger, happiness and fear, moment to moment, they gain insight in to the poetry of the universe, and an experience of the Whole.
Yet as we grow older we learn – because the purity of sadness is so intense – to avoid it. In resisting sadness, we resist life. And as the wisdom of Yin and Yang teaches us, without the fullness of one, the fullness of the other is lessened too.
“You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.” ~ Jonathan Safran Foer
Children probably see adults as cocoons of nothingness; supposedly in control of their emotions, while the child may express them in the socially unacceptable form of tantrums.
They may become red-faced and jolly when chasing away the dissatisfaction their resistance causes them with socially acceptable drugs, or in one of those rare moments where their stress-levels dip below chronic for five minutes. But inevitably this resistance of sadness can ultimately lead to their death.
“When childhood dies, its corpses are called adults.” ~ Brian Aldiss
Trapped emotions and unconscious habits lead to disease, and disease without true healing; addressing these trapped emotions can lead to death. A death that is not the end, but a reminder that next time, they really need to remember to honour their emotions!
Let’s look into why sadness is a gateway to deeper awareness
“Only those willing to walk through the dark night will be able to see the beauty of the night and the brilliance of the stars.” ~ Archbishop Socrates Villegas
So in a way, sadness and our relationship with this prized emotion could lead to the evolution of the soul. Sadness in goodbyes, sadness in loss, sadness in grief, but also sadness as you let each day of your life slip away. Sadness can be a celebration of it.
In becoming less present and less immersed in reality we cheat ourselves; for we may not lose anything, but then we also fall out of step with the universe. Without expressing gratitude for what is passing away we also don’t get to enjoy it.
This fear of letting time escape from us is ironically the root of most human sadness. When we are truly immersed in reality, then time disappears. We become the past, present and future equally, and we are living as part of the Whole. As nature intended.
But the moment we resist, or grasp as Buddhism would have it, we create self-made sorrow. Sadness is a mirror that reflects our human lessons. It is the dark night of the soul encapsulated in one word. So to run away from it is to exacerbate the itch. To let the rash spread and engulf us so much so that we can’t even locate where the itch began.
So instead of experiencing pure sadness; sadness in its original form; as a sorrow for the loss of a moment, we live in the shadow of half sadness. As Don Miguel Ruiz outlines in the fourth agreement, ‘Don’t make assumptions’: “What others say and do is a projection of their own reality; their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and the actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.” (From The Four Agreements.) Projecting onto others is the echo of that internal sadness; the sadness unaddressed; the ‘problem’ in our lives that survives in our subconscious.
So are suffering and sadness the same thing? You could say that original sadness is when something ‘hurts’; the child cut their knee falling over on the sidewalk.
They are innocent to the world of physical pain and that pain then translates itself as anticipation; an emotional pain that recognizes the existence of our mortality.
Suffering is the resistance of that truth, whereas sadness is an honest recognition of it. It is important not to confuse the two. This is also where anger comes in.
Anger could be seen as the layer burying the sadness; it is a violent expression of suffering, whereas the half shadow sadness, the depressive sadness we are more familiar with and terrified of is the opposite of violence.
It is concave, inert. In the same way we must be present in our sadness, anger is usually a way to get there. If we pierce the layer of anger and literally swim in it; observe the intensity of our anger and become aware of it, then we usually pierce through to our unadulterated sadness. To do this can invite a flow of relief. It’s OK, there’s nothing to escape any more. You are safe. Let go.
“If you are patient in one moment of anger you will escape a hundred days of sorrow.” ~ Chinese proverb
So how do we reach back through those many years of resistance and denial and recover our original sadness? Going in to our anger as described above is one way. Another is to have a conversation with ourselves.
We can observe our thoughts and recognize that we don’t have to agree with and comply with everything they say. Questioning them leads us downwards, into our inner most caves; caves full of treasures long-since forgotten. It is in those treasure chests that we may find the source of our pain, and if we allow ourselves, we can let the source float to the surface and return back to the Whole, where it doesn’t need to harm us anymore.
Doing what scares you is the final one. Facing our fears; face our dragon as the ancient art of storytelling invites us to do, to face ones-self and slay it. Only to find the object of our journey that lies waiting behind it, is innocence and pure joy.
“Close your eyes and imagine the best version of you possible. That’s who you really are. Let go of any part of you that doesn’t believe it.” ~ C. Asaad
In case you haven’t heard by now, intention is everything. The way we intend to live our lives, to become the person we want to be, and even how we intend to perceive our day is what sets the wheels in motion for the universe to begin bringing towards us our soul’s deepest wishes and desires.
Deep within each one of our psyche lies thoughts about the person we strive to be or the life we fantasize about living. Believe it or not, these thoughts are how our higher selves communicate with us what our soul’s highest destiny is.
No desire or wish happens by chance. The mere fact that you have a desire is the proof that somewhere in some timeline this potential is very much a reality. These deep desires within our hearts are actually how the universe lets us know what lies ahead for us in the future. Once we traverse all of the trials and tribulations, it molds us into this person.
Some may listen to these calls from their soul and brush them off as another, “oh that’s never going to happen,” dream. Others may have deemed themselves not ambitious enough, rich enough, smart enough, or worthy enough to actually become this dream person they truly wish they were.
However, those who believe in all possibilities will have a very different experience. The mere belief that anything is possible for us and our lives, and the dream life we imagine in our minds is very do-able. So with the help of an intelligence higher than our own guiding us into the “right place at the right time” situations, we can truly experience miracles in our life.
You may be wondering by now, “ok, so what exactly is an ‘intention’ and how do I go about setting one?” There are actually some very powerful exercises one can do that will set an intention in stone, which aligns our lower mind with our higher mind and allows us to begin to align with faith, belief and ultimately the intuition that will guide us into our dream life.
Below are 5 exercises one can do to set an intention in stone and get the ball rolling on their best life ever:
1) Write a detailed description of the person you see yourself being
“If you are not in the process of becoming the person you want to be, you are automatically engaged in becoming the person you don’t want to be.” ~ Dale Carnegie
You may have heard the term, “speaking something into existence.” This phrase explains how powerful our words are, and even more powerful, our written words. By taking the time to write out a detailed description of yourself, your best self ever (and word it in present moment statements), your conscious mind has a chance to become aware of the aspirations you hold deep within.
You can write things such as, “I eat healthy,” or “I am positive and loving,” or you can also write down a dream job or a dream location that you wish to live in. It doesn’t matter as long as its detailed, and you don’t worry about “how” any of it will happen, just write as if it already has happened.
2) Have high expectations and be open to anything
This exercise can be summed up in one sentence… don’t expect things to happen exactly as you have planned. In fact the less you plan the better off you will be.
This may sound really crazy to a third dimensional mind who has bought into the “hard work pays off and you have to plan out your entire life in order to achieve your goals,” but the more we are open to magic and miracles happening in our lives, the more they will.
Remember, it’s all about belief in possibilities, and the crazier and less logical our belief system is, the more we align with “crazy coincidences” and “lucky scenarios.”
3) Write a loving letter to yourself
What are the things you never heard as a child but you wished you had? What are the things your dream soulmate would say to you if they were in front of you right now? These are the things your inner child actually needs to hear from YOU!
Imagine yourself as your most loving parent or companion and write a letter to yourself pouring your heart out about your unconditional acceptance and love, complimenting your best attributes, offering support and guidance for any future adversities, and a safe place to land no matter what happens.
This one step alone will work wonders. We are truly the only ones who can validate ourselves and love ourselves unconditionally and when our inner child hears the words it has always longed to hear it will begin to relax, feel secure and will over time no longer need to act out in undesirable ways to get our loving attention.
4) Take steps (doesn’t matter if you think they are big or small)
Often we get so overwhelmed by “taking action” we feel like so much needs to be done that it makes us feel like we don’t want to do any of it.
Then the guilt or shame we have about not doing anything is prompted and becomes the vibration we sit at which prevents us from taking any step forward.
But what many may not realize is that the steps we take don’t actually have to be “big” or even make sense at all, they only need to be different than what we would normally do.
By putting ourselves in different places, at different times or doing different things than what our usual patterns are, we actually prompt ourselves out of energetic stagnation and give the universe more chances to put us in the right place at the right time to meet someone who either ends up offering us a dream job, or even meeting a new friend or life partner.
Maybe it’s going to a grocery store different than the one you usually go to, or calling an old friend for lunch that you haven’t seen in a while, or signing up for a class to explore a new hobby, as long as it’s not what you would normally do. You do this as often as possible and you will be amazed by the new people, places and things you begin to draw to you.
5) Love the one who doubts, doesn’t believe or is skeptical
There may be a part of you that’s still saying, “this is all bullshit,” or “I don’t know if I really believe I can live my best life ever,” and then another part of you that’s saying, “If you don’t believe it won’t happen! So you better start believing..”.
The fear of “not really believing” is what keeps many of us stuck in the energy of blame, “you don’t have your best life because you don’t really believe it!”
It’s ok if you doubt miracles, it’s ok if you don’t know how to really believe that you can become the best version of you, but you must respond with a higher vibration in response. “Thank you doubt, I love you,” or “thank you judgment, I love you unconditionally,” are things we can say to these types of thoughts when they arise.
No thought has power to ruin your life, and no shred of doubt has the ability to stop our destiny from happening, unless we BELIEVE they do. So take back your power by loving each one of these skeptical thoughts, and over time you will realize they stop altogether.
“Only the individual can rise to the heights of consciousness and awareness. The more you belong to the crowd, the deeper you fall into darkness.” ~ Osho
The term “black sheep,” in its original meaning, meant a disfavored or disreputable member of a group or family. It had a negative connotation. But it is slowly becoming a term of prestige. Probably due, in no small part, to the sick society a lot of us find ourselves in.
Anyone rebelling against such a society, anyone not so well adjusted, will discover a measure of health in becoming a black sheep.
Here are five signs you may be the black sheep in your family.
1.) You rebel against tradition
“Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.” ~ JFK
You’re a vigilant nonconformist. You must be free. Even of that means breaking familial or cultural traditions. Through your actions, you encourage the rest of the family or peer group into stretching their comfort zones.
Despite their whining, you have a cheeky indifference and overbearing nonchalance to their typically outdated and parochial customs. You are the one dropping uncomfortable seeds into all-too-comfortable gardens.
The small picture is that your parents and siblings get a little irritated with your antics. The big picture is that your seed planting eventually grows into a more flexible and adaptable way of being a member of the tribe.
As Anais Nin said, “Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.”
2.) You adventurously left home while everyone else remained
“Much travel is needed before the raw man is ripened.” ~ Proverb of the Caravan of Dreams
While the rest of your family and friends remained near the comfort and security of the shore, you dared the unknown and precarious rapids of traveling abroad.
You’ve immersed yourself into cultures so alien to your own that your mind melted into a more open-minded version of itself. You’ve been so alone that your soul ached from the magnanimous weight of solitude.
You’ve come back to tell the tale, but alas, you’ve generally been rebuffed by the white sheep. Some things simply cannot be explained in words, or even in pictures.
And envy is always a factor, even if they’re not aware of it. Your adventurous black fur mocks their status quo white, and their animosity sometimes cannot help but rear its ugly head.
3.) You think rules (and laws) are meant to be broken
“If you are irritated by every rub, how will you become polished?” ~ Rumi
Whether it’s the tiny unwritten laws of the familial structure or the big written laws of the cultural operating system, you have the audacity to purposely break those rules in order to reveal the fact that the human condition is always fallible and prone to mistakes, especially when it attempts to create and force laws onto others.
And especially especially when it attempts to entrench outdated laws grown stale and inefficient. You realize rules are meant to be broken so that better rules can be realized and eventually broken in a continuous cycle of progressive renewal.
Sometimes this means upsetting the status quo. So you probably hear a lot of whining from those who are hooked on the comfort and security of the current way of doing things.
Whether it’s something as small as making it a point to never lie to your kids about the nonexistence of Santa or something as big as not paying taxes because you realize that taxation is theft, you’re constantly thinking outside the box instead of just tossing the box around like a petty cliché.
4.) You’re infamous
“We all want change and great things in our lives, yet most of us just seek to settle and find a groove, there is enough dust to settle in this world, what we need are more fearless warrior spirits to get out there to shake things up in this realm…so the time has come to REACH for the stars, for the stars will not come down to You!” ~ Alistar Valadez
Your fame is not based in the world of the overly moral goody-two-shoes obeying to the point they are bleating. Nor is it based in the world of the immoral tyrants who seek power over others to the extent they become corrupt. No, your fame is based in a world of amoral courage, a middle way that makes you infamous despite the do-gooders and no-gooders.
Whether it’s just in the small circle of your friends and family or in the big circle of your tribe and culture, you are there to cause waves that wake people up.
Whether it’s in your father’s face or your mother’s, your teacher’s face or your president’s, you’re the one mixing things up; poking holes into unsustainable and outdated ideals grown uncouth over the passage of time, and melting down power entrenched thrones grown corrupt from complacency.
Your infamy is a dark beacon in the blinding light, the personification of impermanence, a reminder that change is the only unchanging truth.
“Until the whole world is free to agree with you or disagree with you, until you have given the freedom to everyone to like you or not like you, to love you or hate you, to see things as you see them, or to see things differently – until you have given the whole world its freedom – you’ll never have your freedom” ~ Adyashanti
When it comes to loving your tribe and your family, you are fierce; but when it comes to being passive to tradition and laws, you’re not having it.
After all, as Derrick Jensen said, “Love does not imply pacifism.”
You will not be walked over: not by authoritarian parents, nor by overreaching cops; not by outdated chains of command (chains of obedience), nor by state-driven politics that made some idiot president over the country you just so happened to be born in.
In short: you will not be fu^#ed with. And in that sense, you are unfuckwithable. For you have pierced the illusory veil of authority. You have revealed it as nothing more than a psychosocial cartoon in the collective brain that everyone keeps repeating ad nauseum.
You’ve unhooked the hoodwink, ousted the warden, silenced the inner victim who has played victim to a victimizing codependent culture for too damn long. Indeed. You have become unfuckwithable, and your black fur blazes all the more brilliant against the backdrop of those who still remain fu^#ed with.
One of the most profound learnings in my personal life came from Sogyal Rinpoche’s book, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying based on the Bardo Thodol (in Tibetan) or the Tibetan Book of the Dead. The realization of “each day we are born and each night we die again,” makes it easier to let go of the past and start the evolution process.
The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying isn’t the only book inspired by the Book of the Dead, another well known book is The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead by Timothy Leary.
What makes the Bardo Thodol special is that it focuses on the Art of Dying and in doing so teaches one to live a more fulfilling life. With this in mind lets start with what’s in focus, Death.
Here are 11 quotes from The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
“When we are at last freed from the body that has defined and dominated our understanding of ourselves for so long, the karmic vision of one life is completely exhausted, but any karma that might be created in the future has not yet begun to crystallize. So what happens in death is that there is a “gap” or space that is fertile with vast possibility; it is a moment of tremendous, pregnant power where the only thing that matters, or could matter, is how exactly our mind is. Stripped of a physical body, mind stands naked, revealed startlingly for what it has always been: the architect of our reality.” ~ Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
While in this reality it is imperative to take care of both the physical and the mental, death according to Buddhist philosophy frees you from the burden of material existence. So while we get caught up in our routine, how many of us actually take a moment to dress up our mind? How about some mental make up today?
All of us believe we have time and take it for granted that as we age we will get time to change and evolve. But the truth is no one knows the hour they will cease to breathe. To put this in perspective…
“Planning for the future is like going fishing in a dry gulch; nothing ever works out as you wanted, so give up all your schemes and ambitions. If you have got to think about something ~ Make it the uncertainty of the hour of your death.” ~ Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
Whenever people ask me my future plans, the Buddhist in me has a good chuckle. All I can plan is what’s happening in the now, because how I work with the present moment is the only thing that will alter the course of my life.
It’s not that I was born like this but life puts forth so much to alter your course. This doesn’t mean you don’t set a goal or have ideas. Set goals, get ideas but focus on the now, how can I work towards this goal now. Should it consume you? Should anything in life consume the essence of what you really are? These are the questions to ask yourself, it’s not for anyone else to answer.
The key to keep in mind is death will happen and along with it…
“What is born will die, what has been gathered will be dispersed, what has been accumulated will be exhausted, what has been built up will collapse and what has been high will be brought low.” ~ Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
We forget our impermanence on a daily basis, the advertisements got you chasing, collecting, upgrading stuff that’s not going with you. Who are you when you strip away everything you did not come into this world with?
Have you met the real you?
“This world can seem marvelously convincing until death collapses the illusion and evicts us from our hiding place.” ~ Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
It’s time to stop hiding and bring the real you to the limelight.
“Just look at your mind for a few minutes. You will see that it is like a flea, constantly hopping to and fro. You will see that thoughts arise without any reason, without any connection. Swept along by the chaos of every moment, we are the victims of the fickleness of our mind.” ~ Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
When we moved into the countryside, the buzz of the city ceased to exist, the stillness in the first few years gets to you. The mind plays tricks in the darkness with the sounds of the night, crickets, owls and silence.
When people from the city come over they wonder why we stay here and what to do with themselves after a day or two. When there is no distraction around there’s only one friend you get to meet, yourself.
“Nothing could be further from the truth. But in a world dedicated to distraction, silence and stillness terrify us; we protect ourselves from them with noise and frantic busyness. Looking into the nature of our mind is the last thing we would dare to do. Sometimes I think we don’t want to” ~ Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
So now that we’ve covered what’s going on today, lets twist the plot a bit and focus on how we can prepare for death with artful living.
“Always recognize the dreamlike qualities of life and reduce attachment and aversion. Practice good-heartedness toward all beings. Be loving and compassionate, no matter what others do to you. What they will do will not matter so much when you see it as a dream. The trick is to have positive intention during the dream. This is the essential point. This is true spirituality.” ~ Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
Row row row your boat gently down the stream of life, isn’t it all just a dream. The world is an illusion, according to Vedic philosophy Maya. In layman terms this is just a transformational phase a place where your actions decide the future outcome of your soul.
So choose to love and be loved, choose to be kind and receive kindness choose to live a life of being good and spreading good. To ensure you’re on the right path never forget to set up a time for yourself to introspect and look back on how the day was and where you can make changes to lead a more fruitful existence.
“There are so many ways of making the approach to meditation as joyful as possible. You can find the music that most exalts you and use it to open your heart and mind. You can collect pieces of poetry, or quotations of lines of teachings that over the years have moved you, and keep them always at hand to elevate your spirit.” ~ Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
Sogyal makes it so easy, meditation is what you make our of it. It’s not about sitting in the lotus position under a Peepal tree, doing anything that brings you into the moment and has a positive effect on you can be meditation. We have written about the ways of meditating without meditating, you could also choose to chant, do what opens your heart and mind.
“Spiritual truth is not something elaborate and esoteric, it is in fact profound common sense. When you realize the nature of mind, layers of confusion peel away. You don’t actually “become” a buddha, you simply cease, slowly, to be deluded. And being a buddha is not being some omnipotent spiritual superman, but becoming at last a true human being.” ~ Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
We have been pushed to believe that the saints, mystics and gods are superhumans. But the truth is all of us have the potential to reach to their levels of being good humans. Its just that the path is so tough to walk, that it becomes easier to feel your job is done by going to a church or temple.
But when was the last time your grand father or his father or generations encountered a person coming down from heaven in a chariot on fire? It’s about time to look within and find the God hidden within.
“Have found also, from my own experience, that it is essential not to take anything too personally. When you least expect it, dying people can make you the target of all their anger and blame. As Elisabeth Kübler-Ross says, anger and blame can “be displaced in all directions, and projected onto the environment at times almost at random.” Do not imagine that this rage is really aimed at you; realizing what fear and grief it springs from will stop you from reacting to it in ways that might damage your relationship. Sometimes” ~ Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
It’s important to understand here that we’re all dying, so when Sogyal speaks of dying people he could actually mean that all of us can spread vile. It becomes really easy especially when we’re overworked, burning out and stressed with the rat race we’re running.
Although it isn’t easy, we need to try to put ourselves in the other persons’ shoes, or at least try to get an overview perspective of the situation. Keeping calm with the help of breath work can help with this.
The next quote sums up the entire essence of the post. Most people feel that they are not bound by this reality, we’re all connected yes but today at this moment you are separate. Sogyal calls it an optical delusion, even if it is a hallucination one cannot discount the experience. So while you experience this realm of existence why not expand your boundaries you have set of love and compassion.
“A human being is part of a whole, called by us the “Universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in” ~ Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying has far more wisdom to offer, but even if the pinches of wisdom above are implemented you will find great results on your path called life.
Here’s an interesting video on the Tibetan Book of the Dead that you may enjoy!
Anyone rebelling against such a society, anyone not so well adjusted, will discover a measure of health in becoming a black sheep.
remained near the comfort and security of the shore, you dared the unknown and precarious rapids of traveling abroad.
When it comes to loving your tribe and your family, you are fierce; but when it comes to being passive to tradition and laws, you’re not having it.
