Avoidance
This one is first, because it is the most important! It’s your life you’re changing, which means its your inner light that’s guiding the way, and focus is imperative. When you regularly saturate yourself in meditation, you gain the momentum, the luminosity, and the inner fire to transform yourself.A regular, proper spiritual practice is the single most effective tool for life change!!! A disciplined, self-aware mind is the byproduct of regular meditation, and it’s an absolute requirement for creating conscious change. Without it, closing the gap between unconscious and conscious awareness, and then between awareness and action, is nearly impossible.
Without a spiritual practice, the mind’s default state is loose, befuddled and easily distracted. I’ve seen it over and over again; people who have gone to dozens of self-help and spiritual seminars, gotten therapy and coaching for decades, or are even doing healing work themselves, but don’t have a regular practice... they finally gain traction on actualizing the changes they want in their lives when they “just do it!” Therefore, the first thing I address with a new client is their practice; without it, other coaching, reflection, and insight typically has limited, transient effect.
We often resist, avoid, and create distractions to our practice. However, if you can harness your intention for change and direct it towards practice, be forewarned... Your life will transform at deep, fundamental levels. You’ll shift from looking outside to finding inside. You’ll become more equanimous, more luminous, more energized, more resilient, more joyful, more inspired, more creative, more intelligent, more compassionate, more aware... you gain the inner power to recreate your life according to your highest potential. If you’re not convinced yet, try the 40-Day challenge outlined below as an experiment, and judge the results for yourself!
Choosing your practice:
An ideal spiritual practice is one which simultaneously cultivates one-pointed focus (by harnessing the ordinary mind, the breath, etc) and entrains to increasingly higher vibrations.Mantra chanting (either out loud or silently), for example, harnesses the thought-train of the ordinary mind (subtlest focus), as well as the breath (subtler focus), and the tongue, lips, and fingers on the counting beads (gross physical focus). The mantra itself is a formula of sacred Sanskrit syllables that produce a specific vibrational effect, which stimulates, energizes, expands, and/or integrates, depending on the formula. Over time, the practice develops one-pointedness and generates tangible energy for self-transformation. It’s an excellent practice for beginners, or people who have tried other practices and didn’t notice benefits; almost everyone experiences some energy and increased focus in a short time.
Other practices are wonderfully effective, such as pranayama, vipassana, yoga nidra, and others. I primarily use mantra as an example because I have the most experience with that practice personally, and I’ve seen the most remarkable results in clients.
Many people say that walking their dog is their “meditation,” or being in nature, or swimming, or playing the guitar... fill in the blank. These activities can bring about an experience of joy and peace, which is a reflection of our natural state, and if that joy is deeply traced and contemplated as such, the activity can definitely be considered a spiritual practice. However, most people engaged in these activities don’t trace the joy back to its source and maintain prolonged contemplation, or experience the same depth of stillness that can be found in a sitting practice (where visual and sensual stimulation is minimal). It’s likely that a focused sitting practice will give you exponentially greater results in terms of mental discipline and inner power.
A note distinguishing spiritual practice and meditation:
A spiritual practice is something you do to cultivate focus and remove the obstacles to your natural state, the experience of which is meditation. You cannot “try” to meditate; meditation is effortless and spontaneous when the obstacles are removed. (If you’re trying, “you” the do-er is a huge obstacle!) Our normal habit is to identify ourselves with our senses, the comings and goings of daily life, place responsibility and blame on others for our happiness, etc. A spiritual practice re-routes these tendencies inside, to the source of the vibrant “I AM,” so that we can experience our true nature, the infinite source of spiritual bliss, equanimity, and auspiciousness. Realistically, especially for beginning practitioners, only a brief flash of this infinity may be experienced; sometimes it takes days, weeks, or months of dedicated practice to train the obstacles to subside. However, even the briefest glimpse has enormous power! And, even if meditation by this definition does not occur easily, the practice trains, refines, and uplifts the practitioner on many levels.Your experiment: Do a dedicated spiritual practice every day for 40 days. Choose a duration you can commit to that represents a small challenge but not an outrageous one. If you already have training in some method, continue with it.
If you’d like to try mantra meditation, I’ve prepared a free sound recording and article on Mantra Meditation for Beginners, which I’ll email if you submit a request via the Q&A form.
