Three important principles may help guide you to Truth. They are stillness, space, and joy.

Stillness is reached through deeply relaxing the body and the mind. In order to do this neither special preparation nor waiting for a special time are necessary or desirable. Simply enter into inner stillness now. Closing your eyes, breathing consciously, relaxing your physical body, and allowing yourself to feel peaceful are enough. Notice that even a few seconds of this conscious interruption in your mind-driven, forward-moving, restless life are enough to feel some benefit. Imagine if you commit to this for, say, five minutes... every day. You will begin to enjoy this stillness practice so much you will extend it to ten minutes, say, several times a day and so on. Embrace stillness as a way of cultivating inner peace, deepening in emptiness and receptivity, and simply as a demonstration of this essential aspect of your true nature that you may have ignored for far too long.

Space -- can you see that space is all around you? However tightly packed you make your day, there is still space. Mental space, physical space, emotional space, energetic space... and the heart thrives on space -- time to pause, to take in, to experience, and to feel. The heart thrives on space and conversely the heart contracts when there is not enough space. Recognize the space that is all around you and behind all your activities, thoughts, anxieties, feelings, relationship dynamics, and life events. Dare to enter that space on its own terms -- as space! Take space, occupy space, tolerate and flourish in it, spread out and play in it. Your contraction will lessen and you heart will expand.

Joy is available to you in every moment. Joy is a sign of spiritual transcendence. It arises naturally and spontaneously when you become aligned with your true nature. Every moment brings an opportunity to cultivate and choose joy. Deepen in your awareness of this choice and dismiss the negative influences from the past that cause you to favor misery and unhappiness. Breathe into your heart and allow feelings of heart-strengthening and expansion. It takes courage to choose joy and a certain abandonment of the societal and cultural norms. You must follow a carefree feeling of letting go. For far too long happiness and joy and their expression have been associated with a lack of responsibility and shirking duties. We are taught that to be adult we must be conscientious, diligent, and burdened, purposeful, serious, and hardworking. Yet we have a primary responsibility to ourselves to be ourselves. Your true nature is happiness and joy. Be truly responsible by allowing yourself to feel lightness, become less serious, and less purposeful. You may relax your tight hold on the reins of your life by surrendering in trust to existence itself and by choosing instead to enjoy living.

Stillness, space, joy -- nivata, nari, muda is the translation of these words in Sanskrit. Use either version to remind yourself and through the internal repetition of this mantra -- nivata-nari-muda -- manifest these spiritual principles in your world. In case you are dismissive of mantra practice, reflect for a minute on the state of your mind. Isn't it already filled with mantras -- demands, imaginary fears, worries, planning, dialogues, and insane gesturing? Perform a spring-cleaning of your mind -- bore it into purification! -- drop this mantra, nivata-nari-muda, into the crowded house of your thoughts and allow it to clear things up!

BLOG entry #44