SPIRITUAL MUSINGS

Happy moments, praise God
Difficult moments, seek God
Quiet moments, worship God
Painful moments, trust God
Every moment, thank God
-- Author Unknown

"When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace."
--Jimi Hendrix

"Your every thought, feeling, perception, spoken word and performed action reverberates into the universe."
--Swami Mukananda

Blessings from The World Puja Network

While in the midst of a session with a wonderful new client I quickly discovered that she lived her life led by her mind. (Not a foreign concept to me.) I began to challenge the things that she said as a matter of fact. I did so because she would fire off answers to me as if they were already programmed and pat responses. Each time she did I would guide her down into her heart and ask the same questions and get a completely different answer. This went on for about 15 minutes. During that time she referred to her mind often, particularly in the making excuses for it. She acknowledged that she rarely consciously paid attention to what her mind was saying to her and how uncomfortable she felt most of the time. She acknowledged that she never questioned whether her mind was telling her a truth or a lie, or whether it was supporting her or hurting her.

I heard myself say, "Your mind is getting away with murder." There was dead silence. In that silence both of us had an awareness of the truth of that statement. Our minds get away with murder. The moment it seeks an uncomfortable pause in our lives, like a race-car it comes full speed ahead to crash into clarity. "Oh my God" she said, "that is so true, I never thought about it like that before." (In truth, neither had I.) We continued to follow that thread of wisdom and uncovered a plethora of ways that the mind gets away with murder.

It kills our joy. It makes bold and boisterous statements that have nothing to do with the truth and each time we accept it, without question, and run with it, it clearly gets away with murder. It kills our passion as it burdens us with "what ifs" (always leaning to the side of failure) about whatever we are passionate about creating and manifesting. It kills the present moment with predictions of our future often paralyzing us from moving in faith and it kills our self worth as it gives us its interpretation of where we have failed. It kills our peace. The saddest part of all of that is that we give it permission to get away with murder by not interrupting it or questioning its validity.

Now, in this moment we have got to put an end to this violence and violation perpetrated upon our lives by our minds. A good argument on behalf of that awareness is that every time we have a murderous thought we immediately alter the positive and healthy electrical flow of energy throughout our entire physical system. Additionally we alter the chemical balance of the body and depress ourselves. It was written in "The Way of Mastery," that "depression can only occur in a mind that had been denying its pathway to joy."

Here are some actions that will help when you are in a state of uncomfortability and your mind goes in for the kill:

1. Slow down and pay attention to every single sentence your mind feeds you. If you feel any constriction anywhere in your body, stop, take three deep breaths, put your hand over your heart and ask yourself, "Is that the truth that I just heard?" Stay still long enough, and your heart will tell you your answer.



2. Become aware of what you do once you have a thought. Do you make a fear based choice? Do you set up a situation that you know in your gut is going to betray you because your mind just scared you? Notice just notice because every time your thought feeds you something, you do something with it. You take an action of some sort prompted by the mind, not the heart and we must learn to discern the difference.



3. Don't just rush past a delivery from the mind. Open the package and see if it contains something truthful and worthwhile or if it's a package of trash that needs to be tossed out.



4. Don't let your mind convince you that you need to be right or that you are right. Go for being happy over being right and stop the ability of your mind killing your happiness. You have nothing to prove, your mind just has you believing you do.



5. Consciously refuse to be defined by your mind. If you don't it will "seemingly" kill off your true identity and have you chasing after all things and all people external to find yourself.



6. Birth the Mind of Christ or the Mind of Buddha or The Mind of Great Spirit and your thoughts will emerge differently and in support of you, always.

A 92-year-old, petite, well-poised and proud man, who is fully dressed each morning by eight o'clock, with his hair fashionably combed and shaved perfectly, even though he is legally blind, moved to a nursing home today. His wife of 70 years recently passed away, making the move necessary.

After many hours of waiting patiently in the lobby of the nursing home, he smiled sweetly when told his room was ready. As he maneuvered his walker to the elevator, I provided a visual description of his tiny room, including the eyelet sheets that had been hung on his window.

"I love it," he stated with the enthusiasm of an eight-year-old having just been presented with a new puppy.

"Mr. Jones, you haven't seen the room; just wait."

"That doesn't have anything to do with it," he replied. "Happiness is something you decide on ahead of time. Whether I like my room or not doesn't depend on how the furniture is arranged, it's how I arrange my mind. I already decided to love it.

"It's a decision I make every morning when I wake up. I have two choices: I can spend the day in bed recounting the difficulty I have with the parts of my body that no longer work, or get out of bed and be thankful for the ones that do. Each day is a gift, and as long as my eyes open, I'll focus on the new day and all the happy memories I've stored away. Just for this time in my life. Old age is like a bank account. You withdraw from what you've put in..."

"So, my advice to you would be to deposit a lot of happiness in the bank account of memories! Thank you for your part in filling my Memory Bank. I am still depositing."

"Remember the five simple rules to be happy:

1. Free your heart from hatred.
2. Free your mind from worries.
3. Live simply.
4. Give more.
5. Expect less."

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