I am very excited to share with you all yet another guest post.

This time, I wrote an article for Goodlife ZEN.

“You can find weekly, practical inspiration at Goodlife ZEN. Get a new take on life, find creative ways to make your wildest dreams come true, and become what you aspire to be.”

Warm thanks go out to Mary, who gave me the opportunity to share my thoughts on her great and inspiring blog.

5 ways to escape the escapist weekend

Here is an excerpt form the article:

“It is Thursday. You are already thinking about Friday. It is Friday morning. You are thinking about Friday afternoon. It is Friday afternoon. It is here.

What do you do?

We all look forward to weekends because it is the time for us to relax, become refreshed, and energized. Ironically enough, only a few us manage to do that. The rest of us just use the weekends to escape from our problems, troubles, work, and “reality” all together.”

Click here to continue reading…

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Image: nattu

Habits Run Your Life

Life is simple.For the most part it is run by habits that we acquire over our lives. When I use the term habit I refer to a default way of responding to a reoccurring situation. Habits form because life is repetitive – common things happen over and over again. People act in predictable ways and our brain subconsciously starts responding in a preset way to certain reoccurring events.

Many of us, however, make it difficult by adopting the wrong habits. We start responding in such a way that is destructive to our lives. For example, people form the habits of negative thinking, laziness, pessimism, failure, depression, victim mentality and so on as a default way of dealing with tough situations.

Most of the time, people are not even aware of their destructive habit until somebody tells them so. Habits form because of the environment that we live in and because of the people that we are surrounded by. Humans learn by imitation and if we see something done enough times, we tend to accept as the default behavior to a particular situation. You can image what happens when a person grows up surround by the wrong role models – a ton of destructive habits that can run our lives into shambles.

If we were only able to change those destructive habits into constructive ones our lives would become a lot more simple and much more rewarding. That is all there is to it. Of course: “Easier said than done.”

How To Simplify Your Life

You could take the following steps to simplify your life.

• Become aware of your own destructive habits. This might the hardest step of them all. As I have mentioned before, most of the time we are not aware of us becoming engaged in a destructive action. A simple way to see if the action is destructive is to check if it interferes with your goals or your life purpose or if it slows your growth and development as an individual.

• Become aware of the situations in which you respond in a destructive way. Once you have identified your destructive habits, you will have to closely watch when the habit reoccurs and try to figure out what caused it. For example, if you start smoking after you become stressed out, you will know the stress is the trigger for smoking.

• Make a list. The next step is fairly intuitive. List your destructive habits along with situations that trigger them. Write it down and carry it with you. Glance over it daily so that you become more and more aware of the situations that trigger your destructive responses.

• Prepare a list of constructive responses. Once you have a clear list of the situations that trigger your destructive habits, create a completely new list of constructive habits to replace your destructive ones. For example, try this: instead of going for a smoke when you get stressed out, take a 5-10 walk outside as a new default response. The thing is, habits do not disappear, they must be replaced with a new habit; otherwise your brain will find its own default way of dealing with the situation. After all, habits exist for a reason – they offer us quick solution to common events. So it is in your benefit to make sure that you respond in a positive manner as opposed to becoming your own obstacle.

• Practice. That is how habits are created – by repetition. That is the only way to create a constructive habit that will change your life – practice. The more you practice the less you will have to think about it. Eventually, it will seem to just happen naturally. It might take years, months , or weeks for your brain to form new neuron connections and accept a new way of behaving.

• Reward yourself. This is helpful, but not required to reinforce a new positive habit. Think of something that will help you act one way versus the other. It might things as simple as watching your favorite show, treating yourself to a nice meal, a movie or a spa to reward yourself for your effort.

I Simplified My Life

Here is a very simple example from my own personal life to illustrate the above point. I was addicted to watching cartoons before going to sleep. I just had to watch them, or otherwise I could not sleep. This would keep me up until 1AM or 2AM  every night. Naturally, it would interfere with my work the next day as I would be sleep and tired the whole time.

The situation that caused me to watch cartoons was stress from the whole day. Simple enough. My destructive habit was watching cartoons. Once I had that, I had to write down a new constructive habit – it was meditation. So slowly but surely, I was able to cut out cartoons before going to bed and I would start meditating. It worked!

Now before I go to bed, I meditate. Mediation seems to work like magic and now I can go to sleep on time without wasting precious hours watching cartoons. Of course, because of that I am less stressed out the next day and meditating becomes much easier before going to bed. It’s a win win!

QUESTION: How could you use this technique to simplify your life?

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Photo: Flickr

Situation

Happiness is an overused and misunderstood concept in the modern society.People base their whole lives on pursuing happiness. Yet, I am going to show you why the “pursuit of happiness” is not  worthy of  your time and effort. In this article, I am going to take a closer look at what happiness really is and why being happy is such an attractive goal for most people. Then I am going to show you exactly why chasing happiness is the recipe for unhappiness and then I am going to discuss some of the more realistic options that you have.

DISCLAIMER: In order to really understand the following discussion really encourage you to read the articles on awareness and emotions before proceeding with the text. Those articles will give a clear understanding of why the conclusions in this article are only a logical outflow coming out from the above mentioned posts. If you decide to skip them, you might still be able to grasp the essential idea, but some questions might be left unanswered

What is Happiness?

Happiness is an emotion which carries certain information attached to it. It is up to us to be aware of the actual meaning that the information carries with in order to get the most out of it. What information does happiness carry with it?  There are couple parts to the anwer.

At the very best happiness is a lagging indicator of your emotional state. It means that whatever state you were in before a certain event was not beneficial to you. However, it does not necessarily mean the state in which you are in right is good for you. Also it tells you that the action that you took to change that your emotional state was the right one for the current situation. If you are able to extract that information, then you will increase your awareness of your emotional well being.

If you are familiar with economics, then you will know of the economic cycles which alternate between recession and expansion. We can take the same concept of the economic cycles and use it to examine happiness.

The graph above represents changes of emotional states ranging from unhappy (trough) and happy (peak) over time. As you can see, happiness is just the result of fluctuations of the emotional states that are influenced by the outside factors. Another interesting point is that happiness lasts for a very short period of time and then it gives way to other emotions. I am going to omit the discussion of the trend line for now on purpose.

Another peculiar feature of happiness is that is dependent  on the contrast with a previous emotional state of being. The more extreme the contrast the more intense the feeling of happiness will result. For example, think of the mother who thinks her son died in the war, just to find out later that he is still alive.

Chasing Happiness is The Recipe For Unhappiness

In essence, I am going to try and answer to the question of why so many people are unhappy.

The main reason would be social conditioning also known as brainwashing. I am not sure if  that happens as a result of a conscious effort on behalf of the people in power or just as a result of a human nature; yet, I am pretty sure it is the mixture of both. People are told to believe that they are supposed to be happy and that is what they have to do their whole lives. Any deviations from that belief are deemed not to be normal.

As we have seen from the paragraph above, happiness is a naturally occurring phenomenon and chasing happiness is somewhat equivalent to chasing the feeling of being full after eating as a purpose of life. It is impossible to stay full all the time as you are going to get hungry, same goes for being happy – it doesn’t last.

Because of this cyclical nature of happiness, it is the perfect carrot on the stick for the manipulation of the people, because people are naturally attracted to positive feelings. Once again, weather that manipulation is conscious or not, I do not know. Yet, that is only a part of why chasing happiness leads to unhappiness.

The other major component of the recipe is the conditioned constant dissatisfaction with our current state of being. As you might remember from the discussion of what happiness is, I said that we experience happiness partly because of the contrast between our past and present emotional states.

Well, imagine being bombarded with ideas about body image,  health, lifestyles that always tell you that you are not enough even though there is absolutely nothing wrong you. That creates  a negative perception of ourselves, which causes us to try to find a way to improve our lives and “fix” ourselves. There are plenty of imaginative ways to make us feel happy:

• you will be happy once you get  a job
• you will be happy once you lose weight
• you will be happy once you buy a house, a car, a tv;
• you will be happy once you retire
• and so on.

And so it goes, the happiness is always illusive , it is always out of your reach. We do not experience the feeling happiness because there was no big contrast from one emotional state to another. Why? Because there was nothing wrong with us to begin with. And so people go on chasing other ways to make themselves happy instead of appreciating themselves for what they are.

In short, the misunderstanding of the purpose of the feeling of happiness and low self-wroth and self-esteem cause most people to lead unhappy lives.

The Recipe for a Fulfilling Life

So what is the recipe for “happiness” or otherwise: “How to lead a fulfilling life?” I said I would come back to the trend line, which I mentioned before – so here I am. The trend line contains within itself somewhat of answer to the posed question. Let us look on how the knowledge presented here fits together to give you a recipe for a fulfilling life:

1. Understand what the purpose of the feeling of the happiness is and use it accordingly. That is, use it as a source of information rather than a goal to strive for.
2. Love yourself. Do not let other people get to you, keep your composure and accept that you are where you are and it is a good place to be. This will help you keep your self-worth and self esteem high.
3. Experience and savor the feeling of happiness. It is a good feeling and you should enjoy while you can because you deserve it. Just do not get attached to it.
4. Use the feelings of happiness to guide you towards growth. This is where that upward sloping trend line comes in. Most people neglect it in their lives. Do not make that mistake! It is my strong opinion that the purpose in each of our lives to fulfill our own individual purposes and grow as human beings. Our body comes equipped with with all of these amazing ways of telling us if we are staying on course or not. We should use them and stay on course.
5. Lead a multidimensional life. It will provide you with many more opportunities to experience happiness along the way to achieving your purpose in life and growing. Diversify what you do and how you invest your time and you will be able to be happy about some things, while other might not being going to well.

Thank you for reading. Comments and feedback are always welcome!

Have you ever felt out of control in your life? Have you ever felt like you did not understand why certain things were happening to you? Have you ever felt like you were just going through motions?  If you can relate to the above situations, then you know what it feels like to lack awareness.

In this article I am going to try to give you all my understanding of what awareness is and why it is important to you and exactly why you want to become aware. Finally, I will give you some tips and tools to get started today!

What is Awareness?

Awareness is what businesses pay for to consulting firms. Awareness is what psychologists do. Awareness is your friend telling you how to improve your paper.  All of the above scenarios describe awareness. A definition that unites all of them would be this – ability to look at yourself and your activities through an outsider’s point of view.

Look back to the time, when you wrote an essay. You were done. You thought it was perfect. You were ready to submit to your professor or teacher. Yet, just because you have been told to do it, you ask for your friend to proof read it. All of the sudden, grammar errors, weird constructs, incomplete sentences, lack of coherent thoughts spill out of the paper. Then you sit back and wonder: “How did I miss it all? After all I read it so many times and checked it and double checked it!” I have a simple answer – you lacked awareness.

Being aware is all about writing your essay and being able to critique it. Being aware is doing something that you should not being doing and catching and stopping yourself from doing it. Being aware is like having a personal life coach with you at all times, except that life coach is yourself.

Why You Need To Become Aware

Becoming aware of your own actions and thoughts will change your life. You will be able to make better decisions because, you will be able to catch yourself before going the wrong direction. Your life quality will improve as you will be able to discover habits that are not beneficial for you and get rid of them. You will become more effective at getting things done because you will be able to self critique yourself. Too good to be true? Hardly. Here is why.

How many times have you critiqued papers and people were thankful for it? How many times your friends came to you for advice and were thankful for helping them making a better decision? How many times you caught people doing thing that they were not aware of? I know I have done quite often, but yet, often times I have failed to become my own consultant. It was very frustrating, but yet, I believe, I have found a solution that works for me. It is only my hope that it will work for you as well.

How to Become Aware

This is only beginners guide on how to become aware. I am not going to reveal any secrets that will change your life over night. It is all hard work and requires persistence and patience. So here it goes.

1. The first and most basic and the most effective technique and practice that one can engage in is meditation. It has been practiced for thousands of years and the benefits of meditation have been scientifically proven. Through meditation you can clear your mind, still your thoughts and emotions, which allows room for clearer thinking and increased awareness. I have documented my personal experiences with meditation in this site as well.
2. If you are already practicing meditation, then the next step would be to study. Go back to basics and study habits and people and how they work and why they work the way they do. Read books or blogs. There are plenty of resources out there to increase your awareness. One of my favorites are StevePavlina.com. Here you will find more resources than you will ever want on creating and breaking habits. One article to get your started could be the following: Raising Awareness Through Multiple Perspectives .
3. The next best thing to studying (or vice versa) is experiencing. That is make friends with people who are already have a high level of awareness. You will able to quickly learn on what they do and how they do. You will able to ask questions and just by being around them, you will become more aware.
4. Ask for feedback. That is – ask be criticized! Counter-intuitive? Hardly. People love to criticize. This way you will learn about what they see when they look at what you do and say. Just make sure you are asking for an opinion from honest individuals (for obvious reasons). The benefits of that is that you will able to easier catch yourself in the action, word or thought and correct yourself on the spot.
5. Practice. SPOILER – This might take years to accomplish. I am still on my way, I am still learning and growing. My belief is that if you do that above mentioned things often enough, you will be able to become more aware and cause a change in your life.

Good luck on your journey and become your own consultant and coach in life! Thank you for reading. And feel free to give me feedback to help me grow and change and in turn help you grow and change!

“A framework is a basic conceptual structure used to solve or address complex issues.” according to Wikipedia.

There are a variety of existing frameworks for life that have been developed over thousands of years. Some of the more notable ones would be world-wide spread religions such as Christianity, Islam, Buddhism; various martial arts, clans, gangs, sects and son on. Although many of them appealed to me, I still found too confusing to start and it always seemed that they contained too many rules, to many regulations and too many concepts to understand. I lacked peace of mind.

I needed a way to find some stability in my life while still making progress. I tried reading various self-development authors and their ideas about life. What I found was usually too extreme for me adopt right away. I found bits and pieces of things that resonated with me and many more things that I just did not feel comfortable with. That is why I kept thinking of a way to solidify and stabilize my thought process while still leaving room for growth and improvement.

That is why I came up with the framework for life for myself. It allowed to me look at my life in much more simpler terms, which got rid of a lot on confusion and mess in my head. It allowed me of a simpler and constructive way of thinking about life and of its challenges.

Building a Pyramid

We are going to pretend like each and every one of our lives can be represented by a pyramid. When we are born we start of from scratch. As we go through our life, we first lay the foundation, then layer by layer, we start building our pyramid. If we are determined and hard-working enough, we will be able to complete our it before our passing. Let us look at the components closer.

Laying Down The Foundation

There are four main building blocks upon which the pyramid of your life is going to be built. They are emotional, physical, mental and spiritual states of being. To have a strong foundation, we must develop and strengthen those four parts of individuality. Each of them supports each other and feeds of each other. For example, if you are not feeling well emotionally, then the rest of the parts are most likely going to suffer.  However, you can prevent that by strengthening the four parts so much that even one of them starts suffering, the other are going to be strong enough to pick you back up and not let you go in a downward spiral.

Creating and Maintaining The Foundation

In my experience, to establish and maintain a strong foundation one has only to do focus on four things: proper diet, proper physical fitness, proper meditation, and proper rest. Once again, these concepts are interrelated to each other just like the four foundation blocks I just mentioned. Those four activities will directly feed and nourish your mental, physical, emotional and spiritual sates of being allowing you to become a wholesome human being.

Diet will have a direct effect on physical sate of being. Meditation will have more of a direct effect on an emotional and spiritual states of being. Proper rest will affect all four parts of your being: mental, emotional, physical and spiritual. Physical training will affect physical and mental aspects of your being more than anything else.  However, it is important to remember that all the parts are interrelated and it is important not to neglect any of them. However, sometimes it might be appropriate to focus more on one part than the other depending on the circumstances.

Building on The Foundation

It is my experience that following the above suggestion should lead you to have a more stable and less easy shakable life.  Once we carry out that, we can start building the pyramid of our lives. The building blocks of the pyramid are going to be accomplished goals in our lives. Naturally, once you have enough of certain goals accomplished, you are going to be able to start to build another level of the pyramid. Naturally, it will need less blocks, but more effort to get those blocks to the next level. Each level completed will bring you closer to your ultimate life purpose until you reach the top point of the pyramid and that is where you will find your life purpose to have been completed.

In order to lay down each additional level, one would have acquire more strength by continuously drawing from your mental, physical, emotional and spiritual resources that support the whole pyramid. To ensure that the foundation can sustain the increasing weight of the pyramid, you will have to improve your rest, physical, meditative and dietary practices in addition to acquiring additional knowledge and experience to continue adding building blocks (goals) to the pyramid.

Implications of The Framework

The above explained model has many implications that makes it plausible. It automatically assumes that each person has a goal or a purpose in life  which they are trying to achieve. It also assumes that each person is able to plan and set up goals to accomplish for oneself to move from one level to another. Those are actually some of the things that many of struggle in life with: some of us don’t know what we want to do with our lives, some of us don’t even plan our lives and just live it as it comes. All of the above things just imply that some people are building never-ending pyramids, some of us stuck at the first level of the pyramid not able to move on. Is that you?

The  model  highlights  some of the more important features of life – collaboration. Let’s imagine we have this grand life vision. How are we going to build this huge pyramid? The simple answer is collaboration with others. It would make the most sense to find other who would help you out in your struggles and share their resources with yours to help you accomplish your goals. And it is only one way, in which this framework can help you answer the questions of life. Just explore!

Benefits of the Framework

I have to admit that this model might be a little bit oversimplified and I am sure that it has some flaws. Yet, I believe that it captures the essence of the human life and the best to lead a satisfying life. One of the major benefits of this framework that it enables you to easily visualize your own progress is life, it let’s you see if you are accomplishing your goals in life. This framework gives you the tools to instill stability and at the same time promote progress in your lives. Have you started building your pyramid of life?

Why do YOU want to meditate?

There are many reasons to start meditating. I always wanted to meditate, but I did not know how or where to start. I was overwhelmed with information out there. I started meditating mainly because it was one of the exercises assigned to me at the School Of Metaphysics. However, my knowledge of meditation started with great master such as Buddha or Gandhi and was further reinforced by more modern figures. All of these people seem to be gaining massive benefits from meditating. Even prominent sports figures such as MJ used to meditate before games as well.

Many people quoted increased concentration and awareness as one of the benefits, others talked about ability to calm ones mind and gain more control over ones thoughts. Yet others claimed that meditation is the way to enlightenment and love. I must agree with all of them.

My personal reason for meditating is to quite my mind, understand myself better, become more centered and balanced as well as begin my journey to self-master. Self-mastery requires self knowledge which comes from knowing ones thoughts which comes from quieting your mind in such a way that you are able to be conscious of your thoughts. Meditation also helps raise ones consciousness to a higher level.

Yet, the purpose of meditating can be anything that you might want to choose – ANYTHING will do. You will just have to try it out for yourself and set your own purpose, but regardless of what it is, just by going through the motions of meditating you will receive all of the benefits that come with it – some of the you might not even be aware of.

How do YOU want to meditate?

The HOW of meditation has many endless answers as I have found out. There are many techniques that you can choose from. I am not going to discuss them here, but it boils down to what is COMFORTABLE for you. Meditating is spending time by yourself, with your own thoughts and feelings and you want to spend quality time with yourself. There various positions such as lotus that are recommended to sit in, but many of them require certain degree of flexibility that one might not have initially.

One of the main requirements for a proper position is comfort, lasting comfort, one must find a position that it is easy to hold for extended periods of time. I am sure that is how those sophisticated positions developed and they ARE the most perfect way to meditate, but for beginners it is important just be comfortable.

However, one must note that no matter what position is, certain key characteristics should remain true: spine should be completely straight, shoulders back, chest out, and abs in and head raised upwards. Another important thing to note is that your knees should be lower than your hips – that will help you keep your spine straight without much effort. The reason for the above requirements is to form a proper posture and allow free flow of energy within the body.

You can mediate sitting up, standing up, sitting on the floor, sitting on your own feet or any other comfortable position that your body can accommodate at the time. One thing I have noticed is that you will have to deal with certain amount of discomfort at the beginning as your body will probably not be used to sitting in fixed position for extended periods of time, but that will surely pass your body will become stronger and will be able to accommodate the position of your choice for as long as you want to. I have been sitting over my feet supporting myself with pillows for the last couple of weeks and that is my current preferred position.

Once you have the position chosen, it is important to to relax your mind and your body right before meditating. That can be achieved by breathing deeply for a couple of times and spending sometime mentally preparing for meditation. After that it is important to express the purpose of your meditation. Like I mentioned before, it can be anything: a request, a thank you, or just a simple affirmation, anything will do. By doing so, you are making your intent clear to the Universe and leave it up to it to take care of it. Sometimes you might not know the intent and it is OK, all you have to do is go through the motions and the intent might become clear after the meditation. After that, you should let go of your prayer and concentrate on meditating.

The meditation itself can be done in many ways. However, the most important thing is to focus ones attention to the third eye through the whole time. Besides that, there are no rules of how to meditate. It can be done in silence, one can say a mantra out loud for as many times as it feels necessary, it can be a combination of both, or you can just repeat a mantra in your head to yourself. The purpose of that is to further quieten the mind and align yourself with your super-conscious mind or God that is with in you. You just need to find what works for YOU.

The period of time during which you meditate is up to you as well. But beginners should probably start with shorter periods of time as longer periods might be discouraging.

My Advice For YOU

Find what works for you! Try it out, play around with it until you find something that is comfortable for you.

Beginnings might be tough and frustrating, but the important thing is to be consistent and just believe that your efforts will pay off, which they will. But you have to be patient and consistent, because it might a LONG time (maybe a year or so) to calm your mind, which is so used to constant stimulus. So don’t be discouraged if you don’t see immediate results, they will come later, you will just have to trust the Universe and be persistent. Just experiment and have and don’t give up and I am sure you will start seeing changes sooner or later.

My Experiences So Far

One thing I almost always notice is decreased body temperature, calm and peaceful mind and increased clarity right after meditation. Besides those obvious physical changes I have started to go deeper into meditation, which almost seems like entering your own subconscious mind. Sometimes, I would see really vivid images from my past, sometimes I would be able to feel like I was almost out of my body, I could feel the limits of my body…it’s a bit tough to describe, but you will know what I am talking about once you experience it. That is all for now, but I know that future holds many great treasures for me hiding in this simple act of meditation in the future. I hope this will encourage some of you to pick up this practice or at least give it a shot and see where it takes you.

Good luck and please let me know if you have any further questions.

Meditation

The best meditation so far! :) I have to admit that meditation is amazing. Before meditating today I was really jittery and my mind was racing. I didn’t feel peaceful going to meditate, but afterwords, I feel really peaceful. The clarity is back, my emotions are calm and quiet.

I was able to meditate the whole time while chanting and that also helping me block out many outside noises such as loud music, people talking out out of my hearing and I was able to just listen to my voice and just repeat the mantra over and over again. This time it felt like I could go on for even longer time and I would have enjoyed even more.

I sat in the same position as before and it wasn’t painful or uncomfortable anymore. On contrary it was really relaxing and comfortable and helping me calm my body.

One thing I really started noticing is that every time after meditation I gain additional clarity and my body temperature drops. For example, today I was warm and uncomfortable, however, after meditating I feel really calm and cool and the feeling is great. Feels like my mind got centered and that I actually rested.

So this is the last official entry in the series. I expect to write a summarizing entry tomorrow that will sum all of my experiences with meditation. I hope that some of you learned something useful or might have been encouraged to take on the practice themselves.

Thank you for reading!

Love and Blessings to All

Meditation

Next to last meditation. Things are becoming better and clearer. I finally found my own routine and it’s almost a habit. This time the chanting did not take too long and was really relaxing and I was able to stop fairly soon after I started chanting. For the rest of the time I just sat in silence trying to calm my mind, which was racing with various thoughts about life.

At one point I started dozing off and seeing various events in my future life, my fears and thing that make me panic. I am not sure why they surface in my mind, but I am sure there is a good reason.

Subconscious

Going to your subconscious while still be aware of it is really powerful as it almost is equivalent of dreaming but actually being aware of your dream. Interpreting your subconscious mind is important as it is the place where your habits, fears and desires lie. It’s what you really are, it is what became so ingrained in your head that it became a part of you. Being aware of certain things can give you the ability to change them or act on your fears to rid them. Yet this is a whole new topic, however, it is closely related to meditation.

Besides that, meditation is just becoming a matter of doing it waiting for the process to yield results, which I am sure will come.

That is all for now.

Love and Blessings to All.

Meditation

This was a great meditation experience. I took a shower beforehand, my mind was calm, the weather was nice and cool, silence, only the nature was disturbing the complete silence.

It was a very soothing experience. I felt like I started to go deeper into meditation because at one point I was chanting the mantra subconsciously as if I was almost dreaming. I was in my usual position, I breathed deeply before started, said my prayer/affirmation/request for Love and started chanting the mantra while holding beads in my hands. I kept chanting the whole time and it was really relaxing and enjoyable. The time passed really quickly and it left me feeling great.

Changing Positions

I will try to switch the positions in a little while. However, then I will purchase a special meditation mat that keeps the body elevated above the ground so that people that are not that flexible would still be able to hold the traditional lotus position.

I feel like I am gaining more and more experience every time I meditate and that I learn something new about myself all the time. More importantly, I am only two days away from completing my 30 day meditation trial and then I can concentrate on much more serious posts. Until then…

Love and Blessings to All.

Meditation

This was the first time I have meditated properly at home. Since it was my birthday weekend, it tougher for me mentally to prepare for meditation or even to find a place for meditation. It almost felt like I just wanted to just be and not think of anything.

This was the time again when I was able to sit down in the proper position with my feet folded under me, I had beads in my hand and I was able to chant for ten minutes straight.

It felt really good to be back in the rhythm, even though I had to stay up until 2AM to complete the meditation, but I am glad I followed through with it. I have only three days left of posting and I am really excited to say that I am almost done what I set out to accomplish.

This meditative experience was really good and relaxing and calming. It almost had a cleansing feel to it where all of my negativity was purged out of my mind and out of my body. I feel really good and clear once again.

I know now that meditation is a journey it’s not a destination and I have so much to explore. I have been meditating for only ten minutes a day, but I know it is possible to sit for hours or even days in meditative states, so I know that I am barely scratching the surface and that my persistence will pay off.

I will keep posting for the last three days, but I know that I am not going to stop researching meditation and various practices that come along with it. So, stay tuned as there will be a lot of good stuff coming up in a few weeks.

Thank you so much for reading and have a blessed day!

Love and Blessings to All.