Principle #6: Relax And Let It Go

This post is sixth in the series "7 Principles for Consciously Creating Your Life". Previous posts covered Living in the Now, Entering the Divine Mind, Summoning Pure Desire, Interrupting Old Patterns and The Ecstasy of Asking.

I'm writing this week's post from India. While traveling through the Chennai airport a few days ago, I happened upon a billboard with a favorite line from the Bhagavad Gita. Lord Krishna instructs the great warrior Arjuna: "Seek to perform your duty, but lay not claim to its fruits." In other words, strive to act boldly, but lay the results of action at the feet of the divine. Be not attached. Act faithfully and surrender the outcome.

This is sage advice, as meaningful today as it was several thousand years ago. We have little control over how things go in this world. We can either become attached to having things a certain way and suffer when they don't work out, or we can do our best in every moment, offering our highest contribution, and then surrender the outcome.

The latter is the essence of our 6th principle: Let it go.

We often want to dictate to the universe how our manifestations should show up. We want to be in charge of every detail...when, where, how, with whom. We are control freaks. Despite knowing the fallacy of this attitude, we become attached to attaining certain results and suffer when reality doesn't meet our expectations. The more we fixate on particular outcomes, the more we set ourselves up for distress. A pithy Zen aphorism declares, "Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional." Suffering is what happens when we resist our life experience rather than relaxing and letting go.

So what does it mean to let go? How does one do this?

In the Gita, Krishna did not tell Arjuna to hang up his sword and take a vacation in Hawaii. As one of the most powerful warriors in all the land, it was Arjuna's mission to fight. Krishna instructed him to fulfill his duty, to put forth his very best effort, yet to detach from the outcome. The fruits of his action were not his to claim.

There are several details of this story I find particularly revealing and powerful:

First, in this epic tale, Arjuna is pitted against warriors for whom he has great respect, many of whom are his own relatives. Arjuna sinks into despair at the prospect of engaging in battle. He doesn't want to fight. Krishna replies, "Your sorrow has no cause. The wise grieve neither for the living nor for the dead. There has never been a time when you and I and the kings gathered here have not existed." So the first thing Krishna does is to remind Arjuna of his True Self, the immortal self that spans across time and space. He immediately puts things into perspective.

Second, Krishna reminds Arjuna that inaction is not a solution: "You should never engage in action for the sake of reward, nor should you long for inaction. Perform work in this world, Arjuna, as a man established within himself - without selfish attachments, and alike in success and defeat." His instruction is very clear - centered in your understanding of the true self, offer yourself in service without hesitation, but don't fret over whatever happens next. Give up the need for any particular result. The fruits belong to God.

Finally, Krishna goes on to tell Arjuna that every action should be born from love. In other words, not only shouldn't you fixate on the outcome - that's the wrong place to put your attention - but you should surrender every deed as a love sacrifice to the divine. Everything you do, do it as a prayer. Do as an ecstatic offering. Do it in love.

After that, the outcome is immaterial. When you operate from love, success and failure are irrelevant.

Why is it we think one outcome is better than another, anyway? Being attached to an outcome is an ego response. We have an identity to uphold and, in order to reinforce that identity, we are hoping for specific things to happen. Success is a better outcome than failure because my ego feels better about it.

But, really, honestly, who are we to judge each infinitesimal outcome in the vast complexity and variety of the cosmic play? Isn't it pretty audacious, arrogant even, to think we could definitively conclude one outcome superior to another in the intricate tapestry of a lifetime? We've all had the experience of lamenting a challenging situation only to find later that, in fact, it held hidden blessings and lessons that were essential for our greater development.

My teacher says simply this, "If I succeed, I celebrate. If I fail, I celebrate. If it works out I celebrate, if it doesn't I celebrate. Nothing can rob me of my celebration, because there's no outcome to be had that is bad."

Surrendering our compulsion to control is relaxing. It makes things pretty simple. It takes the tension out of the body and mind. If failure is the outcome, then it's the perfect outcome. You are a divine instrument and your instrument is being played brilliantly. You can't even take your next breath but for grace. Release your sense of "doership."

Now, to be clear, this doesn't mean everything in life will suddenly be pleasant and trouble-free. Living in duality means that energies like greed, conflict, violence and poverty will still exist. Our world is full of many woes. That's why we are drawn to act in the first place. As social workers, peace-builders, healers, change agents, activists, environmentalists, clergy people, police officers, etc. we, like Arjuna, must fulfill our duty.

We must act. We must respond to the pure desire within us, which propels us along an evolutionary path toward greater wholeness, integration and remembrance of our true, divine nature. And on that path we surrender. This is not running away from life, but running toward life with arms and hearts wide open. We offer out best into the world, in love and service, and lay the outcome in the hands of the divine. We let it go.

Principle #5: The Ecstasy Of Asking

This post is fifth in the series "7 Principles for Consciously Creating Your Life" on cultivating a life of joy, prosperity and abundance. Previous posts covered Living in the Now, Entering the Divine Mind, Summoning Pure Desire, and Interrupting Old Patterns of Thought.

You may be wondering by part five of a seven-part series: when do we get around to asking for what we want? Today is the day. The previous posts have been preparation for this moment: the ecstasy of asking.

Our universe is gloriously beautiful and abundant. But how can we experience this abundance in our own lives?

We started the series by recognizing the possibility of creating from the infinite potential of the higher mind, rather than our limited ego mind. While the finite ego mind can be a fabulous tool for analysis and planning, it is also conditioned by memory and old patterns of thought - doubt, fear, worry, tension, negativity, upset - which are counter-productive to the process of creation. When we operate solely from this level of consciousness, we end up creating a mixed bag of experiences. Rather than manifesting our wish list, we manifest a range of experiences reflecting the untidy state of our mind.

But if we take the time to become present, to relax and release old thought patterns, and to quiet the mind, our intention becomes much clearer and the resulting experience more coherent. Similar to a noise dampener in a radio, we want to clarify the signal of our intention before broadcasting. If we start with a noisy signal, we will broadcast static and disturbance into our daily experience. If we minimize the noise in the system, the fidelity of our intention is higher and the resulting experience much more enjoyable.

As we become more clear and aware, we can consciously use the power of thought to create. What is a powerful thought? It is a thought with no other thoughts around. The yogis understood that if you drop in a single thought into the thought-free mind it will have incredible power to manifest.

Sounds great, you might say, but how do we cultivate this condition?

Powerful thoughts can arise either spontaneously out of the pristine desire of the infinite mind (evoking the sensation of sudden insight or of being in the "flow" with the divine will), or can be intentionally introduced by an adept of conscious creation. The yogic masters developed techniques for the latter, involving use of the energies of the subtle body and of sound, to activate the creation process. Returning to the radio analogy, once we have clear signal, we can use an amplifier to increase the signal intensity, ensuring maximum expression and enjoyment. Similarly the next step in conscious creation uses joyful, ecstatic energy to amplify the power of our intention.

This is how it works. By bringing our awareness into specific chakras, "wheels" or vortexes of energy within the subtle body, we can consciously activate the creation process. Specifically, we move the creative energies found in the sacral chakra, which is located in the lower abdomen and related to procreation and sexuality, up into the third eye chakra, the spiritual center located between the two eyebrows. After focalizing this energy in the third eye, we introduce a thought of what we'd like to manifest. In this powerful state, we become one with the thought. Essentially, we "ask" for what we want by dissolving any sense of difference between ourselves and the object of our desire in rapturous energy of the third eye.

The experience of this is somewhat like an orgasm of being, where all separation between self and other, thought and object, idea and form are radically dissolved. It is like disintegrating the body and mind down to the atomic level, co-mingling with and indistinguishable from our creation. We dissolve in joyful union with an abundant universe.

By consciously moving this energy, we shift its expression from sexual activity and procreation into the ecstatic creation other desires such as health and well-being, loving relationship, a peaceful environment, fulfilling work experiences, spiritual awakening, or other aspects of life that allow us to feel fully abundant.

Here is the full meditation, called the "Ah" meditation by the Tamil Siddha tradition:

"Ah" Meditation - For the "Ah" meditation, sit quietly in a comfortable upright position with eyes closed. This meditation follows the process described above and uses the sacred sound "ah". The sound "ah", which represents divine intelligence, is found in often in the many names of the divine - God, Yahweh, Siva, Krishna, Allah, Ra, Kali, Durga and many more.

As in previous weeks, bring your attention to the central channel of energy in the subtle body, called sushumna, which runs parallel to the spinal column. Visualize a luminous channel of light running up the spinal column, from the tailbone up to the crown of the head and out into infinite space.

Now move your attention down the spinal column to the abdomen region, just below the navel. This is the region of the sacral chakra which relates to procreation and sexuality. Tune into the energy of this chakra and begin to tone the sound "ahhhhh". Repeat this for several rounds as you connect with this internal ecstatic energy. As you tone the sound, let all thoughts fall away. As you continue to tone "ahhhhhh", imagine this energy rising slowly up the spinal column from the abdomen, through the navel, the heart and the throat, into your third eye. Let the sound penetrate your third eye as you feel the energies focalizing there.

Now, with your attention and energy focused in the third eye, bring to mind an authentic, heartfelt desire that you would like to manifest. Put the thought and/or visual image of this desire into the third eye and empower it with the sound "ahhhhh". This meditation is about the expression of joyful creative energy, so enjoy the sound and your manifestation as much as possible. Dissolve into the ecstasy of this creative union. Continue toning the sound for as many rounds as you like, celebrating the joy and elation of creating abundance in your life.

The "Ah" meditation was revealed to the West by Tamil Siddha master Dattatreya Siva Baba. He shared the technique with Dr. Wayne Dyer, who wrote of it in his book Manifest Your Destiny, which he dedicated to Dattatreya (then called Guruji).

Principle #4: Interrupt Old Patterns Of Thought

This post is fourth in the series "7 Principles for Consciously Creating Your Life" on cultivating a life of joy, prosperity and abundance. Previous posts covered Living in the Now, Entering the Divine Mind, and Summoning Pure Desire.

For those of you who've been following this series on manifestation, you've probably noticed that rather than extolling the traditional model of striving, working hard, and exerting willpower, I'm suggesting a radically different approach. Manifestation can be easy, effortless and graceful...if we become present.

While our unruly minds make implementation difficult, the concepts are really quite simple: 1) become present in the moment, 2) access the infinite potential of the higher mind, and 3) allow your soul's desires to arise from the wisdom of that state. While we have a few more principles to cover, these are the starting conditions - moving beyond individual ego gratification into an expanded state of awareness - which are essential for conscious creation.

Unfortunately, this is the point where trouble often arises. For three weeks you've been willing to suspend doubt, to humor me while you gleaned the gist of where we're headed. Perhaps you even experienced a glimpse of omniscient mind during the meditation practices when...wham! A rush of thoughts and emotions flood in. "This sounds too good to be true, it's too simplistic, too idealistic, too whatever. It can't be that easy. I need to work hard to earn things. There's no free lunch."

These wayward thoughts - old emotions, subconscious beliefs, or conditioned thought patterns - keep us from believing we can attain unlimited abundance. They tend to fall into several categories:

Doubt. We've been conditioned to rely heavily on the rational mind to attain our goals. First we must create a plan, then acquire the resources to fulfill our plan, then execute it step by step. This linear sequence must be followed to accomplish our objective. If our new dream home costs $600K, for instance, we need to wait for the next promotion, then clean up our credit, then get approved for the mortgage, then, then... If any step in the sequence is unachievable, our dreams our dashed. Entertaining the possibility of creating in a non-linear fashion brings up massive doubt from the mind. "That sounds impossible. Nothing comes without hard work. If I don't control everything, things won't work out right." Releasing doubt is a necessary step to unlocking our creative potential.

Fear. Most of us live in a constant state of low grade anxiety - anxiety over relationships, family, career, health, finances. This anxiety, and our addiction to the swirl of underlying thought processes that generate it, keeps us trapped in mediocre lives. When we endeavor living into our full potential, fear can arise even more acutely. "What if I fail? What if I'm not good enough? What if my dreams are too bold and my heart gets broken?" We are often more afraid of stepping into our power and dreaming boldly, than of staying small.

Shame. Humans are the only species on the planet who worry about whether they are "deserving" of beauty, goodness and abundance. We hold destructive beliefs such as, "I'm not worthy to be successful. I don't deserve to be happy. I must fix all my flaws before I can be abundant." The nightingale doesn't question whether she deserves to have a beautiful voice -- she just sings. You should too.

So what can we do when drawn into the fear, doubt, shame or any other old thought pattern?

Practice radical gratitude. No matter where you are or how you feel, find something to be grateful for. Give thanks for life's small miracles, for a smile, or a sunset or for any of nature's wonders. Even if the only thing you can appreciate is your next breath, then give thanks for that. Slowly, let the appreciation grow inside you. Feel the heart open as your gratitude expands. Even the smallest spark of gratefulness, fanned with enough attention, can grow into a raging fire of appreciation.

Why do this? Because gratitude is a "pattern-interrupt". It is impossible to be in fear or negativity when we are filled with appreciation. Try it, it's quite extraordinary. Giving thanks centers us. Giving thanks brings us back into this moment. Giving thanks drops us into the heart and creates a natural detachment from the fluctuations of the mind.

Appreciation, acceptance, curiosity, joy. All these are natural "pattern-interrupts" which help us to dis-identify with disabling old thought routines. Once we detach our awareness from old patterns, we can see the higher truth -- fear, doubt and shame are not who we really are. They are simply ignorant thoughts that have momentarily captured our attention. There is no need to identify with these beliefs. Gratitude opens spaciousness within us, allowing a fresh perspective to emerge unsullied by past conditioning. Appreciation transforms our consciousness.

Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami shares a parable about the transformational power of appreciation: A guru was sitting with two disciples under a sprawling banyan tree in India. The older student inquired, "Guruji, how long must I wait until I realize God?" The teacher responded, "Enlightenment is not something that can be predicted, but since you have asked," he leaned over and spoke in the right ear, "It will be twenty more lives." "Oh, no!" the youth cried in dismay, "I don't know if I can wait that long!" The other follower, naturally curious, asked of his own future. The guru whispered, "Liberation will come after you live as many lives as this banyan has leaves!" Hearing this, the seeker jumped to his feet and began to dance. Why? He was suddenly overcome by the assurance that he would ultimately be liberated. Ecstatic with appreciation, he transcended the mind and attained his liberation that very moment.

Appreciation offers the possibility of instantaneous transformation. If you experience any constriction this week, I invite you to practice radical gratitude. Here is an exercise to get started:

Giving & Receiving - The Tibetan Buddhists have a lovely practice called Tonglen, which means 'taking and giving'. The intention of Tonglen is to acknowledge the difficulties and struggles of being human and hold those challenges with the utmost care and compassion. We start by acknowledging ourselves and then expand out to widening circles - loved ones, family, friends, acquaintances, our community, nation, world, even to those we dislike or have challenges with.

Start by sitting comfortably, with eyes closed and spine straight, breathing naturally. On the in-breath, breathe in any challenges, constriction, fear or pain you might be feeling. Feel it being soothed and comforted by the energies of the heart. On the out-breath, breathe out love, compassion, and appreciation for yourself. Thank yourself for all that you do and for the preciousness of your being. Allow yourself to bask in this appreciation for as many rounds as you like. Next, expand your attention to your circle of close family and loved ones. Breathe in their struggles and challenges, allowing them to be held compassionately in your heart, then breathe out appreciation, acceptance, love or anything that would take away their pain. Honor and thank them for who they are.

At your own pace, continue to expand the circle to friends and acquaintances, repeating this process. When you feel ready, hold in mind someone whom you are in conflict. Without judgment, breathe in their pain, fear, and stuckness and hold them in your heart, then breathe out appreciation and understanding for them. Continue expanding to widening circles until you are holding the entire world in your attention, breathing in the suffering of humanity, and quietly breathing out love, appreciation, compassion and care for all beings. Breathe in and out for all of us.

Principle #3: Summon Pure Desire

This post is third in the series "7 Principles for Consciously Creating Your Life" on cultivating a life of joy, prosperity and abundance. The first two posts covered Principle #1: Live in the Now and Principle #2: Enter the Divine Mind.

Last week several readers commented on the description of this series - cultivating a life of a joy, prosperity, abundance - and wondered whether I was promoting a materialist viewpoint.

In my various travels, I've rarely met people for whom material possessions actually made them feel abundant. I've met billionaires who still look for parking spaces with money on the meter, and penniless mostly-naked sadhus filled with supreme delight by a scoop of rice in their begging bowls. Whether rich or poor, something other than money has evoked the experience of prosperity...or prevented it.

"The most important factor in the quality of life for a human being is how the person's mind is managed," writes Richard Thurman, a Tibetan scholar who travels frequently with the Dalai Lama. "Transforming our consciousness is the most important work we can ever do."

How we "manage our minds" is central to how we perceive reality and how we feel about the circumstances of our lives. Creating consciously is about moving beyond the pursuit of external pleasure into the natural abundance of the awakened mind.

Which brings us to Principle #3...tricky territory indeed...Desire.

How do we work with desire without getting lost in it?

The Buddha warned that desire is the primary cause of all human suffering. He said our continuous craving for comfort, pleasure and material possessions can never be fully satiated, so inevitably we end up in pain. John Cleese declared the modern version of this, "I used to desire many, many things, but now I have just one desire, and that's to get rid of all my other desires." The Buddha would have approved.

But now we have a dilemma. While many traditions recognize desire a source of human torment, we also know that desire is an essential element for creation. Whether it's the sexual desire to conceive a child or the social desire to save the rainforest, how can we create without desire?

It's useful to return to a distinction made in last week's post: the distinction between the ego mind and the Divine Mind. Our egos are ripe with individual desires and attachments that ultimately cause us anguish, as the Buddha discovered so many centuries ago.

Alternately, the Divine Mind or universal consciousness is imbued with a different kind of desire -- pure, unpolluted, non-judgmental desire. This desire is the primordial desire of creation, from which the entire world manifests. It exists in the heart of the universal Self, beyond duality, beyond right and wrong, where creation is simply a playful movement of consciousness. By accessing this state, we can know and live the purest desire within the Self.

In Living Deeply (Schlitz, Vietan and Amorok), Yoruba chief and storyteller Luisah Teish shares how her African tradition describes this kind of experience:

The way we talk about it, we would speak of a person realigning their aurie, their earthly head, with ip'ori, their heavenly head. Ip'ori is that part of a person that is connected to spirit, that always has been and always will be. And ip'ori knows what your contract with creation was when you chose to take a body and come into this world.

Transformational teacher Angeles Arrien relays a similar concept held by the Inuit:

There's a lovely Inuit saying that there are really two plans to every day: there's my plan and there's the Mystery's plan. [The first] is an egoic plan. But there's a deeper plan that is much stronger than any egoic plan. This plan gets revealed in silence, with specific intention and attention. What often happens for people in silence and in nature, in prayer or affirmation, is that once they let go and really listen, something else emerges that wasn't on the agenda.

For me, after many years of meditation, I finally asked myself: From which of these states would I rather create a life? From aurie or ip'ori? From ego's agenda or Mystery's agenda? I could spend my whole life exerting my ego to what avail? Even if my ego were capable of making me the next Oprah (which is highly dubious), that would still be paltry compared to cosmic consciousness. What is this incarnation dedicated to after all...or any incarnation for that matter?

I committed to live the Mystery. While my execution is highly imperfect, the intention changed the course of things. And what I've discovered, dissolving into the desire in the heart of the Self, is a doorway into the cosmic bliss experience described by the mystics of the ages. This verse in the Siva Sutras expresses it beautifully: "Hrdaye citta samghattad drshya swapa darshanam." Loosely translated it says when the mind falls into the heart consciousness (Divine Mind), you simultaneously experience both the void and the arising of the entire manifest universe. Experiencing yourself as both emptiness and the entire universe, you become everything you could possibly desire.

As my teacher would say, "You are meant to fulfill desire - not in a human way, but in a divine way."

Exercise for Tapping Pure Desire - Last week we started exploring the yoga of sound. According to the yogis, various sounds carry unique energies that can awaken specific parts of the brain and subtle body. This exercise builds upon last weeks' practice of bringing awareness into the central energy meridian, called the sushumna, and using specific sounds to activate desired energies. Today, we'll be working with the sound "eeee", the seed sound in Sanskrit for the energy of pure desire and divine will.

Sit quietly and bring your attention to the spinal column. Visualize a luminous channel of light running up the spinal column, from the tailbone up to the crown of the head and out into infinite space. Now bring your attention to the heart center in the middle of the chest. As you focus on the heart center, softly tone the sound "eeeee" either out loud or inwardly. Repeat the sound as many times as you like, feeling it vibrate within the entire chest cavity. As you work with the sound, hold the intention to be guided toward the highest desires of your soul. After the mediation, write down any guidance or intuition you receive about desires that are meaningful for you to create.