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Meditation
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26
Keys to Living with Greater Awareness
By Swami Kriyananda
A study of the
lives of successful men and women suggests two characteristics common
to all of them: 1) an abundance of energy, particularly for those
activities in which they achieved their success; and 2) a greater-than-usual
degree of awareness. These characteristics are as common to success
in business as in politics, in sports as in entertainment, in the
sciences as in the arts. A deficiency of both, by contrast, is the
single most common feature among people of mediocre ability.
People generally view abundant energy and high awareness as Nature's
gifts, bestowed gratuitously on a fortunate few. Such is not the
case. A person is never doomed to a twilight of incompetence and
failure by his genes, his environment, or by oppressive circumstances
in his life. He dooms himself, rather, if his attitude toward things
is merely tepid, or if he meets life's challenges halfheartedly.
"It's too much trouble!" How often one finds people avoiding
golden opportunities with this mumbled excuse. Success, however,
demands an affirmation of energy. Reluctance to work hard or in
other ways to commit oneself energetically to a project is the surest
way to ultimate failure. Paramhansa Yogananda, the great spiritual
teacher, used to say, "The greater the will, the greater the
flow of energy." Will power actually generates energy
in the body and brain. People who succeed in life not only have
an abundance of energy and enthusiastic awareness, but dynamic will
power as well.
In this connection,
try to recall some occasion in your life when you felt tired, even
exhausted—but then, unexpectedly, you saw a chance to do something
you really wanted to do. Where did that burst of energy come
from? All at once your fatigue vanished! Instead, you found all
the strength you needed for the project itself, and, as likely as
not, for a dozen others besides.
Yogananda used to tell his students, "A little gram of your
flesh contains enough latent energy to keep the city of Chicago
supplied with electricity for a week. And yet," he continued,
smiling, "you complain of feeling tired! It is because you
live too much attached to the body, rather than seeing yourselves
as waves of God's infinite energy!"
Please study these twenty-six keys to living with dynamic energy
and greater awareness. Be guided by them. The more you absorb these
principles, the more you'll be amazed at their power to revolutionize
your life.
1. Be active,
never passive, in response to life's challenges. Willing activity
will awaken within you the thought that something can be done
about every problem you face.
2. Exercise
regularly with deep attention. Physical exercise will not only help
to keep the body fit, but will also enliven the mind.
3. Practice
breathing deeply several times a day. An increased supply of oxygen
to the lungs invigorates also the brain. While walking, inhale and
exhale deeply. Count to four with the inhalation; hold the breath
counting to four; exhale, again counting four; and hold the breath
out four counts. Repeat this exercise six or twelve times in succession.
Again, standing still, bend forward and exhale completely. Let your
arms hang loosely before you. Then inhale from the diaphragm, straightening
up slowly and raising the hands to the chest, your elbows out to
the side. As you reach the upright position, raise the arms high
above the head and stretch upward, completing your inhalation. Hold
this position briefly, then exhale slowly, stooping forward in the
reverse order of the above movements. Repeat this exercise three
times. While practicing deep breathing, keep the following points
in mind: A deep, full inhalation should always begin at the diaphragm,
extend to the floating ribs, and only in the third and final stage
include the upper chest.
4. Make a habit
of holding your body erect, whether standing or sitting. An erect
spine induces positive mental attitudes. A bent spine, on the other
hand, is the natural companion of negativity and discouragement.
While standing erect, think of yourself as almost weightless. Stand
more often on the balls of your feet than heavily back on the heels.
Keep your chest raised. Look naturally upward, too, as if what interested
you lay more often above the horizon than down on the ground. When
speaking to people, again, gaze frankly into their eyes instead
of timidly at their knees.
5. Develop
a preference for foods that are high in energy and nutrients, as
opposed to those which merely "stick to the ribs." Remember,
diet plays an important role in your mental, as well as your physical,
well-being.
6. Be keenly
interested in everything. Don't wait for things to make you interested.
Awareness is not so much a matter of what one is aware of as of
what he is aware with. Make interest in things a matter of
deliberate, conscious practice. If you tell yourself, "I'll
become interested when I can find something that awakens my interest,"
you'll find yourself becoming progressively bored with everything.
Always be open, instead, to new possibilities, new ideas, new points
of view.
7. Practice
willingness, too, as a matter of principle. Subconscious
reluctance can defeat a person's most strenuous efforts to succeed,
even as pushing on both ends of a car will thwart every effort to
remove it from a ditch.
8. Faith
is another vitally important principle. To do a thing really well,
one must believe in it wholeheartedly. Faith is intuitive recognition
of the truth of a thing. It is not passive acceptance, but committed
belief, belief put into practice. Faith transcends petty victories
and defeats. It is not commitment to things, merely, but to truth.
The foundation of faith should be one's sheer joy in the fact that
he is alive. Rejoice in the power within you, a power shared
by all mankind, to achieve your own highest potential.
9. Don't merely
wish for broader awareness: Embrace it. Never fear
it. The way out of life's difficulties is not to deaden one's consciousness
to them, but to see them always in relation to broader realities.
10. Say YES
to life! In everyone, two voices compete. The one is life-affirming;
the other, life-negating. Be open to the yes-saying influence. When
faced with any new opportunity, ask yourself, "How can I make
it a reality?" Shun the tendency of so many people to enumerate
all the reasons why a new idea could not possibly work.
11. Be solution-oriented.
Solutions to problems don't come by dwelling on the problems. They
come by concentrating on resolving them. To be solution-oriented
is to approach problems with faith, almost as if the problems themselves
were not wholly real. For every problem contains its own built-in
solution. Successful people don't brood on the obstacles facing
them. They commit themselves, instead, to finding ways out of difficulties,
and are certain that such ways exist.
12. Be happy!
This advice may sound impracticable. Most people think that happiness
comes as a result of escaping some difficulty, or of fulfilling
some desire. Happiness, however, comes primarily from holding happy
thoughts. Happiness increases one's awareness, moreover, for it
naturally includes other people in one's well-being, embraces fresh
experiences, and welcomes new opportunities. Smile readily. You'll
never be happy in the possession of mere things. Make it your philosophy
of life simply to be happy!
13. Give your
full attention to everything you do. Live wholeheartedly HERE and
NOW. The reality of the past is that it has helped to create the
present. The future will be determined by how wisely—or unwisely—you
live now. Do your best today, and the results will take care of
themselves. Indeed, they will reflect the very best that is in you.
14. Don't be
attached to success or failure. Successful people work primarily
for the joy of doing what they feel inspired to do. They are less
concerned with returns on their labor. Nonattachment helps a person
to live fully in the present tense—to do his best right
now.
15. Practice
affirmation. The simple statement, for instance, "I live wholeheartedly
HERE and NOW!" when repeated several times a day with deep
concentration, can help to transform mere intentions into reality
by giving them force and definition.
16. Develop
a habit, in response to every challenge, of saying, "I can!"
"I can!" is the yes-saying principle in action.
Unwillingness must be nipped in the bud. Let your first instinct
be, rather, to affirm your openness to new possibilities. Habitual
skepticism kills opportunity. The time exists, indeed, for reasoned
consideration, but this time comes after one has affirmed
his willingness to approach a new idea constructively.
17. Dwell more
on the thought of giving of yourself. Jesus Christ said, "It
is more blessed to give than to receive." Giving is expansive.
The desire to receive, by contrast, is contractive. Energy and awareness
grow as one's sympathies expand. They shrink, however, if one turns
his sympathies selfishly inward upon himself.
18. "Act
enthusiastic, and you'll be enthusiastic!" It was Dale
Carnegie who gave this famous saying to the world. In books and
in lectures across the country he would urge people not to wait
for circumstances to transform their indifference into enthusiasm.
"Even if you feel uninspired," he told his audiences,
"act as though you were overflowing with enthusiasm."
He cited convincing examples of people who had been failures in
life, but who in a very short time had become outstanding successes
by following this principle. When you act out an attitude, the action
itself is a kind of affirmation.
19. Don't wait
for others to love you. Love them! Love everyone—not for what
you receive outwardly in return, but for the sheer joy of offering
yourself as a channel for this greatest of all gifts. Love is a
natural quality of the feeling of the heart. Love becomes deadened,
however, by selfishness. Unselfish love, once awakened, brings every
cell in the body into harmony. It directs the energy of the brain
powerfully toward whatever one sets one's mind to accomplish.
20. View life
as a unity. Dwell on the harmony that underlies the universe. Seek
correlations between events and between circumstances. Consider
the sunlight, how it is not an isolated phenomenon, but gives vitality
to all living things. Consider the infinite variety in the world
around us, how all things are manifestations of a few simple elements.
Consider the seeming struggle between life and death, but how death
itself only makes way for new life-expressions. Ponder the relationship
between opposing mental states, and how suffering often becomes
a portal to deeper experiences of joy. Relationships abound everywhere.
A fractured view of things brings mental confusion, but a unitive
view expands the consciousness, and develops wisdom.
21. Avoid wishful
thinking. Try to harmonize yourself with whatever is.
22. Work with
others, not against them. Be supportive rather than antagonistic
in your dealings with them.
23. Be true
to your word. And always speak the truth.
24. Live more
in the consciousness of energy. Don't think of yourself as a physical
body, merely. Think of the body itself, rather, as a vehicle for
the expression of energy.
25. Meditate
regularly. Meditation raises the consciousness into what many psychologists
have described as "superconsciousness." This state is
the polar opposite of subconsciousness. Inspired men and women have
derived inspiration to a great extent from this higher-than-conscious
level of awareness.
26. Make transcendence
your "ulterior motive" in everything you do. Never let
yourself stagnate in lesser victories. Keep ever climbing up the
mountain toward the highest that is in you. Realize that that highest
embraces not merely physical and mental accomplishments, but spiritual
ones above all. There is a longing deep within every soul for perfect
peace, absolute love, and infinite joy.
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