Being human is a challenge. Every single day, as we deal with ourselves and the world around us, we have so many experiences that give us the opportunities to close our minds and our hearts and give power to the tensions and the judgments within ourselves. Each day we have many chances to embrace the mistakes, embrace the misunderstandings, close our hearts and minds and become judgmental and reinforce the polarity that exists between us and others.
On the other hand, we also have the opportunity every day, day after day, to hold open our hearts and minds and reach into ourselves to discover there a dimension of sweetness and beauty and, ultimately, love. That love is something that each of us has experienced before and searches for in every experience that we engage, even though that sweetness and beauty and love is only and forever found within ourselves.
The only way that we can experience healing on a physical, emotional, and spiritual level is to continually release tension and allow our creative energy to flow, dissolving every crystallization and rigidity, and restoring to us the full range of motion that is available to us in our body, our mind, our heart and our soul. We need to see each person we meet with an open heart and an open mind, understanding that that human being is a miracle that has emerged out of the singularity that is life on earth. We should grateful for the opportunity to connect with and experience whatever alignment might be available in that moment with that person and the flow between us that speaks to the miracle of the unity of life.
Judging people, dumping on people, criticizing people, these are the most ordinary things that any person can do. It’s as ordinary as it gets. Anybody can take a dump on someone else (if you’ll pardon my crudity). It takes a special person to be aware of that urge within themselves, and instead of becoming tangled in our tensions and whatever story is associated with that, to breathe and open and feel and connect and align and flow, which facilitates a change of state that is the dawning of true healing. Our judgments of ourselves and others are only an expression of our ignorance. For us to truly grow, it is essential that we begin to respect and appreciate diversity, see each person in their uniqueness as a miracle, and hold open the space for every living being to unfold their own total wellness from within themselves. We should not be an obstruction to anyone. Rather, we should be a support.
We practice the process, first of all, to release tension. Secondly, we do it to find and feel and allow our own creative energy to flow, and, in allowing that flow, we experience a change of state that feels really good. It feels good. Feeling that simple really good feeling makes our day interesting and meaningful. Moving through our day, it makes our contact, alignment and flow with everyone whose life our life touches an uplifting experience.
A Guided process
Here’s a simple process practice you can do to promote the flow of your creative energy. (If you’d like to follow along with a video, you can find one here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zCEPGXwAgo)
First, it’s important to use proper posture. Whether you’re in a chair or on the floor with your legs crossed, sit up straight, thumbs and forefingers together, hands palms up on your thighs. Find the place on your thighs where your hands can be placed and support your posture—not too far forward, not too far back.
Now turn your attention within yourself. First, close your eyes and find your breath. The simplest expression of life and aliveness in each of us is our breath. We take our breathing for granted, but inside our breath there is tremendous energy. So relaxing your body, lift your shoulders to your ears and drop them. Relax your shoulders. Breathing in fully, hold it for a second, and exhaling, relax your chest. Breathing in again, take a deep breath into your abdomen. Pull down from the diaphragm, breathe into your abdomen, expand it and exhaling, relax your abdomen. Tighten your butt, and exhaling, release it. Take a minute to feel and relax your fingers, your palms, your wrists, your forearms, your upper arms, your neck. Going further, feel your thighs, feel your calves, feel the soles of your feet, feel your toes, and relax everything. It feels really good to relax deeply, and the enhanced experience of circulation that we feel in a deep state of relaxation is extremely healthy.
Now you start to pay attention to the energy centers in your body. In our practice, we consider that the human body is the expression of creative energy in the physical world. The energy body or magnetic field, from which our physical body, our mental body and our emotional body arise, has junction points that are very powerful. These junction points are called chakras. Our sex chakra (in the perineum at the base of our genitals), our heart chakra, and the chakra above the palate behind the eyebrows are considered to be the most powerful chakras in our body.
So, breathing straight into the perineum, the sex chakra, breathe there and relax. Exhale. As you exhale, move your attention up to your heart, and breathing directly into your heart, exhale and relax. As you exhale and relax, move your attention above your palate, behind what we call the third eye chakra, which is really in the middle of your brain. Breathe in, straight up into your brain, and, exhaling, relax your brain.
It’s important to keep your body relaxed when you meditate. A relaxed body facilitates a quiet mind. A quiet mind allows us to see beneath the surface of the thought waves into the vibrancy of life itself within us. To support your opening these energy chakras and awakening this extraordinary energy within you, which you do simply with the power of your own mind, you use a mantra. Mantras are words that have a strong vibration to help in retuning your state. The basic mantra of the spiritual tradition that I have trained in and practice is is 6 syllables: Om Namah Shivaya. Om Namah on the inbreath; Shivaya on the outbreath. It’s repeated silently.
First, you breathe into the sex chakra, Om Namah, and exhaling, Shivaya, having your attention land in your heart. And then Om Namah, breathing straight into your heart, exhaling Shivaya, your attention lands in the middle of your brain. Then with Om Namah, you breathe directly into your brain, and with Shivaya, feel that breath rise out the top of your head.
It’s natural that your mind will wander during the course of this practice, and it’s not a problem at all. When you discover that your mind has wandered, just connect to your breath, and begin again to repeat the mantra and move your awareness within the chakras.
Sit and practice for about 20 minutes using this technique. When you are finished, take a deep breath, breathing in, exhale, and drop your chin to your chest. Inhaling, lift your chin. Exhale. Inhaling again, lift your shoulders to your ears, clench your fist and release and wiggle your fingers. Flex your butt muscles, move side to side, and feel the circulation in your legs.
As you practice, train yourself to take your awareness more and more deeply into the experience of the chakras and the flow. This will awaken in you a profound change of state which will, if you keep practicing, dissolve every tension in you, provide in your life every imaginable and unimaginable possibility and present for you, and everyone whose life your life touches, profound abundance.
Tension is the expression of unawakened energy. Love is conscious energy, and love doesn’t occur accidentally. It occurs consciously. We choose it. Choose to be awakened, choose to rise above the tensions and the judgments, and become the love you say you want to be.