Putting it all Together

This exercise will help you find a deeper understanding of and better experience with the Principle and Sutra Exercise for today (Sunday).

Go to a place where a lot of activity is taking place, such as a shopping mall. But something to eat from the food court. Sit on a bench. Close your eyes. With full awareness, taste the food, smell its aroma, and feel its texture. While keeping your eyes closed, pay attention to all the sounds in your environment.

• What's that music in the background?
• Christmas carols?
• The theme song of a movie?
• Can you tune in to the conversaton of the people next to you?
• Can you hear scattered phrases, words?
• Do any sounds strike you as attractive, or draw your attention more than others?

Now put your awareness in your body, feel everything around you. The hardness or softness of the bench or sofa - is it wood, or metal, or fabric?

Now open your eyes and observe the scene around you, the people walking, the colors, the shops, the items in the windows, and the art galleries.

Now close your eyes and in your imagination note once again what you have experienced - the tastes, the smells, the textures, the colors and the objects you saw, the sounds you heard. Now pick an item from each of your sensory experiences. An example of these might include the following:

• strawberry ice cream on your tongue
• the smell of baking bread
• the touch of craggy rocks under your feet
• a beautiful painting of the sun setting over the hills
• Christmas carols
• theme song from the James Bond movie Goldfinger

Now tell yourself that all these sounds, smells, textures, and tastes are part of a story. Ask yourself what the story is. Ask your nonlocal self to reveal the story to you. Now let go and assume that your nonlocal self will provide the answer in the form of a synchronistic experience.

-0O0-

Chopra goes on to say:

The exercise above is an actual example of an experience I had at a shopping mall during Christmastime. One year later I was in Jamaica. I had taken a drive into the countryside. I saw a scene very similar to the picture in the painting - a beautiful sunset over a hill by the ocean. Upon inquiry I learned that this place was called Strawberry Hill and the James Bond movie Goldfinger had been shot here. There was a beautiful hotel on Strawberry Hill. I decided to go inside. They had a luxurious spa. The spa director was delited to meet me, and he told me that he had been looking for me for the last several weeks because he wanted advice on Ayurvedic therapies. We ended up talking about a mutual collaboration.

Several years later I also met the owner of the hotel, who was a record company executive. His wife had an illness for which she consulted me, and we became close friends. He helped me with great advice when I produced my first music CD with healing meditations.

Finding the Cosmos Within

This meditation on finding the cosmos within will help you find a deeper understanding of and better experience with the Principle and Sutra Exercise for today (Saturday).

Read this into a tape, and play it to yourself:

Sit or lie comfortably with your eyes closed. Quiet your internal dialogue by observing your breath.

After a few minutes put your attention on your heart. Visualize your heart as a pulsating sphere of light. In this sphere visualize two or three diving beings or archetypal energies. These could be angels, gods, or goddesses. Now visualize the rest of your body also as a body of light.

Now slowly imagine this light body with its pulsating sphere of divine beings expanding so it fills the entire room in which you are sitting or lying. Allow the expansion to occur beyond the confines of the room so that you are no longer in the room but in fact the room is in you. Continue the process of expanding your light body so that the entire city in which you live exists in your being - the buildings, the people, the traffic, and the country side.

Continue to expand your sense of self to include in your physical being the state in which you live, your country, and ultimately the entire planet. now see that the whole world exists in you - all the people, all other sentient beings, trees and forests, rivers and mountains, rainfall and sunshine, earth and water - these are different components of your being, just like different organs in your body.

Now quietly say to yourself, "I am not in the world, the world is in me." Whatever imbalances you see in this world of yours, as the divine beings still dancing in your pulsating sphere of a heart to correct them. Ask these diving beings to fulfill any desire you have and to bring harmony, beauty, healing, and joy to the different parts of your cosmic self. Continue to expand your sense of self to include planets and moons, stars and galaxies.

Now say to yourself, "I am not in the universe; the universe is in me." Slowly begin to diminish the size of your cosmic self until you can once again experience your personal body. Imagine trillions of cells in your personal body - all part of a dance, each cell an entire universe unto itself. Remind yourself that your true being inhabits all these levels of creation, from microcosm to macrocosm, from the atom to the universe, from your personal body to your cosmic body. Remind yourself that at each of these levels of your existence you have available to you the divine energies that nonlocally orchestrate the cosmic dance to create the harmonious interaction of elements and forces that can fulfill any desire. Express your gratitude to these archetypal energies.

Now just remain sitting or lying quietly, feeling all the sensations in your body. You may feel tingling or exhilaration. After two or three minutes open your eyes. The exercise is over.

Nonviolent Communication

Exploring nonviolent communication will help you find a deeper understanding of and better experience with the Principle and Sutra Exercise for today (Friday).

There will always be situations and circumstances in your life when someone will cross some personal boundary, triggering strong emotional responses. An excellent book from which the following is derived is: Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg.

There are four basic steps to nonviolent communication, which involve questions you ask yourself whenever you find yourself becoming defensive. When someone pushes your buttons, it's tempting to want to push back. But that is not an optimal response - it is not productive, it wastes valuable personal energy, and it creates more turbulence in the world. As you go through these basic steps, it might be helpful to think of a recent experience you may have had that left you feeling defensive.

Step 1: Separate Observation from Evaluation.

Define what actually happened, instead of relying on your interpretation of what happened.Be as objective as possible when describing the event. Ask yourself:

• What did you actually respond to?
• What actually occurred?
• What did you see and hear?
• Were you responding to the actual event?
• Or were you responding to your interpretation of the event?

Whenever you find yourself having an emotional reaction, stop for a moment and try to discern the difference between your interpretation of the event and the objective observation of the event.

Step 2: Define your Feelings

Describe your feelings in a language that reflects only the feelings that you are responsible for and avoid words that victimize you. Also avoid words that require another person to "make" you feel a certain way. Think to yourself:

• What feelings arose as a result of the situation?
• What am I feeling?
• Which words best describe how this feels within me?

For example, you might feel appreciated, angry, antagonistic, anxious, afraid, bold, beautiful, confident, blissful, bewildered, glad, free, exhilarated, calm, astonished, cheerful, eager, hopeful, joyful, optimistic, proud, sensitive, ashamed, bored, confused, dejected, disgruntled, displeased, fatigued, guilty, hostile, jealous, lazy, or lonely.

Words to avoid might include: abandoned, abused, betrayed, cheated, coerced, diminished, manipulated, misunderstood, overworked, rejected, unheard, unseen, unsupported. These words do not arise from you, instead they describe your response to the other person or the event. These words give others too much power over your emotions. And when you do that, the tendency will be to get caught up in a vicious cycle of attracting people who evoke these feelings.

Step 3: State your needs clearly

You wouldn't be having strong feelings if all your needs were being met. Identify the need as specifically as possible. Ask yourself:

• What do I need in this situation?
• Why?

Continue that line of thought until it eventually leads to something you can ask of another person. For example:

• I need to feel loved. Why?
• I feel lonely. I need to feel less alone. Why?
• I don't have close friends.
• I need to find some friends and develop relationships.

You cannot ask another person to make you feel loved; that is beyond any one's capability. But you can ask another person to go out to a movie with you, to come to a party, to have a cup of coffee. etc.

Step 4: Ask, Don't demand.

Once we identify a need and are ready to make a request, we often demand rather than request that our needs be met. Demands are less likely to be fulfilled because people inherently respond poorly to demands. Most people, however, are happy to fulfill a request. Also, the more specific you are, the more likely your request will be answered. Here are some examples along with the alternatives:

• Pick up the dry cleaning. / Would you please pick up the dry cleaning?
• Love me forever. / Will you marry me?
• Can we spend more time together? / Can we go to the park this afternoon?

In summary:

Whenever you are part of tense situation, allow yourself to take a step back from the emotions of the moment and choose conscious communication.

1. What do you observe?
2. How does it make you feel?
3. Determine your need.
4. Make a request.

Focusing Intention

The Focusing Intention exercise is specially formulated to help you find a deeper understanding of and better experience with the Principle and Sutra Exercise for today (Thursday).


The best way to focus on intentions is to write them down. Although this may sound like an obvious first step, it is a step that many people ignore. As a result, their intentions often remain unfocused, and therefore unrealized.

Go to a quiet place where you are not likely to be disturbed. Write down what you want on all different levels of desire. Include material, ego gratification, relationship, self-esteem, and spiritual desires. Be as specific as possible.

Ask yourself what you want on the material level, in terms of abundance and affluence. Do you want to own your own house with four bedrooms? Write that down. Do you want to be able to send your children to college? Write that down. Think also of your desires for sensory gratification - sound, touch, sight, taste, smell, and sensuality - anything that gratifies the senses. Write those down.

Ask yourself what you want in terms of relationships. Write down your desires for all your relationships - romantic partners, children, peers, parents, friends, and professional relationships.

Write down what you want in terms of personal accomplishments or recognition. Note what you want on a more universal level - how can you help? What do you want to do with your life in terms of your society, your country, your civilization? What do you want to contribute? Write down what you want when you think of discovering your highest sense of self. Whom do you want to be? What spiritually do you want to add to your life? Write down everything you desire on a single sheet of paper. Add or subtract from the list as your desires change or become fulfilled.

Meditate on what life would be like if all these desires were to manifest. See if you can create inner visions of genuine fulfillment on both material and spiritual levels. Don't be concerned about having these visions in any kind of order, or whether they're very realistic or not. Just see them all happening - feel them with all your five senses. The goal is to have congruent attention on all these four levels of aspiration. when that kind of congruency is in play, the internal dialogue is very powerful and clear, and will help you gain unity of consciousness.

Intentions do not need constant attention, but they do need to remain focused. This is a habit that you develop over time. Look at your list once or twice during the day. Read it over again just before you meditate. When you go into meditation, you silence the self. The ego disappears. As a result, you detach from the results and outcomes, you don't get involved in the details, and you let the infinite organizing power of the deeper intelligence orchestrate and fulfill all the details of your intentions for you. The key is to move away from the level of the ego, away from the level of the self and self-esteem, to let the nonlocal intelligence orchestrate the fulfillment of your desires through synchronicity.

In the beginning, you can be as selfish as you want. In the beginning your intentions may be all about "self" and the little details of what you want to happen in your life. But eventually you will realize that the goal is fulfillment on all levels, not just the personal or ego level. As you start to see the fulfillment of your intentions, your self-interest will diminish because you know you can have it all. When you have enough food to eat, you don't obsess about eating all the time. It's the same with intentions. When you know that fulfillment is possible, you will think less about your personal needs and more about the needs of the rest of the world. This is a process that works through stages. Be patient, but watch for the miracles to begin.