“Definitions” – Practices

The Tibetan Blessing:

May I be filled with loving kindness

May I be peaceful and at ease

May I be Happy

May I be well

 You can feel gratitude for having received this blessing from yourself. Who is more qualified to give such a blessing than you? And who is more important?

There is something that is very wonderful and refreshing about this blessing. It reminds us of important states we desire. Each line creates a vision of a state that is often more appealing than the one we are currently experiencing, and thus we find ourselves moving toward something good rather than away from something problematical. You can feel the blessing if you make it deeply.

Another wonderful thing about this blessing is that we can apply it specifically to individuals who we care about and who may be anxious or ill or unhappy. In that case we replace “I” with the name of a person to whom we wish to send this blessing. I have done this in large groups with interesting results. People outside of the group thousands of miles away have experienced healing. I’m not going to say that this blessing caused their healing, that may be too booga booga for some of you, and I have no way of proving it’s true, but I will say the healings happened very shortly after the group joined in the blessing. So, who knows?

Incidentally, this is an excellent blessing to apply to our so-called “enemies.” If you want to see how fast the ego can pop up, give this a try some time. Felt deeply this blessing is very helpful, for invoking compassion when the ego desires something a bit different, when it wants to strike out at something or someone. When it wants to blame or justify, when it wants to attack.

Another way you can use this blessing is to replace “I” or the specific person’s name, with “all beings.” So, when I do this I say “may all beings be filled with loving kindness,” I do this sometimes for everyone in the town I live in. This kind of work sweetens the emotional climate, at least the one I’m traveling in.

And this idea brings us to the amazing discoveries made through transcendental meditation, the form of meditation begun by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi who died in 2008 and who influenced the Beatles profoundly. Perhaps you are familiar with some of the remarkable results of groups doing transcendental meditations on peace and harmony. In short, it was discovered that when a group meditated on peace and harmony, crime rates in their area were definitely reduced. The reduction in crime works in a ratio with a number of meditators. The more meditators, the greater the effect. This reduction in crime as a result of focused peaceful meditation is well documented.

For more information about transcendental meditation go HERE.

The Awareness Practice**

Watch yourself acting in the world from the point of awareness. As emotions arise, you simply witness them. Notice the areas in which you simply feel uncomfortable and don’t know why. Notice feeling nothing. It is as if you are watching a movie of your own life, but you are in the movie live at the same time. You can talk to yourself if you like. “Look, I am feeling anger when he said that” or “look there’s fear.” What is most important is that you do not try to change anything.

Sometimes, when we first begin to use our awareness, we see things much more clearly and we immediately want to fix them. However, for our awareness to birth, it is very important to avoid trying to fix things. Let me emphasize this. Once we try to fix things, or respond or react in new ways, we lose the value of this exercise because we reenter and become lost in our story again and move out of awareness. The ego take over, and we find ourselves immersed in the same old coping strategies. Please remember, we are noticing what is happening and we are feeling it simultaneously, we are not trying to achieve an objective state, a state of denial. There will be plenty of time for fixing things once we have opened fully to the experience of awareness. But not now!

**This practice is covered in more detail in the book, Waking Up, Learning What Your Life is Trying to Teach You. Simply click on either the “Amazon Kindle Edition” or the “Paperback Edition”  button on the left side of this page to review and/or purchase the book.