“Yoga is the cessation of the movements of the mind. Then there is abiding in the Seer’s own form.”
– Patanjali, The Yoga Sutras

Hello Spiritual Warriors!!!!!! Welcome to another week of exploration.

When you close our eyes and ask yourself the question: “who am I?” what comes back to you? Sometimes answers will flow. Sometimes there will be no answers. But most of the time, what flows back is our job, our title, the description on our resume, our relationship to everything and any one in the world – we identify ourselves by our school, our town, our country, our religion, our food choices, what teams we root for, what politics we resonate with, what authors we read or what actors we like. We define ourselves by saying internally & externally, I am a… daughter, or son, a mother, or father, a brother or sister, an aunt or uncle. These orientations to our world help give us an understanding of our relationship to it – and identify it to others. We’ve all seen the bumper sticker “I’m a proud parent of an honor student.”

Regardless of what type of meditation style you practice, you can begin your daily meditation by asking a powerful and profound question such as “who am I?” or “what am I grateful for?” Or “how can I flow more compassion into the world?” or “how can I be more patient today?”

You can begin your morning meditation practice with any questions or any prayer you feel like starting with. I often begin by asking myself the Five Secrets of the SweetSpot or a series of questions known as the soul questions. These help begin my trajectory for the day. They often then create a san kalpa – a subtle intention that flows through me throughout the day. When you ask these types of questions – let them simmer for a bit inside you, then release them…let go of them…and let the answers flow throughout the rest of the day, amazing ripples begin to flow.

By asking these questions, listening to answers or silence, AND THEN LETTING GO OF THEM, we set the table for our daily practice. There is no need to bring the questions or the answers into your mind during the meditation. They are already a part of who you are. And as you expand in consciousness, the cosmic dialogue will continue to expand within you, and you will gain clarity into who you really are – beneath your clothes, beneath your flesh, beneath your opinions, and your beliefs. You will connect with what really rests at your core. If prayer is talking to god…meditation is listening. So give yourself a chance to reflect first thing in the morning on who you are. When we ask these questions over and over, we have an opportunity to go beyond our pre-conceived notions of who we are. The self-definitions become expanded…constrictions fall away. We become more than who we were only minutes before. We activate our true potential.

These are the aspects of Self that hundreds of millions of people explore every day; and that have been explored for thousands of years. These are some of the deepest questions you could ask yourself. And if more answers come to you while you are meditating, gently drift back to your breath, the mantra, or the object of your attention. We do nothing with the information that comes to us during meditation. That’s simply a process for making the soil more fertile. It’s outside of meditation, when the seeds you’ve planted in that soil are growing, that you feel more expanded, more creative, more intuitive, and more insightful. It’s not during meditation that the value of this process takes form. It’s back here with the rest of us, when you’re eyes are wide open, and you’re interacting with the world.

Reflecting on who you are is a stepping-stone to an effortless daily practice, and is a building block for living an expanded, abundant, compassionate life. Of course, you can begin your practice with any ritual that feels comfortable. What are the questions that are important to you? Write them down; explore them before meditating for a solid week, and you will feel them unfold in your life. (Remember: Don’t bring these questions or their answers into your meditation.) After you have asked questions and allowed answers to flow (and sometimes there will be no answers), simply release them. Let them go, and begin your meditation. You can add emphasis to your letting go of them by physically releasing them. Take a long, slow, deep breath in and then let them go. As you exhale, send them out into the universe. Then begin your practice, using your breath, mantra, or another object of your attention. I’ll go deeper on how to awaken our emotional intelligence on Hay House Radio this week. Join me on LIVE! from the SweetSpot.

In the meantime, I’ll see you in the gap! Peace. -davidji