Archives for June 2015

Hello Spiritual Warriors & welcome to another edition of The Source!

This week as we dive deep into personal empowerment, I was drawn to ask you a few questions:

  • “What are you afraid of?”
  • “What are you really afraid of?”
  • “What are the reasons you play small?”
  • “Don’t speak your voice?”
  • “Make excuses?”
  • “Pull yourself back?”
  • “Convince yourself not to take the bold step?”

Most likely it’s your limiting beliefs. And, we all have them. Even the most successful people are carrying beliefs that are self-limiting – they are just carrying different ones than you & I. It all comes down to fear… fear of being judged, not measuring up, having your heart broken, not being included – basic fears of not meeting our needs of attention, affection, appreciation & acceptance. We need to know those needs WILL be met… we want them… we crave them… but we don’t want anyone else to know we fear that they wont be met.

[Tweet “Even the most successful people have self-limiting beliefs they just carry different ones davidji.com”]

These fears limit us. We believe their lies. We’ve embedded them into our being. And in a weak moment, we live our life from them. I’ve grouped our more popular limiting beliefs into seven categories:

1. I can’t be fully authentic.
I’m not good enough – I’m afraid of being found out. I’m afraid I will disappoint those around me. I can’t show the world who I really am because they’ll judge me in a harsh or unkind way.

2. I’m not loveable.
My dream partner will see how unattractive I really am. I’ve been burned before. I won’t risk opening my heart to love again because most likely no one will show up. (& if they do, they’ll quickly learn the truth.)

3. I’m not worthy.
I wont put myself out there because no one will notice me & if they do, I’m afraid of being turned down or rejected & ultimately judged as being a poser.

4. I’m not strong enough to be self-sufficient.
I won’t make requests of others or ask for favors because if I get rejected, I’ll appear needy or even worse – needy.

5. I’m not abundant.
The wealth of the universe is for others – it doesn’t include me. Those who look for greater riches are greedy, don’t understand karma, or aren’t spiritual. I can’t even count that high. How could I ever achieve that? I’m not that kind of person — I’m fine exactly where I am in life – I don’t need more success, so I’m not going to reach beyond where I am.

6. I’m not smart enough.
I didn’t go to Harvard or Oxford… Only those who have a fine academic pedigree can achieve. I can’t dream big because I wont attain my dreams – and that would announce to the world, that I don’t measure up.

7. I’m not valued.
I’m just a peon. People wont cherish my trust so I can’t trust them (& if I do, they will betray me).

These are just a few; but, there are hundreds of limiting beliefs that ripple through us throughout the day… and they keep us constricted, playing small, not being our best expression. AND YET, there are also so many times throughout the day when we step into our power. Trust in the universe. Embrace our highest expression. And own our impact.

[Tweet “Have the courage to trust that the universe will deliver you to exactly where you need to be”]

How do we move beyond our limiting beliefs??? The answer is courage. Having the courage to trust that the universe will deliver us to exactly where we need to be. But we need to show up to make that happen. We need to risk our heart; risk looking like a fool; risk being told “no”…

When you notice you are having one of those limiting belief moments, take a long slow deep breath in ask yourself, “Is this limiting belief really true?” Sit with the answer for a few minutes, and then remind yourself… aham brahmasmi baby! I am the universe!

DeStressify_DisplayHorz5FThis is deep stuff that I’ll explore with you in person at my destressifying workshop in September & at my Masters of Wisdom & Meditation Teacher Training, which begins in December.

If you can’t make it then, join me every Thursday on Hay House Radio where we go deeeeeeep into these timeless teachings. In the meantime, I’ll see you in the gap! Peace. -davidji

Double rainbow forming on the western outskirts of Innerleithen, Scottish Borders

Mantra: Karunai Karmana Namah

Compassion literally means “to suffer together with,” and is considered among the greatest of virtues. In the Buddhist tradition, suffering is an aspect of the human condition that should be recognized and can then be overcome. Compassion is illuminated in the The Four Noble Truths:

1. All existence is dukkha. “Dukkha”  is suffering, anguish or pain, and The Buddha said that our lives are a struggle, and we do not find ultimate happiness or satisfaction in anything we experience. This is the problem of existence.

2. The truth of the origin of dukkha. It is humans’ natural tendency is to blame difficulties on things outside ourselves, but their actual root is found in the mind itself. Particularly, our tendency to grasp at things — or to push them away — places us fundamentally at odds with the way life really is.

3. The cessation of dukkha comes with the cessation of craving. Because we are the ultimate cause of our difficulties, we are also the solution. We cannot change the things that happen to us, but we can change our responses.

4. The path that leads to the cessation of dukkha. The Buddha teaches that we are ultimately responsible for ending our suffering, and he also taught methods through which we can change ourselves.

Want to add this to your personal meditation library? Download it here.

Moksha in Sanskrit means “liberation.”

Sometimes something magical happens when you go into the studio to record. My spiritual opera is a journey through the classical 5 elements in Ayurveda – space, air, fire, water, and earth. Collectively known in Sanskrit as the mahabhutas (the great elements), these are the foundational building blocks of everything in life.

Space is about infinite potential – it’s the womb of all creation – pregnant with possibilities and the birthing place within our lives for our next thought, word, and action.

Air is about movement and flow – the divine circulation of the universe and the flow that exists within each one of us as we channel the divine and express god is through our daily contemplations and interactions.


Vertical adsFire is about transformation, metabolism
– the crystallization of life – whatever we are moving through, chewing on, or struggling with at any given time. The clarity at the end of the tunnel.

Water is about cohesiveness and protection – the sweet vital nectar that remains after fire has burned away the illusions, disturbances and distractions of existence. The nourishment and coming together of each moment.

Earth is about structure, stability, and steadiness – the consistent and reliable characteristics of life. The ground we walk upon and the solidity we seek in each moment.

If spirituality is our journey from our most individual self to our most universal self, the five mahabhutas provide the perfect platform to explore the magnificence of the universe and our own universality- seeing the personal aspect in each element and seeing how awakening their divine qualities within us is the doorway to expansion, abundance, love, healing, growth, and transformation. Ultimately, our path to one-ness.

“Moksha” is a water track about emotional freedom. MJ’s ethereal, cathartic, and deep soulful vocals combined with Dean’s brilliant guitar, drums, and percussion make this meditation one of my favorites of all time.

If you are seeking some emotional freedom, one listen to “Moksha” will touch the tenderness of your heart and allow you to release some emotional pain that you’ve been suppressing or holding on to. It’s the perfect meditation to end your yoga class. Laying in savasana listening to “Moksha” will allow your asana practice to integrate within you as you experience true body, mind, heart, soul liberation.

Enjoy. Peace. –davidji

Hello sweet manifestors!!

As we coast into the last week of June – continuing our journey of awakening the divine aspect of our self, I am humbled by the overwhelming response from so many of you.

Thank you for being such an important thread in this magnificent global fabric of love. We’ve spent the month awakening and cultivating our innate gifts of acceptance, forgiveness, gratitude, and this week, we awaken compassion.

If we can be just a bit more accepting, grateful, forgiving, and compassionate each day, then we indeed are transforming the world by transforming ourselves!!

Compassion is often misunderstood and confused with other emotions. True compassion is the ability to be sympathetic, empathetic, as well as having the desire to alleviate another’s pain and suffering. Beyond living life at the level of, “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you,” compassion looks to heal others even in instances when you would not heal yourself. There are many people we like, even love, yet the depth of our compassion for them is shallow. Perhaps fear, jealousy, resentment, guilt, or anger color our perspective and each of these emotions carry with it a certain attachment that prevents true compassion.

[Tweet “True compassion is independent of attachment davidji.com”]

How can we know if we are feeling compassion about something and are not simply attached? True compassion is independent of attachment. Imagine if our compassion could transcend our relationships and the attachment we have to them – pure sympathy, pure empathy, and pure desire to help them heal. It is the ultimate characteristic of emotional intelligence.

[Tweet “All compassion starts with self-compassion davidji.com”]

But all compassion starts with self-compassion. If you are not rooting for yourself in each moment, how can you root for others? If you can’t empathize with your own plight, then you are not connected to your own heart. And it’s from the depths of our own heart that compassion is birthed. Healing others begins with healing yourself.

This week let’s root for ourselves. Let’s place our attention –from the moment we awake, until the moment we fall asleep – accepting ourselves, forgiving ourselves, seeing gratitude in each moment, and allowing compassion to flow through each thought, word, and action.

If we are just a bit more loving to our self this week, those around us will feel our acceptance, forgiveness, gratitude, and compassion…and the world will be a better place.

Radio-show-promo-suitcase

Join me on Hay House Radio and peaches – the Buddha princess and I will go deeper on awakening compassion. See you in the gap!!! Peace. -davidji

Hello sweet manifestors!!

As we coast into the last week of June – continuing our journey of awakening the divine aspect of our self, I am humbled by the overwhelming response from so many of you.

Thank you for being such an important thread in this magnificent global fabric of love. We’ve spent the month awakening and cultivating our innate gifts of acceptance, forgiveness, gratitude, and this week, we awaken compassion.

If we can be just a bit more accepting, grateful, forgiving, and compassionate each day, then we indeed are transforming the world by transforming ourselves!!

Compassion is often misunderstood and confused with other emotions. True compassion is the ability to be sympathetic, empathetic, as well as having the desire to alleviate another’s pain and suffering. Beyond living life at the level of, “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you,” compassion looks to heal others even in instances when you would not heal yourself. There are many people we like, even love, yet the depth of our compassion for them is shallow. Perhaps fear, jealousy, resentment, guilt, or anger color our perspective and each of these emotions carry with it a certain attachment that prevents true compassion.

[Tweet “True compassion is independent of attachment davidji.com”]

How can we know if we are feeling compassion about something and are not simply attached? True compassion is independent of attachment. Imagine if our compassion could transcend our relationships and the attachment we have to them – pure sympathy, pure empathy, and pure desire to help them heal. It is the ultimate characteristic of emotional intelligence.

[Tweet “All compassion starts with self-compassion davidji.com”]

But all compassion starts with self-compassion. If you are not rooting for yourself in each moment, how can you root for others? If you can’t empathize with your own plight, then you are not connected to your own heart. And it’s from the depths of our own heart that compassion is birthed. Healing others begins with healing yourself.

This week let’s root for ourselves. Let’s place our attention –from the moment we awake, until the moment we fall asleep – accepting ourselves, forgiving ourselves, seeing gratitude in each moment, and allowing compassion to flow through each thought, word, and action.

If we are just a bit more loving to our self this week, those around us will feel our acceptance, forgiveness, gratitude, and compassion…and the world will be a better place.

Radio-show-promo-suitcase

Join me on Hay House Radio and peaches – the Buddha princess and I will go deeper on awakening compassion. See you in the gap!!! Peace. -davidji

 

 

human-emotion-happiness-21
Photo by Dina Bova Sourced from www.flashuser.net/photos-human-emotions-happiness

Mantra: Sankalpa

Karma is all about witnessing our decisions, observing our choices, and watching what we think, say, and do. When we witness our choices and spend time in the unconditioned aspect of our Being, we make more conscious choices going forward.

That’s why ending our guided meditations with a silent meditation is so powerful – because then we spend time in the unconditioned space between our thoughts where there is no activity…no sound…no music…only the magnificent silence that rests within. And it is in the silence that the seeds of our intentions become nourished, ultimately unfolding new, fresh, empowering shifts in how we express ourselves in the world.

Karma is action. And our actions flow from our thoughts. If our thoughts are coming from the divine, our actions will reflect this. Enjoy this weekend meditation on karmic reflection. Simply use this meditation every day for a week and you will make profoundly better decisions.

Peace. -davidji


Want to add this to your meditation library? Download it here.

Hello Spiritual Warriors! Welcome to the Source … and welcome to KARMA!

Karma represents our choices … the ones we celebrate … the ones we regret … the conditional and unconditional ones … the knee-jerk ones and the purposeful ones … the decisions that keep us up at night and those that allow us to rest our head on the pillow. Karma can be translated as action and is the culmination of all the actions we have taken through out our lives. In the teachings of Vedanta, this includes the actions we’ve taken in past lives as well. Whether you believe in re-incarnation or not, doesn’t make karma real or not real – karma just is.

And since we are living in this life right now, focusing on karma for a week will allow us to see all the actions we are taking right now – all the choices we make in each moment. Simply by placing our witnessing awareness on every interaction, email, text, phone call, and conversation … even the behaviors we exhibit to ourselves when we are alone allows us to view the consequences of our actions.

It is in the reflecting on the many plates we are spinning … the many balls we are juggling … on the decisions we made yesterday, this morning, this afternoon, and this evening … the call we chose not to make … the words we let slip out of our mouths … the chore we did or didn’t do … the food, location, and company we chose for each meal … the tone of our voice as we reacted to hearing unexpected information … the article we read … the video we watched … even the clothes we decided to wear today … & by observing who we show up as in each moment, that we can make more conscious choices.

[Tweet “Transmuting our karma allows us to step into our truth @davidji_com”]

In “Secrets of Meditation” I share the 3 ways we have of processing our karma:

  1. We can pay our karmic debt as most people do … what we sow is what we reap.
  2. We can transmute our karma … make lemonade out of lemons. Learn from our choices and make better ones that serve ourselves and others.
  3. We can transcend our karma by meditating … bathing our mind in stillness and silence connecting to the timeless space between our thoughts … and in the process wash away the stains of the past.

Transmuting our karma allows us to step into our truth – altering the trajectory of misguided words and actions so we can make right those “wrong” decisions … and make better, loving, and more purposeful choices … the next time.

We are never damned by the choices we’ve made if we are willing to look at them honestly and own them … take responsibility for our thoughts, our words, and our actions and commit to make better ones. Don Miguel Ruiz teaches the agreement stanozolol for sale to ALWAYS DO OUR BEST. If we are willing to make this powerful agreement with ourselves, then there will be fewer opportunities to regret our choices and more opportunities to make evolutionary ones.

This week, let’s observe our thoughts, words, and deeds and upon deeper reflection, let’s awaken our best version of ourselves. Join me this week on Hay House Radio & we’ll go even deeper into Karma and if you’re in LA Wednesday night, I’ll be at UNPLUG Meditation.

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

manipura chakra, third chakra, manifesting your deepest desires
Photo Credit: Kansas Poetry (Patrick) via Compfight cc

Our inner fire is the source of our energy, our sense of inner power, our creativity. According to Ayurveda, our third chakra, also called the manipura, is located near your belly button. It is a source of personal power and governs self-esteem, warrior energy, and the power of transformation. An open, healthy third chakra means you’re self-confident, have a strong sense of purpose, and are self-motivated. We use the vibration ram to awaken the manipura, and transform and nourish our inner fire so that we may manifest our deepest desires.

 

Hello Spiritual Warriors!!! What do you look like when you meditate?

The traditional image of a meditator is someone sitting cross-legged with their eyes closed and their hands resting on their knees – their thumbs and index fingers touching to form a circle as they chant the sound OM. That chanting of OM is what’s called the chanting of a mantra, which comes from two Sanskrit words: man, which means “mind,” and tra, which means “vehicle” or “instrument.” So your mantra is your mind vehicle . . . your mind instrument… a tool to transport your mind from a state of activity to one of stillness and silence.

[Tweet “your mantra is your mind vehicle…your mind instrument…a tool to transport your mind from a state of activity to one of stillness and silence”]

We get the words “train,” “travel,” and “transportation” from the Sanskrit root tra. Most mantras are comprised of the 50 letters of the Sanskrit alphabet. Mantras can consist of a single letter, a syllable or string of syllables, a word, or a whole sentence. Typically, most mantras are sounds, syllables, or vibrations that don’t necessarily have a meaning. Their value lies in the intention of the mantra and its vibrational quality, not in any meaning that humans, society, culture, or civilization has placed on them over the last few thousand years. For this reason, they go beyond the state of human existence on this planet. And they take you deeper, because they are vibrations that have existed since the dawn of creation.

The Hymn of the Universe

OM is the oldest mantra sacred to Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, yogis, and meditators. OM is considered the ultimate vibration, because it contains every vibration that has ever existed and every vibration that will ever exist, which is why I incorporate it into many of our weekend meditations. Just as white light contains all the colors of the spectrum, OM contains every sound in the vibrational spectrum—even those we can’t hear with our ears. One of the clearest visual representations of this is the cover of Pink Floyd’s album Dark Side of the Moon. It shows the white light coming into a prism and all the colors of the spectrum coming out the other side. The same could be said for OM; it’s the white light of sound.

Historically, OM is first mentioned in the 12 verses of the ancient Vedic text the Mandukya Upanishads, which explains the three basic states of consciousness: waking, sleeping, and dreaming. In its original spelling and pronunciation, Aum (pronounced ahh-uhh-mmm) is a blending of those three states of consciousness into the oneness of three distinct syllables: A, U, and M. These three vibrations also represent the three stages of our known existence: birth, life, and death.

In Sanskrit grammar, when the letters “a” and “u” are combined in writing, they are translated as the letter “o.” That is why we so often see OM written instead of Aum. Over thousands of years, the writing of Aum has taken a backseat to OM, and that has led to OM being the sound that is most often chanted by both Western students and teachers of yoga, meditation, and Vedanta. In much of India, where people have a greater familiarity with Sanskrit from daily prayer, the sound is still pronounced Aum.

When the three individual vibrations are combined, a fourth vibration is created, like a chord in music made up of individual notes. Aum (pronounced ahhh—uhhh—mmmm) represents the fourth state of consciousness—transcendent consciousness, or turiya . . . what we often refer to as enlightenment or oneness. The chanting of the mantra OM heralds our universality, which is why we usually chant OM before and/or after meditation and yoga practice, and when we read sacred, ancient texts.

By repeating a vibration or sound over and over, it will become part of your physiology; it will become your mind; it will become you. It will lose all meaning, all definition, and all relevance. There will be no separation between you and the vibration that is resonating right now. This is the gap between the manifest & the unmanifest; the space between thoughts, breaths, words, & actions!

So whether you are following your breath or silently repeating a mantra, these objects of your attention will always drift you away from your thoughts, sounds in the environment, and sensations in your body. If you haven’t yet meditated today, feel free to bust out Om for a minute here and there. Just silently repeat it over and over and over. Or chant it out loud a few times when you are feeling operatic. By the end of the day, you will have a halo of Om rippling through every word, thought, and deed. And that will feel OMazing!

Aham brahmasmi baby!! and I’ll see you in the gap! -davidji

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P.S. Adopt your next pet!

Photo Credit: http://heretakis.com via Compfight cc
Photo Credit: http://heretakis.com via Compfight cc

“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.” ―William Blake

Your heart is where love and spirit are joined. It’s your heart that aches or fills with love, seems empty or overflowing, and within the heart is a more subtle center that experiences spirit. But you can’t feel spirit as a sensation or emotion. Spirit lies beneath the layers of sensation. You must go to the heart and meditate on it.

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