MARCHing Towards Meditation

As I said in my last post, for the month of March, I plan on following the principles of the book The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success by Deepak Chopra. Even though I am not a particularly spiritual person, and certainly not religious, I do think that I have started to feel as though I am seeking something--something to make sense of the way things have turned out in my life. I recognize that my experiences could definitely have been far more traumatic and I am not trying to undermine the incredibly difficult situations that other people have gone through by whining about my own (in fact, I often feel quite guilty about that.) However, happiness is something that I feel that I have never truly had a good grasp of, something that I have been seeking all my life.

Granted, in The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, Chopra does not speak of happiness specifically. However, he does discuss his perspective on the attainment of success: "Once we understand our true nature and learn to live in harmony with natural law, a sense of well-being, good health, fulfilling relationships, energy and enthusiasm for life and material abundance will spring forth easily and effortlessly." Now it is clear that Chopra's goal with this book is to help others find material abundance. While I am not turning that down(!), my main goal here is not to attain material abundance, it is to attain success.

Success is a pretty subjective term though. To me, success is about finding contentment in my life and learning to be happy with what I have, while still wanting to improve myself. Success is about liking my job and living comfortably without having to worry about money too much (ideally in a place where I don't have to take all of my cookware out of the oven before I want to bake something!) Success is having people in my life who care enough to view our relationships as a priority; People who are willing to work with me on communicating and improving our relationship, instead of letting it slip away. So in an attempt to find some semblance of success and happiness in my life (large kitchen or not) here goes March!

So here's the plan: Given that there are seven laws and coincidentally also seven days in a week, I am going to apply one new law every day, compounding them as the days go on until I am following all seven laws by the end of the week. UPDATE: This is impossible....although I'm guessing it seems more so since I'm sick, but I am going to apply a new law every four days. We'll see how it goes from there.

Law #1: The Law of Pure Potentiality

"This law is based on the fact that in our essential state, we are pure consciousness." According to Chopra, "when you discover your essential nature and know who you really are, in that knowing yourself is the ability to fulfill any dream you have because you are the eternal possibility, the immeasurable potential of all that was, is, and will be." This sounds to me awfully similar to "Be Joy" (or Gretchen as it may be.) In fact (and not to go off on a tangent here) I think a lot of these books are virtually expressing the same things in different ways. But I digress, Chopra discusses the struggle between the Self and the Object, between your internal spirit and external need to control things out of fear (umm... I can definitely relate with the latter, relationship issues, anyone?) So in order to quiet this struggle and put "The Law of Pure Potentiality" into effect, I will make a commitment to take the following steps:

1. I will get in touch with the field of pure potentiality by taking time each day to be silent, to just be. I will also sit alone in silent meditation at least twice a day for approximately 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes in the evening. (This is significantly cut down from what Chopra suggests--two hours(!!!!) a day. That is a looooong freaking time, and as far as I'm concerned 15 mins will be a long time too, but we all gotta start somewhere.)

2. I will take time to commune with nature and to silently witness the intelligence of every living thing. I will sit silently and watch a sunset or listen to the sound of the ocean or stream, or simply smell the scent of a flower. In the ecstasy of my own silence and by communing with nature, I will enjoy the life throb (life throb?!?) of the ages, the field of pure potentiality and unbounded creativity. (Okay, that one was a little much for me...maybe I could just cuddle with my pups? Does that count?)

3. I will practice non-judgement. I will begin my day with the statement, "Today I shall judge nothing that occurs" and throughout the day I will remind myself not to judge. (This one I believe will be the most difficult for me, not in terms of judging other people... I am pretty much paid not to judge other people. In terms of judging myself though, honestly I think judging myself is so deeply ingrained I don't even know when I am doing it half the time. Apparently, "by constantly evaluating, classifying, labeling, and analyzing I am creating a lot of turbulence in my internal dialogue" I will also totally believe that. I go back and forth so often, I have no idea what I'm thinking at all. It's terrible.)

Off to meditate-- wish me luck!