Having amusement in all that you do will directly change your life. Already there are enough times and places of complete seriousness, so if you can create amusement within yourself, you will relax and find life better.
You know what it is like to be filled with laughter and lightness. It makes even the hardest work seem much easier. Everyone one has heard that laughter is the best medicine or that the shortest distance between two people is laughter.
The benefits of a life filled with amusement are many. Studies have shown that laughter reduces stress and increases the health of the heart and exercises the lungs, drops blood pressure, lifts depression and releases anger, boosts the immune system and increases the body’s ability to recover from illness. Lord Byron (1788-1824) said, “Always laugh when you can. It is cheap medicine.”
There is a growing movement towards increased laughter and amusement. I was surprised (and amused) to discover Laughter Clubs, Laughter Therapy and Laughter Yoga as dedicated practices for the upsurge of laughter. Hotei, who is known as the Laughing Buddha, was said to have found enlightenment and never stopped laughing from that day forward.
Saturday, April 5, 2008
The Neutral Mindset
Neutrality creates a natural possibility for a change, a shift in energy or a solving of the problem. To create neutrality in your place of meditation, take time to relax into stillness. Through your grounding, release your cares and concerns. When you are settled into your space begin to imagine a neutral mindset. Postulate that your mind is neutral. Like much of clairvoyance, this is experiential. Describing it is simple, and in fact doing it is simple. But until you actually try it, you will not know that.
So go ahead and try that now. Stillness. Grounding. Neutral mindset. Without forcing the thoughts, establish for yourself that you have neutrality. Affirm and validate within your mind that you are in a state of neutrality. As you do this notice how your body relaxes even further. Notice that your breathing automatically shifts to a longer and deeper breathing pattern. Your mind quiets even further and time sitting in meditation seems to slip away easily.
One of the benefits of the neutral mindset is the ease that it brings to the act of meditating. You will find yourself in a deeper more serene meditation. This will carry over into your day after the meditation is complete. And at some point, after you have been doing this exercise regularly, you will find that you are able to enter into a neutral mindset at any moment. When the heat of a tense moment starts to flare up, when you need to see a situation clearly, when you feel the pressure of someone making demands of you, you will have at your disposal the joint practice of immediately becoming grounded and going to a neutral mindset. Your decisions will be clearer and the outcome will more favorable than if you were not using these basic skills.
So go ahead and try that now. Stillness. Grounding. Neutral mindset. Without forcing the thoughts, establish for yourself that you have neutrality. Affirm and validate within your mind that you are in a state of neutrality. As you do this notice how your body relaxes even further. Notice that your breathing automatically shifts to a longer and deeper breathing pattern. Your mind quiets even further and time sitting in meditation seems to slip away easily.
One of the benefits of the neutral mindset is the ease that it brings to the act of meditating. You will find yourself in a deeper more serene meditation. This will carry over into your day after the meditation is complete. And at some point, after you have been doing this exercise regularly, you will find that you are able to enter into a neutral mindset at any moment. When the heat of a tense moment starts to flare up, when you need to see a situation clearly, when you feel the pressure of someone making demands of you, you will have at your disposal the joint practice of immediately becoming grounded and going to a neutral mindset. Your decisions will be clearer and the outcome will more favorable than if you were not using these basic skills.