Transforming Yourself With Intention.

“Live your life consciously, transforming yourself and achieving the highest possible.”

Transformation is a beautiful process. Nothing demonstrates the beauty of transformation more than the humble caterpillar, which transforms itself into the myriad colors of the butterfly. The caterpillar goes through immense change and sits through, what must be stressful, the pupal stage before it bursts out of its shell into a riot of color as it embraces the world. 

Similarly, as we are swept away by the day to day activities of our lives, we are faced with more changes than ever before. There's more work and less time. We feel that, truly, there’s no time to stand and stare. 

We wonder how to heal our hearts. We wonder how to calm our anxious minds. We wonder how to restore balance in our often-fractured lives. 

Behind all these different questions, I have observed one common thread - most of us want to transform our lives in some way. This desire to change is important because it sets the stage for the first step in transformation: that of having an intention. 

Over the past six decades, the practice of Heartfulness has helped me improve and refine my life. These are practices that have worked for me, and in sharing these, I hope that we can take the first steps to create a life of peace and inner transformation.

Having intention and focus

To achieve anything in life, we must first simplify our intention. If we were to think of transforming our lives, we must focus on that goal of transformation. 

I will give you an analogy that you might immediately understand. If you leave all the apps on your smartphone running all the time, you might find that your phone’s battery is draining very fast! That’s similar to life too. If you have too many apps running in your life, you are just going to exhaust yourself quickly. The intention to transform oneself becomes more solid with focus. That’s why you need mindful attention. It roots us, gives us a surefootedness, which becomes the foundation for focusing on Heartfulness. It allows us to see what matters most to us in life, and we act with a certain strength that comes from deep within. 

Having focus is one simple principle that will help you in all aspects of life, be it a career, relationships, or transformation. It allows you to utilize that precious inner resource within all of us and more importantly, enables us to act keeping the people and things we love in mind.

How do we focus? It is an ability that comes naturally from simple meditative practices. There are some practices we follow in the Heartfulness Way that can regulate our mind, refine our consciousness, and aid us on this path of transformation. 

Cultivating openness 

Having openness means that we have the desire to seek answers. The first practice that can sow the seeds of transformation in us is meditation. 

Meditation helps us to transform our thought process from scattered to focused. I started with my own practice of meditation when I was a third-year pharmacy student in college back in 1976, and my life has been changed forever since then. How? By opening up my mind and heart. It taught me about impermanence, the illusion of control, and mindfulness.

One of the first prerequisites for meditation is to have an open mind and heart. Your heart is your laboratory here. So, whenever you start with the practice of meditation, sit with an open heart. You will receive a different experience.  

Begin meditating with a hypothesis that there is a source of light present within your heart. Like a scientist, we test this belief each time we close our eyes and attempt to connect within. When we experience answers for ourselves, knowledge truly becomes ours. 

With regular meditative practice, we develop traits such as self-acceptance, self-discipline, and focus. 

Meditation is a process to create a meditative state within us that manifests our heart's intrinsic goodness. This expression of goodness makes peace dynamic and life-affirming, and in its wake, brings unity and harmony to this world.

The more we meditate, the more the mind learns to gently and naturally focus on one thing. In heart-based meditation, we go deeper into the heart – where we discover our world of feelings, inspiration, creativity, and love – and come out refreshed, with a deep sense of well-being. As we slowly add meditation to our everyday life, our consciousness expands, instilling in us a desire for inquiry, which enables us to focus on all aspects of our lives. 

If you are beginning with the practice of meditation, it’s ok to start with a duration that you feel comfortable with. I usually recommend that you fix a time for meditation. This helps you to bring in discipline the first time you are meditating. I also suggest a shorter unwinding session in the evening to remove the daily stress, known as cleaning, to aid you in this transformation.

While it is one thing to meditate actively on a daily basis, our goal should be to remain meditative in all our activities. Meditation is just the beginning of your transformation. Try to stay meditative throughout the day, even when you are doing other things. 

To find out more about Heartfulness Meditation or to contact a Heartfulness trainer for free, please visit: www.heartfulness.org

Seeking guidance

When in doubt, we often seek answers from outside. Yet, true guidance is our inner truth. When we focus on our inner truth, the answers that we are seeking from outside open up within. How do we develop that guidance? Through meditation.

Now that we have the practices of right intention and meditation, we can continue our transformative journey with prayer. The Heartfulness Prayer is part of the practice of self-transformation and part of the overall practice of Heartfulness.  

Prayers fill the inner sanctum of the heart with love. Prayer takes us into the infinite world of the heart, which is filled with so much joy and beauty.

When we go deep inside and seek guidance, we are able to integrate the inside and outside and step a little closer to self-mastery. To achieve this, we need to nurture all our three bodies – the physical, mental, and spiritual. 

We can nurture the mental and spiritual bodies by connecting with our higher Self within the heart through the time-honored practice of prayer. This prayer is an entreaty said just before bedtime that allows us to heed the heart’s wise and unceasing guidance. 

When done this way, you will find that the practices of meditation, clearing, and prayer become vital tools in our transformational process. It’s when you have clarity in mind that it becomes easier to navigate the turns and twists of life’s journey with the right understanding, and these tools offer us the ways to do that. 

The Heartfulness practices I have revealed here prepare us to respond to all sorts of situations in life. Situations that require discipline. Situations that test our character. Situations where we find that we have to meet our weaknesses and understand our strengths. These practices help us to work with our ego, make wise decisions, provoke self-analysis, and solve conflicts - all with the intent of transforming ourselves. 

We all have the opportunity to transform our life, wherever we are. Transforming your mind, body and heart will lead you to inner stillness, lightness, and clarity. Your mind will regain its natural flexibility and let go of its heavy burdens. It’s my wish, my dear readers, that all of us will find this process of transformation deeply enriching in this journey of life. 

Love,

Daaji.