Monthly Article

	A HELPFUL PRAYER The one all-Intelligent Power of the Universe is around and in and through me at this very moment. This Infinite Love is right now healing my body, prospering my affairs, harmonising my relationships, giving me every good gift, adjusting all conditions, straightening out every crooked place, perfecting all that concerns me, and totally protecting me from all harm and from every negative influence. I now totally surrender my mortal mind, ego and personality to the Spirit within, knowing that the Activity of God now taking place within me and through me is the only Power at work in my life and affairs. With complete gratitude I surrender to the Love of my heart and soul. From John Randolph Price's book 'Practical Spirituality'. ISBN 0942082-06-0 I have found this prayer invaluable in my own life. Using it daily made last year one of the best years I have had in a long time. the prayer covers everything. Try it! ================================================== Monthly Article . By Anup
	How to keep our selves in a peaceful happy state at all times. Is there really a way to have peace and happiness every moment? I believe there is and just like anything that is worthwhile, it takes some practice to master, but it is attainable and once you master a few simple truths, you will have the ability to live in that state when ever you choose. So how to attain the peace? Well the first thing to look for when So lets look at what we need to know to get ourselves in that loving peaceful state. Firstly, we must realize that, when our attention is on them, our thoughts are directly connected to our feelings, which means that when we are thinking a negative thought, we will always experience a negative feeling, and vice versa, when we think a high positive thought we will surely experience a great feeling because of it. You may ask if positive thinking would help to keep us at peace? Yes positive thinking does absolutely help the way we experience reality but only if it is coming from a state of peace first, if we have negative thoughts and we are continually trying to change them to positive ones then there will always be a conflict of energies flowing inside and for all the effort we put into being positive, a counter action of the same amount of negative will surely ensue. I find it good to invoke a high positive attitude when I have things to accomplish or when I am going out to meet and communicate with the world, then when I’m alone with myself, (meaning when I have time to look at my thoughts and feelings) I work on creating a peaceful state within. You see I know when I am feeling peaceful inside: I see more clearly, I laugh much more, I can really see life around me, my health is better, I look and feel much better. I actually become that positive attitude that I always wanted to have. Life is a miracle and when I am at peace inside I truly see and love to be part of that miracle. So how to attain the peace? Well the first thing to look for when we are feeling down is to realize what we are thinking. Now this might sound easy but our thoughts are flowing through us at such an incredible speed that they are difficult to catch at times. I find the easiest way is to stop what ever I am doing, and really experience the feeling or look into it and ask what is it that I was thinking when this feeling first came? Sometimes I see the thought easily and sometimes I don’t, if I do see it then I just laugh at it, I don’t judge the thought or myself, nor do I try and change the thought, it is already there, I just laugh at it and realize that it is just a thought, it’s not the truth and it is not me. If I don’t see it then I have to work on transmuting the feeling, which I will explain a little later. Now I mentioned that I must realize that the thought is not me and this is very important to understand, our thoughts are not us, they are simply thoughts that are moving through us. If we believe them and put our attention into them then we become a slave to them. If they feed us with negativity we go down, if they tell us that things are good, then we go up. So we lose our power as we are continuously looking to our thoughts to see if life is good or not. If we put our attention into our thoughts we give them power, and as you already know, we have millions of thoughts coursing through our mind in any given day. So you can see that it would be very difficult to attain any level of peace if we were to remain locked into our thoughts. So if the key to peace is to get our attention out of our thoughts how do we do it? As we know we live from our mind - from thoughts and emotions. This is like living in a rushing river. As well as being active and violent, these places are also mesmerizing and hypnotic. Living from thoughts as most do is a form of sleep. To remove our self from this slumber, we must simply awaken. Where are your hands now? Are they relaxed or tense? What are you thinking (remember no judgement), what is the taste in your mouth? What is the aroma around you? What are your feelings doing? (Again no judgement, just let it all be the way it is). Do you know the expression on your face? Is your brow furrowed and tight? What is the temperature of the air surrounding you? What is the position of your feet? What supports your body this moment, and how is your weight distributed? This awareness of yourself and of your surroundings is Now. In this attentive state you are separate, watching yourself read the words on this paper, witnessing the thoughts and sensations coursing through you. Becoming awake lifts you out of the tumultuous waters of doubt, anxiety, worry, fear and anger. Your attention places you on a bridge over the tumbling river. You still see the chaos below, but now you are not part of it. You are transformed into an impartial observer. It is in this attentive state that peace will bestow her magic on your presence; it is also from this state that something higher can communicate with you, but we’ll leave that for another day. Rather than be immersed in our thoughts we must always stay separate from them, and it is only by remaining in the “now moment” that we can do this. Meditation is a good technique to get us into the now moment but we can easily practice bringing ourselves back to this moment without having to meditate. A thousand times a day bring your attention back to now, every time you do it you are disconnecting your attention from your thoughts and putting it into the moment, which is where life is really happening and it is here and only here that you will find lasting peace. This is a very simple truth and also a very difficult one to master but with a little time and practice you will find more and more peace, and the natural consequence is that your life will become easier and easier, opportunities will just throw themselves at you, and laughter will become a common occurrence. What to do if I am feeling very down and I have no idea what started it, and I just cant seem to get out of the negative spiral? I mentioned earlier that I would touch on feelings and how to transmute them or to move them into a positive state. There were times in my life when no matter how much I tried to master my thoughts and keep myself at peace, doing different yoga practices, meditations, mantras and mudras, I still found myself feeling very down and disheartened with life. The following technique helped me overcome many low times in my own life and I know it can help you too if you just follow the three simple steps. The three steps to transmute any negative emotion into a positive one: 1. Take responsibility for the feeling. This means that we must own all our feelings, even if it looks like someone else made us feel a particular way, the truth is always that the feeling is coming from with in me, so it must be caused by me. A good example is if you are in a room with two of your friends and in walks a stranger, a man, he starts talking very loudly to himself about how is going shout at his neighbour when he sees him, he is talking so loudly that it is impossible to ignore him. One of your friends finds it incredibly funny and can’t help but giggle, the other one finds it frightening and would like to leave and you feel angry that he has taken your peace. We now have three people with three different emotions playing out, and yet you are all looking at the same scene, this proves that the emotions you are feeling are there because of your interpretation of what you are seeing, not because of what you are seeing. We all experience life differently due to our respective upbringings, some things that annoy one person may not worry the next person at all, depending on all the different circumstances and situations that we go through in life. If you came from a family that was always quiet then loud noises may disturb you, whereas if you were brought up with lots of people around you all the time then you may feel at ease with lots of noise and business around you. So you see that we must take full responsibility for our feelings. When you are feeling sad for example, you tell your self this is my sadness, it is coming from me even though it looks like it is because of this that or the other, it is 100% mine, and I take full responsibility for the feeling. Now it is also very important not to judge your self either, you do not get into self talk like, oh its all my fault that I am so sad, no, you just take responsibility that this is your feeling, actually own it and DO NOT try to get rid of it, just realize it is a valid part of you that wants to talk to you. Remember an emotional pain is not there to hurt you it is there to wake you up; and it just wants to move through you; so do not resist it. 2. Align the judgement. That simply means that you tell your self it is totally ok to have this feeling. We are so conditioned to think that we can only have good feelings and that we shouldn’t have any negative ones and then if the so called negative emotions surface we start to immediately judge ourselves for not being happy like we are “supposed to be”. We say things like, what’s the matter with me, how come I’m not happy, how come I feel angry, sad, confused etc. we think we are not ok the way we are, and yet for many many reasons there are lots of emotions inside of us that just want to be set free, they just want to come out. If we try to change them they stay locked within us because we are basically saying it’s not ok for you to be there, which causes a resistance. The mind is saying go away and the emotion is saying let me stay and move forward. You could see it like a flow of water going in one direction (the emotion) and another one going in the opposite direction (the mind), of course they are going to clash and when that happens inside of us, because thoughts are a real energy just as emotions are, then we feel pain. We cannot change an emotion, it is a real thing, but we can let it flow and if we move into acceptance then the emotion can move through us. So our two points so far are that we have taken responsibility for the emotion, its mine, and then we have told ourselves that it’s ok to have this emotion too, and that there is no need to try and get rid of it. It is a valid part of us. You can even talk to the emotion and say something like, hey there, its ok, you can hang our here, no need to go anywhere, I’m not going to try and move you, just do what ever you want. 3. Feel the feeling. Now lots of people say to me of course I am feeling the feeling that’s why I am in so much pain, but actually, pain is a resistance to feeling, if you are in pain then you are resisting feeling it through. So to feel the feeling you must let your stomach muscles relax and let everything inside you do what ever it wants to do, have absolutely no desire to change anything, just let it be what it is, keep moving your attention into the feeling, just relaxing around it. As you do this, the feeling will start to move and before you know it you will have transmuted it. There have been times when I have gone from extreme anguish to delirious joy using this technique. Do not try and move the feeling as this is still “doing” just let the feeling move on its own by letting it do what it wants, this is “being”. So your three steps in a nutshell 1. Take responsibility for the feeling. 2. Align the judgement; let it be ok for it to be there. 3. Feel the feeling through. This whole process is real magic, true alchemy, turning a negative into a positive. The amount of awareness you will gain from doing this process will also benefit you tremendously! Remember to have fun doing it, try not to analyse too much, in fact try not to analyse at all, it’s a total waste of time. When it is time for you to understand something you will move into understanding, the key is always to stay at peace as often as you can. For more information about Anup and his work please go to www.merlintrinity.com