8 Tips for Making Decisions

What process do you use for reaching decisions? Some say, its best done on a case-by-case basis.  Are you guides bythe logical mind or feeling heart or some combination? Consider these 8 Tips for making decisions:

1. Don't let stress (fear) direct your choices

2. Breathe and make the most of time for reflection 
3. Weigh the pros and cons
4. Consider whether it aligns with core values
5.  Does it allow you to feel more aliveness
6.  Talk it out with a trusted friend or mentor
7.  Keep a diary
8. Live spontaneously

Let go of Attachments

Notice attachment to pleasure, is an obstacle that evokes suffering. We attach ourselves to sources of pleasure because we expect happiness from this, forgetting happiness is always in us as the essence of true Self. To expect joy from the external, from relationships, jobs or other experiences, is to create energetic attachments. If we find these things make us unhappy, we create an aversion to them. Likes and dislikes are impediments on the spiritual path. Basing our happiness and unhappiness on the external makes us feel powerless, dependent and unable to control our destiny. Although happiness seems the basic need of all, why does it seem so few rarely find it and actually dwell here?

Well, just as a pure, clean mirror reflects our true nature beneath and beyond the skin and bones, certain pure, clean faces reflect our core happiness. This is why its saidd the eyes are windows to the soul. We give our power away each time we look away, think a person or situation is reason for our happiness. Other faces and situations evoke discomfort, and our happiness is distorted. So, we tell ourselves we dislike them. This is simply ignorance. Only as we reconnect with core being, go through purification, let go of what distorts true nature do we begin to feel happy at a smiling face because it dawns this reflects our inner radiance. Sri Swami Satchindananda reminds us nothing and nobody an give or take away our happiness, only distort our own timeless inner happiness. This is echoes in the timeless Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.

Thus, only as we connect deeply with Self is it possible to exude this happines or true nature. Its not based on what we do but being intimate and reconnecting with the truth of who we are. As we grow increasingly fearless, our destiny presents in greater clarity. Its up to each of us to seize the day, and listen to the heart to feel truly alive. Only then do we authentically allow fun and spontaneity to arise and be our compass does soul consciously guide the course of our lives.

Let go of Attachments

Notice attachment to pleasure, is an obstacle that evokes suffering. We attach ourselves to sources of pleasure because we expect happiness from this, forgetting happiness is always in us as the essence of true Self. To expect joy from the external, from relationships, jobs or other experiences, is to create energetic attachments. If we find these things make us unhappy, we create an aversion to them. Likes and dislikes are impediments on the spiritual path. Basing our happiness and unhappiness on the external makes us feel powerless, dependent and unable to control our destiny. Although happiness seems the basic need of all, why does it seem so few rarely find it and actually dwell here?

Well, just as a pure, clean mirror reflects our true nature beneath and beyond the skin and bones, certain pure, clean faces reflect our core happiness. This is why its saidd the eyes are windows to the soul. We give our power away each time we look away, think a person or situation is reason for our happiness. Other faces and situations evoke discomfort, and our happiness is distorted. So, we tell ourselves we dislike them. This is simply ignorance. Only as we reconnect with core being, go through purification, let go of what distorts true nature do we begin to feel happy at a smiling face because it dawns this reflects our inner radiance. Sri Swami Satchindananda reminds us nothing and nobody an give or take away our happiness, only distort our own timeless inner happiness. This is echoes in the timeless Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.

Thus, only as we connect deeply with Self is it possible to exude this happines or true nature. Its not based on what we do but being intimate and reconnecting with the truth of who we are. As we grow increasingly fearless, our destiny presents in greater clarity. Its up to each of us to seize the day, and listen to the heart to feel truly alive. Only then do we authentically allow fun and spontaneity to arise and be our compass does soul consciously guide the course of our lives.

Love is a timeless teacher

Notice some people believe love is simply an emotion that keeps people bonded and committed. Awareness echoes love is more. Uplifting feelings, a deep sense of care, connection and commitment awaken something deeper. One might say everything points to a love beyond boundaries, beyond the known and unknown. Even that which evokes discomfort and resistance is guiding us to surrender to what is greater than self.

As Kahlil Gibran echoes, "when love beckons, we follow him." The brave are willing to travel high and low, to endure and grow from whatever presents. The winding journey is guiding one home.

Something within invites us to trust or have faith in what love represents, in all its disguises, shapes and forms. At different life moments, dreams may be shattered. This can be love in action And even as we fall in and out of love, do we realize love invites growth and pruning. All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life’s heart.

The fearless one knows love is not limited to peace and pleasure. Love gives nothing but itself and takes nothing but itself from itself. Love possesses not and cannot be owned. Love is enough in and of itself. Only ego thinks it can direct the course of love. If love finds one worthy, love actually directs one's winding course.

Love has no other desire but to fulfil itself. This takes shape in the flowing river, the sun beaming down on the Earth, the wind that blows through the forests, plains and deserts. To know the pain of too much tenderness. To be wounded by your own under-standing of love. And to bleed willingly and joyfully. Every moment is another opportunity to love and be loved, to be grateful for another day of loving. Meditate on love’s ecstasy.

To exist and move through life with a grateful heart is to sleep with a prayer of love for one's beloved and all beings in th heart. So love is everything and nothing, flowing in all directions and all dimensions right now. How and to what extent we are open to it, begins and ends within our unique being. This is the path of love, to love, back to love, from hence we came and never actually left.

 

Yoga frees all that is false

(Visionary art by Ivan Blažetić Šumski)

Notice the process of yoga is freeing everything that is false. The more we engage in soul yoga, the more layers fall away. At some point, it hits we are not the body or the mind, we are consciousness. From the moment it dawns you are pure consciousness that pre-existed before the body and will continue to exist after the death of the body, you enter a very different state of consciousness. This deeper understanding is free from constraints of death, fear of abandonnment, fear of loneliness, all the psychological defenses of the ego that keep us questioning, doubting, seeking. When ready, it dawns the ego is simply a web of defenses around the heart. Ironically, the ego does not know its own heart. The Self that has realized who we are , that One being is completely free of all illusions and projections that created our suffering. To reach self-realisation is to reach a state where no suffering exists. Illusion creates suffering. As one grows aware of, dismantles false beliefs and ideologies, only then can one know what true freedom is. At this point, one must let go of the ego itself. This is necessary because the egoic concept blocks the infinite nature of consciousness. Truth is, only one consciousness exists, not a multiplicity of egos. We have created a holographic world of worlds but we have never left one consciousness. The world we think we know is maya-illusion. Reading about different levels of reality is not the same as direct experience of this. Its the difference between studying electricity and getting electrocuted,( or feeling biocircuits connect and allow cosmic energy to flow). Read as much about lightning as you like. Its not the same as being hit by lightning. Every upheaval in our lives today is a catalyst for awakening soul consciousness and rediscovering true freedom.