Patanjali & 5 steps to master your thoughts

Patanjali offers 196 yoga sutras to increase your clarity and deepen you practice. Thought patterns are gradually mastered through learning non-attachment. Consider these five steps to begin to master your thoughts;

1) Notice whether your thoughts are colored with aversion or attraction. Do not judge. Learn to be an astute observer.

2) Nurture the lifestyle, actions, speech, and thoughts, and spiritual practices that lead in the positive direction. (rather than going in the opposite direction, away from the positive, and towards the negative).

3) Let go of the mental coloring of your thoughts that lead away from the spiritual (rather than going in the opposite direction, giving in to the attachments and aversions).

4) Raise conscious awareness to become more discerning of how you think and feel and the implications.

5) Practice consistency.  Learn to choose the wiser courses of action with deliberate intention.

Happiness

How does it feel to discover happiness is not earned, but is freely given? Real and lasting happiness is grounded in love. This is something you cannot buy, or put a measurable price on.

In essence, true happiness is not created by your circumstances or perception of love.  It is the source of your creative power. It is something you open yourself to as you open the heart more fully.  A Divine connection awakens and grows.  Sometimes it helps to have guidance to recall that you are whole and healed.  Notice if you tell yourself there is something wrong with you. Notice how you distract focus from joy. Let go of the fault-finding mind.  Alter everything.

As you feel increasingly connected with your soul and why you were born, real happiness emerges.  Recognize that as you ask a question, the answer is simultaneously given.  Your sense of happiness is linked to harnessing your creative power.  Nothing outside of you has potential to affect you as deeply.  Sometimes interacting with others is a stepping stone to finding yourself.

As you see more clearly, you cannot help but smile broadly. The truth about happiness is obvious in the here and now.  Embody joy.  Allow it to fill you; go on, laugh yourself silly.

"There is only one success - to spend your life in your own way." - Christopher Morley