Did you know that your mind is your strongest mantra?! Sanskrit nerd: Mantra = man (manos/mind) + Tra (tools)
Thank about it! 🤔
What are you telling yourself on repeat?
A popular statistic (that I have admittedly quoted more than once) states that we have ~60,000 thoughts in any given day. However, this was recently addressed and debunked.
(read here for one person's quest for determining where this number came from - I looked for about 5 minutes before finding the "controversy" behind this claim, and then had more fun reading the debunkers)
In November 2021, Dr. Jordan Poppenk published an article in Nature Communications with a new method to measure brain activity. He reports that the human brain thinks around 6200 thoughts every day.
Regardless, that's A LOT of opportunity
What spells are you casting?
Are these thoughts on repeat kind? Or useful?
What if you bypassed your brain, and went straight to your heart?
Our hearts are like the ocean….the surface may be choppy, but dive deeper and you will find a sense of peace, calm, stillness.
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“That which is known by the heart is rock solid real and everlasting while that which is known by the senses is temporary - fleeting - impermanent; like clouds in the wind. “
The Bhakti sutras of Narada - Ethan Walker III
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One of my favorite works to return to again and again is The Bhakti Sutras of Narada.
Bhakti Yoga is the Yoga of devotion. The Yoga of surrendering to the higher path of love. This path is the most direct path to Samadhi (enlightenment), which doesn’t make it the easiest.
The path of the heart is not one for the meek, it takes a courageous warrior to stay on the path of surrender and devotion.
I have spent most of my life in my head, so dropping into my heart felt awkward, and uncharted territory.
When I first started speaking from/to my heart, everything seem to tumble out all at once. #heartvomit
The teachings describe the heart center as anahata “un-struck sound.” Sound that occurs without striking, or violence.
I’m learning that our hearts are like the ocean….the surface may be choppy, but dive deeper and you will find a sense of peace, calm, stillness.
Dropping into my heart requires practice and training, just like diving to the depths of the ocean.
I've reignited a practice of speaking directly to my heart. I've written a few post-it notes, and created opportunities to pause in my daily life to drop in.
Currently, my love letter to my heart sounds like this:
“I love you. I trust you. You are beautiful and wise. You beat in harmony with the greater path of love. You are my guiding light.”
And then, the magic…listen IN! See what messages are available when you flip the script.
Cast spells of love, compassion, kindness.