Welcome to Week 3, our final week in this 21 Days of Gratitude.

I hope you feel this is a practice you can bring into your daily life, and allow it to become deeper, beyond being grateful only for those things that are positive in your life, but also seeing how from the challenges, the edges, and varying degrees of pain, you have become who you are today. And that is not to say, those things don’t still hurt, or that you have and must be grateful for them. Not at all! The gratitude is for who you are now. Here. Who you would not be without the fullness of your life’s experience, from crises to celebration. 

In each moment, both light and shadow exist. We cannot live in light until we embrace the shadow, which means while hoping for the good, also embracing the possibility of the opposite.

Also recall the Kleshas - the 5 causes of suffering, and that desire and aversion both cause suffering. Wanting and not wanting. Liking and not liking.

It’s an interesting practice, isn’t it? To become “neutral” to what happens in life, without becoming “complacent?” We’ll discuss that in tomorrow’s practice.

For today, I want to introduce the meditation practice, and also the mantra:

Sarvesham Shantir Bhavatu.

Say it silently to yourself, three times. 

Sarvesham Shantir Bhavatu.

Sarvesham Shantir Bhavatu.

Sarvesham Shantir Bhavatu.

Now notice the sensations in your body. 

A mantra is a “mind trick” or “tool.”

Man = manos, or mind, as in manomaya kosha, from the 5 layers of our being; this is the layer of the mind.

Tra = tool or trick

So, a mantra is a tool or trick to use, to quiet or calm or focus the mind.

What it means (and keep in mind this is always loosely translated, as Sanskrit is a language that is quite different from English):

“My Presence Creates Peace.”

Now repeat that silently to yourself, three times.

My Presence Creates Peace

My Presence Creates Peace

My Presence Creates Peace

Notice the sensations in your body.

Consider this:

Through this practice, not only does my Presence become calm, and create calm around me,  My Presence to my self - my state of being, allows me to become more calm.
And a step further - my Presence to my own Self - my Self of the self - peace, by becoming more connected to and aware at the core of my being. 

With each of those three stages of understanding this mantra, notice the sensations in your body.

Sarvesham Shantir Bhavatu

Practice this meditation:

https://vimeo.com/407005986/8c57d06d05

Then, from Presence, what are you grateful for now?

“There is a calmness to a life lived in gratitude, a quiet joy.” - Ralph H. Blum

Be Well in All Ways,

Kristen

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