I have it fixed now and so I should be able to start posting again!

I probably don’t practice like some twenty year olds. I probably practice harder than others.

What I have learned in my time studying this way of life, is that as you grow older, you begin to practice less hard and spend more time in meditation. I find that to be true in my life. Although I did not practice this morning, I did sit for nearly twice as long as my usual meditation time.

There is nothing wrong with this! As we age, we begin to find that doing a headstand for ten minutes may be good, but finding our center within the Universe is even better! I guess you could chock it up to priorities.

However you practice, I encourage you to always push the boundaries! It is how you grow.

The other blog, Life Change For You, is a blog about life change and how to go about it. It has taken a lot of effort and I hope to start being back here and talking about yoga a spirituality more very soon.

I beg you to check back now and again. I really want this blog to be of use to you. If you have comments or suggestions, I encourage you to send them to me. This has to be about you or it isn’t of any use!

Namaste!

P.S. I put out a new meditation CD that is downloadable. It is a guided meditation to help change and deepen your life. Check it out!

I think yoga and success are linked very well.

Why would I say such a thing? I mean isn’t yoga about purity and all that and success is, well, success means stomping on others and winner and loser.

I don’t think so.

Yoga is about learning about yourself, your body, mind and spirit. It is about learning to be a better you. Success is seen as something dirty, but it doesn’t have to be.

Success simply means that you work on something until you consider it successful. I worked on doing a headstand for a month or better, but I finally got to where I could do one. Success!! I felt great about myself and I felt successful.

Success doesn’t have to be evil.

I don’t think success needs to be a bad thing. It doesn’t need to stomp on others. Do you think of yourself as successful? If you do, are you an evil person? Do you not care who gets hurt as long as you get what you want?

I doubt it. If that is true, you need to work on your Yamas and Niyamas!

Yoga and success are great together. Use your training in yoga to give you the perseverance and strength to do the things you want to do!

Namaste!

These conversations were about how to best reach people who are seeking not only a connection to the Infinite, to God, but also seeking a better life. The general consensus was that the old wisdom of how to go about that does not meet the issue anymore. I thought it was most interesting to hear these people talk about what they thought and how like each other they were, although not together at the time or place.

I recently read something in a course on online SEO that I am taking from Dan Thies. What he said was that following conventional wisdom without thinking can lead to trouble. I thought this was a insight!
Albert Einstein said that insanity was doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. How is it that we look to conventional wisdom, that may have been very true at one point and not see that time, circumstance, and culture may make that wisdom less or completely irrelevant. It doesn’t matter what the subject.

I once worked in industry and had to deal with people coming into our shop and telling us how to produce product. These “customers” would try to force us into doing things their way when it was obvious to all that it wouldn’t work as well as what we already had. Conversely, there were times when a new idea worked very well, but the workers didn’t want to change because, “we’ve never done it that way.”

What is the insane thing you are doing over and over and expecting different results? How are you trying to better your life, but using the things you have done before and didn’t work? Do you even know where you want to go and what you want to do? Take sometime to evaluate your life. Are you going where conventional wisdom says to go, even though you feel strongly that it is not the right way? You are in charge of your life. You determine where to go and what to do. Don’t let faulty wisdom interfere with your goals in life.

Stephen

A Common Path

Can we ever be perfect? I don’t think so. This life is a journey, not a destination, and we never stop learning, or shouldn’t, until we breathe our last breath. Some people think they are too old to learn or change. Others think that they are incapable of changing. This is nonsense!

This past week-end, we had some friends over for dinner and some reiki.  We
enjoy treating people, but we enjoy more having the conversation. The couple that was over are friends that we feel comfortable sharing our beliefs with. Anyway, during the conversation something was said, I don’t even remember what now, and it caused me to reflect on myself. I realized something I wanted to change and I have been thinking about this for most of the day today.

Everyone I know has aspects about themselves that they would like to change.
They are too dependent on others or they are not assertive enough. They think they are lost causes on a one way road to oblivion. They see no hope of anything better than what they have right now. Their dreams have died and, for the most part, so have they. Does this describe you? Why not take just one little thing about yourself and see if you can’t, over the next two weeks change it. It might not change completely, but it might improve. If you can do it with one, then you can try another. Don’t be one of those people who are either afraid, or too lazy to change! Give yourself a chance and do what needs to be done. You can have the life you dream about. It takes work, sure. The old saying, “there ain’t no free lunch,” is true, but it may not be as hard as you think! Those who have gone through this change process will tell you that it is well worth the effort! Don’t stop now! Become who you were created to be!
]]> http://acommonpath.com/2009/08/31/a-two-week-challenge-to-change/feed/ 0 http://acommonpath.com/2009/08/27/how-to-improve-your-life-by-making-choices-2/ http://acommonpath.com/2009/08/27/how-to-improve-your-life-by-making-choices-2/#comments Fri, 28 Aug 2009 04:00:00 +0000 Stephen Thomas http://acommonpath.com/blog/2009/08/27/how-to-improve-your-life-by-making-choices-2/

Does your life seem to go from one drudgery type experience to another? You get up and go to work, drudgery, then you come home and do
around the house chores, more drudgery. Everything you do seems to be a “have to” type situation. Well, not only is there hope, you are wrong to boot!

You don’t have to do anything you don’t want! That’s right! You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. You may be thinking that I’m wrong, you do have to go to that job you hate. After all, there are bills to pay. The truth is, you choose to go to work. You choose to because you choose to pay the bills. I know, you’re thinking I don’t know what I’m talking about, but give me a chance. You don’t have to do those things. You can choose not to.
Sure there are repercussions! Your house may be taken away, your partner might leave you, any number of things, but in the end, you choose. There is a principle that states that ultimately, you are responsible for your own life
and happiness. That means you take responsibility for making the choices you do.

I once had an employee that wanted a job that would be a promotion. I had to tell him that he was not going to get it since someone else was more qualified. He wasn’t happy! He started to get angry and I told him he didn’t have to stay working for us if he didn’t want to. I would understand if he felt under-appreciated and wanted to go somewhere else. He got angrier and
said he had to be there. I told him no one was chaining his leg to his desk. He
said he had bills and a family. I said I knew that, but he still had a choice.
He started to speak, but then thought for a minute. He admitted I was right. He could just quit and take the consequences or, he could stay. He stayed and was promoted about a year later.

The truth is we choose, and by choosing, we are expressing our wants. You may not want to work where you do, but you want to make money and you want to not have to look for another job.

We all have choice. Once we realize that our lives are our own responsibility, we can begin to have personal growth and success. We begin to feel more in control and our life improves.

I stood there looking at the selection and remembered that Scott had said to get a sixty-five cm ball.  I had this feeling, and intuition that I should get the bigger ball, the seventy-five cm ball.  Part of me wanted to say that Scott knew what he was talking about.  After all, he is the expert here, but then part of me said that he was hitting for the middle of the road and, of course, we need to adjust for our own bodies.  Back and forth the debate went.  I read the box and saw where it said the sixty-five cm ball was good for people up to five foot eleven.  I’m six two.  I bought the sixty-five cm ball, brought it home, blew it up and it is too small for me.  I have to take it back and get the bigger ball.

There are three steps you can take to increase your ability to let your intuition guide your life.  They are in essence, simple, but not so easy to follow in the moment.

The first is to recognize what is going on.  You get this feeling in the pit of your stomach or it seems like a part of your mind is trying to tell you, warn you of something.  We all get these nudges, but most of us ignore them.  The next time you get one of these nudges, recognize it as your intuition.  Recognize the fact that the Infinite is guiding you.  Recognize that you are receiving information from the matrix of intelligence that is all around you.

The second is to listen.  Listen to what is being said to you.  What is your intuition trying to tell you?  Maybe it is in guiding you to buy the right thing, like with me, or maybe it is in giving you directions on your journey.  Whatever it is, listen to it and try to comprehend what is being said.  If I had listened and understood that the ball I has was too small, I would have bought the right one.

The last step is to act.  Do what your intuition is telling you.  Turn left instead of right, buy the right ball, speak to that person.  Whatever you intuition is telling you to do, do it!  Now you might say that you have tried that in the past and it didn’t turn out well.  Sometimes we are just wrong about what we hear.  This is especially true when first beginning to listen.  The second thing about this is that sometimes, we don’t immediately see the benefits of doing it the way intuition says instead of what we originally thought.  It may seem a mistake to turn right instead of left, but what did turning right teach you.

Once you get used to listening to your intuition and following it, you will begin to grow spiritually, and personally.  You begin to see the reality of your connection to the Infinite and that evolves into great personal growth.  You begin to be more successful because you are making the right choices.  Listening to your intuition is well worth the effort.

What are our limits, as humans?  One of the Principles is the we determine our limitations.  No matter how much we may not like it, this is true.  We tell ourselves that we cannot do this or that.  You might think that someone else is stopping you, but in reality, they are the roadblock that you have the choice to go around or not.  You determine you limitations.

The question is, what if we had no limitations?  What if we tapped into the well of the Infinite and could do whatever we wanted?  It reminds me of tapping into a keg of beer.  You tap the keg, pull that first glass and get little but foam.  You taste the beer and its good so you get another.  This one has a lot of foam still, but not as much as before and you get more of the beverage.  The next glass is all beer and it tastes good and goes down smooth.  You begin to feel lighter in spirit and more friendly.  By your six or seventh glass, you begin to think how fun life is and what you might do.  Somewhere along the line you begin to think, to know, that you are invincible.

Now tapping into the Infinite is so much better than that.  You get the same feelings, but no hangover and it is not a false sense of well being, but are real sense of all being right and your place in it as right.  You begin to know your strengths and your talents.  You begin to serve others through your abilities and you have such a sense of euphoria that nothing in life can get you down.

Why not tap into the keg of the Infinite, the Source?  Why stand on the sidelines feeling like a wallflower, or worse, the worlds biggest loser.  Why not drink your fill of what awaits you, if you only will?

How much do you trust? No I don’t mean about loaning your friend five dollars, I mean trust that something greater than yourself is there for you?

We so often live our lives feeling like it is all up to us and that there is no real hope of something miraculous, fantastic, happening in our lives. Unfortunately, thinking that way almost guarantees that it will be true. When we think, believe, that our lives are destined to be ordinary and small, our thoughts attract the energy of those thoughts. The result is ordinary small lives.

As children, we believe in all sorts of wonderful things. Do you remember waking up on Christmas morning believing that Santa Clause had come? You were so excited that you could not stay in bed even though your parents threatened you with a horrible death if you got up. Maybe it was some other holiday, but you believed so strongly in the magic of life that you couldn’t stand it. Often you would experience something and just know that it was because of some greater or higher power.

As we grow to adults, we stop believing this way. The world, our parents and teachers tell us to stop being so silly and to grow up. The sad truth is that they conditioned us to lives with no magic in them. When we trust that God, the Universe, the Infinite, the fairies, whatever, will bring us untold wealth of life and happiness, it happens! We begin to have the excitement of a child again. We believe that anything is possible and watch for its coming into our lives.

Take the time to believe again. Take the time to trust in whatever it is you feel holds the universe and all things in it secure. Fall in love with the Infinite again. It can’t hurt you and you might be amazed at what it will bring you!