How to Use the Power of Positive Thoughts and Meditation to Build a Life of Love, Joy and Peace
Meditation’s first benefit is to give you the ability consciously choose to focus on and accept only positive thoughts and not accept negative ones in daily life.
Photo Credit: Chinmayan
It is the wee hours of the night, here on Still Mountain.
These hours before the dawning of a new day
Are very special because while everyone else in this valley
Is asleep, I am enjoying the solitude and sacred stillness that
Cannot be found during the busy, noisiness of daytime.
It’s the perfect time for me to write a new Dawning Light story and send these
Daily love letters
To you before the sun comes up…
And once its published, for me to climb into a big deep tub of
Hot water for my nightly prayer time and meeting with my heart’s inner Beloved,
Before coming back to this tiny house and my bed.
Photo Credit: Chinmayan
When the sun is up and it is not raining, daytime is the time for working…
Doing the chores of life, then giving long hours of labor to the
Task of making firewood for our hearth and for sale to friends and neighbors
Who can’t make firewood for themselves and depend on our roadside
Firewood Stand for the wood they need to heat their homes.
Nearly everyday, I go into the mountains alone with our big gnarly Four by Four truck
to “make wood” at one of our “harvest sites”…which are always serene and beautiful
places where we have been invited to cut up and remove dead trees
killed by climate change or by wildfires.
Its very hard and challenging work, but I love it because I am in solitude,
Doing something which directly serves others, and since I am alone,
I am completely free to do the work
Mindfully and in a flow state that makes it into a meditation practice.
I have had many breakthroughs in consciousness,
which are the fruit of many years of doing daily
Meditation, prayer and kirtan practices, while doing the highly focused
and physically demanding work of making firewood…
The work itself pushes me up against my own normal mundane mind
Which constantly tells me “I don’t want to do it! It’s too hard!
I can’t do it! I want to quit and go home!”
As it whines and complains like a toddler having a temper tantrum.
Photo Credit: Chinmayan
I know if I were to give into to those thoughts that I would be stuck in a
State of lower consciousness and misery…
I would not be able to respect or like myself or feel good about
being weak and not accomplishing the work which must be done
when I know very well from years of painful experience
that negative thoughts are poisonous and always produce negative results
One of the first benefits of doing daily meditation practice is developing our ability to watch our own minds at work and then consciously choose which thoughts to accept and give our attention to and which thoughts to ignore.
One of the first things you discover for yourself when you establish your own satisfying meditation practice is that negative thoughts always make you feel bad, stressful, painful, upset or angry…and that positive thoughts always make you feel good, relaxed, content, confident and best of all give you a peaceful mind.
If you can understand and apply this one principle everyday in your own daily life, you will create a new life of unlimited potential and amazing possibilities.
It is a powerful, wonderful thing to develop a vital new habit and ability through
Meditation to not buy into mundane mind’s normal negative commentary and
Consistently and consciously choose the positive thoughts,
Which always lead us up into higher states of consciousness and satisfaction,
Into an attitude that opens our hearts, makes us more loving, aware and grateful!
That is my sincere wish for you, my dear friend, tonight as I say goodnight
And seek the sanctuary of healing hot water and prayer…
Image credit: Still Mountain Meditation Center