by Navjit Kandola
We have so many feelings surrounding money. It can trigger our emotions, and make us feel rich or poor, confident or sad.
Money can be the difference between being homeless and living in a palace. It can provide access to worlds and experiences that exist outside the normal circumference of our lives. We seek it, we work for it, and yearn for more of it. We project so much onto money, and associate it with so much power that we expect it to fill in the gaps in our lives.
Our feelings about money can range from adoration to absolute hatred. Today, let us explore our relationship to money, extend energy to it, and give to it – instead of always taking. After all money, is an energy. We can amplify that energy through our consciousness, and invite money to be our friend.
Here we go.
Take a couple of deep breaths into your body and close your eyes. Breathe in quietly and sweetly, allowing the breath to reach past the diaphragm all the way down to the solar plexus. Feel the luxury of the breath inside your beautiful body.
Take your time, and connect to the wonder of you, the wealth inside of you. Feel it moving through your body. Allow your body to relax in this sense of abundance within.
Take another deep breath, and ask money to take a form as it lives in your life. Take the first form you see. It can be anything – a dollar bill, a tree, a pile of rubble. What is the energy of this symbol that you perceive? Is it sticky? Does it make you tighten your chest? Or does it make you feel good? Just perceive what is being triggered inside you.
Now, ask money what gift it would like from you. Again, take the first thing you perceive. It may be a feeling or an object – a feeling of laughter or a bag of gold. Imagine this gift coming in from the universe, through your body, and extend it to money. Then, watch what happens.
Keep extending as much of this gift as money wants – until it is quite full.
Great. Now ask money what gift it wants to give to you. Just allow it to show you. It can be anything. A hug, dollars, rainbows – whatever it is, imagine this gift coming to you and filling you up. What does it feel like? Does it activate a feeling or a sense of being? Take as much as you need to feel completely full, thus creating a sense of openness to receiving from money.
Once you feel you have enough and then some, take your time to imprint this new sense of relationship with money onto your conscious awareness. As you imprint this, your whole body’s vibration will become like a magnet for attracting positive, nourishing channels of abundance.
And finally, take another deep and release the form of money into the light. Breathe into your body and enjoy.
We are endlessly wealthy, and can always create new pathways for money to be our friend.
by Navjit Kandola
You are changing. Can you feel it?
As conscious beings, we can easily spot changes in the world around us.
But for some reason, we always assume we are standing still amongst them, like rocks in a stream.
Just as the world shifts, we too are in a steady state of transformation, but we often fail to notice. This disconnect of awareness runs deep. Even when our physical bodies are decidedly altered, our minds are often preoccupied elsewhere. It might take a drastic event – an illness, a sudden recognition of improvement, or an outside source telling us what they see – before our personal metamorphosis becomes apparent to ourselves.
The ability to recognize and be in alignment with change is a true gift. We can amplify this awareness by choosing to meet change with self-knowing and confidence.
So today, let us prepare our consciousness for the shifting into the season of autumn/fall, by focusing on being aware of change.
Let’s begin.
Take a couple of deep breaths and close your eyes. Breathe into your inner landscape, allowing your breath to nourish and replenish your inner world of drought or floods. Give yourself a moment to find a point of ease.
On your next deep breath, ask your body where it holds the essence of being in perfect alignment with change. Take a moment to feel into this point of awareness, holding its essence. Take another deep breath and pop open this essence, diving into the sensations it provides.
What does it feel like? Is it a vast energy? Is it sudden and bright, like lightning? Or is it still and subtle, like the surface of a calm lake?
As you perceive this essence, contemplate how it feels to be in alignment with change. Freeing? Relaxing? Imagine this energy rippling out from your whole body, and into your aura. Feel this energy meeting the change that is happening around you and within you, from a place of inner knowing and balance.
Allow yourself to be immersed in this energy for as long as you would like. And then, when you are ready, take a few more deep, delicious breaths and open your eyes.
Change is the fibres in the fabric of life – let us learn to meet it with humor and dancing feet!
by Navjit Kandola
Sometimes… we just don’t want to make a decision.
We’re terrified by the impact it may have on our lives. So we dilly-dally through the day, distracting ourselves, avoiding the sensitive issue at hand. We look to others for advice and support. We pour money, time, and energy into orchestrated attempts to quash the reality of making the choice.
Decisions can make us feel as if we will be torn apart, or that the cost is so high that we will be devastated for the rest of our lives.
If you are at that spot between a rock and a hard place, have courage. I know it is not easy – I have been in that spot many times as well. Take your time, and make that space bigger, big enough to breathe and remember your wholeness.
Decisions can be reframed as choices whose purpose (on the deepest level) is to reconnect, nourish, and grow our sense of wholeness. Whether that decision is about staying in a relationship or starting a new business, the question must circle back to the self.
“Does choosing this way help me to grow? How? How do I feel and how do I want to feel?”
For today’s meditation, let us make space for big decisions!
Take a couple of deep breaths into your body, and close your eyes. Breathe into your body, and allow your senses to turn within so that you can feel the life within you, the goodness in your cells, the knowing that is in your bones, and in your heart.
Come in a little bit closer still, deeper still, to the stillness within you where the decision has already been made; a place of pure consciousness. As you find your place in this stillness, allow the pull of anxiety to fade into the background, and let your senses be bathed in the energy of non-duality – no good or bad, no right or wrong.
Breathe, and sit in the tranquility within you. Allow yourself to drift in your consciousness until you feel nourished and rested, and all the the neurons & synapses in your brain and body remember the connectedness, and feel the wholeness. From this place, you can come to your decision as your whole self – the self that will neither be destroyed by a decision, nor made by it.
You already are a whole, warm, tender, loving, loved, and kind being; and the decision is just one seed or direction that you explore.
When you feel that knowing presence of wholeness within you, take a couple of deep breaths and open your eyes.
Good decisions are made better decisions when they are made from a place of wholeness, and we feel the depth of our being anchoring within.
by Navjit Kandola
It’s time for our monthly silent meditation! But today, there is a little twist.
Sitting in silence is very nourishing, and can deeply replenish the physical senses as well as the soul. However, finding your way to that inner quietude can be tricky.
There are so many ways to experience silence beyond simply eradicating sound or movement. Music – a celebration of activity, movement, waves of light, and sound – contributes to and manifests the inner sanctuary of silence just as much as stillness.
Did you know that playing melancholy tunes for people experiencing depression can alleviate negative emotions and rest their inner and outer senses? Or that moving or dancing can bring about deep inner peace?
Silence is not a void or an abyss of inactivity – it is fecund, and the very source of life and consciousness itself.
So today, choose a piece of music that will bring you closer to meditation. Listen, dance, or move your body to bring about stillness of your mind and spirit, and tap into the very source of life within you. Use all that life provides to create your sanctuary to eat, pray and love!
Here are some juicy choices from my personal playlist. Pick something and find your way home!
More ecstatic
Gayatri Mantra
Spin your heart
Yala – Oumou Sangare
Kick up your heels
La Grange – ZZ Top
Pure indulgence
Gangnam Style – PSY
by Navjit Kandola
I am smiling as I write these words, because I know it is time to say some good things.
Saying good words is not really an affirmation or a mantra. Instead, it is an exercise in appreciating what we love that is already present, or that we can bring to the foreground to appreciate. It’s a moment to acknowledge the simple details of life, and parts of ourselves that we take for granted.
Good things happen all the time in our lives, and all around us. Speaking positive words allows us to connect to the bigger picture, expand our horizons, and shake loose the dross of stagnation.
This exercise is so simple and yet soooo lovely to practice. It is one of my favourite exercises to do as I wash dishes or fall asleep, or especially before starting the day.
So if you’re ready, take a couple of deep breaths and close your eyes.
Feel the good breath coming into your good body, nourishing your good lungs and mixing with the good blood being pumped by your good heart. Allow your senses to touch the good air from this good planet Earth as it rushes up through your good nasal passages. Feel the goodness of slowing down and releasing tension, knowing that you are in the presence of inner and outer goodness.
Now take another deep, wonderful breath and prepare yourself to speak those good things to yourself.
Here are some of mine:
I love you, my body.
I thank you, my mind.
Thank you, light.
Thank you, tree in the winds.
I am glad in this moment, and smile with love in my heart.
I love the joy this meditation creates….
Speak these thoughts to yourself for as long as you would like. Then, when you are ready, take another deep, good breath and open your good eyes to this good, good world.
There are so many good things to speak of. Each time you practice this exercise, whether for a moment or for a day, you will find the warmth of your heart leaving love notes everywhere!
by Navjit Kandola
Do you imagine running fast as Usain Bolt? Or swimming like Aquaman himself, Michael Phelps?
Did your heart open and your eyes fill with tears during the recent Olympics?
My heart did. It soared, it swelled, was held captive by the dazzling athletic performances.
Our hearts generate such powerful energy. I wonder: what would it be like to have an Olympics entirely focused on heart energy & love?
On our daily excursions through life, we squeeze our hearts, riddling them with stress and strain. At times, we even fill them with hatred and rage. But there are other moments still when only radiant love can be found within us – and when that happens, we are golden.
Imagine that today, we could choose to be like those athletes who train for years to excel at their sport – in that we could train our hearts to be even more luminous, compassionate, and rich in love. What would such a world look like, if all members of our families focused on the development of their heart muscles, or whole communities studied the evolution and expansion of love and mindfulness.
These “heart” Olympics would be open to all, from babies to elders.
So today let’s take a few moments to connect to our own Olympian hearts, and pulse with love, wonderful love.
Here we go:
Take a couple of deep breaths into your body and close your eyes.
Allow your senses to shift from the outside to the inside. Give your body a few moments to become attuned to this inner awareness.
On your next deep breath, take your awareness to your heart and see how it feels in this moment. Does it feel heavy or light? Constricted or open?
Now ask your heart what color it wants to wash out any old residues of fears, conclusions or vows that stop it from being in the moment. Imagine that color coming in from the universe directly into your heart, and begin rinsing it with that color. Take as much color as your heart wants or needs. Breathe and relax as you do this exercise.
Once you feel the heart tingling and fresh, ask it to open the essence of its most radiant love. Feel into this essence. You might perceive it as light, or a ripple of loving emotion. Breathe into it. Open it with your trust. Breathe. Expand. Glisten with the energy of love as it moves into your cells. Feel its vibration bathing you as your heart taps into its deepest knowings through this channel of love.
Stay in this energy for as long as you would like. Then, when you are ready, take a few more deep breaths and open your eyes.
How do you feel now?
Keep in mind – this is just one round of this exercise. Imagine putting this practice into play several times a day for many months, or even years!
Look into the future, and see how much you have grown with the great power of love in your heart.
