Freedom and Happiness

Imagine a life free of mental conflict and emotional suffering, so that you can express your wisdom, love, and creative power without fear or limit. Here are two simple tools to achieve this, and eventually to make your realization permanent.

The first one is the practice. Read this short paragraph first and then do the practice… Close your eyes, breathe deeply and slowly, and then imagine, or visualize, empty space inside your head. Breathe into that space… Be the space… Relax into it, and let the feeling of pure emptiness linger for a few minutes…

Then open your eyes and notice how you feel…

The more you do this simple practice, the more you have the direct experience of your true, spacious nature. It renews you in body, mind, and spirit. You see everything with new eyes. Your intuition opens up, and you’re guided as to what to do next. It is quite amazing in its simplicity and power to connect you with the deep freedom and happiness inside you.

Why does it work so well? Because when you imagine empty space inside your head, the brain is flooded with alpha waves, the healing energy of the meditative state. Do this practice often, and you’ll find many physical problems healing themselves, in addition to the mental and emotional clarity and harmony you’ll experience.

But to really become one with the source of freedom and happiness inside you, you need more than this practice. You need to understand, and eventually embody, or live, the teaching, which is the second tool.

The teaching, fortunately, is also simple, though somewhat harder to live and to embody in daily life. This is because the conditioning to believe you are a “somebody”—a “person” with a psychological and emotional history—is deep-rooted. We get very identified, in other words, with the “story” of who we believe we are. But don’t worry. The more you do the practice, the more you naturally begin to realize the truth of the teaching…

The teaching is that while your thoughts are very powerful—after all, they have created everything human-made—they are not real. Not even your “I” and “me” thoughts are real. Why not? Because they, like the conflict and suffering they produce, come and go, but you, as an aware, conscious being—this alive presence, the empty space you are, the watcher of your thoughts—are still very much here. The more you realize this, the lighter, freer, and happier you feel.

Then self-centered thinking gradually falls away, because you realize that this “self” you’ve taken yourself to be is an illusion! It frees you up to use thought for the powerful, creative tool it is, and right action tends to flow naturally. As your freedom deepens, your heart opens and life becomes rich in beauty, love, and meaning. When you share your love—your caring presence—with others, miracles happen…

The practice and the teaching combine in an approach to awakening that is elegant, clear, and do-able by anyone. Practice imagining empty space inside your head, and grasp the teaching that you are not your thoughts, not even your “I” or “me” thoughts, and the simple truth of happiness will eventually be yours…