God. Thank you for the day today. God, I tried to do everything to the best of my abilities. I may have done few things right and others wrong. Please forgive me, my mistakes and please reward me for my successes if you so desire.

God, I want to forget today and get up fresh tomorrow. I also want to forget all of my past. God, I want to love tomorrow as if it is my birthday. I want to treat tomorrow as my new birth and forget all of my past. This will help me live life in a new way every day without any burden of the past. God, please help me doing this. God, There are many incidents of my past which were very bad when they occurred. But today, I don’t even remember them. I want to do this to all my incidents of today. I don’t want them to fade away from my memory slowly. But I want to bury them now. God, please help me doing that.

God, Please give me new ideas tomorrow. Please give me a new outlook. Let me treat all the obstacles as challenges. Let me enjoy fighting with them rather than getting frustrated by them. God, please give me a new way of looking at the things. Let all the situations be a test situation for me. Rather than getting annoyed and irritated, let me look at them as my adversaries that have to be outwitted by me. Let me do this in a playful way.

God, let me do this everyday. God, let me pray to you in the same way everyday. God thank you very much.

I accept and welcome these changes as a necessary part of life.

My priorities are the things that are most important to me. Naturally, as I grow and change throughout my life’s journey, different things become more important to me. Changing my priorities keeps me true to myself.

When I pursue new goals, these goals may replace or take precedence over goals I had in the past. Changing my priorities incorporates these goals into an important place in my life and helps me succeed.

When love enters my life, I change my priorities again. I gratefully acknowledge my partner as one of the most important people in my life and redirect my priorities to allow for this change.

I create my daily schedule according to my priorities so the most important tasks are sure to get done. On some days, a new task, goal, or challenge may be more important for that day, so I accept this and remain adaptable.

I make my decisions according to my priorities. In this way, I always know that I am making the right decision for me. It brings me the confidence to go ahead and act on my decisions, knowing that regrets cannot hold me hostage.

In order to follow my heart and keep true to myself, I examine my priorities often and change them as necessary to reflect on what is most important to me.

Today, I plan to re-examine my priorities and re-set them with my most important people, goals, and tasks at the top.

Self-Reflection Questions:

1. What’s most important to me?
2. Have I clarified my priorities to myself with these most important things at the top?
3. Do I make my decisions according to my priorities?

Life is a mystery. The cosmos is a mystery. What are its boundaries? If it is an expanding universe, where does it expand to? What is beyond it. Some of the stars are millions of light years away from us. What an unimaginable distance! What is there in the cosmos? Who made it? When did it form? What was there, before it was formed?

Who are we? Am I a body with a name? Then how do some people have good luck and some bad? Why do some children get cancer at a very young age and some people with all the bad habits live a healthy life for a long time? What are we destined to do on this earth. Where did we come from and where shall we go?

Why there is so much misery in the world? Why do we love some people and hate some? What is that, which will satisfy us? What is the objective of human life? There are so many questions in our minds. Every religion has its own theory and its own explanation. In India, it is considered that The Guru is the only one who can answer all these questions.

Who is Guru? According to Indian scriptures, Guru is God in human body. He comes on this earth to liberate followers. A Guru is not to be confused with people who write well or speak well about Indian mythology and philosophy. They might be called as learned persons or good speakers or good writers of books. But none of them is The Guru.

The west is getting attracted to Hinduism. Many branches of Hinduism including Yoga are becoming very popular in the west. Many people travel from India to the west to lecture upon Hinduism and scriptures of India, and many people call them as Gurus. That is wrong use of word Guru. Guru is very mysterious.

How to know that some one is Guru? After coming in contact with Guru, you must feel a change that is life altering. The change is not something like – I feel good, or I feel peaceful. But Guru brings about changes that can never be explained by you to others. If anytime, you come across Guru, you will know by these changes and then over a period of time The Guru will reveal his/her identity to you. That depends on his/her wish.

No one should take every saint in India as Guru. There are very few in the world. According to Indian scriptures, only if you have collected lot of good karma, do you get Guru. I can only make one statement. The experience of the power of Guru is very different than anything else. And in the beginning the experience may be very painful rather than pleasant. But the end is pure bliss.

I let go of the thought that everything depends on me, and freely pass on the responsibility to others. When I do, I feel a heavy burden lifted from my shoulders.

At home, I let my children handle some of the chores. This teaches them responsibility and lets them feel like an integral part of the family. I let my spouse handle whatever he will and am pleased with the outcome of our teamwork.

At work, I delegate tasks efficiently by letting those best qualified for the task to lend a helping hand. This gives me more time to focus on the tasks that I must do myself. As a result, we work as a team on the job, output higher quality work, and I do not have to do it all myself.

I know that most of the time someone else will not do a task in the exact same way I would, but that does not mean that the results are sub-par. In fact, I find that if I back off and let them be in control of their delegated task, they produce fine work.

Letting go of the need to do everything gives me more time to do what I really want to do. I can take the time to relax and take better care of myself. I can rejuvenate my energy and focus on the things that are important to me.

Today, I am free of the stress that comes with trying to do everything myself. I happily let my spouse, children and co-workers take on what they can, knowing that all will be well.

Self-Reflection Questions:

1. How strong is my need to do everything myself?
2. What chores can I assign to my children instead of doing them myself?
3. What daily tasks can I delegate to others at work?

A great way to cultivate spirituality is through a rigorous routine. Specifically, the foods we put in our bodies are very connected to how spiritually grounded we are on any given day of the week.

One way to cultivate your spirituality is selecting one day out of the week to fast from something. For example, for 2 years now I’ve been taking Monday’s to observe not eating-experiencing solidarity with those who don’t eat because of material circumstance-for two years this has been a cornerstone to my spiritual development and practice. However, lately I’ve found it difficult to stay with it, so I’m remaining flexible and slightly changed my routine. Now, I eat one meal every Monday-since many people live off one meal a day-I keep this meal as simple as possible, beans and rice or lentils.
That may not be for everyone, so there are always variations that you can try. For example, you may want to select one day a week when you ingest only juices or perhaps only fruits and nuts? Or maybe, that one day a week is the day that you decide you will go without turning on the television, or, for coffee drinkers, that may be the day you do not have any coffee? Some, who are more adventurous, may want to spend that day going to somewhere they’ve never been before, even if that is a place down the road from where you live. Not only will this augment discipline, in the cases with food, it will give your internal organs a necessary space and time to cleanse and release toxins from your body.
No matter what it is, fasting from something, or, trying something new one day a week, allows us to explore different perspectives and ways to see our lives and hence the world.
Another practice to experiment with is not eating out more than once a week. Personally, I feel better about myself when I’m not spending money lavishly. For those living in the western, industrialized world, we must constantly remember that 8 or 9 US dollars on a meal is what many families around the world have available to them for an entire month of food.
Not snacking between meals is another steadfast way to increase one’s awareness and discipline. No matter what you strive to do, it is important to stick to a practice because that cultivates will power, which will help us grow spiritually (sometimes denying ourselves what we WANT in a particular moment and seeing that it may not be what we NEED, is what allows us to fortify our values/ principles).
I also understand that sometimes (for our own sanity) we’ve got to treat ourselves. This means that the lines may occasionally blur at midnight, when we don’t need that apple and peanut butter to stay alive, but we do need that apple and peanut butter to help us smile… and that’s ok (except maybe for the most ardent spiritual seekers)! It’s important to have faith that we will make the right decisions, especially in those moments, and have to be kind, gentle, forgiving, and open to accepting the occasional exception to the rule.
No matter how you chose to develop your spirituality and discipline, two of the things I have been meditating on extensively over the past years, is one: consistently remembering how thankful I must be to have food to eat. And two: checking consumerism and excessive use of resources that keeps others in the world oppressed and exploited. It’s important to find out where what we’re buying is coming from; and then, finding alternatives to that which is damaging to the environment and the lives of other people.
Maintain your composure and transform the self without being motivated by guilt. Transform your being patiently, and for many, you will find it necessary to isolate the self in order to explore it more freely and intimately. Isolation means spending time alone. This is always an essential part of spiritual growth.
Stay balanced. Focus on how your life is part of something greater, and allow tremendous spiritual experiences to flow.
I encourage exploration of self and trying something new whenever possible. The universe is filled with possibilities for endless growth, seize them and transform!
written by HAWAH – an artist, organizer, peace educator and yoga instructor currently living in Washington, D.C. He has independently published 3 books, including “Trust Before Suspicion,” “Escape Extinction,” and the newly released “zerONEss.” He serves as executive director of the non-profit organization One Common Unity, Inc. and can further be explored at http://www.EVERLUTIONARY.net
Traveling the world-in less than 7 years over 23 countries-sparked a commitment in Hawah to empower those less materially privileged. In 1999, working as an Americorps community organizer and mentor in Washington DC’s most under-resourced neighborhood, he encouraged youth to explore the roots of oppression.
After graduating from American Univ. with a degree in Peace and Educational Philosophy, he was awarded a fellowship with the RFK Foundation to work as a special rep. to the U.N. and the World Conference Against Racism. Hawah is co-founder/ executive director of One Common Unity, a non-profit org. that nurtures sustainable communities through innovative peace education, arts, and media.
For 3 years he directed the Peaceable Schools Program in DC’s largest high school-specifically leading Alternatives to Violence, Positive Stretch, Deep Breathing & Yoga classes. A spoken word poet known as Everlutionary, Hawah has authored 3 books: Trails: Trust Before Suspicion (2001), Escape Extinction (2003) and zerONEss (2006). His work can be further explored at http://www.everlutionary.net