The path to an extraordinary quality of life is simple.  Two words: Let Go.

Let go, let go and let go some more.

Of physical tension, emotional stress–well, just everything.

You are driving to work.  Try this little assessment exercise.  Tune in acutely to what happens to the temple of your body/mind while you drive.  You try to maneuver to the right lane.  The car behind you speeds up.  Tension in the body–feel it, be aware of it.  Tension in the mind.  The mind and body are NOT separate.  What occurs to one, also happens to the other.

You see the driver ahead of you talking on a cell phone.  Tension in the mind/body.  Traffic bunches up, you may be late for work if things don’t clear up.  Stress in the body/mind. 

You had a disagreement yesterday with the co-worker who sits across from you.  Tension in the body/mind.

Your son didn’t receive a single grade better than a C on his grade report.  Tension in the body/mind.  You look at the sky.  It might snow.  Your tires are not in great shape.  Tension in the body/mind.

Our days and nights are filled with hundreds of “microtensions.”

It is not just the big things that cause us to suffer.  It is all those little stresses that accumulate throughout the days, weeks, months and years. 

We learn to “numb” ourselves to the existence of constant physical and emotional tension.  We literally divorce our awareness from parts of our bodies where stress causes muscles to clinch.  We avoid thinking about so many things.  We live in denial.  There is so much pain!

So, Let go!

Yeah.  A simple dictum to understand but not so easy to accomplish.

Do you want to evolve as a person? As a human being?  Don’t wait for ineffable truths.  Don’t look for secret formulas.  Don’t rely on another human being–guru, teacher or otherwise.

Practice–that is the secret.  Not what you know or believe.

Surrender physical tension by initiating breathing exercises.  Before you get up in the morning.  When you lie in bed at night.  Lay flat on your back with your arms at your sides and practice long, deep breathing.

Practice breathing every chance you get.  Challenge yourself to extend your breath capacity over time.  Cultivating breath control will help you to begin to get in touch with the temple of your body/mind.  With greater awareness of the sensations of your body, of the content of your mind, comes the increased capacity to let go.  First you face, then you release.

Surrender mental and emotional tensions by performing simple chants.  Make up your own prayer.  Something simple.  Find a mantra you like, Om Namah Shivaye.  Om Tara tuttare…etc.  Here’s one that I made up for myself years ago: The One is the breath, the breath is the blood, the blood is the bone, the bone is the flesh, the flesh is the many, the many is the One.

A simpler mantra.  Yim-yeem-yame-yam-yahm-yum-yohm-yoom.  Eight syllables that have the power to displace negative thoughts, repetitious thoughts, persistent dialoguing, constant scripting, etc, etc.

You know as well as I do that 90% of the thoughts in your head, the images, the reinforcements, ad infinitum, are unnecessary.  Simple as that.  We don’t need ’em.  Evolve, my friends. Displace and replace.  Displace all that wasteful content.  Replace with your mantra.  In time, you will discover that the mantra will be replaced by silent stillness.  Quiet will reign where once a tempest roared.

And meditate.  Don’t wait for instruction.  Just set your alarm, get comfortable–but not too comfortable.  Put in some earplugs and learn who you are from the inside.  The sounds, the sensations.  Troublesome at first, perhaps, but in time, these sounds and sensations will become the gateway whereby the temple of the body/mind moves from stress to stillness, from tension to tranquility.

There is no sound in the universe more sacred and powerful than the inner OM that you will discover when your mind and body become quiet.  You thought that all that OM stuff was just some Hindu or Buddhist mythology?  You didn’t realize that there truly is an OM and when your body/mind are sufficiently still and silent, that you will hear that OM?  You saw the bumper stickers and thought, “another hippie yoga idiot.”

OM is real.  When you hear OM, you will never forget it.  When you focus your attention on OM you will descend into a quality of blissful stillness that, quite frankly, you are at this moment incapable of imagining.

For the path of Trika, there is a pyramid of evolution: the Sound, the Light and the Sensation.

The sound is OM.  The light is the recognition of the One Light that illumines all things everywhere–from the thoughts inside your head to the grass and trees and buildings.  The Sensation is Kundalini.  When you awaken to the sensations of your body/mind you awaken to the sensation of the universe and to that One Sensation that is the originating vibration of all things everywhere.

Meditate on the Sound, the Light and the Sensation.  Let go of everything that stands between your perception of Sound, Light and Sensation. 

You will arrive at that great lake of universal awareness–that lake of consciousness where no separation exists between the One and the many.  One consciousness: one will, one knowledge, one action.  There is no transcendence, nor immanence.  No witnesser or witnessed.  There is the constant experience of the dynamic identity of the one with the many.

Practice, discipline, arrives at the experience of truth.

Truth will never be one stop shopping.  There won’t ever be an absolute undeniable “truth” that all persons will perceive equally and alike.  There’s only the truth of experience.  And when you let go of thoughts, beliefs, opinions, prejudices–when you surrender all the tension in the temple of the body/mind–when nothing that you see, hear or feel separates you from the living experience that only One Identity exists, you will be free to enjoy and perform on the stage of life free of strife.  No pain, no suffering.  Period.