Author: Giridhari Das

In Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras we find an interesting definition of 3 things we need to be successful in yoga. Let’s take a look at that here.

Among other things, Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras are famous for the yamas and niyamas, which are the very basis of the entire path of yoga. Here we’ll briefly explain the 5 niyamas.

I’m excited about my upcoming retreat in the Bahamas, from the 15-18th of July!

Among other things, Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras are famous for the yamas and nimayas, which are the very basis of the entire path of yoga. Here we’ll briefly explain the 5 yamas.

Why are we here? Yoga is adamant in stating that ignorance leads to all other suffering. But not so much is said about how it all began. Why did I become ignorant? When? How? Find out more here.

Be aware that you are not seeing life as it is. You’re seeing it as you are, according to unconscious filters you have created, which control what information reaches you. How does this happen? How is it affecting your life? And how can you change this? Find out more here.

Life isn’t easy. Every day we have to deal with so-called problems. Let’s see here how the 3T Path gives you all the tools and knowledge you need to diminish and even overcome life’s problems.

Here are five steps to an amazing life. At every step, your life will get noticeably better. Put together, you’ll be experiencing perfection. This is not something made up, but the cumulative wisdom of thousands of years of the yoga tradition, now confirmed by modern science.

Step#1: Self-observation

The first step is to look inside. Before you can make any changes to how you’re living and what your mind is doing, you have to become a witness to your own self. What are you thinking, what’s your focus, what are you feeling? Track your mind’s movements and get in touch with not only your emotions but what’s behind them. Keep track of your motivations and desires and see what their outcomes are.

Take time to examine your consciousness. Silence is key for this. Focus not on external things or your endless to-do list, but just on yourself. Get to know yourself deeply.

Step#2: Self-responsibility

Once you’re looking inside, now you can start taking control of what’s going on. This is when you take the helm and direct your life to where you want it. You assume FULL responsibility for your well-being. No more victimhood. You put aside any idea that your happiness depends on anything or anyone else. You and you alone call the shots when it comes to how you’re feeling and the quality of your life.

You can read more about this in my earlier blog on the topic.

Step#3: Mindfulness

Now that you’re trying to command your mind, the first thing you need to do is to bring it to the here and now, which is a basic definition of mindfulness. Mindfulness is the portal for all higher states of consciousness. Being in the here and now is the solution to just about every form of suffering you impose on yourself.

As your mind drifts to the past, you experience melancholy and lamentation. When your mind jumps to the future, in the false hopes of future happiness, you experience anxiety, fear, and frustration. True joy begins in the now.

You can read more about this in my earlier blog on the topic.

Step#4: Dharma

Being in the here and now allows you to bring your full attention to your task at hand. This raises a key question: what should I do? This is where the concept of dharma comes in.

Dharma means your duty and essence. What’s the best you can do right now? What’s the purest expression of the best of you at this very moment?

Dharma means prioritizing your true nature and learning to balance out your different demands and responsibilities properly. It’s about being guided by values, not external goals. It’s about living your purpose.

This is one of the key components of The 3T Path. This video will help you understand the concept a little better.

Step#5: Bhakti

Lastly, and most importantly, you need transcendence. You need love. Bhakti means transcendental love and devotion. Once you’re in the here and now, living the best of you, now you can make that your spiritual practice, by connecting it all in love of God. Love is the highest expression of the soul. You know this because you’ve experienced how love makes feel great.

But love requires an object. You have to love someone. And you can only love someone to the extent they are “loveable”. That’s why, though we can all agree that love is the highest state of mind, we end up not experiencing it enough. Not many people are so loveable.

Even if you don’t understand or accept the concept of God, at least you can see the logic here. God is defined as infinitely loveable. As such, you can love Him and Her infinitely, which naturally gives you access to an infinitely high state of consciousness and bliss. As an added bonus, God, being transcendent, is always with you, so you can experience this loving connection anywhere, at any time.

Conclusion

So, there you have it: 5 steps to an amazing life. The first four will make your life flow with grace and enthusiasm. The last will take you beyond the constraints of material life, to an ocean of bliss.

In the book, The 3T Path (https://3tpath.com/books/) you can see in detail all these points, the techniques necessary to make them happen and how this can transform your life.

Watch my video on this topic here.

Look what they’re saying about The 3T Path book: “A life-saver!” – Ivan Llobet

 

Loss brings about great suffering. But what is the basis of this suffering? What’s behind this? Is there a way to disarm this source of pain or to minimize it? Here we’ll see how to deal with loss.

First, a meditation: “if you’ve lost something, it’s because it wasn’t really yours”.

What you lost was not the person or object. That was never “yours”. You’re not the ultimate owner of anyone or anything. You lost the illusion that it was yours.

And that’s what’s making you hurt. The brutal reencounter with the reality that nothing is yours deeply disturbs those who base their lives on the illusion that happiness comes claiming ownership of things and people.

Not even your body is yours. Did you make your body? I didn’t make mine. A rock, a fiber of cotton, water, earth… none of this is yours. You can’t make any of this. For those who have activated their devotion, the concept is easy enough to understand: everything belongs to God.

This concept is central to yoga and essential for living in peace: nothing belongs to you. You are just you. Consciousness. The soul.

That’s why things enter and leave your life beyond your control. Because they are not yours. When we don’t understand this, inevitably we experience the harsh lesson of loss.

And what about losing loved ones? It’s beyond awful. So much pain. But that person was never “yours”. The person was never really “your” brother or “your mother”. You never owned that person. The person was an eternal soul who came and played that part in your life, and now he or she is gone. Every relationship here has a beginning and an end. I was born, I will die. You were born, you will die. The pain of separation can be mitigated with a dose of reality: every person has always existed and will always exist. Only your time with that person, under those conditions, has ended. You can learn more about this topic of life after death in this video.

You’re a tourist. Only passing through. You arrived with nothing and no one and you’ll leave with nothing and no one. Everything you have is on loan, to be used while you’re here. The only thing that’s absolutely certain in life is that you won’t leave with anything or anyone.

The feeling of loss is a call for your awakening. We have to wake up to our internal reality. Even if you don’t believe in soul or God, you still cannot deny that you’re conscious and your experience of life in internal and metaphysical.

That’s why any step you take in this direction will bring you enormous positive gain and wellbeing. Changing extrinsic objectives for intrinsic objectives, prioritizing peace, emotional health, love… all of this will bring about huge gains and save you from the suffering that naturally arises from focusing on external things like money, things, social status, etc.

In the book, The 3T Path (https://3tpath.com/books/) you can see in detail how to develop the mental power and vision to conquer this paradigm shift and, thus, how to deal with loss.

Watch my video on this topic here.

Look what they’re saying about The 3T Path book: “a richly rewarding experience” – Chaitanya Charan Das

You’ve heard of IQ, right? Then people started talking about Emotional Intelligence.  Now, finally, people are valuing Spiritual Intelligence. Here I’ll explain what this is and why it’s so important you develop it.

IQ is intelligence quotient, which measures people’s intelligence in their capacity to process forms, numbers, facts, and words. It measures people’s ability and speed in processing information. It’s like comparing your brain to a computer. The faster the processing power, the better. The focus of IQ is the mind.

But we’re not robots. Being a walking encyclopedia or a computational genius is very nice, but not so useful if the person can’t deal with his or her emotions, nor deal with the emotions of others. Such a person becomes unhappy and even unproductive. Seeing the importance of this, the topic of Emotional Intelligence (EQ) arose in the 1990’s. The world began to value the concept of dealing well with our own personality. The focus of EQ is the heart.

For some years now the academic world has recognized and identified a third type of intelligence, placing our acts and experiences in a broader context of meaning and values: Spiritual Intelligence (SQ). The focus of SQ is the soul.

Researcher Danah Zohar introduced this concept and she identified ten qualities common to spiritually intelligent people. According to her, people who have Spiritual Intelligence has the following characteristics:

1. They practice self-awareness. I always say this is the very first step to a better life. You have to look inside. To use Patanjali’s term expressed in the classic Yoga Sutras, you have to become a witness to your mind.
2. They are motivated by principles and values. More and more research is showing that to be happy we have to go deep and find meaning in all that we do. We’re fooling ourselves if we think we can be happy chasing after superficial things like money, status and sense pleasure only.
3. They can transform adversity into growth. Let’s face it, life’s an endless set of challenges. From the insignificant to the epic, we face adversity pretty much on a daily, if not hourly, basis. Basically, you have three choices when facing adversity. First, you can become despondent and depressed. Secondly, you can become numb and lifeless. And lastly, and obviously, the only way to go, you can grow from it. Yoga will tell you that’s why we’re here: to learn and grow.
4. They take a holistic approach, by seeing things from multiple angles. Problems that seem unsurpassable become easily overcome when seen from a different angle. It’s what they call thinking outside the box. A spiritually intelligent person sees things on multiple levels simultaneously: practical, emotional, experiential and existential. A great example is that of Arjuna in the Bhagavad-gita, who was morose and utterly at a loss as the book begins, but then, having become enlightened in yoga, clearly saw it from a different angle. As a result, he embraced his mission, with enthusiasm and iron-clad determination.
5. They celebrate diversity with a sense of belonging and a tendency to see a connection between diverse things. Yoga means seeing the oneness in all. A spiritually intelligent person will appreciate the need for variety while seeing what unites us all.
6. They are independent and can go against convention. A spiritually intelligent person is being guided by his or her own deeper values and clear vision. Such a person will not care for the uneducated opinion of others nor what the masses are doing.
7. They have a tendency to ask why. In the search for meaning and truth, the spiritually intelligent person first asks “why?”. Not “what?”. Not “how much?”. Is what I’m doing aligned with my purpose, my dharma? That has to be the guiding principle of life.
8. The see the big picture. Nothing is insignificant. Every act is a portion of your life, the expression of your soul. Every moment, the only reality there is.
9. They have compassion and a reluctance to cause unnecessary harm. Because a spiritually intelligent person sees the connection with all others, he or she naturally cannot cause undue harm to any person or creature. If you’re guided by principles, by meaning, there is no room for senseless violence. Therefore, veganism and ecology are natural consequences of becoming spiritually intelligent.
10. They’re spontaneous, knowing how to live in the moment and be present. Being in the here and now is the doorway to all other higher states of consciousness. This is step one for a great life, a great day, or even just a great moment. If you’re not flowing with life, you’re stuck in your head, lamenting the past or yearning for the unreal. It all happens now.

In the book, The 3T Path (https://3tpath.com/books/) you can see in detail how to develop your spiritual intelligence and then experience how this will transform your life.

Watch my video on this topic here, where I explain more deeply each one of these traits of spiritual intelligence.

Look what they’re saying about The 3T Path book: “I’ve been practicing The 3T Path and it’s completely transforming my life. After I started listening and reading your precious teachings, I have lived the happiest days of my life, and, as a result, have emanated joy and good consciousness to others.” Ivanildo Viana