One of the greatest benefits of being a Mind Transformation
Coach is that in order to help my clients transform their lives I must have the
courage to transform my own life first. This means that I must explore the
depths within my being and test out any tools and techniques on myself before
sharing them.
I am silently, yet constantly exploring these depths, and
I’ve noticed that the deeper I go, the more fascinated I become about myself.
Instead of this leading to arrogance of knowledge, it leads to humility, and a
sense of wonder. Because the more I learn, the more I realize how little I
know, and this sets me off on an even deeper journey of self-discovery and
exploration.
I do not share many of these insights in my articles because
they are fairly deep, although I do share the simple ones, which the readers can
adopt into their lives.
Recently, my dreams have been guiding me towards exploring
the idea of oneness. I do not know the reason for this, but whenever I get a
message in my dreams, I always follow it. So, as I set off on my early morning
walk, I set my intention on oneness, even though I had no idea what it was. I
simply walked with my highest level of mindfulness or awareness for three days.
That’s for about an hour each day, I did not walk for three days straight.
By the third day, as I embodied the sense of mindful walking,
it triggered a sense of gratitude and oneness for all that I could perceive. I
noticed that my level of awareness was raised to such a point, which would be
so difficult to describe in words. The only way I could express it is through
the words of the Persian poet Rumi where he writes, “witness the blessing
dropping their blossoms around you”.
This experience was so wonderful that I simply wanted to
hold on to it as my consciousness kept on shifting from the experiencer to the
experience and back. Whenever I would experience 100% presence, my mind would
jump back into experiencer-mode. For example, as I looked at the blade of grass
near the bench I was about to sit on, I felt a sense of oneness with the grass,
there seemed to be no separation. I realized that the grass, air, earth,
sunshine, the people passing by, the singing of the birds, the sounds of the
traffic, and everything else that was happening at that very moment was one
with me. The moment that I acknowledge this oneness with creation, I bounced
out of experience-mode to experiencer-mode, where I was now the witness of this
creation. I started to enjoy this fascination and started to play around with
this idea of experiencer and experience.
This was very similar to my experiences of meditation and
lucid dreaming where I am a witness to my thoughts, emotions, body, and dream
interactions. This is why witnessing is expressed in terms of the meditator
being the sky, and the thoughts and emotions being the clouds. The meditator
experiences oneself as the sky, simply without judgment observing the clouds
passing by. However, the difference is that now, I was not experiencing this in
a state of meditation or dreams, but in wakefulness, or could I say almost
full-wakefulness?
I would like to share a technique that you could easily
adopt so that you can experience a sense of oneness that is right for you. For
the next three days, I would like to invite you to make a commitment to
yourself – it’s called the “Gratitude Walk”.
Set aside 15-20 minutes for the next three days, preferably
at the same time each day. Also choose to walk down the same road each day.
Before you start your walk, set an intention that you will walk with “absolute
gratitude and mindfulness”. This intention will program your mind to focus on your
intention for the next 15-20 minutes. As you walk, observe life around you with
a sense of wonder and gratitude. You will suddenly notice objects, places,
trees, etc. that you’ve never noticed before, even though you’ve walked on that
path many times.
For example, as I walked with mindfulness and gratitude, I
noticed fire hydrants that I had never seen. As I passed by these fire
hydrants, I felt a sense of gratitude. After all, if there is ever a fire in a
building; the fire hydrant would be responsible for saving so many lives. All I
could say was “Thank you fire hydrant”. In the same manner, there was so much
more that I noticed during this walk, which I was never grateful for before.
Ultimately, whether you experience a similar sense of
oneness like I did or not, you will benefit from the positive energy that you
gain from the Gratitude Walk. Although, I am sure that if you continue this
practice of the Gratitude Walk for a few weeks, you will have an experience
that is far beyond your imagination, yet just right for you.
Finally, I would like to empower you with the powerful words
of Rumi – “wear gratitude like a cloak, and it will feed every corner of your
life”.
