May 27, 2019
In this episode we look at how to create a new mind and a new reality for ourselves by purifying negative karma (previous thoughts and actions) and taking positive actions toward creating the life we really want.
Meditation on Your Future Self with an Emphasis on Purifying Negative Karma
- Imagine your future self (with some profound change for the better). Feel it, experience it vividly. Imagine how wonderful it will feel to accomplish this and how it will benefit others too.
- Power of Release (sometimes translated as the power of regret). Generate the strong wish to purify the karma causing you suffering, that is perpetuating your current way of being that you wish to change. Then visualize purifying what you need to let go of by imagining the negative karma, appearing as dark, oily smoke, being pushed out of every pour of your body (pushed out from the power of your wish to release at your heart).
- Power of Promise: Make a promise to yourself not to repeat a certain negative or unhelpful behavior (or way of thinking).
- Power of Action: Promise yourself that you will take actions that will begin your change to a new, more positive way of being.
- Power of Support: Pray for help to any holy being you feel connected to or simply pray. In Tibetan the word prayer means “wish path” and a prayer is a karmic action or path leading you to a new reality.
Greater in combat
Than a person who conquers
A thousand times a thousand people
Is the person who conquers herself. (103)
Certainly it is better to conquer
Oneself than others.
For someone who is self-restrained
And always lives with mastery,
Neither a god, a gandhabba,
Nor Māra and Brahmā together
Could turn conquest into defeat.
—Buddha, from the Dhammapada