Positive Action
Choose one or more of the following Tapas practices.
# Karma Yoga - Service
1. In the morning of each day, remind yourself to do 1 selfless action that helps others (people, animals, trees, etc.)
2. Determine which action this day you're doing as selfless service/no strings attached.
Karma Yoga is selfless service.
Karma yoga is the broom that cleans your Karmic closet.
Selfless service clears your Karma, a repository of all of our actions, good and bad, and their equally powerful and deserving reactions. A selfless action carries no Karma because its reaction goes out to someone else, someone who is the recipient of your selfless action.
Karma Yoga is a powerful practice that cleanses your energetic and emotional constitutions and ensures a meaningful life well-lived, and, ultimately, moves you closer to enlightenment.
# Selfless Acts of Compassion
1. Cue your mind in the morning to notice an opportunity during the day and take the action to help another living being, or the planet.
The idea is to set in motion the energetic vibrations of selflessness and compassion that ripple out into the Universe.
The Chaos Theory claims that "everything affects everything". A butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil can cause a thunderstorm in Germany.
By the same token, such simple selfless acts as freeing a moth trapped in your house, picking up a piece of trash on the street, wiping the toilet and the sink in a public restroom, smiling at a stranger on the street, or in traffic - all set in motion a whole sequence of positive events, physical and energetic.
# Practice Ahimsa/Non-Violence
In your actions toward yourself and others, in your speech, and in your thoughts.
"Treat the world gently, and it will be gentle with you. Tread lightly upon the earth, and it will nourish you."
1. Start with yourself first. Remind yourself each day to keep your actions healing and nurturing to your body, mind, and soul.
2. Make a verbal commitment each day to be aware of your words and thoughts.
3. Make an effort to pause words or thoughts when aggressive or violent, and turn them toward a more healing, positive, or constructive area of your life.
# Practice Non-Attachment
Non-attachment is a panacea for stress, because stress happens when we resist what is.
Non-attachment is an attitude of no expectations from your actions. It is when we do not resist the natural course of events called life.
No resistance = no stress.
1. First, recognize that in this moment, in any given moment in time, there is no stress and there are no attachments to outcomes.
There is only stress and attachments when the mind thinks, but the mind thinks only of the past or the future - not in the very present moment.
Practice being in the moment - moment-to-moment - focusing on the breathing and other physical sensations.
2. Second, recognize that there is a force, innate intelligence, or consciousness at work, that is greater than our individual self.
It is the same innate intelligence that weaves the spider's web, that keeps you alive by beating your heart, working your nerves and muscles and digestion and everything else without "you" consciously doing anything about it - it just happens according to the plan, the pattern of which you are part of.
Take a moment each morning to recognize this idea, and contemplate its meaning.
3. Finally, make your actions selfless.
Dedicate your actions for the benefit of others: your family members, children, friends, strangers, animals, nature.
Remind yourself in the morning of each day to dedicate your actions to others.
When you perform your tasks selflessly, as a benefit to someone else, you expect no gain from your actions. In other words, you are not attached to the outcomes of your actions. (This is the secret to stress-free life and true happiness).
# Right Livelihood
1. Schedule a specific amount of time, each day, to move yourself toward your desired goal. Read more about Right Livelihood.
2. This work must be done in stages, one small step at a time. Start with a time frame that is doable right now.