As Juan says in his last post, “Each day we get busier and busier.” It’s hard to be present to the unfolding miracle of our lives when demands and distractions pull us away from our dharma. Dharma is a Sanskrit word that means the moral law and spiritual discipline that guides our lives. When we live our dharma, we are in touch with our values, living with a deeper sense of meaning. We are present, as Juan says, “to the abundant gift of life.” Following our dharma, we live mindfully, in an ongoing state of creative discovery, following our hearts and using our gifts to make a creative contribution to the world.
To live our dharma is to experience life as sacred. As a writer, words have always intrigued me, especially anagrams that express polarities or what the Buddhists call “near enemies.” Essentially, we respond to life with either love or fear: perceive life as sacred or are scared by it, become either creative or reactive, live in either dharma or drama.
Drama is all around us. From celebrities’ lives on magazine covers to the daily dramas of friends and families, too much of what passes for news is just drama. Triggering emotion, commotion, anxiety, stress, and fear, drama puts us on high alert. Filling our bodies with adrenaline and cortisol, it exhausts us, wears us out. Studies have shown that too much noise around us sabotages our ability to create. Too much drama damages our bodies and our brains, shutting down our immune systems, causing chronic disease, and damaging the hippocampus, the part of our brain that consolidates long-term memories.
Dharma, on the other hand, heals, inspires, and energizes us.
To live our dharma means getting back in focus. When I was a child, I had a magnifying glass that helped me see the intricate patterns in the veins of a leaf, the petals of a rose. The magic glass also revealed the power of focus. Holding it over a piece of paper would concentrate the sun’s energy into a tiny spot of light, burning a hole in the paper.
Our energy, yours and mine, when focused, is even more powerful. Each day, each moment, we can choose to live with dharma or drama, be creative or reactive. We always have a choice.
Take a moment now to focus your energies.
- Take a deep breath and ask yourself what you’re experiencing: What is this?
- Is it drama or dharma?
- If you’re caught up in drama, stop–take a long deep breath, relax and reconnect with your body.
- Then when you feel more centered, ask yourself, “What is my dharma?”
Focusing on your dharma will help you see more clearly, respond more wisely, and live with greater joy, following your destiny to make a creative difference in the world.
Namaste,
Diane