Adikara

I was driving in the car with my little man last week and as we were passing under a bridge he read the "Clearance 17 ft." sign posted there. He turns to me and asks if I can imagine being 17 feet tall.

And for the next few miles, I did exactly that in my head...imagined being 17 feet tall. I had a picture of this new freakishly tall body in my mind and even began to consider how I would fold and contort this body to fit in my wee little compact car.

I then decided I wouldn't like it--I like my size, have always liked being short and felt very thankful for my proximity to the ground.

My point here?

The mind is more than happy to create a story for you--any time or any place, with any thought 'seed' that you plant. It just goes to show how very undisciplined our minds are when left to their own devices.

Sometimes, maybe most times, these seedling manifestations of thought are harmless and breed creativity through the musings of imagination but if we stay too long in the land of stories, then we have removed our self from the present moment.

Furthermore, by succumbing to haphazard musings of the mind too much of the time, we cut short the time of intentional contemplation and planning--that time we spend with our most intimate self, whereby we come to know what it is that we desire, where it is we want to go and how it is we plan to get there.

Recently, I visited a blog, The Yamas and Niyamas (posted to the right in my blog roll) and viewed her video posting on "Plugging Your Holes".

Deborah was offering a small teaching on Asteya or nonstealing and expanded into Adikara--a sanskrit term meaning "the right to have or the right to hold".

Adikara has become my new seedling of thought, especially by using the metaphor offered by Deborah that she learned from a friend who likens Adikara to a colander.

In considering the right to have something we must first consider what it is that we want--what is our desire? And in knowing what we want, we must evaluate how it is escaping us currently--considering Adikara as a colander, we can imagine our 'desire' slipping through the holes.

In an effort to "plug the holes", we must cultivate a condition of being mindful guardians and activists for our desires, for our path. To do this, I practice san kalpa during my meditation or during intentional windows of stillness and quiet that I take/make for myself throughout the day.

San kalpa is a positive affirmation or statement of intention. I like to think of it as a promise made to myself and the universe. Once created, the san kalpa should be repeated three times, planted like a seed in a mind well equipped to manifest reality from a single, tiny seed.

Thus we arrive full circle as I ask myself--do I want to stay in the land of stories whereby I am imagining what it will take to 'fit' a 17 ft. tall body into my teenie-tiny car or dare I use that same energy to 'plug the holes' and manifest an intentional path for myself by cultivating adikara, the right to hold and have my dreams?