The most popular teacher, the most amazing retreat, will not be useful without that firm and grounded commitment to the practice day after day, whether sick or well, busy or bored.ĭoing sadhana means maintaining that spark of the divine within you. Real growth comes from an individual’s daily commitment to engaging in the practice.
Sadhana requires a basic level of discipline, while building a higher level of commitment in the practitioner.Ī lot of people think that they need to study with a famous teacher or attend a retreat in a far-off exotic location to grow their spiritual practice. So then 40 consecutive days is the minimum time period for any sadhana. Yogi Bhajan said it takes 40 days to change or break a habit. Since Kundalini Yoga meditations have impact in as little as 3 minutes, sadhana need not be long in order to be effective. Yogi Bhajan, who brought Kundalini Yoga to the United States in the 1960s, recommended that all practitioners do sadhana, or daily spiritual practice, as a way of connecting with the infinite on a regular basis. What bigger and more powerful miracle than that can there be, that by your very presence you can invoke Godhood in people?” – Yogi Bhajan “The highest sadhana is that your presence should remind people of God. Yogi Bhajan would say “Recognize that the other person is you.” In other words, be willing to look past the surface differences in order to “understand with compassion.” Even though you may not know the whole story, it’s important to realize that there’s more to any behavior or action than meets the eye. When asked by a fellow passenger to control his children, the man shared that they had just come from the hospital and their mother had died. Yogi Bhajan would call it a principle of the Aquarian Age.) “Everyone you meet comes from some great battle.”Ĭovey tells the story of a man riding the subway whose children were misbehaving. (This idea is present is many different philosophies. While I don’t dismiss this, I think an important principle applies here, which Covey would call a paradigm shift. It’s possible to argue that the person who threw the trash on the ground needs to be educated, or taken to task for the behavior, etc. It just means that establishing blame and holding other people responsible won’t get us very far at all. Now, this doesn’t mean we need to martyr ourselves by giving up our principles or making ourselves wrong. And a need to make other people “wrong” can be incredibly damaging to relationships. Now, of course there’s certain satisfaction that comes with the feeling of being right, of holding the moral high ground, so to speak. I will never forget the moment when someone I respect very much asked me, when I was complaining bitterly about an issue of great importance to me, and explaining how I held someone else responsible for my pain, “Do you want to be right? Or do you want to be happy?” In the meantime, there’s still garbage everywhere, and simply putting the garbage in the bin would solve the immediate problem and enhance the surroundings for all who pass by. Then running after that other person, in the hope of shaming or berating him/her into some other action. It’s like walking past trash on the ground, having seen someone someone throw it there carelessly. The important thing to realize here is that establishing blame, or holding someone responsible, does nothing to actually resolve an issue. Those in the first stage, dependence, play “the blame game.” They hold other people responsible for their circumstances or failures. In the process of personal growth Covey identifies 3 stages: dependence, independence, and inter-dependence. Making hopes and dreams a reality hinges on the process of personal growth: developing real habits that will lead us in the direction we truly want to go. He makes an excellent point that functions as an extension of the discussion of hopes and dreams.
Stephen Covey, the author of The Seven Habits, defines a habit as “the overlapping of knowledge, skill, and attitude.” This means knowing what to do, how to do it, and why you are doing it.