Illuminations 43.1 – JMC (1) – Building Your foundation
Japa Mini-Course (JMC) Installment 1- Building Your Foundation
There are ten installments in this japa course. I suggest that you focus on one to two installment per week, integrating what you have learned into your japa that week.
At the end of each installment I ask you to write me the realizations you got by applying the practices. Writing your realizations will help you better imbibe what you are learning, and also serve you in the future as a reminder of the realizations you were getting while doing this course.
Hare Krishna,
Mahatma das
Evaluating Your Japa
Rate how your japa has been in the recent past on a scale of 1 to 10.
Consider what you can do to improve, and start to implement these ideas. Regularly monitor the quality of your japa by considering what is going well, what isn’t going well, and how you can improve.
Little improvements over time amount to major progress.
Without making a regular effort to improve, our japa can easily lapse into a mediocre state. If we are not trying to regularly improve, it can easily get worse.
The difference between offensive chanting and the clearing stage is the effort you make to improve. When you make your best effort, you are at least on the clearing stage.
Since we are creatures of habit, we have specific japa habits. Improving japa entails creating new and improved japa habits, thus making good japa your norm.
This week work on overcoming some bad japa habits by developing some new and better habits.
Write down the realizations you got by doing this and send them to me at mahatmadasa@gmail.com.
Note that all realizations will not necessarily be positive. Sometimes you might simply realize how difficult it is to change. These kinds of realizations make you aware that you will have to work harder at improving than you might have thought. Therefore, even the “bad” becomes an inspiration to improve.
Write down the realizations in the below comments sections you get this week by applying this principle to your japa.