Your Japa Blueprint

What’s Your Blueprint?

We all have a japa blueprint. This blueprint manifests in the quality of our chanting, which tends be more or less the same every day. This works for us or against us, depending on the quality of the blueprint.

Chanting good japa consistently is possible for you. It’s a matter of making excellent japa normal. As poor or average japa tends to be a habit that is repeated daily, good or excellent japa can easily become a habit.

However, it does require work to change your blueprint. The key is to be steady with your improvements. The latest science tells us it takes 66 days of consistent behavior to develop a new habit. So, for the next two months or so, if you maintain improvements to your chanting, like putting out more effort, focusing more, or not thinking about your day when you chant, you will then have develop some good japa habits that will hopefully remain with you for the rest of your life.

You can start to improve your japa blueprint by bringing more awareness to your current level of chanting. Notice what you habitually do that is either helpful or harmful to your japa. Then, improve upon what is already working for you, eliminate what is not working, and add practices and attitudes that help. As your japa improves, you will see positive changes in your Krishna consciousness. Change your japa, change your life.

There are also subconscious habitual thoughts that affect our chanting. One subconscious mantra that many of us chant when we begin our japa is, “Oh no, 16 rounds,” as we dread the austerity of having to control our minds for two hours. Another similar subconscious mantra that tends to flow through our japa is (sometimes it is not so subconscious), “When is this going to be over.” We need to eliminate these and other similar mantras from our habitual subconscious thinking.

As you chant this week, become aware of the other “mantras” going on in your head that may be undermining quality japa and replace them with more positive expressions that reflect appreciation of the holy names.

Write down the realizations you get this week by applying these practices to your japa.

Hare Krishna,
Mahatma Das