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Life isn’t easy. Every day we have to deal with so-called problems. Let’s see here how the 3T Path gives you all the tools and knowledge you need to diminish and even overcome life’s problems.

Here are five steps to an amazing life. At every step, your life will get noticeably better. Put together, you’ll be experiencing perfection. This is not something made up, but the cumulative wisdom of thousands of years of the yoga tradition, now confirmed by modern science.

Step#1: Self-observation

The first step is to look inside. Before you can make any changes to how you’re living and what your mind is doing, you have to become a witness to your own self. What are you thinking, what’s your focus, what are you feeling? Track your mind’s movements and get in touch with not only your emotions but what’s behind them. Keep track of your motivations and desires and see what their outcomes are.

Take time to examine your consciousness. Silence is key for this. Focus not on external things or your endless to-do list, but just on yourself. Get to know yourself deeply.

Step#2: Self-responsibility

Once you’re looking inside, now you can start taking control of what’s going on. This is when you take the helm and direct your life to where you want it. You assume FULL responsibility for your well-being. No more victimhood. You put aside any idea that your happiness depends on anything or anyone else. You and you alone call the shots when it comes to how you’re feeling and the quality of your life.

You can read more about this in my earlier blog on the topic.

Step#3: Mindfulness

Now that you’re trying to command your mind, the first thing you need to do is to bring it to the here and now, which is a basic definition of mindfulness. Mindfulness is the portal for all higher states of consciousness. Being in the here and now is the solution to just about every form of suffering you impose on yourself.

As your mind drifts to the past, you experience melancholy and lamentation. When your mind jumps to the future, in the false hopes of future happiness, you experience anxiety, fear, and frustration. True joy begins in the now.

You can read more about this in my earlier blog on the topic.

Step#4: Dharma

Being in the here and now allows you to bring your full attention to your task at hand. This raises a key question: what should I do? This is where the concept of dharma comes in.

Dharma means your duty and essence. What’s the best you can do right now? What’s the purest expression of the best of you at this very moment?

Dharma means prioritizing your true nature and learning to balance out your different demands and responsibilities properly. It’s about being guided by values, not external goals. It’s about living your purpose.

This is one of the key components of The 3T Path. This video will help you understand the concept a little better.

Step#5: Bhakti

Lastly, and most importantly, you need transcendence. You need love. Bhakti means transcendental love and devotion. Once you’re in the here and now, living the best of you, now you can make that your spiritual practice, by connecting it all in love of God. Love is the highest expression of the soul. You know this because you’ve experienced how love makes feel great.

But love requires an object. You have to love someone. And you can only love someone to the extent they are “loveable”. That’s why, though we can all agree that love is the highest state of mind, we end up not experiencing it enough. Not many people are so loveable.

Even if you don’t understand or accept the concept of God, at least you can see the logic here. God is defined as infinitely loveable. As such, you can love Him and Her infinitely, which naturally gives you access to an infinitely high state of consciousness and bliss. As an added bonus, God, being transcendent, is always with you, so you can experience this loving connection anywhere, at any time.

Conclusion

So, there you have it: 5 steps to an amazing life. The first four will make your life flow with grace and enthusiasm. The last will take you beyond the constraints of material life, to an ocean of bliss.

In the book, The 3T Path (https://3tentesting108.com/books/) you can see in detail all these points, the techniques necessary to make them happen and how this can transform your life.

Watch my video on this topic here.

Look what they’re saying about The 3T Path book: “A life-saver!” – Ivan Llobet

 

Loss brings about great suffering. But what is the basis of this suffering? What’s behind this? Is there a way to disarm this source of pain or to minimize it? Here we’ll see how to deal with loss.

First, a meditation: “if you’ve lost something, it’s because it wasn’t really yours”.

What you lost was not the person or object. That was never “yours”. You’re not the ultimate owner of anyone or anything. You lost the illusion that it was yours.

And that’s what’s making you hurt. The brutal reencounter with the reality that nothing is yours deeply disturbs those who base their lives on the illusion that happiness comes claiming ownership of things and people.

Not even your body is yours. Did you make your body? I didn’t make mine. A rock, a fiber of cotton, water, earth… none of this is yours. You can’t make any of this. For those who have activated their devotion, the concept is easy enough to understand: everything belongs to God.

This concept is central to yoga and essential for living in peace: nothing belongs to you. You are just you. Consciousness. The soul.

That’s why things enter and leave your life beyond your control. Because they are not yours. When we don’t understand this, inevitably we experience the harsh lesson of loss.

And what about losing loved ones? It’s beyond awful. So much pain. But that person was never “yours”. The person was never really “your” brother or “your mother”. You never owned that person. The person was an eternal soul who came and played that part in your life, and now he or she is gone. Every relationship here has a beginning and an end. I was born, I will die. You were born, you will die. The pain of separation can be mitigated with a dose of reality: every person has always existed and will always exist. Only your time with that person, under those conditions, has ended. You can learn more about this topic of life after death in this video.

You’re a tourist. Only passing through. You arrived with nothing and no one and you’ll leave with nothing and no one. Everything you have is on loan, to be used while you’re here. The only thing that’s absolutely certain in life is that you won’t leave with anything or anyone.

The feeling of loss is a call for your awakening. We have to wake up to our internal reality. Even if you don’t believe in soul or God, you still cannot deny that you’re conscious and your experience of life in internal and metaphysical.

That’s why any step you take in this direction will bring you enormous positive gain and wellbeing. Changing extrinsic objectives for intrinsic objectives, prioritizing peace, emotional health, love… all of this will bring about huge gains and save you from the suffering that naturally arises from focusing on external things like money, things, social status, etc.

In the book, The 3T Path (https://3tentesting108.com/books/) you can see in detail how to develop the mental power and vision to conquer this paradigm shift and, thus, how to deal with loss.

Watch my video on this topic here.

Look what they’re saying about The 3T Path book: “a richly rewarding experience” – Chaitanya Charan Das

You’ve heard of IQ, right? Then people started talking about Emotional Intelligence.  Now, finally, people are valuing Spiritual Intelligence. Here I’ll explain what this is and why it’s so important you develop it.

IQ is intelligence quotient, which measures people’s intelligence in their capacity to process forms, numbers, facts, and words. It measures people’s ability and speed in processing information. It’s like comparing your brain to a computer. The faster the processing power, the better. The focus of IQ is the mind.

But we’re not robots. Being a walking encyclopedia or a computational genius is very nice, but not so useful if the person can’t deal with his or her emotions, nor deal with the emotions of others. Such a person becomes unhappy and even unproductive. Seeing the importance of this, the topic of Emotional Intelligence (EQ) arose in the 1990’s. The world began to value the concept of dealing well with our own personality. The focus of EQ is the heart.

For some years now the academic world has recognized and identified a third type of intelligence, placing our acts and experiences in a broader context of meaning and values: Spiritual Intelligence (SQ). The focus of SQ is the soul.

Researcher Danah Zohar introduced this concept and she identified ten qualities common to spiritually intelligent people. According to her, people who have Spiritual Intelligence has the following characteristics:

1. They practice self-awareness. I always say this is the very first step to a better life. You have to look inside. To use Patanjali’s term expressed in the classic Yoga Sutras, you have to become a witness to your mind.
2. They are motivated by principles and values. More and more research is showing that to be happy we have to go deep and find meaning in all that we do. We’re fooling ourselves if we think we can be happy chasing after superficial things like money, status and sense pleasure only.
3. They can transform adversity into growth. Let’s face it, life’s an endless set of challenges. From the insignificant to the epic, we face adversity pretty much on a daily, if not hourly, basis. Basically, you have three choices when facing adversity. First, you can become despondent and depressed. Secondly, you can become numb and lifeless. And lastly, and obviously, the only way to go, you can grow from it. Yoga will tell you that’s why we’re here: to learn and grow.
4. They take a holistic approach, by seeing things from multiple angles. Problems that seem unsurpassable become easily overcome when seen from a different angle. It’s what they call thinking outside the box. A spiritually intelligent person sees things on multiple levels simultaneously: practical, emotional, experiential and existential. A great example is that of Arjuna in the Bhagavad-gita, who was morose and utterly at a loss as the book begins, but then, having become enlightened in yoga, clearly saw it from a different angle. As a result, he embraced his mission, with enthusiasm and iron-clad determination.
5. They celebrate diversity with a sense of belonging and a tendency to see a connection between diverse things. Yoga means seeing the oneness in all. A spiritually intelligent person will appreciate the need for variety while seeing what unites us all.
6. They are independent and can go against convention. A spiritually intelligent person is being guided by his or her own deeper values and clear vision. Such a person will not care for the uneducated opinion of others nor what the masses are doing.
7. They have a tendency to ask why. In the search for meaning and truth, the spiritually intelligent person first asks “why?”. Not “what?”. Not “how much?”. Is what I’m doing aligned with my purpose, my dharma? That has to be the guiding principle of life.
8. The see the big picture. Nothing is insignificant. Every act is a portion of your life, the expression of your soul. Every moment, the only reality there is.
9. They have compassion and a reluctance to cause unnecessary harm. Because a spiritually intelligent person sees the connection with all others, he or she naturally cannot cause undue harm to any person or creature. If you’re guided by principles, by meaning, there is no room for senseless violence. Therefore, veganism and ecology are natural consequences of becoming spiritually intelligent.
10. They’re spontaneous, knowing how to live in the moment and be present. Being in the here and now is the doorway to all other higher states of consciousness. This is step one for a great life, a great day, or even just a great moment. If you’re not flowing with life, you’re stuck in your head, lamenting the past or yearning for the unreal. It all happens now.

In the book, The 3T Path (https://3tentesting108.com/books/) you can see in detail how to develop your spiritual intelligence and then experience how this will transform your life.

Watch my video on this topic here, where I explain more deeply each one of these traits of spiritual intelligence.

Look what they’re saying about The 3T Path book: “I’ve been practicing The 3T Path and it’s completely transforming my life. After I started listening and reading your precious teachings, I have lived the happiest days of my life, and, as a result, have emanated joy and good consciousness to others.” Ivanildo Viana

We suffer so much because we feel that life and people need to be a certain way. We get frustrated and bewildered by not seeing things happening as we expected or wanted. Does this happen to you? What can you change? See here the importance of flowing with life.

The more we create expectations in our minds as to how people should behave and how things should be, the more we set ourselves up for suffering. The more you think your happiness depends on a combination of external events, the more you’ll experience pain based on the difference between reality and your illusion.

Life happens. Not only are there the individual desires of the countless trillions of life forms, not only are there the forces of the physical universe in play moving atoms and galaxies, but there is also the will of God, as those who have awakened to spiritual life perceive.

And in the middle of all this, you think you can control your destiny? Seriously?

So, we have to learn to flow with life. In China, we find the ancient concept of the TAO, the flux of life. The classic example is that of the leaf floating downstream. When the leaf hits a rock, what does it do? Does it try to break the rock? Does it get angry because a rock got in its way? No. It’ll just flow around the rock and on down the river. You can do the same.

Your river is your purpose, your dharma. You flow through life living your purpose, putting in action your multiple dharmas as I explain in the book The 3T Path (www.3TPath.com/books). You learn to feel the flow of your essence and of living your values. Exactly where and how your life will flow doesn’t matter. The leaf does not care if the river turns to the left or the right, if it’s deep or shallow, fast or slow, nor what rock or log it’ll find in its way.

Life becomes much easier when you develop this ability to let things flow. Let those who need to enter your life, do so. And, just the same, let those who need to leave your life do so too. Understand that a “no” is just as good as a “yes”, because it’s just showing you which way to flow, which path you should take. A closed door is nothing more than a step towards the door you need to open.

Krishna greatly emphasizes this point in the Bhagavad-gita. Practically the most repeated instruction in Krishna’s teachings is the importance of developing equanimity. Equanimity means that you remain “equal” no matter what life brings you. You learn that everything external is just that, “external”, and you’re not affected by it because you’re inside, untouched by external events. What life presents you is only the backdrop for your existence, and the focus remains always the same: doing your dharma, in divine connection. Just, you remain unperturbed.

This really works. As long as you remain fixed in doing your dharma, the best of who you really are, you’ll experience satisfaction and peace, no matter what’s going on outside.

A note of caution: flowing is not spilling. Flowing has direction, has purpose. Spilling is dissipated undirected energy. When we’re running around starting things, only to quit soon afterward, not getting serious about anything… we’re spilling. A sentiment of frustration and confusion will pervade your mind because the action has no flow, no direction. This happens when we don’t know our purpose, our dharmas.

Give up expectations and focus on being who you really are. This means focus on your dharmas, on your deepest nature, and your values. Take on whatever life brings you as an opportunity to express the best of you. As a result, you’ll naturally experience an overall sense of clarity, peace and joy.

Watch my video on this topic here: https://youtu.be/C-rVTgIsUDY.

Yours,

Giridhari Das

Look what they’re saying about The 3T Path book: “What a fantastic read.” – Mikey Serino

It’s happened to all of us. And it happens more often than we’d like. Suffering an emotional aggression isn’t easy. It hurts. So, how to deal with it? Here I’ll share 5 steps to deal with it, which will take you from pain to well-being.

Those who don’t take care of themselves and who don’t try to improve and spiritualize their lives, end up filling their hearts with the toxic waste of hate, resentment, jealousy, and so forth. Because they suffer, they lash out and make others around them suffer too. Those who cultivate the victim mentality are especially likely to hurt those nearest to them.

So, what can we do, when this happens to us? Here are 5 steps I recommend:

1. Don’t return the aggression or pass it forward. The last thing you want to do is to lower your consciousness to the level of the aggressor. They’re suffering, and you’ll suffer more if you react in darkness. Hurting others is very painful for the doer, and, in terms of good sense and karma, you’ll just be setting yourself up for more of the same in the future. You will have failed the test, and be forced to go through it again.
2. Don’t ignore, silence and bottle up the pain. If you do this, you’ll poison yourself. This toxic waste you just received is no joke. This stuff is nasty. It’ll burn inside you, whether you’re aware of it or not. It’ll stay there, festering. It won’t go away on its own. It’ll come back in the form of disease or sorrow, or as a stimulus for you to act in aggression in the future.
3. Don’t think you need to educate the aggressor. This is a classic mistake! And it’s a disaster. For one thing, the person attacking you is not even thinking straight. Adrenalin is coursing through their veins, their amygdala is taking over from the cortex, and they’re basically acting like a beast. In this state, no one can learn anything. Further, the person is attacking you. At that moment, they’re hating or despising you. They are certainly NOT seeing you as a teacher, as a superior who can grant them wisdom. Whatever you say, no matter how brilliant, wise or incisive, will be interpreted merely as an attack, adding fuel to the fire.
4. Without accusations, in neutral terms, after some time, communicate your pain to the aggressor. Give it a day or, at least, several hours. Let the passions die down and the brain restore its normal functions. Then, without judgmental tones, without hate, as blandly as possible, communicate the fact. Register the occurrence. By doing this you accomplish two things. First, you get it out of your system. It’s no longer bottled up inside you. Second, you let the aggressor know it’s been noted. It happened. It was wrong and it hurt. Don’t expect a reply. Don’t expect an apology. Require nothing from the aggressor. This is about you, not him or her.
5. To really cleanse yourself of that toxic waste, invoke your greatest weapons: gratitude and love. This is tough, but if you want to really wash off all the toxic waste, you have to use gratitude and love. Bring to mind all the things that make you grateful in your relationship with the person. What about them do you appreciate and admire? How have they helped, at least in terms of you becoming a better, stronger person? And lastly, feel love. Emanate love for the aggressor. If you’re really strong, you can express it personally. If you’re not ready for that, do it internally. But that love, that deep honest desire for the person to be happy and evolved, will fill you with light and harmony, cleansing you of the toxic waste that was dumped on you.

Here are three further considerations to keep in mind.

1. Create limits. As a crucial act of self-love, you must not be around people who are constantly attacking you. Sure, life’s tough, we all hurt others from time to time. It’s understandable. But you can’t submit yourself to regular abuse. It’s good for you, and it’s good for the aggressor to seek distance or simply terminate the relationship.
2. It’s not personal. It’s weird to think that, but it’s true. The aggressor had toxic waste flowing out of him or her. You happened to be there to get it. It’s not about you. Whoever was there, no matter who it was, given time, would have gotten it. It’s not you that’s wrong, it’s the aggressor.
3. Take shelter of God. If you’ve activated your devotion and spirituality, direct your mind to God and His and Her infinite love. Know that this world is a training camp for us deluded souls. We’re here to learn and return to our original state of pure and divine love. If you want to be surrounded by pure loving beings, you’ll have to qualify yourself through the process of self-realization to return to that divine realm.

In the book, The 3T Path (https://3tentesting108.com/books/) you can learn other techniques to deal with negativity, how to use that for your growth and also how to start your journey to self-realization towards pure spiritual bliss.

Watch my video on this topic here.

 

Look what they’re saying about The 3T Path book: “I’m reading your book and I’m loving it. You’ve played an essential role in my search for peace. I’m eternally grateful!” – Roberta Rocha

Come to Belgium with me! I’ll be teaching every day, except Sundays, about the Bhagavad-gita and the 3T Path in a yoga teacher training course, in a beautiful castle in Belgium! The course is from the 1-29 of June 2018. Details and sign-up here: http://bhaktivedantacollege.com/events/yoga-teacher-training-course/!

The course is being organized by Bhaktivedanta College with Yoga Alliance RYT 200 certification. The students will have a deep and transformative experience, in a fairy-tale setting.

The castle is surrounded by quaint villages and rolling pastures in the heart of Belgium. The teachers are all dedicated spiritualists, with decades of experience and practice of yoga.

One of the asana teachers is the world-famous Gokulachandra. Check out his Instagram if you haven’t heard of him: https://www.instagram.com/gokulacandra/. And his teacher, Jayananda will also be there teaching asanas. He’s got a Ph.D. in religion and recently published a book, Inner Yoga.

I’ll be teaching a month-long course on the Bhagavad-gita, based on the version published recently by my spiritual master, H.D. Goswami, Comprehensive Guide to Bhagavad-gita with Literal Translation. I’ll be explaining the whole Bhagavad-gita with an emphasis on the practical application of the knowledge to transform our day-to-day lives, using the approach contained in The 3T Path.

The course will be entirely in English and previous experience in yoga is required.

More details and sign-up here: http://bhaktivedantacollege.com/events/yoga-teacher-training-course/! There is a 200 Euro discount if you sign-up before January 15, so hurry up!

Come join me in the Bahamas from the 15-18th of July for a beautiful Yoga Retreat in the Sivananda Ashram!

I’ll be speaking about The 3T Path – Self-improvement and self-realization in yoga.

What is yoga, really? Yoga is more than simple mindfulness and a technique for becoming happy. Yoga has the power to bring profound changes to our daily lives — and this is only the beginning.

Embark on a journey to explore yoga’s history as well as the various paths of yoga, including Bhakti, Jnana, and Karma Yoga. Learn about the seven dharmas and chakras, lifestyle choices within the yogic path, and practical techniques on how to implement positive changes into your daily life.

Explore the ways in which yogic mindfulness can make you happier and healthier. Dive into the ancient and modern techniques to achieve inner peace, no matter your external circumstances. Finally, explore the timeless mysteries of humanity: the concept of God, reincarnation, avatars, what love really is … and how yoga ties it all together.

For more information and sign-up sheet, go here.

If you want life to be good, you have to make it happen. Self-responsibility is the key term for a great life. You have to command your life, take control of your life. Here I’ll talk about this and how why it’s so important.

The first step to having a better life is self-observation. First, you have to learn to look inside, to observe your thoughts, desires, and feelings. You should become the witness of your mind.

Once you’re aware of yourself, then comes the second essential step: self-responsibility. Now you have to take control of your life. You must understand that you have the potential to completely determine your degree of happiness, satisfaction, peace, enthusiasm and so forth. You and only you.

I teach this mantra to help you take control of your life:

“I have created the life I live”

Repeated it over and over again. Repeat it until you stop blaming anyone or anything else for your unhappiness. Repeat it until you understand that your life is your creation. You built it, you got here by your choices. You created your life as it is now, which means you can now define what kind of life you want.

Better yet, you have the power to immediately change your well-being.

In the Bhagavad-gita, Krishna says, “the yogi depends on no-one”. You don’t depend on anyone or anything. You only depend on your own ability to live better. An ability which you can develop more and more.

In the book, “The 3T Path” (https://3tentesting108.com/books/) you’ll that there is a wide range of techniques and facts you need to make this happen. These are techniques that have been successfully employed by yogis for thousands of years, and which science is confirming and explaining. It’s not a wave-of-the-wand empty promise. These are real steps you can take, from multiple angles, to take control of your mind and thus your life experience. From diet to meditation, from philosophy to devotion.

Somebody could ask, “Doesn’t God help me? Isn’t my life also the work of God? What about my parents and friends? Haven’t they help my life be what it is today?” The answer is YES. But, never underestimate your role in your good fortune. If you have friends and family to help you out, it’s because you’ve done something right to earn them. You’ve done something right to keep them dear to you and you dear to them. As for God, Krishna says plainly in the Gita: “I’m equal to all”. God is equal to all, of course. But, He says, if you ask for His help, He’ll help you. So, even when it comes to getting more divine mercy, it’s still up to you to make it happen. You have to ask for it.

Being grateful is one of the many things you can practice, as part of your effort to take control of your life, to have a better life. So, it still boils down to you having to take command of your mind to be happy.

So, take control of your life. Learn to live better. Understand that you have this power. You have the means to define the quality of your life. All you need is the know-how and then the grit to make it happen.

Watch my video on this topic here.

 

Look what they’re saying about The 3T Path book: “A spectacular book. I’m experiencing great transformations in my life!” – Elton Orvate

Life’s full of ugly surprises. Not a day goes by without something or someone giving you trouble and pain. We have to learn to use this negativity to fuel our growth. Here we’ll see how you can do this.

Actually there are no problems. Think about it: what you call a problem is when something happened that you didn’t expect or desire. Where was this expectation and desire? In the future. Was it realistic? Apparently not. It was a fantasy. This is at the core of the 3T Path: changing from the fantasy paradigm to the life paradigm. Live life as it is, here and now.

And what you have here and now are challenges: from the smallest, like getting out of bed, taking a shower, and meditating for a while; to larger ones, like dealing with a difficult client or fighting off a bad cold; to epic ones, like dealing with a great loss or the death of a loved one. But that’s life: a series of challenges, right from the beginning. You had the challenge of dealing with birth, of learning to crawl, of needing sleep and motherly comfort. And it never stopped: first day of school, sharing your toys, sports, school, puberty, social life . . . non-stop challenges. This is just the way life is.

What you call a problem is just another challenge – life happening, as it always happens. There are no problems, just reality. And if it is different from what you expected or wanted, you can see how wrong you were in having expectations and undue attachments, living in the future instead of the present. What you call a problem has at the very least the benefit of bringing you back to the here and now and making you focus on your action and being yourself, exercising your wisdom and devotion.

Adversity is unavoidable; it’s part of life. It doesn’t matter who you are or what you have. Everyone has to deal with adversities, both large and small. But the great news is that suffering is optional.

You might think that suffering is something forced on you from the outside or that it is the natural result of a miserable event. If you stop and think about it, however, you’ll see that suffering is entirely self-imposed.

You and you alone create your own suffering as your mind refuses to synchronize with reality. All suffering is a result of your mind not being aligned with reality. The greater the difference, the more you suffer. The more you grab onto your fantasy, the more suffering you’ll experience in living a reality that doesn’t correspond.

The path to diminishing or even overcoming your suffering lies in following the steps of acceptance, gratitude, trust, and engagement in enlightened action, mindfully and according to your dharma. This brings your mind away from fantasy and to reality. It puts you in harmony with what’s really going on in your life.

Every situation, no matter how terrible, is a chance to deepen your spiritual consciousness and develop grit.

Some adverse situations come with hidden advantages. How many times have you experienced that not having your wish fulfilled turned out to be the best thing that could have happened? Has something seemingly bad, like being rejected by someone or being fired, ended up opening new doors in your life? As the saying goes, “Everything God does is good.”

You can change the world to a very limited degree, but you can drastically change your mind and how it interprets reality. Even as you try to adjust your material circumstances according to your dharmic duties, you must stay in harmony with the situation as it is, in the here and now, making the best of whatever situation you find yourself in.

Whenever a challenge arises, immediately skip over lamentation. Don’t let yourself be lost in complaint and self-pity. It’ll suck out all your power and drive, destroy your wellbeing. Immediately think: “What can I benefit from this situation? How will I become more detached, stronger and wiser from this?” And then, focus on your dharma, focus on taking a step forward, towards being the best you can be to rise up to the challenge, to face the situation that has arisen.

Watch my video on this topic here.

Look what they’re saying about The 3T Path book: “This book is incredible! It really changed my life and will change yours too.”