Eight Steps for a Blissful Life Everyday🔗

Ananda Ashtanga or Blissful Living is a simple eight-fold pathway to living enlightenment. These are simple techniques that take you into the experience directly without the need to understand and absorb.

These are:

As soon as you wake up in the morning, even before you get up from your bed, laugh for five minutes! Just laugh at yourself. Laugh without a reason!

Laughter is a wonderful meditation technique. The technique of the ancient Zen tradition of masters and disciples is to touch no-mind through laughter. Laughter works whether we believe it or not. It has an immediate effect. With other techniques, we need to practice to see the result, but with laughter we don't need to practice. It happens the first time and every time. It goes in deep and heals us physically and mentally.

Laughter itself is born out of health and creates health. It is an overflowing energy. It releases emotional suppressions.

Laughter is the greatest spiritual quality. In laughter we become Buddha, the enlightened one. Buddha is ‘no-mind’. When we laugh, we are in a no-mind state for those few moments. Either laughter or our mind can exist, never both at once. When we laugh, for that moment, our mind disappears and we become one with the energy of Existence. We don’t feel our identity. Can we experience ourselves as separate in the peak of our laughter? No! That ceasing to exist is the momentary no-mind and merging with Existence. That is why we need to laugh more. The moments of the self’s disappearance can be extended so that we finally lose our identity and live as one with the energy.

Laughter is known to heal a number of diseases, especially diseases related to the nervous system and throat. A hearty laugh is said to squeeze out harmful byproducts of cellular functioning.

Ananda means bliss. Sankalpa means vow. Ananda sankalpa is a vow of bliss.

You can decide to be blissful. It is a choice you make. In fact it is not even a choice that you make. If you allow yourself to flow in a choiceless manner along with whatever Existence intends for you, you will be in bliss eternally. This attitude of being choiceless can be cultivated.

Part of this meditation has its origin with the Sufi mystic Abdullah^*. Sufis are the most ecstatic sect ever. Their prayer is gratitude, nothing else. Abdullah* was famous for his ever-smiling face. It is said that even on his deathbed, he was laughing. Finally some of his disciples couldn’t help but ask Abdullah* how he was always blissful. They asked him, ‘Master, what is so funny about dying?’

Then Abdullah gave them the secret that his own master had taught him. He said, ‘Remember that your happiness is always in your hands. Your happiness is 100 percent your own choice. Every day, life gives you a chance to be happy or miserable. What you choose is up to you!’

There can’t be a simpler meditation technique than this. Yet it is the most effective one.

Every morning, as soon as you get up, even before you open your eyes, sit up in bed.

Call out your name loud. If you don't wish to disturb people around you by calling out loud, then just speak silently to yourself.

Ask yourself (using your name…in the first person), What do I choose to experience today? Do I choose happiness or sadness?

Naturally, first thing in the morning, you are not going to choose misery! So your mind will say, I choose happiness.

Then reply, Ok (your name), be happy, that's all!

Then, with your eyes closed, for a few minutes, strongly and consciously, come to the understanding that nothing can make you suffer without your silent permission. You suffer because you agree to be affected by external circumstances. You have the power within you to be happy all the time. Now open your eyes and live your affirmation!

You will see during the day that just by the strength of your affirmation, you have changed the whole course of your mind. You will see how until then you were blaming others for your misery, while actually you were choosing to become disturbed at every turn of events. You will develop an attitude of being happy, not because of external circumstances, not despite them – but irrespective of them. You are happy because you are happy, that's all.

The tongue is said to be an indicator of what is going on in the body. By examining the tongue and its color, it is possible to guess the medical condition of a person. According to ayurveda^\*, the tongue is mapped to different organ locations. Specific sections of the tongue are connected to specific parts of the body, like the kidneys, lungs, etc. When we do oil pulling, the oil pulls mucus, bacteria and toxins from your body through your saliva and tongue. According to ayurveda* medicine, mucus is a poison that must be removed.

Early morning, before brushing your teeth, eating or drinking anything, take one full tablespoon of either sesame or refined sunflower oil. Put it in your mouth, sit in one place, tilt your chin up so that the oil gets to the back molar teeth, and slowly pull through your softly gritted teeth for fifteen to twenty minutes.

Don’t multitask while doing this. When the time is up, spit out the oil in a washbasin and brush your teeth well. If you have pulled properly, the oil that you spit out will be thin and whitish in color. Drink two glasses of water after rinsing and cleaning the mouth.

Note: do not swallow the oil that you pull. It will contain parasites and bacteria.

If you have to pull oil after meals, wait at least four hours before you do it.

Oil pulling is said to address many conditions, including anything from cracked heels to cancer. Exhaustive research reports on the benefits of oil pulling are available on the web.