Golf for enlightenment

By Deepak Chopra

• Life is a game without clear cut rules. 
• This book is about letting go.
• When you can make the voice your best friend instead of your worst enemy, your possibilities are endless.
• Enlightenment is nothing more than mastering the here and now. 
• We are making a mistake to confine heaven to the hereafter.  Sadly, we’ve failed to accept the divine gift that makes heaven out of life on earth, here and now.
• The Garden of Eden isn’t a physical place, it’s inside us. 

My eyes are radiant with your light

My ears delight in your music

My nostrils are filled with your fragrance

My face is covered with your dew,

You have made me see all things shinning

You have made me see all things new.

I am bathed in celestial light and I have become like paradise.

King Solomon 

The seven lessons of the fame of life

1) PERCEPTION

• Not seeing yourself as separate, see yourself in union with everything and everyone, it’s not being distracted. 
• This is known as mindfulness, when attention is still, calm and focused, it is mindful.
• There are 4 aspects to meditation

1. stopping the random activity of the mind (constant inner dialogue)
2. calming your emotions which fuel inner dialogue (fears, doubts and past feelings)
3. resting your attention (and clearing your focus)
4. healing (being still) all 4 = total focus. 

• There is a built in struggle between silence (inner being) and activity (outer world) though because they are opposed. 
• The end of this struggle comes when you find peace through one-pointed focus. 
• The trick is to close the gap of perception by giving the object 100% attention.
• When you truly pay attention, you become intimate.
• Being intimate frees the flow of attention and allows you to set aside beliefs, prejudices and expectations.  

2) GET OUT OF YOUR OWN WAY

• You must master non-doing (a way of remembering who we really are), just remember what it’s like to be a child! 
• Non-doing happens when you put your trust in the universe.  It happens when we feel centred. 

1. Know that you have a centre.
2. Know that you belong here.
3. Know that the path to the centre takes no effort.

•  Promise yourself first that you will not struggle (i.e. against a problem)
• secondly, you will do the minimum first, then stand back (and let the process unfold, one that intuitively feels right or even nothing)
• and third, allow answers to come from your centre (ignoring what your ego wants you to do) which is your real goal. 

3) THE PRESENT MOMENT

1. dive deep into yourself (mediation)
2. holding still when you get there (awareness)
3. Doing what you need to do (spontaneous right action). 

• Every state of mind has a state of breath; your next breath is always a more reliable guide than your next thought!
• After breathing comes listening and paying attention to your body.
• Wounds are made in the past but healed in the present. 
• Having opened up trapped energy, ask for it to be healed by applying forgiveness.
• Forgiveness is done by understanding, accepting and releasing old energy, so breath every time you feel fear, anxiety. 

4) INTUITION

• It tells you what is right or wrong when nothing else can.
• It’s our subtle (or second) body which is the self we inhabit on the outer fringe of the physical realm. 
• Its speciality is insight, its energy is inspiration. 
• The best way to align your subtle body is through visualisation. 
• Don’t trust blindly, discount strong pushy feelings like anger, resentment, and selfishness, they never come from the subtle body. 
• To do this is to learn to recognise the egoless state. 

5) POWER

• Stop trying to control the unknown. 
• Succeeding is passion without detachment, instead be centred (get out of your way, it all comes down to disarming the ego). 
• Matching the ego and the soul is one of the major goals of spirituality. 
• Give of yourself without any selfish desire to take back.
• Make decisions calculated on faith rather than ego, “the answer is already out there, be willing to watch it unfold” having this attitude pays dividends.  

6) IMPECCABILITY (being without flaw)

• Karma is 99% habit so being impeccable involves being new at every moment.
• Live life as if every moment of every day was a brand new experience because you are beginning life over with ever breathe, word and thought. 
• On and on the chain of cause and effect grows as karma accumulates because whatever you do at this moment changes your whole future.
• Remember, if you do things from anger, angry results will follow. 
• Karma provides the circumstances; you always choose the outcome based on your responses. 
• If you’re stuck in a karmic pattern, you are a prisoner of old habits and conditioning. 
• When you stop attaching yourself to your actions and act in unity, impeccability emerges.
• Lists of how to behave on the way to unity include giving, trusting, doing no harm, thinking virtuously, not giving into impulses. 
• When you have a choice to make, notice how the decision feels, ask for the right response before taking action. 
• Note the higher self doesn’t have a voice, it is always silent.  Every other voice good or bad that has a voice is always from the past, any voices are from the ego. 
• If you don’t here from your higher self, just move on knowing you’ve done your best.
• Remember that the more you trust and ask for guidance, the more likely you are to know it when it comes.
• Pay attention of who you are, where you are and what is going on all at once  

States of mind:

ü      be willing to redefine yourself every day

ü      watch yourself falling into old habits and beliefs, stop as soon as you catch yourself

ü      accept total responsibility for every response and feeling you have, do not cast them onto anything or anyone external

ü      take the world to be a true mirror of who you are at this instance

ü      receive whatever is trying to come to you, messages are everywhere

ü      Don’t act when you are in doubt; don’t make decisions when you are uncertain, practice patience until you are sure. 

7) ENLIGHTENMENT (liberation)

• A person who is free has no need to focus on outcomes. 
• When you can laugh at yourself, you’ve transcended sorrow, when you can take genuine pleasure in someone else’s victory, you’ve transcended jealousy. 
• When you can feel satisfied with things, you’ve transcended self-importance. 
• Only when you set your sights to go beyond outcome can you allow in the possibility of defeating the voice of self-criticism and ending frustration and fear. 
• We’ve only two choices, either conquer primal forces or transcend them.
• Once you’re totally secure, safe and free, other qualities like compassion, caring, devotion, and love to blossom which can’t be expressed if you’re in conflict.
• To be secure, safe and free you have to act as if and not allowing life’s ups and downs to throw you (this feeling can only exist internally).
• Understand that the future is unknown and this is just as it is, embrace the mystery of it instead of dreading it. 

Promise to self 

I will never force or strain.

I will go where my joy leads me.

I will allow myself to be who I am. 

States of mind, practice them daily:

ü      be willing to redefine yourself every day

ü      watch yourself falling into old habits and beliefs, stop as soon as you catch yourself

ü      accept total responsibility for every response and feeling you have, do not cast them onto anything or anyone external

ü      take the world to be a true mirror of who you are at this instance

ü      receive whatever is trying to come to you, messages are everywhere

ü      don’t act when you are in doubt; don’t make decisions when you are uncertain, practice patience until you are sure

ü      trust in the universe.