Ever since that dreadfully tragic morning of September 11, 2001, Americans have discovered what hundreds of millions of people around the world have known for years: As human beings, we are far more vulnerable than we’d ever imagined ourselves to be. Even before three jet airplanes were deliberately crashed into buildings in New York City and Washington, D.C., you’ve been vulnerable.
But vulnerability is not necessarily a bad thing at all. In fact, it can even be a good thing, so much so that I’ve often given my life coaching and business coaching clients the following – apparently paradoxical - affirmation: “My strength lays in my vulnerability.” This surface contradiction has puzzled many of these people.
So I elaborated. Just to stay alive, you depend on each breath that you take through your nostrils, and each beat of your heart every moment of every day and night. Both of these are provided for you by an invisible Higher Power. Could you possibly be more vulnerable than that? As if that isn’t enough, you’re continually reliant on the powerful force of gravitation that keeps you from being hurled into outer space since, in point of fact, you are living on a spaceship that endlessly circles the sun. So what I explain is that once you realize that you’re vulnerable, and yet taken care of powerful cosmic forces, you can surrender to them – and that, in a nutshell, is what spiritual development is all about. I’ll come back to that shortly.
Since that fateful 9/11, we’ve had our danger measured by orange and red alerts posted by the Department of Homeland Security. I propose a breakthrough way of measuring vulnerability: get in touch with your inner Omland Security. What, you ask, is Omland Security? By this I mean getting connected to that which is eternally safe, deep within you. The more you do that, the more your color-coded alerts will shift from orange or red to white – as in the pure white light of Truth.
I say these things not to frighten you, but to enlighten you. I’d like you to realize that your safety in this lifetime on Earth and in the larger universe as a whole depends not on agencies governmental, but on governing your mental. The best way to govern your mental life is to bring your mind to its peaceful source, where your strength and eternal safety rests. The asanas you practice on your mat in your Saturday morning Hatha Yoga class were originally part of a spiritual program that was taught to Arjuna, a military leader in India. He learned, ever so eloquently, from his teacher Krishna, of the invincibility of the Inner Self: The great guru told his student that, “Weapons cannot cleave him, nor fire burn him; water cannot wet him, nor wind dry him away.”
Having taught Transcendental Meditation for several decades, and the Higher Self Healing Meditation that I founded, as a variant of it, in 2012, I can say with absolute certainty that these meditation techniques can bring you to this place of deep safety in the silence of your mind, where your individual mind emerges out of the universal part of your inner Being.
Americans are at a crossroads, the so-called proverbial fork in the road. One way on that fork leads through the Department of Homeland Security, which can whip you into a panic of frenzy and terror. The other part of that fork, the Department of Omland Security, can settle you into the peace that sets you free. So do you want to take your direction from D.C. (as in Washington) or T.C. (as in what meditators call Transcendental Consciousness, a state of pure joy)? Now, more than ever, is the time for you to choose.