Sadhana: 21 Days to Inner-Spaciousness

By L.M. Blanchard

Mindfully crafted and insightful, this practical guide outlines spiritual exercises that are intended to help you realize a more peaceful and spacious mind as you experience a transformative connection with your spiritual self.

Sadhana: 21 Days to Inner-Spaciousness is a must-read for anyone looking to live a life with intention

• Language: English
• Publisher: Burnstown Publishing House
• Release date: Nov 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9781772571257

Book preview

Introduction

We all have had moments in the experience of spaciousness, both external and internal spaciousness. Perhaps on a starlit night … gazing up at the open sky … letting your eyes linger on the vastness of empty space above … illuminated by distant stars so large and numerous … reminding you of your smallness in the context of the universe.

Frequently our external experience of spaciousness becomes a trigger that leads us to the experience of inner-spaciousness. In this state of openness, we briefly witness and experience the breakdown of the duality that sets us at odds with our true nature … our divine nature. Although it is in this state that we access our genuine potential to shape our lives contiguously with the energy that feeds our deepest dreams and desires, for so many, the manifestation of those dreams and desires remain in the realm of whimsy.

In the duality where the boundaries between our human experience and divine experience are clearly drawn, we trap ourselves in a cage preventing us from soaring to the height of greater experiences where we can actually shape, create, and manifest an extraordinary life. With our mind and through our logical thinking, we define ourselves as being human with everything that it entails, including limited abilities. This perspective exacerbates our separation from the qualities of divine nature that exist all around us and are available to us on a daily basis; they are here now, and ready to be tapped into to activate our inherent ability to transform our perceived reality.

With the help of deliberate and mindful spiritual practices, we can blur the lines between what we perceive it means to be human versus what it means to be divine; allowing us to be set free from the confines of our cage as we transcend our perceived human limitations and mingle in oneness with the divine in a state of spaciousness that is so vast with no boundaries and no limitations.

One of my experiences of inner-spaciousness came to me when I was a leading seaman in the Royal Canadian Navy during a training deployment on an old Naval Reserve vessel off the coast of British Columbia. As a naval combat information operator, my primary duty was to man the ship’s navigational equipment located below deck in the Ops Room. The Ops Room was dimly lit with red lights to minimize eye fatigue; they gave the space a dark and eerie feeling. After hours on watch, it was always a great relief to make my way back above deck to stretch and to fully experience the actual position of the ship on the sea rather than seeing our relative position as interpreted by the green radar sweep in the red glow of the Ops Room.

As with all sailors serving onboard a warship, a duty that was rotated among the ship’s complement was to serve as lookout. This involved standing at the bow of the ship or on the flybridge to visually observe and report to the main bridge any navigational hazards that may have been too small to be picked up by radar. The other lookout post on board was located at the stern of the vessel, and the purpose of this post was to raise the alarm in the event of a man overboard incident or any possible threats to the ship coming from the stern. My preferred post to serve as lookout was indeed at the stern, perhaps due to my introvert tendencies; this was a bit more removed from the hustle on deck and it provided me with the quietness and space I truly appreciated. Going to the stern as lookout was a brief rest from the stress of being on watch in the Ops Room and provided a moment of serenity where I could regenerate and recharge. Always attentive to the importance and purpose of watching for hazards to the ship or for a sailor falling overboard, this duty also provided me with a vantage point where I could appreciate the natural beauty of the open space and the tranquility of the sea, as well as giving me a moment of solitude that could not be had anywhere else on board.

I recall a time when I stood at the stern on lookout, in appreciation of the panorama offered by the natural beauty of the British Columbia coast … the current in the water swirling in the wake of the ship as it displaced the water … the cool and crisp air of the new dawn as the red and pink glow of the rising sun reflected on the clouds … the fresh smell of the ocean brine that wafted in the air …

All of these elements seemed to conspire to heighten my senses, triggering a profound moment of pure oneness with everything around me. In this moment, I remained cognizant of my ability to be the observer and to live the moment simultaneously. I experienced my human-consciousness shift to a higher form of consciousness … an omnipresent consciousness. As my field of sight began to take in the slight curvature of the vast and distant horizon that can be seen on the open sea, I began to experience and understand my smallness on the planet; I also became aware from where this smallness perspective came and how it was in place for the purpose of giving the human spirit something to rise above.

This curvature of the horizon, which indicated the spherical shape of the globe, put into perspective the vastness of the vista in relation to the point at which my human observation originated. At this fixed and miniscule point from where I stood at the stern of the ship, my eyes observed the vista, and my mind interpreted my smallness in relation to it; my spirit was freed to experience the abundance of space around and beyond my point of observation. The vastness of space and quantity of mass that surrounded me was unfathomable to comprehend from a limited perspective but it made total sense to me as I became aware of the grandeur of the planet and the nature of this omnipresent-consciousness, a consciousness whose qualities I can only describe as being full of emptiness.

The mechanism of human judgment ceased being active in me as I experienced transcendence over my human consciousness. The experience stopped being simply beautiful and transitioned into the realm of the divine. Only in the merging with everything through the experience of oneness can we grasp the nature of the universe. The experience of smallness, which should not be mistaken for insignificance, is a stepping stone to the greater experience of spaciousness. It allowed me to shift from my limited point of view and to experience boundless freedom in the abundance of the space around me. The spaciousness I experienced on the outside was in truth a reflection of the spaciousness that arose within me.

The key to experience transcendence emerges in the absence of concepts and notions that are used as a result of our human condition. These mindbased constructs that we have and hold so dearly allow us to function in the context of the physical realm, but they limit and obstruct our ability to transcend to enlightened states. In this transcendence, when we rise above the parts and parcels of our personalities and egos, it becomes possible to reintegrate with our original nature … our divine nature; one that is full yet empty, complete yet unfinished, whole yet formless …

The experience of spaciousness helps us to reframe a perspective to which we have become accustomed in the living of our daily lives. As we get wrapped up in the mundane of the everyday, we easily forget that we are not as central to life experiences as we might like to think. In experiencing moments of our smallness in the context of the universe, we can enact a shift in consciousness whereby we bring about a decentralization of life experiences, enabling us to experience a change in perspective that allows us to touch on a wholeness that engulfs us in the enormity of all existence, in the wholeness of the human experience, which can also be described as oneness.

Through spiritual practices, we can attune ourselves to the way in which we truly exist in those moments when we rise above our limited thinking that creates those limiting human and divine boundaries. When you begin to take note of what surfaces in you as you observe the essence of inner-spaciousness though spiritual exercises such as sadhanas, you can start the process of building a bridge between your human and divine territories, making it easier to cross over into the realm in which transcendence occurs. When you experience this inner-spaciousness, you can glean a fresh insight into a part of yourself that exists in harmony with the universe. You begin to see in yourself the aspect that is part of the harmonious expression of the universe and how the universe becomes a harmonious expression of