Meditation on Thinking, Speaking, and Living with a “Smile”

Today I invite us to practice being viruses 😉 … what I mean by that is I encourage us to start an epidemic of bliss!  Have you ever noticed how your thinking influences your actions, which affect others, just as their doings impacts you?  Think of a get together where one person started ranting or gossiping and pretty soon everyone was piling on.  Or even consider how in many ways your inner monologue, the story you tell in your head, sets your day and activities up for failure or success.

On the topic, the Buddha says: “The mind is everything, what you think you become.”  Expounding on this, Paul, the famous follower of Christ, wrote: “I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious–the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse.”  Do this, he continues, and you and I will join and experience the “most excellent harmonies” of the Divine.  In short, when we bring heaven into our thought lives, we experience heaven in our realities.

With this in mind, I invite us to think, speak, and live with a “smile.”  Smiles, literal and metaphorical, make everything both easier and better.  What is more, even physically faking a smile will turn on the good vibes centers in your brain, making you and everyone around you more blissful, regardless of what you’re doing.  Try it out and lets start an epidemic of joy brought on by smiles of all kinds!