A User's Guide to Living: Part 2

THE SCIENCE OF CREATING A DAILY MEDITATION PRACTICE

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DAAJI continues his series on daily living and human transformation. In this second article, he takes us through the essential aspects of a good self-development practice, and introduces us to the first principle of the user’s guide – the science of creating a good meditation practice.

It may surprise you to know that at the time Babuji wrote his book on the ten maxims in the 1940s, there were just a handful of books published in the area of self-help, including the hugely popular Self-Help by Samuel Smiles, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, As a Man Thinketh by James Allen, and How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. Babuji was the first author in this era to give us a comprehensive guide to living by incorporating the five key elements of self-development: an effective practice, essential values, regulative behavior, leadership, and continuous improvement (see diagram 1). Within those five elements there are also ten principles. Even today, only a handful of books offer such a rich and all-encompassing road map to a fulfilling life.

THE FIVE ELEMENTS AND TEN PRINCIPLES OF SELFDEVELOPMENT

The ten principles for living follow a daily cycle and inherent sequence, which unfolds like a flowering. At the center of this unfolding is the