Dying to be Me / Anita Moorjani

"I can’t stress enough how important it is to enjoy yourself and not take yourself too seriously. One of the biggest flaws with many traditional spiritual systems is that they often make us take life too seriously. If I ever had to create a set of tenets for a spiritual path to healing, number one on my list would be to make sure to laught as often as possible throughout every single day – and preferably laugh at myself. This would be hands down over and above any form of prayer, meditation, chanting, or diet reform. Day to day problems never seem as big when viewed through a veil of humour and love. If every single one of us realized only this truth - the importance of joy and humor in our lives, we would reduce the number of illnesses in our bodies and the rate of violence in our societies dramatically.

In this age of information technology, we’re bombarded with news seemingly at the speed of light. We’re living in an age of high stress and fear, and in the midst of trying to protect outselves from everything that we think is “out there”, we’ve forgotten to enjoy ourselves and to take care of what’s inside.

Our life is our prayer. It’s our gift to this universe, and the memories we leave behind when we someday exit this world will be our legacy to our loved ones. We owe it to ourselves and to everyone around us to be happy and to spread that joy around.

If we can go through life armed with humor and the realization that we are love, we’ll already be ahead of the game. Add a box of chocolates into the mix, and we’ve got a winning formula!"

Anita Moorjani (From "Dying to be Me")

Paris, 1952, by Robert Frank