Most of the cosmos seems to operate on the simple law of resonance: To exist is to be in harmony.

We’re told that someone living in a finer spirit world is automatically pulled into a community of like-minded people. Everyone gets along in kindness, mutual respect, and mutual support. They’re resonant.

The cosmic law of resonance apparently dominates the lives of spirits as completely as the universal law of gravity dominates us physical humans—pulling us relentlessly to Planet Earth, and pulling the Earth relentlessly toward the sun.

Beings throughout most of the cosmos are simply pulled into resonant, like-minded groups.

But on Earth?… not so much.* Sure, we gravitate into groups with common goals and interests, but we don’t really resonate with everyone in the group. Certain people and traits get on our nerves—personality differences, bad habits, bullies, despots, gossips, rivals, complainers, slackers, over-achievers, bootlickers… whew.

*How Earth became a turbulent world run by quirky humans is explored elsewhere. The information below is about how to become a more resonant person in this turbulent world, through body-mind-spirit integration.

Enjoying a life of peace, order, and happiness is rare in our world because of all the dramas that disturb the resonance.

So the first step toward finding a happy life amid all the drama is to understand and acknowledge that we’re a composite of body, mind, and spirit.

More specifically, we’re each a stressed body, a restless mind, and a calm spirit. That’s simply a fact of life for most of us here on Earth.

The goal, then, is to help those 3 parts of our self to get along with each other—to resonate—and in a moment we’ll look at 4 simple steps that might be useful. But first…

How Body, Mind, and Spirit Are Nested

Those spirit worlds and their inhabitants mentioned a moment ago aren’t “out there” in some far-off heaven. They’re nested inside us. Our physical body has spirit bodies nested within it. Earth has spiritual copies or templates of itself nested within it. And our material universe has spiritual universes nested within it (represented by the fine, white circles in the diagram). So, to find genuine peace and happiness in a lifetime, the first step is to understand and acknowledge that we have…

• A physical body that’s built to handle the stresses of living on Earth,
• A finer spirit that resonates in peace, and
• An often restless mind, where body and spirit come together.

Next step, then, is to learn how to tame the restless mind so that it can integrate the stressed body with the calm spirit. To let everything resonate.

Four Steps to Resonate in Peace and Happiness

There are lots of good formulas to find contentment in the world, but I think these 4 steps take a good, comprehensive approach. And they’re simple and basic.

1. Understand and acknowledge that living on Earth means having a stressed body, a restless mind, and a calm spirit (as explained above).
2. Get into healthy habits like exercising, eating wholesome stuff, drinking lots of water, processing emotions, and being aware of personal compulsions and addictions. (more here… )
3. Practice techniques to tame the restless mind.
4. Finally (and most important) foster conscious contact with the source that rests at the center of everyone and everything, brimming with infinite potential to create and sustain life and harmony.

The first two items are well covered by experts like the two mentioned below, so let’s focus on steps #3 and #4 that are of special interest to me.

Taming the Mind To Touch the Source

Taming the mind isn’t as challenging as it may sound. The technique that I like, at least, is kind of simple. It’s heart meditation.

Does it work? Can our restless mind really use techniques like heart meditation to settle down and help our stressed body resonate with our calm spirit?

Well, not completely.

Dramas are unavoidable on Earth, and as long as there are dramas in our lives we can’t reasonably expect to be calm and happy all the time—not until we die and move to a peaceful, orderly (spirit) world where the law of resonance works well. Still, heart meditation (and other techniques) can get us to the point where our body is less stressed and more resonant. And maybe that’s good enough during a lifetime. It is for me.

Several authoritative articles were guiding lights for this article. They were written by fellow “baby-boomers”… the age-group I most resonate with.

• Patricia Faust provides an everything-in-a-nutshell look at body-mind-spirit integration. She’s a gerontologist and brain health specialist who, by popular demand, became a brain health coach. You can learn more about Patricia and her work on her website.
• John R.M. Day is a retired surgeon (with a metaphysical inquisitiveness) who’s been a trusted friend here in Colorado (USA) ever since I came to him in 1988, on the brink of death, and he removed my advanced colon cancer. After saving my life, he introduced me to a spiritual yoga practice that drew me away from my staunch agnosticism that (I now believe) was really killing me. So he helped save my life again. My early encounter with John (and his invisible, interdisciplinary team of spirit supporters) nudged me onto a healing path. In effect, his guys talked to my guys and pointed me toward afterlife research, which is all about resonance. More about John Day at the end of this article, since his work is at the heart of body-mind-spirit integration.

Heart Meditation (and Other Techniques) To Calm the Mind

I’ve described heart meditation and provided links to other techniques elsewhere on this site, so in a nutshell:

For heart meditation, we simply move our mind (or awareness or consciousness or self) from the head to the chest.

Hm… “simply?”

Moving our awareness to the heart isn’t always so simple at first, but the more we do it, the easier and more fluid it becomes. Here’s why it’s challenging but worth the initial effort. (Hint: It’s all about the brain vs the heart.)

The brain is built to monitor and navigate our way through this unruly world that’s caught up in time and space. Our mind feels most “at home” in the brain, since that’s where it needs to be to survive the rigors of Earth living. The brain is the our physical CPU, or central processing unit.

The heart, on the other hand, is the body’s spiritual CPU, and in that regard is a lot more powerful than the brain (as friend John Day explains in his 4 articles below).

The brain is keyed into dramas and imperfections in time and space. It’s keyed into Planet Earth.

The heart is keyed into peace and perfection beyond time and space. It’s keyed into the source of all-that-is.

When we move our mind to the heart, that’s essentially what we find: Peace and perfection beyond time and space… and direct access to the source—what religions call God, Allah, Brahman, or Yahweh.

Conscious Contact with the Source

During a heart meditation (or any other technique for taming the mind), simply understand and acknowledge that the source, with all of its perfection, rests at the center of our being as a sort of inner light. For centuries mystics in the Far East have said that the heart is the seat of the soul or atman, which is our perfect personal connection to the source.

The source is nested in our heart.

Hold onto that awareness throughout the meditation.

Know that the source has all the power to make things right in our lives and in our world… that Earth and its dramas are illusory and have no power whatsoever in the cosmic scheme of things.

Our job isn’t to fix things around us—an overbearing boss, a troubled family member, a lack of money, lying government leaders, a badly stressed global ecosystem…. Our only job is to foster our oneness with the source, so that the real fixing can begin.

As we enter a meditation, we drop off all of the dramas at the door before entering. The only two “people” in the meditation are our mind (or self) and the source.

All of our spiritual intercessors and supporters will immediately be drawn into the resonance that we establish with the source, and they will do whatever they can to make things right in our body, in our life, in our family, and in the world around us.

Then, we trust that whatever is happening around us, for better or worse, is happening for a reason… even if “God only knows” what that reason is.

There’ll be plenty of opportunity to deal with the earthy matters after our meditation, when our mind can go “back home” to the brain. But during the meditation, those earthy matters are of no concern whatsoever.

So that’s the gist of body-mind-spirit integration—taming the mind to calm the body in order to become more resonant with the source, then letting the source make things right.

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My friend Dr. John R.M. Day enhanced his medical practice by exploring spiritual paths and healing practices of other cultures during his college and medical school time in the 1970s. He integrated his medical and spiritual understanding into his Haelen Lifestream practice in 2001 upon retirement, and in recent years has focused a lot of attention on the role of the heart (both medically and metaphysically) in what it means to be human. If you want an in-depth understanding of the heart and its overriding role in body-mind-emotions-spirit integration (from a metaphysical as well as scientific and medical perspective), John’s website is probably the best place to look… especially his 4 articles on heart electromagnetics: Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV. These articles are a lot to wade through, but the world would be a much better place if they were required reading in high school… or maybe college 🙂 .

As always, a special thanks to my wife Regina, whose many years of mystical work with Joel Goldsmith, Richard Rohr, Braco, and A Course in Miracles have slowly and patiently moved my moral compass toward the inner light.