In his latest book, Come Se Tutto Fosse un Miracolo (As If Everything Were a Miracle), the natural biologist and meditation advocate starts with his own path of personal transformation to talk about six keys to living a happy life.
In his latest book Come Se Tutto Fosse un Miracolo (As If Everything Were a Miracle), Daniel Lumera, an Italian natural biologist and meditation expert, recounts his own journey of death and rebirth while offering practical advice that can easily be incorporated into our daily lives. He provides a path to overcome difficult moments of crisis and live life with more serenity and lightness.
The title of Lumera’s new book highlights an attitude that allows us to break free of our common habit of sleepwalking through life. We can rediscover a sense of wonder and approach the world as if we are encountering it for the first time, enjoying the thrill of discovery. “Most of us look for intense reactions and strong emotions in our daily lives, when in fact the great wonder of life is already within us. If we become aware of the miraculous qualities of everything around us, we can feel more deeply connected to the meaning and purpose of our existence. There is an inner space where we can overcome crises and awaken happiness, wonder, and creativity, as we appreciate the gift of existence,” Lumera explains. “We need to imagine ourselves as a patras, a Sanskrit term meaning a container or bowl. Each of us must guard this bowl so that it remains intact. According to Eastern traditions, during the course of life, events and situations occur that create cracks in our bowl and that is how we lose our purity. The six steps that I call charisms, or gifts, allow us to return to that original state of purity when the bowl was intact. That bowl can hold all the beauty and happiness that escapes us when we turn away from our true selves and become trapped in our fears and expectations.”
Understanding integrity
“Integrity doesn’t just mean living in a manner consistent with your values, but also being in touch with one’s calling or nature – what is called dharma in Hinduism. Our society dazzles us with distractions that don’t reflect what we truly require as living beings; they don’t respond to our desire for truth. Therefore the challenge of integrity is to find one’s life purpose and have the courage to follow it by embracing the six charisms,” Lumera says. “We need to be able to listen to our desires, not those planted and superficial distractions, but the deep ones, which do not belong to our individual personality but to our deeper consciousness. The key is to return to an original sense of awareness.”
Find happiness by following these 6 steps
The ability to grasp the world as it is, to be whole, and to not check out in the face of life’s challenges allows us to more effectively overcome stress and feelings of isolation. It helps to relieve tension and rebalances our hormones which in turn helps generate a sense of wellness, calm and confidence. “If you are aware of the signs that you are living a life that isn’t true to who you truly are, there will be a sense of rupture — and this is the place where the path back to your true self begins. For me, this ‘awakening’ happened in two ways: through a very deep crisis and also through a great deal of love. You can retain lost integrity by following a path made up of six stages, or steps. They have changed me and they can change everyone as they are capable of bringing us back to a state of wholeness and an awareness of who we really are.” The six charisms can, in a very concrete way, provide guidance on how we should live to regain a lost state of happiness.
Step one: Remember that words matter
Words are powerful. They can even change our body’s biology. “Studies show that when a mother says to her child every night, ‘I’ll always be there for you’ or ‘You’re a good child’ it helps the infant develop cognitive abilities and can strengthen their immune system. Words have transformative power. They can make things happen and they change how we perceive reality,” Lumera explains.
Don’t say of others behind their backs what you wouldn’t say to their faces. You should say what you feel and hear what you say. All this involves is being honest with yourself and being aware of the intentions with which you utter words. Keeping these rules in mind will prevent you causing damage with your words.
Step two: Don’t leave any task undone for more than three days
How many times do we lack the strength or resolve to deal with a situation and so instead we put it off? Those issues don’t then disappear. Instead they will linger in the back of our minds, making us anxious and dreading the moment when they eventually resurface. In fact, our mind is programmed not to leave tasks unattended to – we will be drawn back to them even when we try to forget about them. “Ignoring an unresolved situation can be like a rubber band that pulls us back when we try to move forward. Things left undone, apologies that are never made, debts that aren’t settled, fines that go unpaid, and books that are left unfinished, prevent us from moving forward in life. They keep us stuck. The patra rule states that we should address any situations that require our attention within three days.
“Being more aware of the finite span of our lives invites us to resolve issues so that we have no regrets and can free ourselves to live life fully. At the same time, doing so allows us to have a more natural relationship with our own mortality because it focuses us on what is essential in terms of our existence.”
Step three: Give generously
“Life is a gift, and whenever we give ourselves, our time, and our energy for the benefit of others, we reconnect with life. This third step expresses itself in giving selflessly but then observing the reaction that a gift produces. In order to give, we must stop holding back what we are afraid of losing; we must listen to that desire present in each of us that urges us to help others so that they can thrive.” The patras rule on this topic is very simple: “Give what you would like to receive.”
Step four: Live in wonder
People are no longer able to lose themselves to our innate sense of wonder because of stress, worries, health problems, ambition, and other distractions. As we grow up, we become more and more disconnected from an ability to be awed by the world. “For scientists, wonder is the result of our observing the vastness of our world; it is seeing the infinite around us, feeling interconnected with nature and our environment, a feeling of being part of something bigger than ourselves.”
This fourth charism tells us to perform an act of “conscious madness” every day — that is, we should surprise ourselves and take a moment to marvel at the world around us, reawakening our capacity for wonder. Among the ways of reconnecting with our innate sense of wonder that Lumera describes in his book is practicing the act of looking at others with a gaze that recognises each person’s unique value and the miracle of their existence, knowing that that there is not and never will be anyone else exactly like them.
Step five: Embrace emptiness
“Our true nature is emptiness, but we try to fill our lives with things, facts, actions. The fifth charism suggests we empty our hearts to make space to welcome new understanding. We must learn to sustain that emptiness and be immersed in it. Emptiness is a fundamental aspect of creativity; when grace comes to us, it finds space in that very emptiness."
Step six: Seek peace
We can experience many different types of inner peace. There is peace of heart, which is what comes with forgiveness and releasing pain we have held inside for too long. There is peace of mind, which comes when we use meditation to bring stillness to the parade of thoughts that never stop. There’s another peace that comes when you accept that you can’t control other people and situations. There is also the peace that comes from making choices that bring us closer to our most authentic versions of ourselves. These are different expressions of peace, which we experience when we feel at home in the world and especially in ourselves: “The sense of feeling at home in one’s body begins with the breath – the more we are aware of it, the more we will feel its presence and the more we will experience peace,” Lumera explains. Peace does not come through action, it is instead the very nature of our being; it is up to us to find peace by learning to breathe.
