Looking for a happy marriage? Chant - Part 1

Finding and doing the right sadhana can make all the difference in the world.

“You should ask Lakshmi for a happy marriage!”

After several years of working together with one of my teachers, he made this suggestion during a recent joint session with my beloved, Richard.

Richard and I have been working diligently to overcome relationship hurdles that create patterns that we haven’t been able to overcome for a long while. I don’t typically share these kinds of personal things, but it just might prove to be useful information for some of you out there. 

We all have hurdles to overcome in this life. The challenges that are the toughest offer us the most meaningful opportunities to overcome karma. 

We come in to this life with karma (actions) that we are either here to overcome, or that we are blessed with to help us along our path. It is our diligence and committed persistence toward overcoming those hurdles that creates growth. This IS the journey!

In an earlier session, my teacher told us a story about his experience with doing sadhana to Mother Lakshmi for manifesting an influx of money. He told us his story to emphasize the power of working with Lakshmi and the speed with which something can be accomplished when she is invoked to support our intention. I was curious and inspired.

Lakshmi, a feminine goddess from Hindu mythology, is a manifestation of the feminine energy (Shakti). Lakshmi has dominion over all things of beauty and harmony including wealth and success, prosperity and abundance, happiness, joy, harmony and particularly happiness in marriage.

Over the years I have done many sadhanas and ritualistic devotions. Some of these have been to Lakshmi and of those, most have been to increase the flow of wealth. The information about her other virtues was new to me.

With happy marriage (relationship) in my crosshairs, I set about doing my research. One of my karmic blessings (positive karma) is to have gifts with mantra. I find the right one, I learn it quickly, and I can recite the sounds as if it were my mother tongue all with ease. I set my intention to accomplish my sadhana (practice) within an ambitious timeframe in order to correlate with some astrological timings that our teacher had indicated lay ahead for us. This meant that I was chanting, initially, for 4 1/2 hours every day!!! And that was in addition to my already very full schedule. Very ambitious, indeed.

As my familiarity with the mantra increased and my ease with the sounds and pronunciation normalized, my eagerness and anticipation for something wonderful to happen began mounting. As I practiced, my comfort with the mantra and the rhythm, melody and cadence I chose increased. Soon I was hearing it clearly in my head and throughout the day. Within several days, I felt myself changing. I felt lighter. I felt happier. I felt more easy going and particularly with Richard. I felt a kind of purification was taking place. At some moments during chanting sessions, I even felt subtle shifts in my skull like the mantra was rewiring my brain. Things between us started to ease and we were having many more moments enjoying each other along with our improved communications.

I was truly impressed with the power of this sadhana. I was motivated toward my commitment to get up every morning at 5AM to do my first chanting session of each day. I couldn’t always tell how my day was going to go once I started to see clients and teach and engage with the outside world, so my first, early morning chanting session of each day was vital to maintaining my practice. If I could complete the first 650 of the 1,500+ daily repetitions I committed to do, I felt confident that I would find a way to fit the other 870 repetitions in on that day. Given that I had set a 90-day timeframe for this practice in order to reach the goal of 125,000 total repetitions, discipline and serious commitment to keep to the schedule would be an absolute.

No one was forcing me to do this practice. This was totally self-directed. Sadhana is something that we do as a discipline. It is something that we do for a specific intention, the more specific we can be, the more effective the offering. And it absolutely must be something that we do from a place of love. I say this because, and especially in the case of such an ambitious practice as the one I am in the middle of, it is hard. I mean difficult. 

Some days the time spent sitting and chanting is absolute bliss. Even on those days there can be moments when distraction, agitation, or resistance creeps in for part of a round of mala. But there are days when the force required to get out of bed feels like a crow bar coaxing out a rusty nail. There are times when the day’s schedule builds like a boulder rolling downhill. On those days, the pressure to get to the cushion and complete the day’s repetitions is up against the mind’s habit to sit in front of that favorite program on the tube and drop out after a long day. 

But most devotees who have been engaged in long-term devotional practice know that dropping IN will always result in a better outcome than dropping OUT. And so it is the choice-less choice. The cushion calls and we respond. 

With another 47 days of this sadhana to go, I am pacing myself. One thing I can say for sure is that these are deceivingly powerful technologies. They show just how little we sometimes comprehend about energy, vibrations, sound, intention, commitment, vision, not to mention those mystical and mythical beings we turn to in our darkest moments.