Sunday, June 29, 2014
Thursday, June 26, 2014
Awesome article on workplace threat
Neuroleadership: How Your Brain Fights for Social Survival in the Workplace
BY MANIE BOSMAN
Have you ever rolled around in bed thinking about an incident earlier that day and feeling really frustrated with yourself for not clearly explaining your point or saying what you should have said? Maybe it was a meeting where you struggled to state your case and later, thinking back, what you should have said was so clear and simple and you just couldn’t believe how you didn’t see that earlier. Well, for what it’s worth, thousands – perhaps tens of thousands – of people have a similar experience every day.
What you’ve experienced during that meeting was the activation of the classical ‘fight or flight’ response
in your brain. This response, also known as our survival instinct,
helps us stay alive by triggering neurological pathways in our brains
which enable us to react to danger without even having to think about
it. Here is how it work: as you grew up, your brain ‘labeled’ or encoded
some stimuli (things you observed or experienced) as “threats” (e.g. food that tasted really bad) and others as “rewards” (e.g. food that you enjoyed). These “labels” or neurological codes are stored in the amygdala, a small oval-shaped object in the brain’s limbic system,
which also plays an important role in the actual encoding process. From
then on, whenever you come across something encoded as either a
“threat” or a “reward”, the amygdala activates the limbic
system to trigger an automated ‘disengage’ (refuse to eat your cabbage)
neurological response when facing a perceived threat, or an ‘engage’
(eat the ice-cream) response when facing a perceived reward. Similarly,
your brain most likely encoded losing money, seeing a large predator, or
facing a scar-faced guy wielding a flick-knife as threats while
receiving money, water, sex, and a safe shelter were all encoded
asrewards.
So, you’re out hiking through the forest and you hear an unfamiliar sound somewhere behind you. Your limbic system is aroused in the blink of a second – neurons are activated and hormones are released – as you try to establish whether this is a threat or reward, and subsequently if you should disengage or engage. Anxiously staring into the underbrush your heightened senses pick up a small movement and the next moment you’re running – disengaging from what might be a lion or bear or some other dangerous predator. Important to note here that this entire process is automated – in other words your brain (or the neural pathways that are triggered) determines how you will respond without you consciously giving any real input.
While the basics of this survival instinct had been known for some time, neuroscience, with the use of fMRI scans
and other scientific methods, has in recent years given us new insights
into exactly what happens when a threat or reward response is
activated. Probably the most exiting revelation has been that exactly
the same neural responses which drive us towards food (reward-engage) or
away from danger (threat-disengage), are activated when we socially
interact with other people. In other words, when we’re having a meeting
at work, enjoying a braai (South African version of a barbeque) with
friends, or chatting about the weather while standing in the queue at
the supermarket, people’s behaviour during these social interactions can
trigger either a “threat” or “reward” response in one another.
For leaders, the consequences of this discovery are really profound. It means that the human brain is basically a social organ which reacts to social situations (and social pain in particular) in exactly the same way in which it reacts to the physical environment (and physical pain), which is a bit of a kick in the proverbial butt for Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. It also means that the brain views the workplace primarily as a social environment where it is constantly assessing social interaction as either threats or rewards.
But
there’s more. Studies have shown that when a threat response is
activated, it has a severely negative impact on our cognitive
performance. When the limbic system goes into its automated response,
fewer resources (oxygen and glucose in particular) become available to
the prefrontal cortex–
the part of the brain where conscious thought takes place. This means
that when a threat response is activated our ability to understand, make
decisions, remember, memorize, plan, inhibit impulses, solve problems
and communicate is impaired. Your creativity and innovativeness become
restricted, you struggle to see the “big picture” and ultimately your
overall productivity drops.
David Rock, who could probably be called the father of the emerging field of neuroleadership (applying the scientific findings of neuroscience with leadership practice) cites a study in which two groups had to complete a maze where a little mouse had to reach a picture on the outside. The first group had to guide their mouse through the maze to reach a picture of cheese on the outside, and the second group had to reach an owl, which of course is a predator. Once they had completed this exercise, the two groups were given creativity tests. The researchers found that the group pursuing the cheese solved considerably more creative problems than those approaching the owl. As Rock concludes, “this study, supported by several other similar studies, shows that even subtle effects of this approach-avoid (reward-threat) response can have a big impact on cognitive performance”.
Do you now see why you were finding it so difficult to hold your own during that incident which kept you awake that night? Somehow, at some point during your interaction someone (perhaps a dominating manager or maybe just an insensitive colleague) triggered a threat response in your brain. Your brain perceived this social threat in exactly the way it would perceive a physical threat, and it went into ‘survival mode’ where your cognitive abilities became impaired and restricted.
As
leaders in the highly volatile, constantly changing 21st Century, our
greatest skill will increasingly be the ability to facilitate engagement
in the workplace. Neuroscience is providing us with solid scientific
evidence of what happens in the human brain as we interact with each
other in the workplace. As leaders and facilitators of organizational
development this provides us with great opportunities to apply the
principles of “neuroleadership” which, among other things, means
understanding that the workplace is primarily a social environment and
that the human brain is a ‘social organ’ which needs to beled in a way that complies with its social needs.
Have you ever rolled around in bed thinking about an incident earlier that day and feeling really frustrated with yourself for not clearly explaining your point or saying what you should have said? Maybe it was a meeting where you struggled to state your case and later, thinking back, what you should have said was so clear and simple and you just couldn’t believe how you didn’t see that earlier. Well, for what it’s worth, thousands – perhaps tens of thousands – of people have a similar experience every day.
What you’ve experienced during that meeting was the activation of the classical ‘fight or flight’ response
in your brain. This response, also known as our survival instinct,
helps us stay alive by triggering neurological pathways in our brains
which enable us to react to danger without even having to think about
it. Here is how it work: as you grew up, your brain ‘labeled’ or encoded
some stimuli (things you observed or experienced) as “threats” (e.g. food that tasted really bad) and others as “rewards” (e.g. food that you enjoyed). These “labels” or neurological codes are stored in the amygdala, a small oval-shaped object in the brain’s limbic system,
which also plays an important role in the actual encoding process. From
then on, whenever you come across something encoded as either a
“threat” or a “reward”, the amygdala activates the limbic
system to trigger an automated ‘disengage’ (refuse to eat your cabbage)
neurological response when facing a perceived threat, or an ‘engage’
(eat the ice-cream) response when facing a perceived reward. Similarly,
your brain most likely encoded losing money, seeing a large predator, or
facing a scar-faced guy wielding a flick-knife as threats while
receiving money, water, sex, and a safe shelter were all encoded
asrewards.So, you’re out hiking through the forest and you hear an unfamiliar sound somewhere behind you. Your limbic system is aroused in the blink of a second – neurons are activated and hormones are released – as you try to establish whether this is a threat or reward, and subsequently if you should disengage or engage. Anxiously staring into the underbrush your heightened senses pick up a small movement and the next moment you’re running – disengaging from what might be a lion or bear or some other dangerous predator. Important to note here that this entire process is automated – in other words your brain (or the neural pathways that are triggered) determines how you will respond without you consciously giving any real input.
While the basics of this survival instinct had been known for some time, neuroscience, with the use of fMRI scans
and other scientific methods, has in recent years given us new insights
into exactly what happens when a threat or reward response is
activated. Probably the most exiting revelation has been that exactly
the same neural responses which drive us towards food (reward-engage) or
away from danger (threat-disengage), are activated when we socially
interact with other people. In other words, when we’re having a meeting
at work, enjoying a braai (South African version of a barbeque) with
friends, or chatting about the weather while standing in the queue at
the supermarket, people’s behaviour during these social interactions can
trigger either a “threat” or “reward” response in one another.For leaders, the consequences of this discovery are really profound. It means that the human brain is basically a social organ which reacts to social situations (and social pain in particular) in exactly the same way in which it reacts to the physical environment (and physical pain), which is a bit of a kick in the proverbial butt for Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. It also means that the brain views the workplace primarily as a social environment where it is constantly assessing social interaction as either threats or rewards.
But
there’s more. Studies have shown that when a threat response is
activated, it has a severely negative impact on our cognitive
performance. When the limbic system goes into its automated response,
fewer resources (oxygen and glucose in particular) become available to
the prefrontal cortex–
the part of the brain where conscious thought takes place. This means
that when a threat response is activated our ability to understand, make
decisions, remember, memorize, plan, inhibit impulses, solve problems
and communicate is impaired. Your creativity and innovativeness become
restricted, you struggle to see the “big picture” and ultimately your
overall productivity drops.David Rock, who could probably be called the father of the emerging field of neuroleadership (applying the scientific findings of neuroscience with leadership practice) cites a study in which two groups had to complete a maze where a little mouse had to reach a picture on the outside. The first group had to guide their mouse through the maze to reach a picture of cheese on the outside, and the second group had to reach an owl, which of course is a predator. Once they had completed this exercise, the two groups were given creativity tests. The researchers found that the group pursuing the cheese solved considerably more creative problems than those approaching the owl. As Rock concludes, “this study, supported by several other similar studies, shows that even subtle effects of this approach-avoid (reward-threat) response can have a big impact on cognitive performance”.
Do you now see why you were finding it so difficult to hold your own during that incident which kept you awake that night? Somehow, at some point during your interaction someone (perhaps a dominating manager or maybe just an insensitive colleague) triggered a threat response in your brain. Your brain perceived this social threat in exactly the way it would perceive a physical threat, and it went into ‘survival mode’ where your cognitive abilities became impaired and restricted.
As
leaders in the highly volatile, constantly changing 21st Century, our
greatest skill will increasingly be the ability to facilitate engagement
in the workplace. Neuroscience is providing us with solid scientific
evidence of what happens in the human brain as we interact with each
other in the workplace. As leaders and facilitators of organizational
development this provides us with great opportunities to apply the
principles of “neuroleadership” which, among other things, means
understanding that the workplace is primarily a social environment and
that the human brain is a ‘social organ’ which needs to beled in a way that complies with its social needs.Triumph of bad over good - how negative events affect us
So, as I ponder over why negative situations leave me traumatized, I can take relief in this article.
So, essentially - what was a physical survival mechanism is used wrongly in social and other contexts, causing great harm to us.
Our brains react to perceived “threats” and “rewards” in the social environment (in particular our needs for status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness or fairness) in the same way and with the same intensity with which it reacts to physical threats (e.g. a predator, pain) and rewards (e.g. food, money). What I did not emphasize before was that threat responses have a greater impact and are far more powerful and easier to trigger than reward responses. This means that leaders need to be extremely attentive in managing perceived social threats in the workplace as these could ultimately have a severely destructive impact on the organization’s survival and success.
For example, studies have shown that a single traumatic experience can have long-term and even permanent effects on an individual’s health, happiness, outlook, self-worth and general behaviour. On the other hand there is little or no confirmation that a single positive experience can have even nearly the same impact.
For a relationship to succeed and remain stable, positive and good interactions must outnumber the negative and bad ones by no less than five to one. If the ratio drops lower than that, the relationship is unlikely to last. This means that contrary to what we might expect, the long-term success of our relationships actually depends more on not doing bad things than on doing good things.
So, essentially - what was a physical survival mechanism is used wrongly in social and other contexts, causing great harm to us.
Our brains react to perceived “threats” and “rewards” in the social environment (in particular our needs for status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness or fairness) in the same way and with the same intensity with which it reacts to physical threats (e.g. a predator, pain) and rewards (e.g. food, money). What I did not emphasize before was that threat responses have a greater impact and are far more powerful and easier to trigger than reward responses. This means that leaders need to be extremely attentive in managing perceived social threats in the workplace as these could ultimately have a severely destructive impact on the organization’s survival and success.
For example, studies have shown that a single traumatic experience can have long-term and even permanent effects on an individual’s health, happiness, outlook, self-worth and general behaviour. On the other hand there is little or no confirmation that a single positive experience can have even nearly the same impact.
For a relationship to succeed and remain stable, positive and good interactions must outnumber the negative and bad ones by no less than five to one. If the ratio drops lower than that, the relationship is unlikely to last. This means that contrary to what we might expect, the long-term success of our relationships actually depends more on not doing bad things than on doing good things.
Numerous
studies have concluded that we experience negative emotions more
intensely than positive emotions. An interesting approach to this was
studies which looked at language – the code with which we describe
emotions. These studies concluded that negative emotions were more fully
represented (there were more words to describe them) than positive
emotions. One study which looked at words that described emotions showed
that 62% described negative emotions while only 38% described positive
emotions. Another looked at all the words in the English language
describing personality traits and found that an overwhelming 74% of the total described negative traits.
Even our senses seem to experience negative input more intensely than positive inputs. In one study participants
facial expressions were monitored as they were exposed to pleasant,
neutral and unpleasant odours. The results indicated that people’s
negative reactions to unpleasant odours were much stronger than their positive reactions to pleasant odours.
The negative effects of bad parenting and bad childhood experiences have a much stronger impact on our lives than good parenting and positive experiences.
This
tendency of bad having a stronger impact than good continues into
nearly every sphere of or existence. Bad first impressions last longer
and are harder to change than good ones; bad stereotypes are quicker to form and have a stronger influence on our behaviour than good ones; bad feedback has
a much more profound impact on how we view our performance than
positive feedback; the memory and effect of bad social interactions last
longer than that of good social interactions; and the impact of bad
health is stronger than that of experiencing good health.
So
where does this leave us? Neuroscience has shown us that our brains and
the brains of the people that we interact with are strongly influenced
by how it perceives the social environment in which we operate. When it
perceives a social threat (real or not) it goes into “survival mode” –
functioning well below its best when needed to make decisions, remember,
solve problems or collaborate with others. However, because we
experience “bad” so much more intensely than we experience “good” (at a
ratio of 5:1), we need to go further than just maintaining an equal balance
in our work relationships. Routinely treating people badly and then
asking for forgiveness is not an option. If we really want them engaged
and committed we need to minimize negative interactions and create a
culture where positive social interactions abound.
Cognitive psychology
What Is Cognitive Psychology?
Cognitive psychology focuses on the study of how people think, learn, remember, and process information.
Image: sanja gjenero
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Indian Journals Subscribewww.ripublication.comSubscribe International and Indian Journals Research India PublicationCognitive psychology is a relatively young branch of psychology, yet it has quickly grown to become one of the most popular subfields. Topics such as learning styles, attention, memory, forgetting, and language acquisition are just a few of the practical applications for this science. But what exactly is cognitive psychology? What do cognitive psychologists do?
Answer:
Cognitive psychology is the branch of psychology that studies mental processes including how people think, perceive, remember, and learn. As part of the larger field of cognitive science, this branch of psychology is related to other disciplines including neuroscience, philosophy, and linguistics.
The core focus of cognitive psychology is on how people acquire, process and store information. There are numerous practical applications for cognitive research, such as improving memory, increasing decision-making accuracy, and structuring educational curricula to enhance learning.
Until the 1950s, behaviorism was the dominant school of thought in psychology. Between 1950 and 1970, the tide began to shift against behavioral psychology to focus on topics such as attention, memory and problem-solving. Often referred to as the cognitive revolution, this period generated considerable research on topics including processing models, cognitive research methods and the first use of the term "cognitive psychology."
The term "cognitive psychology" was first used in 1967 by American psychologist Ulric Neisser in his book Cognitive Psychology. According to Neisser, cognition involves "all processes by which the sensory input is transformed, reduced, elaborated, stored, recovered, and used. It is concerned with these processes even when they operate in the absence of relevant stimulation, as in images and hallucinations... Given such a sweeping definition, it is apparent that cognition is involved in everything a human being might possibly do; that every psychological phenomenon is a cognitive phenomenon."
How is Cognitive Psychology Different?
- Unlike behaviorism, which focuses only on observable behaviors, cognitive psychology is concerned with internal mental states.
- Unlike psychoanalysis, which relies heavily on subjective perceptions, cognitive psychology uses scientific research methods to study mental processes.
Who Should Study Cognitive Psychology?
Because cognitive psychology touches on many other disciplines, this branch of psychology is frequently studied by people in a number of different fields. The following are just a few of those who may benefit from studying cognitive psychology.- Students interested in behavioral neuroscience, linguistics, industrial-organizational psychology, artificial intelligence, and other related areas.
- Teachers, educators, and curriculum designers can benefit by learning more about how people process, learn, and remember information.
- Engineers, scientists, artists, architects, and designers can all benefit from understanding internal mental states and processes.
Major Topics in Cognitive Psychology
- Perception
- Language
- Attention
- Memory
- Problem-Solving
- Decision-Making and Judgment
- Intelligence
Important People in the History of Cognitive Psychology
- Gustav Fechner
- Wilhelm Wundt
- Edward B. Titchener
- Hermann Ebbinghaus
- William James
- Wolfgang Kohler
- Edward Tolman
- Jean Piaget
- Noam Chomsky
- David Rumelhart
- James McClelland
Working without stress - Eckhart
Is your doing surrendered or non-surrendered? This is what determines your success in life, not how much effort you make. Effort implies stress and strain, needing to reach a certain point in the future or accomplish a certain result.
The feeling of “needing” to get things done is devoid of all flow. As long as we feel this way, we’re not in the now but mentally and perhaps emotionally elsewhere.
http://www.namastepublishing.com/blog/compassionate-eye/how-present-are-you-activities-your-life
Roadmap to an interesting life
The smartest, most interesting, most dynamic, most impactful people … lived
to figure it out. At some point in their lives, they realized that
carefully crafted plans … often don’t hold up… Sometimes, the only way
to discover who you are or what life you should lead is to do less planning and more living — to burst the double bubble of comfort and convention and just do stuff, even if you don’t know precisely where it’s going to lead, because you don’t know precisely where it’s going to lead.
This might sound risky — and you know what? It is. It’s really risky. But the greater risk is to choose false certainty over genuine ambiguity. The greater risk is to fear failure more than mediocrity. The greater risk is to pursue a path only because it’s the first path you decided to pursue.
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2014/06/25/daniel-pink-northwestern-commencement/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+brainpickings%2Frss+%28Brain+Pickings%29
This might sound risky — and you know what? It is. It’s really risky. But the greater risk is to choose false certainty over genuine ambiguity. The greater risk is to fear failure more than mediocrity. The greater risk is to pursue a path only because it’s the first path you decided to pursue.
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2014/06/25/daniel-pink-northwestern-commencement/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+brainpickings%2Frss+%28Brain+Pickings%29
A wonderful message from Humans of New York
I asked her for a piece of advice. She reached in her purse, pulled out a piece of paper, and handed it to me. It said this:
Life isn't fair, but it's still good. Life is too short-- enjoy it. Cry with someone. It's more healing than crying alone. Make peace with your past so it won't screw up the present and the future. It's OK to let your children see you cry.
Don't compare your life to others. You have no idea what their journey is all about. If a relationship has to be secret, you shouldn't be in it.
Take a deep breath, it calms the mind. Everything can change in the blink of an eye. It's never too late to be happy. But it's all up to you and no one else. When it comes time to go after what you love in life, don't take no for an answer. Burn the nice candles, use the nice sheets, wear the nice lingerie, wear the nice clothes. Don't save it for a special occasion. Today is special.
Over prepare, then go with the flow. No one is in charge of your happiness but you. Frame every so-called disaster with these words: 'In five years will this matter?' Always choose life. Forgive but don't forget. Time heals almost everything. Give time, time. However good or bad a situation is, it will change. All that truly matters in the end is that you loved.
If we all threw our problems in a pile and we saw everyone else's, we'd grab our's back. Envy is a waste of time. Accept what you already have, not what you need. Yield. Friends are the family we choose. Life isn't tied with a bow, but it's still a gift.*
"His
grandmother and I are raising him. I worry about putting him into the
public school system. I was a teacher for many years. I've seen so
much confidence destroyed by the standardized system. Every human is
born with natural curiosity. I've never
seen a child who wasn't inspired. But once you force someone to do
anything, the inspired person is killed. I dropped out of school myself
in 7th grade. So I know. I taught a GED course for years, so I've
seen the end results over and over. I've seen so many kids who have
complexes and insecurities because they were forced to do something they
weren't ready to do, and then they were blamed when they weren't able
to do it. What we call 'education' today is not organic. You can't
take something as complex as the human mind, compartmentalize it, and
regiment its development so strictly."
"I
wrote an essay about my mother. I decided she put a destructive
algorithm in my head when I was a child. I call it a 'mal-gorithm.' My
mother always had very low self-esteem, so she never wanted me to have
any confidence. She felt threatened by confident people, so her way of
keeping control was to never give me any encouragement or approval. I
remember one time I spent all day wrapping a gift
for my grandmother. I decorated it with all sorts of designs, and
glued cotton balls on the package. My mother took one look at it and
said: 'What did you do that for? Grandma isn't going to care about
that.' I think I realized then that I was never going to get her
approval."
"How does this affect you as an adult?"
"It's very difficult for me to have the confidence to do things. I'm always anticipating the negative feelings of others But I'm working on it."
"How does this affect you as an adult?"
"It's very difficult for me to have the confidence to do things. I'm always anticipating the negative feelings of others But I'm working on it."
Tuesday, June 24, 2014
osho and Tao on dance -to be one with the universe
Living moment to moment joyously, ecstatically, living moment to moment
totally, intensely, passionately…. If one lives passionately, the ego
dissolves. If one is total in one’s acts, the ego is BOUND to dissolve.
It is like when a dancer goes on and on dancing: a moment comes when
only the dance remains and the dancer disappears. That is the moment of
enlightenment.
http://faculty2.ric.edu/rfeldstein/560spring11/1.a.taoteching.pdf
Osho Talks about Dance
Excerpted from: Krishna: The Man and His Philosophy #13
Excerpted from: Krishna: The Man and His Philosophy #13
"If you can dance with abandon, you will begin to see yourself and your body as separate from each other. Soon you will cease to be a dancer; instead you will become a watcher, a witness. When your body will be dancing totally, a moment will come when you will suddenly find that you are completely separate from the dance.
"In the past many devices were designed to bring about this separation between a seeker and his body, and singing and dancing was one such device. You can dance in such a way and with such abandon that a moment comes when you break away from dancing and clearly see yourself standing separate from the dance. Although your body will continue to dance, you will be quite separate from it as a spectator watching the dance. It will seem as if the axle has separated itself from the wheel which continues to keep moving – as if the axle has come to know that it is an axle and that which is moving is the wheel, although separate from it.
"Dancing can be seen in the same way as a wheel. If the wheel moves with speed, a moment comes when it is seen distinctly separate from the axle. It is interesting that when the wheel is unmoving you cannot see it as separate from the axle, but when it moves you can clearly see them as two separate entities. You can know by contrast which is moving and which is not.
"Let someone dance and let him bring all his energy to it, and soon he will find there is someone inside him who is not dancing, who is utterly steady and still. That is his axle, his center. That which is dancing is his circumference, his body, and he himself is the center. If one can be a witness in this great moment then kirtan has great significance. But if he continues to dance without witnessing it, he will only waste his time and energy.
"Techniques and devices come into being and then they are lost. And they are lost for the simple reason that man as he is tends to forget the essential and hold on to the non-essential, the shadow. The truth is that while the essential remains hidden and invisible like the roots of a tree, the non-essential, the trunk of the tree is visible. The non-essential is like our clothes, and the essential is like our soul. And we are liable to forget that which is subtle and invisible and remember the gross, the visible. It is for this reason when someone comes to me to know if kirtan can be useful, I emphatically deny it and ask him not to indulge in it. I know that now it is a dead tradition, a corpse without soul, as if the axle has disappeared and only the wheel remains." Osho
http://faculty2.ric.edu/rfeldstein/560spring11/1.a.taoteching.pdf
Samskriti
If you are equanimous and exuberant you are equipped to explore all dimensions of life.This is what Samskriti means.- Sadhguru
Uttarayana Dakshinaya and the time to sow and harvest
Uttarayana is time of flowering, #Dakshinayana of striving. Period of striving is when life is in our hands.Time to take charge of one’s life.
http://blog.ishafoundation.org/sadhguru/masters-words/shifting-to-dakshinayana/
http://blog.ishafoundation.org/yoga-meditation/demystifying-yoga/the-significance-of-dakshinayana/
http://blog.ishafoundation.org/sadhguru/spot/uttarayana-the-time-of-harvest/
Dakshinayana is for purification. Uttarayana is for enlightenment.
So - we need to choose the right seeds and sow them and water them.
After a while they will bear fruits and flowers.
I plan to sow my own seeds this time.
Already I can feel the effect of Dakshinayana on me. I am full of possibilities now.
I feel relieved. I am now going to take the same energy further.
The human body, if brought to a certain level of intensity and sensitivity, is a cosmos by itself. Everything that happens in the external sphere, in a subtle way, manifests in the body. It is happening to everybody, it is just that most people do not notice this. But a more organized and purposeful rearrangement of the human mechanism could be done if one becomes conscious of the external movement and aligns that with the movement that is happening within the human system. If you want this body of flesh and bone to imbibe the nature of the cosmic body, understanding and being in tune with this movement of Uttarayana and Dakshinayana is very essential.
The sadhana pada is always more important because in the process of making anything happen, the most important thing is to do what is in our hands right. What is not in our hands, we only have to wait. Sadhana is something which is in our hands – we can do something about it. It may be a lesser dimension than the other but it doesn’t matter, it is in our hands. It becomes important because we can make it happen.
Watering and putting manure to a plant is important. Flowers will come as a consequence of that. It is not our doing. This is just like that. These six months are the sadhana pada and this time is important because now you can do the right things. If you do the right things, when the time to harvest comes, the right kind of harvest will come.
Also - In terms of doing something, a man is better equipped; in terms of receiving something, always the feminine is better equipped. A little advantage, but this doesn’t mean all women are more receptive than men. The feminine is definitely more receptive than the masculine because the masculine is geared for survival.
There are some areas of life where a man will naturally get a ‘double promotion’. There are certain other areas of life where a woman will get a ‘double promotion’. So the northern run, or Uttarayana, is more favorable to the feminine because it demands receptivity, not work. The southern run demands work so the masculine will dominate.
http://blog.ishafoundation.org/sadhguru/masters-words/shifting-to-dakshinayana/
http://blog.ishafoundation.org/yoga-meditation/demystifying-yoga/the-significance-of-dakshinayana/
http://blog.ishafoundation.org/sadhguru/spot/uttarayana-the-time-of-harvest/
Dakshinayana is for purification. Uttarayana is for enlightenment.
So - we need to choose the right seeds and sow them and water them.
After a while they will bear fruits and flowers.
I plan to sow my own seeds this time.
Already I can feel the effect of Dakshinayana on me. I am full of possibilities now.
I feel relieved. I am now going to take the same energy further.
The human body, if brought to a certain level of intensity and sensitivity, is a cosmos by itself. Everything that happens in the external sphere, in a subtle way, manifests in the body. It is happening to everybody, it is just that most people do not notice this. But a more organized and purposeful rearrangement of the human mechanism could be done if one becomes conscious of the external movement and aligns that with the movement that is happening within the human system. If you want this body of flesh and bone to imbibe the nature of the cosmic body, understanding and being in tune with this movement of Uttarayana and Dakshinayana is very essential.
The sadhana pada is always more important because in the process of making anything happen, the most important thing is to do what is in our hands right. What is not in our hands, we only have to wait. Sadhana is something which is in our hands – we can do something about it. It may be a lesser dimension than the other but it doesn’t matter, it is in our hands. It becomes important because we can make it happen.
Watering and putting manure to a plant is important. Flowers will come as a consequence of that. It is not our doing. This is just like that. These six months are the sadhana pada and this time is important because now you can do the right things. If you do the right things, when the time to harvest comes, the right kind of harvest will come.
Also - In terms of doing something, a man is better equipped; in terms of receiving something, always the feminine is better equipped. A little advantage, but this doesn’t mean all women are more receptive than men. The feminine is definitely more receptive than the masculine because the masculine is geared for survival.
There are some areas of life where a man will naturally get a ‘double promotion’. There are certain other areas of life where a woman will get a ‘double promotion’. So the northern run, or Uttarayana, is more favorable to the feminine because it demands receptivity, not work. The southern run demands work so the masculine will dominate.
Monday, June 23, 2014
Unhealthy thoughts - past karma
From A Wise heart - http://www.amazon.com/The-Wise-Heart-Universal-Psychology/dp/0553382330/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1403538435&sr=8-1&keywords=A+wise+heart
Unhealthy thoughts chain us to the past.
They are a result of past karma that we cannot change.left with worry, doubt and fright.
We can choose to release ourself from these thoughts and allow life's wonder and possibility. By changing the landscape of our thoughts we can revolutionise our entire world.
Also reflected in:
http://www.tolleteachings.com/karma-and-the-ego.html
Eckhart's long video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KopmSpe33Eg
We try to understand ourselves through things - the things we possess.. and we think of ourself as an object. Our body - the cells - the thoughts - everything changes with time. Our opinions, beliefs, everything changes. So, who am I?
When you stop thinking - when you stop the hyper active mind - you feel alive and present and calm. It's only in this state that new, original, creative thoughts arise. Else 99% of the time our thoughts get recycled and we play the same old story - me and my story.
We're all playing roles. We get so identified with the role unconsciously and over time, it gets difficult to play the role. It becomes tiresome and the mask falls - whether in love or at work.
Don't play conditioned roles. Treat everyone the same way - pope or plumber.
When you get to the alert still state, you relate to humans more genuinely. You become spontaneous. You do not have to prepare what to talk.
Attention = energy = consciousness. Usually attention is absorbed by thoughts.
The intelligence that flows from stillness is very different from society's mind based intelligence. Here we cram a lot - gather wisdom, analyse, research, get into very specific specialities.. that is a different intelligence.
Some children are slow - including Einstein.There is space between their thoughts. When you ask them questions they look deep inside and search for answers - they will not give bookish answers. They are creative, original.
In your unconscious states you may have good and bad thoughts. Mind has polarities. The conditioned mind may make you behave in ways that are not worthy of you. But when you are fully aware you recognize the behaviour and tell that you're wrong. You may not be able to control the conditioned mind at all. As long as its working it may make you repeat certain things. You cannot aim to become perfect as long as you have the conditioned mind. Don't attempt that.
Don't let yourself be identified through the thoughts that arise.
Awareness is not needy. It is not self serving. It does things just for it...It does not cause suffering. True love does not want anything. Its selfless action.
Whereas conditioning - You make the present moment and others into a means to an end.
When you're present to now - you experience the fullness of life. Feel the intensity of aliveness.
When you feel full and alive, your action will have a certain quality. It's not a means to an end. It carries your aliveness and ultimately being conscious will lead you to wealth.
Whereas people who feel they are poor and they need to make money or people who feel they need to build big businesses to show to others who they are, bring the same quality to their work. Even after achieving their goals, due to their conditioning they feel the same. They feel unfulfilled.
You could be free anywhere, even in a prison. Freedom is to step out of thoughts, into awareness. It's ultimately freedom from thoughts. Freedom from future - the psychological pattern.
Never believe that future will bring greater fulfillment than now. Access the power of now, regardless of the external circumstances. Once you start waiting for happiness in the future, no matter what happens, you will continue waiting :-)
If your happiness comes from external circumstances and things and people, the same can also cause unhappiness. A woman who came into your life can becomes a great cause of unhappiness after 3-4 years. A great job initially makes you happy. Later it is so stressful that it makes you so unhappy. Famous people later find their fame a huge issue.
It doesn't mean that one should not pursue goals or fame, but one should not expect them to make oneself happy. True happiness comes from true alignment with one's inner self. It's here and now.
The experiences cannot give you fulfillment. There's no stability in the outside world. Happiness comes from feeling the deeper I - the being.
You can play in the outer world - acquire forms, lose forms.. and finally lose everything.
True love cannot come from the pseudo I - I the poor guy, I the good looking guy..
I am not what happens; I am the space in which things happen; I am NOW;
We try to understand ourselves through things - the things we possess.. and we think of ourself as an object. Our body - the cells - the thoughts - everything changes with time. Our opinions, beliefs, everything changes. So, who am I?
When you stop thinking - when you stop the hyper active mind - you feel alive and present and calm. It's only in this state that new, original, creative thoughts arise. Else 99% of the time our thoughts get recycled and we play the same old story - me and my story.
We're all playing roles. We get so identified with the role unconsciously and over time, it gets difficult to play the role. It becomes tiresome and the mask falls - whether in love or at work.
Don't play conditioned roles. Treat everyone the same way - pope or plumber.
When you get to the alert still state, you relate to humans more genuinely. You become spontaneous. You do not have to prepare what to talk.
Attention = energy = consciousness. Usually attention is absorbed by thoughts.
The intelligence that flows from stillness is very different from society's mind based intelligence. Here we cram a lot - gather wisdom, analyse, research, get into very specific specialities.. that is a different intelligence.
Some children are slow - including Einstein.There is space between their thoughts. When you ask them questions they look deep inside and search for answers - they will not give bookish answers. They are creative, original.
In your unconscious states you may have good and bad thoughts. Mind has polarities. The conditioned mind may make you behave in ways that are not worthy of you. But when you are fully aware you recognize the behaviour and tell that you're wrong. You may not be able to control the conditioned mind at all. As long as its working it may make you repeat certain things. You cannot aim to become perfect as long as you have the conditioned mind. Don't attempt that.
Don't let yourself be identified through the thoughts that arise.
Awareness is not needy. It is not self serving. It does things just for it...It does not cause suffering. True love does not want anything. Its selfless action.
Whereas conditioning - You make the present moment and others into a means to an end.
When you're present to now - you experience the fullness of life. Feel the intensity of aliveness.
When you feel full and alive, your action will have a certain quality. It's not a means to an end. It carries your aliveness and ultimately being conscious will lead you to wealth.
Whereas people who feel they are poor and they need to make money or people who feel they need to build big businesses to show to others who they are, bring the same quality to their work. Even after achieving their goals, due to their conditioning they feel the same. They feel unfulfilled.
You could be free anywhere, even in a prison. Freedom is to step out of thoughts, into awareness. It's ultimately freedom from thoughts. Freedom from future - the psychological pattern.
Never believe that future will bring greater fulfillment than now. Access the power of now, regardless of the external circumstances. Once you start waiting for happiness in the future, no matter what happens, you will continue waiting :-)
If your happiness comes from external circumstances and things and people, the same can also cause unhappiness. A woman who came into your life can becomes a great cause of unhappiness after 3-4 years. A great job initially makes you happy. Later it is so stressful that it makes you so unhappy. Famous people later find their fame a huge issue.
It doesn't mean that one should not pursue goals or fame, but one should not expect them to make oneself happy. True happiness comes from true alignment with one's inner self. It's here and now.
The experiences cannot give you fulfillment. There's no stability in the outside world. Happiness comes from feeling the deeper I - the being.
You can play in the outer world - acquire forms, lose forms.. and finally lose everything.
True love cannot come from the pseudo I - I the poor guy, I the good looking guy..
I am not what happens; I am the space in which things happen; I am NOW;
Saturday, June 21, 2014
Perpetuating the past through repetitive compulsive thinking
“If your mind carries a heavy burden of past, you will experience more
of the same. The past perpetuates itself through lack of presence. The
quality of your consciousness at this moment is what shapes the future.”
Strictly speaking, you don't choose to think; Thinking happens to you. The statement “I think” implies volition. It implies that you have willfully chosen to think what you think (or that you think in the first place). For most people, this is not yet the case. “I think” is just as false a statement as “I digest” or “I circulate my blood.” Digestion happens, circulation happens, thinking happens.
The voice in the head has a life of its own. Most people are at the mercy of that voice; they are possessed by their thinking and its repetitive, unconscious content. This circular, repetitive, incessant thinking is conditioned by the past, and it keeps you trapped in the past. It is as though you continue to relive the past over and over again. Do you ever wonder why the same problems challenge you throughout your life? Your unconscious mind is re-creating them, but you don't even know it.
The Eastern term for this repetitive cycle is karma. You continually bring to your life experiences that correspond to your thinking. What you reap, you will sow. What you think, you will attract. If the contents of your thoughts are locked in past events, you are destined to repeat them. This is karma. And it goes both ways.
We have heard of good karma and bad karma. Bad karma is the experiences we have that are attracted to us by our mind's obsession with all the bad things that have happened to us. Bad karma not only produces experiences that are undesirable, it is also a life lived in the past, not the present.
Good karma, on the other hand, comes from living in the present moment. When we liberate our mind from thoughts of the past and negative rumination, we are free to engage our mind in original, creative thought. We are free to be spontaneous and fun-loving. We are free to live our life now with a sense of curiosity, discovery and adventure. Far from being trapped in a cycle of negativity, we live a life of freshness, proactivity and healthy self-expression.
If you have been living life in the past, caught in the cycle of bad karma, you can get free of it.
Just in the way that thinking happens to you, bad karma happens to you. It is an involuntary predicament. It is a condition that you do not consciously choose.
The solution is to begin choosing what you want for yourself. Instead of being a victim of your own thinking, be an active, engaged choice maker.
Karma and the Ego
The greater part of most people's thinking is involuntary, automatic, and repetitive. It is no more than a kind of mental static and fulfills no real purpose.Strictly speaking, you don't choose to think; Thinking happens to you. The statement “I think” implies volition. It implies that you have willfully chosen to think what you think (or that you think in the first place). For most people, this is not yet the case. “I think” is just as false a statement as “I digest” or “I circulate my blood.” Digestion happens, circulation happens, thinking happens.
The voice in the head has a life of its own. Most people are at the mercy of that voice; they are possessed by their thinking and its repetitive, unconscious content. This circular, repetitive, incessant thinking is conditioned by the past, and it keeps you trapped in the past. It is as though you continue to relive the past over and over again. Do you ever wonder why the same problems challenge you throughout your life? Your unconscious mind is re-creating them, but you don't even know it.
The Eastern term for this repetitive cycle is karma. You continually bring to your life experiences that correspond to your thinking. What you reap, you will sow. What you think, you will attract. If the contents of your thoughts are locked in past events, you are destined to repeat them. This is karma. And it goes both ways.
We have heard of good karma and bad karma. Bad karma is the experiences we have that are attracted to us by our mind's obsession with all the bad things that have happened to us. Bad karma not only produces experiences that are undesirable, it is also a life lived in the past, not the present.
Good karma, on the other hand, comes from living in the present moment. When we liberate our mind from thoughts of the past and negative rumination, we are free to engage our mind in original, creative thought. We are free to be spontaneous and fun-loving. We are free to live our life now with a sense of curiosity, discovery and adventure. Far from being trapped in a cycle of negativity, we live a life of freshness, proactivity and healthy self-expression.
If you have been living life in the past, caught in the cycle of bad karma, you can get free of it.
Just in the way that thinking happens to you, bad karma happens to you. It is an involuntary predicament. It is a condition that you do not consciously choose.
The solution is to begin choosing what you want for yourself. Instead of being a victim of your own thinking, be an active, engaged choice maker.
- Choose to be more present.
- Choose to be more aware of what thoughts are circulating in your mind.
- Choose to engage your mind in original, creative thinking.
- Choose to make your mind an interesting, adventurous place.
- Choose to make good karma by using your mind for positive and productive thinking.http://www.tolleteachings.com/karma-and-the-ego.html
Winning changes nothing
“I Feel as if I’ve Been Let in on a Dirty Little Secret: Winning Changes Nothing.”
“But
I don’t feel that Wimbledon changed me. I feel, in fact, as if I’ve
been let in on a dirty little secret: winning changes nothing. Now that
I’ve won a slam, I know something that very few people on earth are
permitted to know. A win doesn’t feel as good as a loss feels bad, and
the good feeling doesn’t last as long as the bad. Not even close.”–Andre Agassi, Open: An Autobiography
Agassi is referring to the “negativity bias,” the phenomenon that means that generally, bad is stronger than good. Alas.
http://www.gretchenrubin.com/happiness_project/2014/06/i-feel-as-if-ive-been-let-in-on-a-dirty-little-secret-winning-changes-nothing/
What is happiness? Awesome story by Osho
Ordinarily, time is divided into these three tenses: past, present,
future. The division is basically wrong, unscientific. Because present
is not part of time. Past and future only are parts of time. Present is
beyond time. Present is eternity.
Past and future are part of time. Past is that which is no more, and future is that which is not yet. Both are non-existential. Present is that which is. The existential cannot be a part of the non-existential. They never meet, they never cross each other’s way. And time is mind; past accumulated is what your mind is.
What is your mind? Analyse it, look into it. What is it? – just the past experiences piled up, accumulated. Your mind is just a blanket term, an umbrella term; it simply keeps, holds, your whole past. It is nothing else. If by and by you take your past out of the bag, the bag will disappear.
If past is the only reality for the mind, then what can the mind do? One possibility is that it can go on chewing, rechewing the past again and again. That’s what you call memory, remembrance, nostalgia. You go again and again backwards; again and again to the past moments, beautiful moments, happy moments. They are few and far between, but you cling to them. You avoid the ugly moments, the miserable moments.
But this you cannot do continuously because this is futile; the activity seems to be meaningless. The mind creates a ‘meaningful’ activity – that’s what daydreaming about the future is.
The mind says, ‘Yes, past is good, but past is finished; nothing can be done about it. Something can be done about the future because it is yet to come.’ So you choose out of your past experiences those which you would like to repeat again, and you drop experiences that were very miserable, painful; that you don’t want to repeat in the future.
So your future dreaming is nothing but past modified, better arranged, more decorated, more agreeable, less painful, more pleasant. This your mind goes on doing. And this way you go on missing reality.
Meditation simply means a few moments when you are not in the mind, a few moments when you slip out of the mind. You slip in reality, in that which is. These existential moments are so tremendously ecstatic that once you taste them, you will stop daydreaming.
This is what goes on happening to each mind – you long for something, it will happen, but by the time it happens you will see that you are still discontent. Something else is creating the misery now.
This is something to be understood – that if your desire is not fulfilled, you are frustrated; if it is fulfilled, then too you are not fulfilled. That is the misery of desire. Fulfilled, you are not fulfilled. Suddenly many new things arise.
If your happiness has a condition to it, you will remain unhappy. If you cannot be happy just as you are,you are not going to be happy ever.
Unless a man is happy, simply happy, for no reason at all, unless a man is mad enough to be happy without any reason, a man is not going to be happy ever. You will always find something destroying your happiness. You will always find something missing, something absent. And that missing will become your daydream again.
And you cannot achieve a state where everything, everything is available. Even if it is possible, then too you will not be happy. Just look at the mechanism of the mind: if everything is available as you want it, suddenly you will feel bored. Now what to do?
Mind will never allow you to be happy. Whatsoever the condition, the mind will always find something to be unhappy about. Let me say it in this way: mind is a mechanism to create unhappiness. Its whole function is to create unhappiness.
If you drop the mind, suddenly you become happy… for no reason at all. Then happiness is just natural, as you breathe. For breathing, you need not be even aware. You simply go on breathing. Conscious, unconscious, awake, asleep, you go on breathing. Happiness is exactly like that.
That’s why in the East we say that happiness is your innermost nature. It needs no outside condition; it is simply there, it is you. Bliss is your natural state; it is not an achievement. If you simply get out of the mechanism of the mind, you start feeling blissful.
http://www.oshonews.com/2013/
Past and future are part of time. Past is that which is no more, and future is that which is not yet. Both are non-existential. Present is that which is. The existential cannot be a part of the non-existential. They never meet, they never cross each other’s way. And time is mind; past accumulated is what your mind is.
What is your mind? Analyse it, look into it. What is it? – just the past experiences piled up, accumulated. Your mind is just a blanket term, an umbrella term; it simply keeps, holds, your whole past. It is nothing else. If by and by you take your past out of the bag, the bag will disappear.
If past is the only reality for the mind, then what can the mind do? One possibility is that it can go on chewing, rechewing the past again and again. That’s what you call memory, remembrance, nostalgia. You go again and again backwards; again and again to the past moments, beautiful moments, happy moments. They are few and far between, but you cling to them. You avoid the ugly moments, the miserable moments.
But this you cannot do continuously because this is futile; the activity seems to be meaningless. The mind creates a ‘meaningful’ activity – that’s what daydreaming about the future is.
The mind says, ‘Yes, past is good, but past is finished; nothing can be done about it. Something can be done about the future because it is yet to come.’ So you choose out of your past experiences those which you would like to repeat again, and you drop experiences that were very miserable, painful; that you don’t want to repeat in the future.
So your future dreaming is nothing but past modified, better arranged, more decorated, more agreeable, less painful, more pleasant. This your mind goes on doing. And this way you go on missing reality.
Meditation simply means a few moments when you are not in the mind, a few moments when you slip out of the mind. You slip in reality, in that which is. These existential moments are so tremendously ecstatic that once you taste them, you will stop daydreaming.
This is what goes on happening to each mind – you long for something, it will happen, but by the time it happens you will see that you are still discontent. Something else is creating the misery now.
This is something to be understood – that if your desire is not fulfilled, you are frustrated; if it is fulfilled, then too you are not fulfilled. That is the misery of desire. Fulfilled, you are not fulfilled. Suddenly many new things arise.
If your happiness has a condition to it, you will remain unhappy. If you cannot be happy just as you are,you are not going to be happy ever.
Unless a man is happy, simply happy, for no reason at all, unless a man is mad enough to be happy without any reason, a man is not going to be happy ever. You will always find something destroying your happiness. You will always find something missing, something absent. And that missing will become your daydream again.
And you cannot achieve a state where everything, everything is available. Even if it is possible, then too you will not be happy. Just look at the mechanism of the mind: if everything is available as you want it, suddenly you will feel bored. Now what to do?
Mind will never allow you to be happy. Whatsoever the condition, the mind will always find something to be unhappy about. Let me say it in this way: mind is a mechanism to create unhappiness. Its whole function is to create unhappiness.
If you drop the mind, suddenly you become happy… for no reason at all. Then happiness is just natural, as you breathe. For breathing, you need not be even aware. You simply go on breathing. Conscious, unconscious, awake, asleep, you go on breathing. Happiness is exactly like that.
That’s why in the East we say that happiness is your innermost nature. It needs no outside condition; it is simply there, it is you. Bliss is your natural state; it is not an achievement. If you simply get out of the mechanism of the mind, you start feeling blissful.
http://www.oshonews.com/2013/
Is man a biocomputer? Heck, no.
Artificial intelligence can do scientific work, mathematical work,
calculation – great calculation and very quick and very efficiently,
because it is a machine. But a machine cannot be aware of what it is
doing. A computer cannot feel boredom, a computer cannot feel
meaninglessness, a computer cannot experience anguish. A computer cannot
start an enquiry about truth, it cannot renounce the world and become a
sannyasin, it cannot go to the mountains or to the monasteries. It
cannot conceive of anything beyond the mechanical – and all that is
significant is beyond the mechanical.
--Osho, I am that.
--Osho, I am that.
Form identity - Eckhart Tolee
Here are some ways in
which people unconsciously try to emphasize their form-identity. If you
are alert enough, you may be able to detect some unconscious patterns
within yourself: demanding recognition for something you did and getting
angry or upset if you don't get it; trying to get attention by taking
about your problems, the story of your illnesses, or making a scene;
giving your opinion when nobody has asked for it and it makes no
difference to the situation; being more concerned with how the other
person sees you than with the other person, which is to say, using other
people for egoic reflection or as ego enhancers; trying to make an
impression on others through possessions, knowledge, good looks, status,
physical strength, and so on; bringing about temporary ego inflation
through angry reaction against something or someone; taking things
personally, feeling offended; making yourself right and others wrong
through futile mental or verbal complaining; wanting to be seen, or to
appear important.
Once you have detected such a pattern within yourself, I suggest you conduct an experiment. Find out what it feels like and what happens if you let go of that pattern. Just drop it and see what happens. De-emphasizing who you are on the level of form is another way of generating consciousness. Discover the enormous power that flows through you into the world when you stop emphasizing your form identity.
Once you have detected such a pattern within yourself, I suggest you conduct an experiment. Find out what it feels like and what happens if you let go of that pattern. Just drop it and see what happens. De-emphasizing who you are on the level of form is another way of generating consciousness. Discover the enormous power that flows through you into the world when you stop emphasizing your form identity.
Past, present, future - collection of life changing articles
Yesterday I spoke to my husband and to S about my pain body; how I lived in eternal blame, in anxiety, in fear. So much that the moment I step out of home, I become anxious. My heart beat races. I find meeting new people very painful and frightening. I am frightened to take up new projects - what if I fail? What if I don't do a good job? What will others think of me? I have this image that I am very careless and I know it is genetically passed on. People around always talk about the uselessness and worthlessness of a person. Somewhere it has seeped deep into me. I am afraid of being labelled as dull, useless or non-intelligent or lazy or careless. I have made a lot of attempts to be cautious and careful, not to make mistakes, not to give others an opportunity to blame me. I am afriad to learn new things or use new gadgets. I am afraid I will end up dropping the mobile or appearing foolish in front of others. Also, I am afraid of washing glasses. I am always afraid that I will drop it and my MIL will become upset. In that fear itself I keep dropping glasses. Since I joined Hughes and had bad blameful colleagues, I have grown a negative attitude to myself. I think I am an average person and I have to work hard. If I fail, I get extremely disappointed. I have created a huge memory bank of pain - mostly at work. So, that haunts me everytime. I wonder if I will ever get a job after almost 3 years of being at home. I wonder if I can pick up new things. I wonder if I will ever be in a good job and do a good work. I wonder if my life will turn out useless. All these worries play day in and day out. My body is always in a state of trauma. Even in sleep I can feel my body traumatized.
And now that both of us are jobless, I feel what will others think. Will they think we are a stupid, useless couple? Will they think of my husband as a failure? I cannot bear that. I always like people to think very high of him - as a very caring and extremely intelligent guy. What will happen to that image that I have projected now? Will they think he's a weak person? Along with the fact that it has become extremely hard to get a job, these thoughts also plague me. So, overall there is no possibility of being in peace. I am a failure.. and now maybe even he is a failure. We're almost bankrupt. I have no great employable skills. I have emotional issues. I slip into depression too often. Even if I get a job my emotions will ensure that I cannot give it a 100%. Too much for me to bear. So, frequent collapses happen.
Yesterday when I re-read Eckhart Tolle's take on the pain body and how we energise it with negative emotions, I understood what I have been doing with myself. Also his emphasis on being in the present, led me to do some research on the past, thoughts and emotions, the power of now, etc.
I also read Osho's words on being present and somehow all of a sudden they started making more sense. I think I had a switch of consciousness. Come saturday, June 21st and I was quite a happy person. I thought that I first needed to fully accept the situation. I then needed to work on my pain body. Whatever be the monetary cost, I needed to get myself out of this on-off depression. That was the primary goal. Job or no job - being happy, being present and mindful became the goals.
I kept reading the following links and also read A Wise Heart and became mindful. I did all the mindfulness exercises prescribed. The moment I let go of my goals, I became free. The moment I accepted that we may be jobless for sometime (given today's kind of work and repetitive recessions) I could forgive us for being jobless. The moment I accepted that I will ask for help from family to help us stay afloat - my financial worries were resolved. I also made up that I will not care about my image or brood too much about being stupid. I will just be myself. I will accept whatever people think of me. I will try not to judge others.. I made up a few rules.. and it was all possible because somewhere I had hit rock bottom. I was bottoming out. I was recovering. All the seeds I'd planted, were bearing fruits. I do think my consciousness shifted to a different level this summer solstice day. And the last 2 days have been good. Maybe I did have days like this earlier but I was unconscious. But now, I am conscious. I can feel free and light in my heart. A huge burden has been lifted. I will try to come to a stable state first and then think about my goals.
I realized that I can find happiness in my current situation and if I do that, I can definitely find happiness when our situation improves. I realized that being jobless is just that.. the suffering accompanied does not have to follow. For all you know, your thoughts are not even yours. Look at Eckhart's last video and you'll know about collective mind's thoughts. It's just thoughts circulating in the same negative frequency that you're emitting. So, no need to take these thoughts seriously.
Also, I realized that all the jobs that we do, which we're so proud of, mostly are just to keep the money rolling.. so that everyone can make some money. There's no purpose or meaning in most of the jobs. Very few jobs really uplift humanity and improve human conditions. Let's take an iPhone. Does it really solve any true purpose? It just solves the ego of the creator and the user. And in between so much money gets transacted. It's good. Coz it keeps people occupied. It feeds our families. It makes us feel respected, acknowledged, etc. It makes us feel proud about ourself.
So, money and job - is not a big deal. It's good to have but not so bad in case you don't have it for a while.
So, I do guess I hit some rockbottom which took me up. I may fall down again yet my improved consciousness will not let me fall to earlier levels (I hope). After a long long time, I feel easy.. I feel free.. I feel I can breathe - that the world is not such a bad place after all. I thank everyone who helped me in this journey.
Below is a collection of articles pertaining to these, which will help us build a correct picture of how we came to be, why we behave the way we behave and what is the way out.
http://blog.ishafoundation.org/yoga-meditation/demystifying-yoga/get-a-handle-on-your-karma/
http://blog.ishafoundation.org/sadhguru/masters-words/change-your-thinking/
http://blog.ishafoundation.org/sadhguru/masters-words/the-mechanics-of-human-suffering/
http://discovermagazine.com/2013/may/13-grandmas-experiences-leave-epigenetic-mark-on-your-genes#.Ub8xcfYY3R4
Lessons:
You are a product of the past memories. The way you think and emote is controlled by all your past incarnations - from a single celled embryo to your father and mother and their behaviour, resilience and depression patterns. If this generation is going to behave, act, live and experience life just the way the previous generation did, this is a wasted generation. This generation should experience life in a way the previous generation never even imagined. It can be taken to the next level of experience.
You are a recycled version of your ancestors. You look like them. You start thinking like them. You act like them. You are a minor variation of your ancestors. That's it. You are doing nothing new. You are adding to their past and that will get passed on to the future.
Psychological reality (living from your mind and thoughts) and existential reality (just using this body to be alive) are different. To "just be" is existential reality.. accepting yourself and being.
All the grand ideas you have about yourself, all the grand ideas you have about your person are very false. This is why we told you, it is all maya, because the way things are playing within you is such that almost everything you do is controlled by past information. This is very powerful.
If a little distance comes between you and your body, between you and your mind, then whatever the karma, it has no impact on you.
So many things that you do so easily, something as simple as walking on two legs for example, is possible not just because of your bone and muscle, but because of the memory that you carry. The body remembers how to walk. If you forget, you cannot walk.
If you just see “What I think and feel is not so important,” if you bring this distance between you and your thought and emotion, they will become a conscious process. Once your thought and emotion become a conscious process, you are free from the karmic process in many ways. Right now, both your thought and your emotion are a compulsive process. Once it is a conscious process, suddenly you are empowered in such a way that people think you are super human. This is not superhuman, it is just being human.
Today morning, did you see that the sun came up wonderfully well? The flowers blossomed, no stars fell down, the galaxies are functioning very well. Everything is in order. The whole cosmos is happening wonderfully well today but just a worm of a thought worming through your head makes you believe it is a bad day today. Suffering is happening essentially because most human beings have lost perspective as to what this life is about. Their psychological process has become far larger than the existential process, or to put it bluntly, you’ve made your petty creation far more important than the Creator’s creation. That is the fundamental source of all suffering. We have missed the complete sense of what it means to be alive here.
Life is about the creation that is here, knowing it absolutely and experiencing it the way it is; not distorting it the way you want. If you want to move into existential reality, to put it very simply, you just have to see that what you think is not important, what you feel is not important. What you think has nothing to do with reality. It has no great relevance to life. It is just chattering away with nonsense that you have gathered from somewhere else.
Osho on being present - here and now:
http://spotitup.blogspot.in/2012/08/osho-quotes-on-moment-to-moment-living.html
http://www.oshonews.com/2013/
A buddha is one who lives moment to moment, who does not live in the past, who does not live in the future, who lives here now. Buddhahood is a quality of being present here and now — and buddhahood is not a goal, you need not wait, you can become just here and now.
Freedom means dying moment to moment to the past and living the present.
Don't live through your past experiences:
The past makes your life convenient, comfortable, because the past is known; you are familiar with it, you are very efficient with it. But life is never past, it is always present. The past is that which is no more, and life is that which is. Life is always now, here, and all your knowledge comes from the past. Trying to live the present through the past is the way of the coward;
Living in intensity and totality in the moment creates a direction for your life:
You cannot decide direction, you can only live this moment that is available to you. By living it, direction arises.
Dissolve your ego (thoughts):
If one lives passionately, the ego dissolves. It is like when a dancer goes on and on dancing: a moment comes when only the dance remains and the dancer disappears.
Everything simply is, for no reason at all. Everything simply is utterly absurd. If this is understood, then where is the hurry, and for what? Then you start living moment to moment. live it in its totality. And don’t try to sacrifice it for any other moment that is going to come in the future. Live it for its own sake.
Don't care about your image or ideologies, live however you are:
You are simply living moment to moment, not according to some future idea of yourself, but according to your reality that is herenow. To live with the reality, moment to moment, is to be sane. To live with the idea is to be insane.
The unconscious man needs a certain idea of ‘I’, otherwise he will be without a centre. He does not know his real centre. He has to invent a false centre so that he can at least function in the world, otherwise his functioning will become impossible. He needs a certain idea of ‘I’. So because we don’t know the real ‘I’ we substitute it by a false ‘I’ – something invented, composite.
Don't try to be perfect, just try to be real, total and relaxed:
Perfectionism is a sort of madness; only mad people try to be perfectionists. Sane people never try to be perfectionists.
Learn stillness, reflect life:
Learn sitting silently — become a mirror. Silence makes a mirror out of your consciousness, and then you function moment to moment. You reflect life.
Nobody, not even you yourself, knows what is going to happen in the next moment. You start living moment to moment. Stop planning.
If you know already where you are going you are dead. Then life runs in a mechanical way. A life should be a flow from the known towards the unknown.
You are nothing but your past. What are you? Just a collection of the past. Drop your past, and you are not. The ego is nothing but a collective name for your whole past;
There is no goal of life, for the simple reason that life is its own goal.
Collect yourself from every dimension and direction. Be concentrated herenow, and in that single moment you will be able to know life in its eternity.
Unless a man is happy, simply happy, for no reason at all, unless a man is mad enough to be happy without any reason, a man is not going to be happy ever. You will always find something destroying your happiness. You will always find something missing, something absent.
Eckhart Tolle:
http://www.eckharttolle.com/article/The-Power-Of-Now-Spirituality-And-The-End-Of-Suffering
http://www.eckharttolle.com/article/Awakening-Your-Spiritual-Lifes-Purpose
http://blog.ishafoundation.org/sadhguru/spot/beyond-meaning/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KopmSpe33Eg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWFVi1cPUZo
To make money, to gather knowledge, to learn a new skill, to explore new territory, even to get from A to B – for all these things you need time. For almost everything you need time, except for one thing: to embrace the present moment.
Many people live with a tormentor in their head that continuously attacks and punishes them and drains them of vital energy.
I would say about 80 to 90 percent of most people’s thinking is not only repetitive and useless, but because of its dysfunctional and often negative nature, much of it is also harmful.
It causes a serious leakage of vital energy. This kind of compulsive thinking is actually an addiction. What characterizes an addiction? Quite simply this: you no longer feel that you have the choice to stop. It seems stronger than you. It also gives you a false sense of pleasure, pleasure that invariably turns into pain.
Thinking, or more precisely identification with thinking, gives rise to and maintains the ego.
Negative states of mind, such as anger, resentment, fear, envy, and jealousy, are products of the ego.
It needs enemies because it defines its identity through separation.
Emotion arises at the place where mind and body meet. It is the body’s reaction to your mind — or you might say, a reflection of your mind in the body. For example, an attack thought or a hostile thought will create a buildup of energy in the body that we call anger. The body is getting ready to fight. The thought that you are being threatened, physically or psychologically, causes the body to contract, and this is the physical side of what we call fear. Research has shown that strong emotions even cause changes in the biochemistry of the body.
The pain-body is my term for the accumulation of old emotional pain that almost all people carry in their energy field. I see it as a semi-autonomous psychic entity. It consists of negative emotions that were not faced, accepted, and then let go in the moment they arose. These negative emotions leave a residue of emotional pain, which is stored in the cells of the body. The pain-body has a dormant stage and an active stage. Periodically it becomes activated, and when it does, it seeks more suffering to feed on. If you are not absolutely present, it takes over your mind and feeds on negative thinking as well as negative experiences such as drama in relationships. This is how it has been perpetuating itself throughout human history. Another way of describing the pain-body is this: the addiction to unhappiness. Every negative thought has a similar frequency to the pain-body and so feeds it. It cannot feed on positive thoughts. We release it by cutting the link between the pain-body and our thought processes, so that we no longer feed the pain-body with our thinking.
Every pain-body contains a great deal of fear, since fear is the primordial negative emotion. How do we deal with that? Here again, you recognize it for what it is: the pain-body, an accumulation of old emotion. Once you recognize it, it cannot take over your mind, feed on your negative thoughts, and control your internal dialogue as well as what you say and do. Once the pain-body has come up, don't fight or resist it. It is part of the "isness" of the present moment with which you always need to be in inner alignment. So you allow it to be there. If you don't feed it anymore, it loses its energy charge and the negative emotion undergoes transmutation.
"The pain-body consists of trapped life-energy that has split off from your total energy field and has temporarily become autonomous through the unnatural process of mind identification"
So you see and judge the present through the eyes of the past and get a totally distorted view of it.
By dwelling mentally on the situation, event, or person that is the perceived cause of the emotion, the thought feeds energy to the emotion, which in turn energizes the thought pattern, and so on.
Usually, the future is a replica of the past. Superficial changes are possible, but real transformation is rare and depends upon whether you can become present enough to dissolve the past by accessing the power of the Now. Many people still live trapped in old dysfunctional mind-sets that continuously re-create the same nightmarish reality.
If your mind carries a heavy burden of past, you will experience more of the same. The past perpetuates itself through lack of presence. The quality of your consciousness at this moment is what shapes the future.
Look closely and you will find that your thinking and behavior are designed to keep the pain going, for yourself and others.
To be identified with your mind is to be trapped in time: the compulsion to live almost exclusively through memory and anticipation. This creates an endless preoccupation with past and future and an unwillingness to honor and acknowledge the present moment and allow it to be. The compulsion arises because the past gives you an identity and the future holds the promise of salvation, of fulfillment in whatever form. Both are illusions.
This is my secret,” he said. “I don’t mind what happens.
Does it matter whether we achieve our outer purpose, whether we succeed or fail in the world? It will matter to you as long as you haven't realized your inner purpose. After that, the outer purpose is just a game that you may continue to play simply because you enjoy it. It is also possible to fail completely in your outer purpose and at the same time totally succeed in your inner purpose. Or the other way around, which is actually more common: outer riches and inner poverty, or to "gain the world and lose your soul," as Jesus puts it. Ultimately, of course, every outer purpose is doomed to "fail" sooner or later, simply because it is subject to the law of impermanence of all things. The sooner you realize that your outer purpose cannot give you lasting fulfillment, the better. When you have seen the limitations of your outer purpose, you give up your unrealistic expectation that it should make you happy, and you make it subservient to your inner purpose.
The mind unconsciously loves problems because they give you an identity of sorts.
The human mind loves its problems.
The ego does not want an end to its “problems” because they are part of its identity. If no one will listen to my sad story, I can tell it to myself in my head, over and over, and feel sorry for myself, and so have an identity as someone who is being treated unfairly by life or other people, fate or God. It gives definition to my self-image, makes me into someone, and that is all that matters to the ego.
Resentment is the emotion that goes with complaining and the mental labeling of people and adds even more energy to the ego. Resentment means to feel bitter, indignant, aggrieved, or offended. You resent other people’s greed, their dishonesty, their lack of integrity, what they are doing, what they did in the past, what they said, what they failed to do, what they should or shouldn’t have done. The ego loves it. Instead of overlooking unconsciousness in others, you make it into their identity. Who is doing that? The unconsciousness in you, the ego. Sometimes the “fault” that you perceive in another isn’t even there. It is a total misinterpretation, a projection by a mind conditioned to see enemies and to make itself right or superior. At other times, the fault may be there, but by focusing on it, sometimes to the exclusion of everything else, you amplify it. And what you react to in another, you strengthen in yourself.
As soon as something is perceived, it is named, interpreted, compared with something else, liked, disliked, or called good or bad by the phantom self, the ego.
If you can be absolutely comfortable with not knowing who you are, then what's left is who you are -- the Being behind the human, a field of pure potentiality rather than something that is already defined.
When you fully accept that you don't know, you actually enter a state of peace and clarity that is closer to who you truly are than thought could ever be. Defining yourself through thought is limiting yourself.
Be a nobody:
If you are content with being nobody in particular, content not to stand out, you align yourself with the power of the universe. What looks like weakness to the ego is in fact the only true strength.
Nonresistance, nonjudgment, and nonattachment are the three aspects of true freedom and enlightened living.
Accept — then act. Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it.
Not what you do, but how you do what you do determines whether you are fulfilling your destiny.
Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at this moment.
You are awareness, disguised as a person.
When you no longer perceive the world as hostile, there is no more fear, and when there is no more fear, you think, speak and act differently.
The psychological condition of fear is divorced from any concrete and true immediate danger. It comes in many forms: unease, worry, anxiety, nervousness, tension, dread, phobia, and so on. This kind of psychological fear is always of something that might happen, not of something that is happening now.
Consciousness is a vast ocean and thinking is the
waves & ripples on the surface of the ocean. Every wave & ripple has a very short lived life - it is very fleeting
Do not identify with your thoughts - continued identification with the stream of thinking leads to a very serious dysfunction in ones sense of identity...
The ego says, ‘I shouldn’t have to suffer,’ and that thought makes you suffer so much more. It is a distortion of the truth, which is always paradoxical. The truth is that you need to say yes to suffering before you can transcend it.
Thinking is only a small aspect of consciousness. Thought cannot exist without consciousness, but consciousness does not need thought.
Be the silent watcher of your thoughts and behavior. You are beneath the thinker. You are the stillness beneath the mental noise. You are the love and joy beneath the pain.
You don't have a life. Anything you have, can be lost. You ARE life.
In essence, you are neither inferior nor superior to anyone. True self-esteem and true humility arise out of that realization. In the eyes of the ego, self-esteem and humility are contradictory. In truth, they are one and the same.
When someone criticizes you, blames you, or calls you names, instead of immediately retaliating or defending yourself – do nothing. Allow the self-image to remain diminished and become alert to what that feels like deep inside you. For a few seconds, it may feel uncomfortable, as if you had shrunk in size. Then you may sense an inner speciousness that feels intensely alive. You haven't been diminished at all. In fact, you have expanded. You may then come to an amazing realization: When you are seemingly diminished in some way and remain in absolute non-reaction, not just externally but also internally, you realize that nothing real has been diminished, that through becoming “less,” you become more. When you no longer defend or attempt to strengthen the form of yourself, you step out of identification with form, with mental self-image. Through becoming less (in the ego’s perception), you in fact undergo an expansion and make room for Being to come forward. True power, who you are beyond form, can then shine through the apparently weakened form.
Don't look for peace. Don't look for any other state than the one you are in now; otherwise, you will set up inner conflict and unconscious resistance.
The philosopher Descartes believed he had found the most fundamental truth when he made his famous statement: "I think, therefore I am." He had, in fact, given expression to the most basic error: to equate thinking with Being and identity with thinking. The compulsive thinker, which means almost everyone, lives in a state of apparent separateness, in an insanely complex world of continuous problems and conflict, a world that reflects the ever-increasing fragmentation of the mind.
Fulfill me, make me happy, make me feel safe, tell me who I am. The world cannot give you those things, and when you no longer have such expectations, all self created suffering comes to an end.
When faced with a radical crisis, when the old way of being in the world, of interacting with each other and with the realm of nature doesn't work anymore, when survival is threatened by seemingly insurmountable problems, an individual life-form -- or a species -- will either die or become extinct or rise above the limitations of its condition through an evolutionary leap.
Whatever you do takes time, and yet it is always now. So while your inner
purpose is to negate time, your outer purpose necessarily involves future and
so could not exist without time. But it is always secondary.
Whenever you become anxious or stressed, outer purpose has taken over, and you lost sight
of your inner purpose. You have forgotten that your state of consciousness is
primary, all else secondary.
On a deeper level you are already complete. When you realize that, there is a joyous energy behind what you do.
Once you have identified with some form of negativity, you do not want to let it go, and on a deeply unconscious level, you do not want positive change. It would threaten your identity as a depressed, angry or hard-done by person. You will then ignore, deny or sabotage the positive in your life. This is a common phenomenon.
Not to be able to stop thinking is a dreadful affliction, but we don't realize this because almost everyone is suffering from it, so it is considered normal. This incessant mental noise prevents you from finding that realm of inner stillness that is inseparable from Being.
The moment you start watching the thinker, a higher level of consciousness becomes activated. You then begin to realize that there is a vast realm of intelligence beyond thought, that thought is only a tiny aspect of that intelligence.
Living up to an image that you have of yourself or that other people have of you is inauthentic living.
If you get the inside right, the outside will fall into place. Primary reality is within;
When your inner dependency on form is gone, the general conditions of your life, the outer forms, tend to improve greatly. Things, people, or conditions that you thought you needed for your happiness now come to you with no struggle or effort on your part, and you are free to enjoy and appreciate them - while they last. All those things, of course, will still pass away, cycles will come and go, but with dependency gone there is no fear of loss anymore. Life flows with ease.
As soon as you honor the present moment, all unhappiness and struggle dissolve, and life begins to flow with joy and ease.
All negativity is caused by an accumulation of psychological time and denial of the present. Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry - all forms of fear - are caused by too much future, and
not enough presence. Guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, and all forms
of nonforgiveness are caused by too much past, and not enough presence.
Some changes look negative on the surface but you will soon realize that space is being created in your life for something new to emerge.
Give up defining yourself - to yourself or to others. You won't die. You will come to life. And don't be concerned with how others define you. When they define you, they are limiting themselves, so it's their problem. Whenever you interact with people, don't be there primarily as a function or a role, but as the field of conscious Presence. You can only lose something that you have, but you cannot lose something that you are.
One thing we can do is to notice the little things all around us, paying attention to details such as the birds in the trees and the flowers in the garden or the park—just notice the beauty everywhere, even the smallest things. To notice seemingly insignificant things requires alertness. That alertness is the key. It is the unconditioned. It is consciousness itself. Another helpful practice is to watch the breath, and breathe consciously. If we are paying attention to our breath, we cannot be thinking of anything else at the same time.
In fact, breath, because it has no form as such, has traditionally been equated with spirit, the formless One Life.
The desire to become a better person is usually to do with wanting to improve how I feel about myself, how I see myself, or how I am seen by others. It is to do with mental image-making, that is to say, ego. Spiritual realization is the discovery that you don't need to add anything to yourself in order to be yourself fully. You don't need to try to become good. Just allow the goodness in you to come out.
"A true spiritual teacher does not have anything to teach in the conventional sense of the word, does not have anything to give or add to you, such as new information, beliefs, or rules of conduct. The only function of such a teacher is to help you remove that which separates you from the truth ... The words are no more than signposts."
And now that both of us are jobless, I feel what will others think. Will they think we are a stupid, useless couple? Will they think of my husband as a failure? I cannot bear that. I always like people to think very high of him - as a very caring and extremely intelligent guy. What will happen to that image that I have projected now? Will they think he's a weak person? Along with the fact that it has become extremely hard to get a job, these thoughts also plague me. So, overall there is no possibility of being in peace. I am a failure.. and now maybe even he is a failure. We're almost bankrupt. I have no great employable skills. I have emotional issues. I slip into depression too often. Even if I get a job my emotions will ensure that I cannot give it a 100%. Too much for me to bear. So, frequent collapses happen.
Yesterday when I re-read Eckhart Tolle's take on the pain body and how we energise it with negative emotions, I understood what I have been doing with myself. Also his emphasis on being in the present, led me to do some research on the past, thoughts and emotions, the power of now, etc.
I also read Osho's words on being present and somehow all of a sudden they started making more sense. I think I had a switch of consciousness. Come saturday, June 21st and I was quite a happy person. I thought that I first needed to fully accept the situation. I then needed to work on my pain body. Whatever be the monetary cost, I needed to get myself out of this on-off depression. That was the primary goal. Job or no job - being happy, being present and mindful became the goals.
I kept reading the following links and also read A Wise Heart and became mindful. I did all the mindfulness exercises prescribed. The moment I let go of my goals, I became free. The moment I accepted that we may be jobless for sometime (given today's kind of work and repetitive recessions) I could forgive us for being jobless. The moment I accepted that I will ask for help from family to help us stay afloat - my financial worries were resolved. I also made up that I will not care about my image or brood too much about being stupid. I will just be myself. I will accept whatever people think of me. I will try not to judge others.. I made up a few rules.. and it was all possible because somewhere I had hit rock bottom. I was bottoming out. I was recovering. All the seeds I'd planted, were bearing fruits. I do think my consciousness shifted to a different level this summer solstice day. And the last 2 days have been good. Maybe I did have days like this earlier but I was unconscious. But now, I am conscious. I can feel free and light in my heart. A huge burden has been lifted. I will try to come to a stable state first and then think about my goals.
I realized that I can find happiness in my current situation and if I do that, I can definitely find happiness when our situation improves. I realized that being jobless is just that.. the suffering accompanied does not have to follow. For all you know, your thoughts are not even yours. Look at Eckhart's last video and you'll know about collective mind's thoughts. It's just thoughts circulating in the same negative frequency that you're emitting. So, no need to take these thoughts seriously.
Also, I realized that all the jobs that we do, which we're so proud of, mostly are just to keep the money rolling.. so that everyone can make some money. There's no purpose or meaning in most of the jobs. Very few jobs really uplift humanity and improve human conditions. Let's take an iPhone. Does it really solve any true purpose? It just solves the ego of the creator and the user. And in between so much money gets transacted. It's good. Coz it keeps people occupied. It feeds our families. It makes us feel respected, acknowledged, etc. It makes us feel proud about ourself.
So, money and job - is not a big deal. It's good to have but not so bad in case you don't have it for a while.
So, I do guess I hit some rockbottom which took me up. I may fall down again yet my improved consciousness will not let me fall to earlier levels (I hope). After a long long time, I feel easy.. I feel free.. I feel I can breathe - that the world is not such a bad place after all. I thank everyone who helped me in this journey.
Below is a collection of articles pertaining to these, which will help us build a correct picture of how we came to be, why we behave the way we behave and what is the way out.
http://blog.ishafoundation.org/yoga-meditation/demystifying-yoga/get-a-handle-on-your-karma/
http://blog.ishafoundation.org/sadhguru/masters-words/change-your-thinking/
http://blog.ishafoundation.org/sadhguru/masters-words/the-mechanics-of-human-suffering/
http://discovermagazine.com/2013/may/13-grandmas-experiences-leave-epigenetic-mark-on-your-genes#.Ub8xcfYY3R4
Lessons:
You are a product of the past memories. The way you think and emote is controlled by all your past incarnations - from a single celled embryo to your father and mother and their behaviour, resilience and depression patterns. If this generation is going to behave, act, live and experience life just the way the previous generation did, this is a wasted generation. This generation should experience life in a way the previous generation never even imagined. It can be taken to the next level of experience.
You are a recycled version of your ancestors. You look like them. You start thinking like them. You act like them. You are a minor variation of your ancestors. That's it. You are doing nothing new. You are adding to their past and that will get passed on to the future.
Psychological reality (living from your mind and thoughts) and existential reality (just using this body to be alive) are different. To "just be" is existential reality.. accepting yourself and being.
All the grand ideas you have about yourself, all the grand ideas you have about your person are very false. This is why we told you, it is all maya, because the way things are playing within you is such that almost everything you do is controlled by past information. This is very powerful.
If a little distance comes between you and your body, between you and your mind, then whatever the karma, it has no impact on you.
So many things that you do so easily, something as simple as walking on two legs for example, is possible not just because of your bone and muscle, but because of the memory that you carry. The body remembers how to walk. If you forget, you cannot walk.
If you just see “What I think and feel is not so important,” if you bring this distance between you and your thought and emotion, they will become a conscious process. Once your thought and emotion become a conscious process, you are free from the karmic process in many ways. Right now, both your thought and your emotion are a compulsive process. Once it is a conscious process, suddenly you are empowered in such a way that people think you are super human. This is not superhuman, it is just being human.
Today morning, did you see that the sun came up wonderfully well? The flowers blossomed, no stars fell down, the galaxies are functioning very well. Everything is in order. The whole cosmos is happening wonderfully well today but just a worm of a thought worming through your head makes you believe it is a bad day today. Suffering is happening essentially because most human beings have lost perspective as to what this life is about. Their psychological process has become far larger than the existential process, or to put it bluntly, you’ve made your petty creation far more important than the Creator’s creation. That is the fundamental source of all suffering. We have missed the complete sense of what it means to be alive here.
Life is about the creation that is here, knowing it absolutely and experiencing it the way it is; not distorting it the way you want. If you want to move into existential reality, to put it very simply, you just have to see that what you think is not important, what you feel is not important. What you think has nothing to do with reality. It has no great relevance to life. It is just chattering away with nonsense that you have gathered from somewhere else.
Osho on being present - here and now:
http://spotitup.blogspot.in/2012/08/osho-quotes-on-moment-to-moment-living.html
http://www.oshonews.com/2013/
A buddha is one who lives moment to moment, who does not live in the past, who does not live in the future, who lives here now. Buddhahood is a quality of being present here and now — and buddhahood is not a goal, you need not wait, you can become just here and now.
Freedom means dying moment to moment to the past and living the present.
Don't live through your past experiences:
The past makes your life convenient, comfortable, because the past is known; you are familiar with it, you are very efficient with it. But life is never past, it is always present. The past is that which is no more, and life is that which is. Life is always now, here, and all your knowledge comes from the past. Trying to live the present through the past is the way of the coward;
Living in intensity and totality in the moment creates a direction for your life:
You cannot decide direction, you can only live this moment that is available to you. By living it, direction arises.
Dissolve your ego (thoughts):
If one lives passionately, the ego dissolves. It is like when a dancer goes on and on dancing: a moment comes when only the dance remains and the dancer disappears.
Everything simply is, for no reason at all. Everything simply is utterly absurd. If this is understood, then where is the hurry, and for what? Then you start living moment to moment. live it in its totality. And don’t try to sacrifice it for any other moment that is going to come in the future. Live it for its own sake.
Don't care about your image or ideologies, live however you are:
You are simply living moment to moment, not according to some future idea of yourself, but according to your reality that is herenow. To live with the reality, moment to moment, is to be sane. To live with the idea is to be insane.
The unconscious man needs a certain idea of ‘I’, otherwise he will be without a centre. He does not know his real centre. He has to invent a false centre so that he can at least function in the world, otherwise his functioning will become impossible. He needs a certain idea of ‘I’. So because we don’t know the real ‘I’ we substitute it by a false ‘I’ – something invented, composite.
Don't try to be perfect, just try to be real, total and relaxed:
Perfectionism is a sort of madness; only mad people try to be perfectionists. Sane people never try to be perfectionists.
Learn stillness, reflect life:
Learn sitting silently — become a mirror. Silence makes a mirror out of your consciousness, and then you function moment to moment. You reflect life.
Nobody, not even you yourself, knows what is going to happen in the next moment. You start living moment to moment. Stop planning.
If you know already where you are going you are dead. Then life runs in a mechanical way. A life should be a flow from the known towards the unknown.
You are nothing but your past. What are you? Just a collection of the past. Drop your past, and you are not. The ego is nothing but a collective name for your whole past;
There is no goal of life, for the simple reason that life is its own goal.
Collect yourself from every dimension and direction. Be concentrated herenow, and in that single moment you will be able to know life in its eternity.
Unless a man is happy, simply happy, for no reason at all, unless a man is mad enough to be happy without any reason, a man is not going to be happy ever. You will always find something destroying your happiness. You will always find something missing, something absent.
Eckhart Tolle:
http://www.eckharttolle.com/article/The-Power-Of-Now-Spirituality-And-The-End-Of-Suffering
http://www.eckharttolle.com/article/Awakening-Your-Spiritual-Lifes-Purpose
http://blog.ishafoundation.org/sadhguru/spot/beyond-meaning/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KopmSpe33Eg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWFVi1cPUZo
To make money, to gather knowledge, to learn a new skill, to explore new territory, even to get from A to B – for all these things you need time. For almost everything you need time, except for one thing: to embrace the present moment.
Many people live with a tormentor in their head that continuously attacks and punishes them and drains them of vital energy.
I would say about 80 to 90 percent of most people’s thinking is not only repetitive and useless, but because of its dysfunctional and often negative nature, much of it is also harmful.
It causes a serious leakage of vital energy. This kind of compulsive thinking is actually an addiction. What characterizes an addiction? Quite simply this: you no longer feel that you have the choice to stop. It seems stronger than you. It also gives you a false sense of pleasure, pleasure that invariably turns into pain.
Thinking, or more precisely identification with thinking, gives rise to and maintains the ego.
Negative states of mind, such as anger, resentment, fear, envy, and jealousy, are products of the ego.
It needs enemies because it defines its identity through separation.
Emotion arises at the place where mind and body meet. It is the body’s reaction to your mind — or you might say, a reflection of your mind in the body. For example, an attack thought or a hostile thought will create a buildup of energy in the body that we call anger. The body is getting ready to fight. The thought that you are being threatened, physically or psychologically, causes the body to contract, and this is the physical side of what we call fear. Research has shown that strong emotions even cause changes in the biochemistry of the body.
The pain-body is my term for the accumulation of old emotional pain that almost all people carry in their energy field. I see it as a semi-autonomous psychic entity. It consists of negative emotions that were not faced, accepted, and then let go in the moment they arose. These negative emotions leave a residue of emotional pain, which is stored in the cells of the body. The pain-body has a dormant stage and an active stage. Periodically it becomes activated, and when it does, it seeks more suffering to feed on. If you are not absolutely present, it takes over your mind and feeds on negative thinking as well as negative experiences such as drama in relationships. This is how it has been perpetuating itself throughout human history. Another way of describing the pain-body is this: the addiction to unhappiness. Every negative thought has a similar frequency to the pain-body and so feeds it. It cannot feed on positive thoughts. We release it by cutting the link between the pain-body and our thought processes, so that we no longer feed the pain-body with our thinking.
Every pain-body contains a great deal of fear, since fear is the primordial negative emotion. How do we deal with that? Here again, you recognize it for what it is: the pain-body, an accumulation of old emotion. Once you recognize it, it cannot take over your mind, feed on your negative thoughts, and control your internal dialogue as well as what you say and do. Once the pain-body has come up, don't fight or resist it. It is part of the "isness" of the present moment with which you always need to be in inner alignment. So you allow it to be there. If you don't feed it anymore, it loses its energy charge and the negative emotion undergoes transmutation.
"The pain-body consists of trapped life-energy that has split off from your total energy field and has temporarily become autonomous through the unnatural process of mind identification"
So you see and judge the present through the eyes of the past and get a totally distorted view of it.
By dwelling mentally on the situation, event, or person that is the perceived cause of the emotion, the thought feeds energy to the emotion, which in turn energizes the thought pattern, and so on.
Usually, the future is a replica of the past. Superficial changes are possible, but real transformation is rare and depends upon whether you can become present enough to dissolve the past by accessing the power of the Now. Many people still live trapped in old dysfunctional mind-sets that continuously re-create the same nightmarish reality.
If your mind carries a heavy burden of past, you will experience more of the same. The past perpetuates itself through lack of presence. The quality of your consciousness at this moment is what shapes the future.
Look closely and you will find that your thinking and behavior are designed to keep the pain going, for yourself and others.
To be identified with your mind is to be trapped in time: the compulsion to live almost exclusively through memory and anticipation. This creates an endless preoccupation with past and future and an unwillingness to honor and acknowledge the present moment and allow it to be. The compulsion arises because the past gives you an identity and the future holds the promise of salvation, of fulfillment in whatever form. Both are illusions.
This is my secret,” he said. “I don’t mind what happens.
Does it matter whether we achieve our outer purpose, whether we succeed or fail in the world? It will matter to you as long as you haven't realized your inner purpose. After that, the outer purpose is just a game that you may continue to play simply because you enjoy it. It is also possible to fail completely in your outer purpose and at the same time totally succeed in your inner purpose. Or the other way around, which is actually more common: outer riches and inner poverty, or to "gain the world and lose your soul," as Jesus puts it. Ultimately, of course, every outer purpose is doomed to "fail" sooner or later, simply because it is subject to the law of impermanence of all things. The sooner you realize that your outer purpose cannot give you lasting fulfillment, the better. When you have seen the limitations of your outer purpose, you give up your unrealistic expectation that it should make you happy, and you make it subservient to your inner purpose.
The mind unconsciously loves problems because they give you an identity of sorts.
The human mind loves its problems.
The ego does not want an end to its “problems” because they are part of its identity. If no one will listen to my sad story, I can tell it to myself in my head, over and over, and feel sorry for myself, and so have an identity as someone who is being treated unfairly by life or other people, fate or God. It gives definition to my self-image, makes me into someone, and that is all that matters to the ego.
Resentment is the emotion that goes with complaining and the mental labeling of people and adds even more energy to the ego. Resentment means to feel bitter, indignant, aggrieved, or offended. You resent other people’s greed, their dishonesty, their lack of integrity, what they are doing, what they did in the past, what they said, what they failed to do, what they should or shouldn’t have done. The ego loves it. Instead of overlooking unconsciousness in others, you make it into their identity. Who is doing that? The unconsciousness in you, the ego. Sometimes the “fault” that you perceive in another isn’t even there. It is a total misinterpretation, a projection by a mind conditioned to see enemies and to make itself right or superior. At other times, the fault may be there, but by focusing on it, sometimes to the exclusion of everything else, you amplify it. And what you react to in another, you strengthen in yourself.
As soon as something is perceived, it is named, interpreted, compared with something else, liked, disliked, or called good or bad by the phantom self, the ego.
If you can be absolutely comfortable with not knowing who you are, then what's left is who you are -- the Being behind the human, a field of pure potentiality rather than something that is already defined.
When you fully accept that you don't know, you actually enter a state of peace and clarity that is closer to who you truly are than thought could ever be. Defining yourself through thought is limiting yourself.
Be a nobody:
If you are content with being nobody in particular, content not to stand out, you align yourself with the power of the universe. What looks like weakness to the ego is in fact the only true strength.
Nonresistance, nonjudgment, and nonattachment are the three aspects of true freedom and enlightened living.
Accept — then act. Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it.
Not what you do, but how you do what you do determines whether you are fulfilling your destiny.
Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at this moment.
You are awareness, disguised as a person.
When you no longer perceive the world as hostile, there is no more fear, and when there is no more fear, you think, speak and act differently.
The psychological condition of fear is divorced from any concrete and true immediate danger. It comes in many forms: unease, worry, anxiety, nervousness, tension, dread, phobia, and so on. This kind of psychological fear is always of something that might happen, not of something that is happening now.
Consciousness is a vast ocean and thinking is the
waves & ripples on the surface of the ocean. Every wave & ripple has a very short lived life - it is very fleeting
Do not identify with your thoughts - continued identification with the stream of thinking leads to a very serious dysfunction in ones sense of identity...
The ego says, ‘I shouldn’t have to suffer,’ and that thought makes you suffer so much more. It is a distortion of the truth, which is always paradoxical. The truth is that you need to say yes to suffering before you can transcend it.
Thinking is only a small aspect of consciousness. Thought cannot exist without consciousness, but consciousness does not need thought.
Be the silent watcher of your thoughts and behavior. You are beneath the thinker. You are the stillness beneath the mental noise. You are the love and joy beneath the pain.
You don't have a life. Anything you have, can be lost. You ARE life.
In essence, you are neither inferior nor superior to anyone. True self-esteem and true humility arise out of that realization. In the eyes of the ego, self-esteem and humility are contradictory. In truth, they are one and the same.
When someone criticizes you, blames you, or calls you names, instead of immediately retaliating or defending yourself – do nothing. Allow the self-image to remain diminished and become alert to what that feels like deep inside you. For a few seconds, it may feel uncomfortable, as if you had shrunk in size. Then you may sense an inner speciousness that feels intensely alive. You haven't been diminished at all. In fact, you have expanded. You may then come to an amazing realization: When you are seemingly diminished in some way and remain in absolute non-reaction, not just externally but also internally, you realize that nothing real has been diminished, that through becoming “less,” you become more. When you no longer defend or attempt to strengthen the form of yourself, you step out of identification with form, with mental self-image. Through becoming less (in the ego’s perception), you in fact undergo an expansion and make room for Being to come forward. True power, who you are beyond form, can then shine through the apparently weakened form.
Don't look for peace. Don't look for any other state than the one you are in now; otherwise, you will set up inner conflict and unconscious resistance.
The philosopher Descartes believed he had found the most fundamental truth when he made his famous statement: "I think, therefore I am." He had, in fact, given expression to the most basic error: to equate thinking with Being and identity with thinking. The compulsive thinker, which means almost everyone, lives in a state of apparent separateness, in an insanely complex world of continuous problems and conflict, a world that reflects the ever-increasing fragmentation of the mind.
Fulfill me, make me happy, make me feel safe, tell me who I am. The world cannot give you those things, and when you no longer have such expectations, all self created suffering comes to an end.
When faced with a radical crisis, when the old way of being in the world, of interacting with each other and with the realm of nature doesn't work anymore, when survival is threatened by seemingly insurmountable problems, an individual life-form -- or a species -- will either die or become extinct or rise above the limitations of its condition through an evolutionary leap.
Whatever you do takes time, and yet it is always now. So while your inner
purpose is to negate time, your outer purpose necessarily involves future and
so could not exist without time. But it is always secondary.
Whenever you become anxious or stressed, outer purpose has taken over, and you lost sight
of your inner purpose. You have forgotten that your state of consciousness is
primary, all else secondary.
On a deeper level you are already complete. When you realize that, there is a joyous energy behind what you do.
Once you have identified with some form of negativity, you do not want to let it go, and on a deeply unconscious level, you do not want positive change. It would threaten your identity as a depressed, angry or hard-done by person. You will then ignore, deny or sabotage the positive in your life. This is a common phenomenon.
Not to be able to stop thinking is a dreadful affliction, but we don't realize this because almost everyone is suffering from it, so it is considered normal. This incessant mental noise prevents you from finding that realm of inner stillness that is inseparable from Being.
The moment you start watching the thinker, a higher level of consciousness becomes activated. You then begin to realize that there is a vast realm of intelligence beyond thought, that thought is only a tiny aspect of that intelligence.
Living up to an image that you have of yourself or that other people have of you is inauthentic living.
If you get the inside right, the outside will fall into place. Primary reality is within;
When your inner dependency on form is gone, the general conditions of your life, the outer forms, tend to improve greatly. Things, people, or conditions that you thought you needed for your happiness now come to you with no struggle or effort on your part, and you are free to enjoy and appreciate them - while they last. All those things, of course, will still pass away, cycles will come and go, but with dependency gone there is no fear of loss anymore. Life flows with ease.
As soon as you honor the present moment, all unhappiness and struggle dissolve, and life begins to flow with joy and ease.
All negativity is caused by an accumulation of psychological time and denial of the present. Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry - all forms of fear - are caused by too much future, and
not enough presence. Guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, and all forms
of nonforgiveness are caused by too much past, and not enough presence.
Some changes look negative on the surface but you will soon realize that space is being created in your life for something new to emerge.
Give up defining yourself - to yourself or to others. You won't die. You will come to life. And don't be concerned with how others define you. When they define you, they are limiting themselves, so it's their problem. Whenever you interact with people, don't be there primarily as a function or a role, but as the field of conscious Presence. You can only lose something that you have, but you cannot lose something that you are.
One thing we can do is to notice the little things all around us, paying attention to details such as the birds in the trees and the flowers in the garden or the park—just notice the beauty everywhere, even the smallest things. To notice seemingly insignificant things requires alertness. That alertness is the key. It is the unconditioned. It is consciousness itself. Another helpful practice is to watch the breath, and breathe consciously. If we are paying attention to our breath, we cannot be thinking of anything else at the same time.
In fact, breath, because it has no form as such, has traditionally been equated with spirit, the formless One Life.
The desire to become a better person is usually to do with wanting to improve how I feel about myself, how I see myself, or how I am seen by others. It is to do with mental image-making, that is to say, ego. Spiritual realization is the discovery that you don't need to add anything to yourself in order to be yourself fully. You don't need to try to become good. Just allow the goodness in you to come out.
"A true spiritual teacher does not have anything to teach in the conventional sense of the word, does not have anything to give or add to you, such as new information, beliefs, or rules of conduct. The only function of such a teacher is to help you remove that which separates you from the truth ... The words are no more than signposts."
Friday, June 20, 2014
The courage of Hanuman
Angada said: "No matter bow hard the task, one should never lose courage.
Courage is the key to success. To lose heart is to lose everything.
But, for all your strength, you are virtuous and modest. Increase your stature. You are the equal of Garuda."
Hanuman sat in meditation. During this meditation, Hanuman became aware of tremendous physical, mental, and spiritual powers bestowed upon him by the grace of the Lord. He became conscious about his ability to fly, become as big as the mountain, or as small as an atom. If he willed he could become invisible or carry out such unusual physical feats which were not possible for an ordinary mortal.
Waking from his deep state of introspection or meditation, the humble, but brave and powerful Hanuman mentally saluted Rama with firm resolve to conquer Lanka and seek release of Sita from her mental and physical sufferings.
"Jai Shri Rama" became the inspiring slogan for everyone to fill themselves with freshness and courage. The dullness and despondency, the anxiety, apprehension, and depression gave way to hope of victory. Hanuman said, "Dear brothers, Sri Rama has infused special powers in my life. I am sure I shall be able to cross this ocean in one jump."
Everyone was delighted and shouted "Jai Sri Rama". Hanuman made himself big and tall and flew off to the distant Lanka across the ocean. He landed at the closed doors of the capital city that were guarded by the terrifying and vicious demons. He killed them one by one and entered Lankan kingdom. He made himself small and roamed in the city for further information on the whereabouts of Mother Sita. He searched for the way to Ashokvan where Sita was held hostage.
But, for all your strength, you are virtuous and modest. Increase your stature. You are the equal of Garuda."
Hanuman sat in meditation. During this meditation, Hanuman became aware of tremendous physical, mental, and spiritual powers bestowed upon him by the grace of the Lord. He became conscious about his ability to fly, become as big as the mountain, or as small as an atom. If he willed he could become invisible or carry out such unusual physical feats which were not possible for an ordinary mortal.
Waking from his deep state of introspection or meditation, the humble, but brave and powerful Hanuman mentally saluted Rama with firm resolve to conquer Lanka and seek release of Sita from her mental and physical sufferings.
"Jai Shri Rama" became the inspiring slogan for everyone to fill themselves with freshness and courage. The dullness and despondency, the anxiety, apprehension, and depression gave way to hope of victory. Hanuman said, "Dear brothers, Sri Rama has infused special powers in my life. I am sure I shall be able to cross this ocean in one jump."
Everyone was delighted and shouted "Jai Sri Rama". Hanuman made himself big and tall and flew off to the distant Lanka across the ocean. He landed at the closed doors of the capital city that were guarded by the terrifying and vicious demons. He killed them one by one and entered Lankan kingdom. He made himself small and roamed in the city for further information on the whereabouts of Mother Sita. He searched for the way to Ashokvan where Sita was held hostage.
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