This is a guest post by Jill Magso from the Silva Team

When our personal fountains of good will seem to have run dry or our stores of energy too sorely taxed, it can be difficult to believe that the source for all goodness and good will is really ours all the time. We often speak of filling up our tanks or replenishing our stores, but we rarely take the time to do so. And it is uncommon to be able to actually feel the well bubble up in our body, bringing life, energy, optimism and discernment to our entire psyche and everything we do.

Each one of us, left to our regenerative devices, bathed in a little loving kindness and given just a little space, can feel the fountain of optimism and cheer at least begin to percolate beneath the rocks. Our bodies and minds have within them the blueprint for healing and re-fueling. Sometimes all you need to do is prime the pump to feel the milk of human kindness begin to flow through your veins, into your own heart, and through you out to those you touch.

For today, notice when you feel your personal well of kindness being drawn upon, either because someone is making a withdrawal or a deposit, and notice how full or empty you feel. Simply by paying attention, taking note and being compassionate for our own needs we can begin to clear the way for our own fountain of good.

Step by step to the Meditation:

Find your comfortable seat with your sitting bones pressing into the surface beneath you and your heart lifting from the strength of your connection to the Earth. You can either sit Japanese style on your knees or with crossed legs in easy pose.

Begin with breath observation. For five breaths simply be breathing, noticing how your body moves to accept the breath and then to let it go.This is a guided meditation for which we’ll remain seated. As you inhale, imagine that you are growing roots out and down from your tailbone and deep into the Earth. Follow them with each in breath as they travel down, seeking nourishment and water. Feel them grow strong and begin to work their way between clods of Earth, dislodging small stones as they travel ever downward. Allow every inhalation to swell your roots and give them the energy to dig deeper, connecting you to the Earth.

When you feel completely stable, steady and fed, bring your awareness back up and into your heart. As you inhale begin drawing sustenance up from the Earth, through your roots and up the center of your body into your heart. Allow this feeling to collect here on every exhalation, spreading as a pond would gather from a spring bubbling up through the Earth. Continue for a minute or two inhaling up through your roots and into your heart, until your heart feels like it’s about to run over.

Just as your heart-pond is about to spill over its banks, take your next inhale and continue the path up through your heart center, up and out of the top of your head as if it were a great fountain that upon exiting your head split in every direction and then fell back to the Earth to pool around you and soak back into the Earth. As you inhale, draw this up through your center to the top of the fountain, a few inches past the crown of your head. As you exhale, imagine the stream splitting into infinitely sparkling differently colored lights and falling back down, creating a pool of light and color around you on the floor. Allow this liquid light to pool around you, and seep back into the Earth as a puddle would after the rain.

Stay here, inhaling up through the center of your body, and exhaling down and around your body in a great three dimensional circle, a cycle, a circuit of light, color, energy and health.

When five minutes have passed by timer or by music, bring your attention back to the feeling of your breath moving in and out of your body. Opening your eyes, reach your arms up and over head and draw your hands down in front of your heart.

Jill Magso is a member of the Silva Team and contributes to spreading enlightened ideas and sharing teachings about meditation practices. The Silva Method encompasses a variety of powerful exercises that take you deep into Alpha and Theta levels of the mind so that you can work within your subconscious as well as your conscious mind.

Related posts:

1. 10 ways to improve your meditation significantly
2. A simple visualization technique to keep calm under pressure
3. Mindfulness Meditation: My Path

How many times in a day do we hear ourselves asking the question, “Why did I do that?” Well, definitely more than once. You know you should have showed up for that interview for that dream job of yours but you don’t; you ought to have kept clear of eating dessert at that party as you were on a fat-cutting diet but you don’t; and you should have just put one step forward to experience the taste of success, but you don’t. You are certain of what you should have done but defying all logic and reason, you end up self-sabotaging yourself and doing the exact opposite. Why? The answer is – your self-sabotage behavior. Self-sabotage refers to the process of going out of the way to hold back, prevent or limit yourself from achieving your goal due to unidentified fears, lack of self confidence and negative self image. Self-sabotage encompasses a combination of negative thoughts, feelings and actions that create a stumbling block to success by fighting against your own self interests.

Self-sabotage and the Subconscious

“Was that really me?” The truth is, it was YOU. The decision to self-sabotage yourself was and always is purely your own choice. You might be wondering how could you purposefully do harm to yourself or prevent yourself from getting what you want. Unfortunately, you can and the root cause of the problem lies within yourself, within your subconscious mind. To be precise, self-sabotage is the result of a mental tug-of-war between the conscious and the subconscious mind in which the subconscious mind always wins.

Imagine you have a found an exciting new business idea or have been assigned a challenging project. Initially you find yourself all enthusiastic about it and begin to work dedicatedly towards achieving it. In a few days, you find yourself losing interest in it for no particular reason, all the excitement and enthusiasm fading away and eventually you leave the project unfinished and sweep it beneath the carpet. Most of us have been here, haven’t we? Have you ever stopped to think why this happens to us? Well our subconscious mind is the culprit. Although our conscious mind wants us to stay positive and work towards achieving our goal, our subconscious mind which houses our fear of failure, lack of confidence and “Oh! I can never do this” attitude, ultimately triumphs. Your subconscious mind prompts you to withdraw your efforts and leaves you a failure. So from now on, it wouldn’t be wrong to say – you are what your subconscious mind is and you get what your subconscious mind desires. Hence the harmonious relationship between the conscious and the subconscious mind is key in eliminating self-sabotage. Next time you do something, make sure you want to do it and have complete faith in yourself. After all, you can only lie to others, not to yourself!

Some Common Reasons for Self-sabotage Behavior

1. Fear of Success – Your own past experiences or those of others condition your mind to behave in a particular manner. You may have seen near & dear ones of your friend turning hostile to him after he became successful or you may be afraid that once you succeed, people may begin to pin higher hopes on you and you may not be able to reach their expectations. These experiences and thoughts linger in your mind and become part of your subconscious mind which then associates success with fear or pain. Hence every time you get close to achieving success, your subconscious mind will trigger your self-sabotage behavior and you end up losing.

2. Low Self-worth – You firmly believe yourself to be unworthy of success, achievement, relationships or money, i.e. you feel you do not deserve to have any of the good things in life. This low self-worth stems from your low self-esteem and poor self-image and ends up destroying you.

3. Lack of Self-confidence – You do not have faith in your own abilities and you feel your goals are unrealistic. Your characteristic way of reacting to any challenging situation is “I can’t” and your negative self will always whisper in your ears “This is complicated, back off.

4. Denying the Real you – This behavior manifests itself in the form of a “just-to-please yes” when you actually mean to say “no I don’t want to.” Every time you do something you really don’t want or like to do, you are denying your true spirit, sabotaging your desires and your right to live life the way you want it to be.

Tips to Overcome Self-sabotage

1. Identify and Accept your self-sabotaging behaviors – Some people may show self-sabotaging behaviors when it comes to success, some with money and some others with relationships. Realizing and knowing the areas where you sabotage yourself and learning to accept them are the most important stages in the first step to overcoming self-sabotaging behaviors.

2. Stop making excuses and Take responsibility – Stop blaming others or your destiny for all the things that go wrong in your life. You should understand that only you are responsible for your failure and only you are the one in power to change it.

3. Positive Visualization and Self-talk – Once you have taken responsibility and made plans to change, put your plans into action. In order to change yourself, you should change your self-image. Positive visualization is a method of creating vivid mental images of already having achieved what you really want and experiencing its pleasure. You should consciously allow your mind to visualize this image several times a day and soon you will find yourself believing in it and making efforts to make it happen.

Your mind constantly talks to you and most of the time the communication is negative and scares you away from your goals. Make an effort to listen to your inner communication and replace every negative word, phrase or thought with a positive one. Gradually you will find a tremendous change in yourself and you will emerge a more confident, capable and worthy individual.

4. Ask for Help – If you feel you are unable to get rid of your self-sabotaging behavior all by yourself, ask for help. Join a support group where your friends will constantly reassure your efforts and make sure you are on the right track. If your self-sabotaging behavior goes way beyond your control and you begin to have suicidal tendencies, be wise, turn around and seek the help of a professional therapist or a doctor. They have the skills and expertise to take you through procedures like hypnosis and dialectical behavior therapy in order to read your subconscious mind, find your sabotaging behavior and its reasons and advice remedial measures to overcome it.

As a closing note, a point that repeatedly needs mention is – “always choose what you want and what you believe” and dedicatedly work towards achieving it. By now, you all must know that nothing can stop you, not even your own self, if YOU decide so!

Related posts:

1. Overcoming Fear and Breaking Free from its Tyranny
2. Zen Proverbs, Koans and viral codes of the mind
3. Striptease of the mind: A peep into your naked self

This is a Guest Post by Jill Magso from the Silva Method Team

You have most likely noticed that some people are extraordinarily talented when it comes to taking solid decisions. They just have a great knack for knowing which decision to take at the appropriate time. Many of these individuals have established tremendous success in the world of business and other areas in life. How could they not? They have this brilliant ability to tap into their insights anytime, whenever they need it.

Wouldn’t you like to model their abilities? I’m sure you would but perhaps you lack such innate talents. Or do you? In all honestly, it would be wrong to assume the potential to develop intuitive decision making is impossible. Anyone can do it with the right effort.

Yet aren’t some people born with the talent of intuitive decision making? They may very well have been. Yet I will say that it is more likely that they developed their extraordinary decision making talent from years of trial and error and experience. They might not admit it themselves and in some cases they might not even be directly conscious of it.  Such skills are the end result of a lengthy process of making decisions repeatedly over time. Eventually, those with good judgment will pick up on what works and what does not.

In many ways, you could say that developing intuitive decision making follows the same pattern as any other skill development. Essentially, you need to want the skill first then you have to work at acquiring it. Decision making (or, more accurately, effective decision making) is a skill like any other. It can be effectively attained and there is no magic to it.

There is an old saying about luck that is right on the spot: “The more I practice, the luckier I get.” Efficient decision making is quite literally cultivated through practice.

It is quite probable that even people who are naturals at taking effective decisions had poor intuition or judgment earlier in their lives. This is not a good thing or a bad thing. That is just how their decision making process turned out for them at the time. Those that were wise or conscious enough began to pick up on those things that work and discard those things that do not.

How can this be done? Is a great deal of time commitment required to make this particular process work? Does there come a point where you eventually give up on trying to develop intuitive decision making skills?

If these are the questions going through your mind, you may be running the risk of suffering from paralysis by analysis. In other words, your fretting about making improvements in terms of your intuitive capabilities will undermine you actual ability to take time out and develop said skills.

The process for reflecting for improvement may not be as difficult as you initially assume. Here are some insights into how to gain the much needed improvements you require…

1. Be resolute on trying and just do it

First, when you wish to deliberately improve a skill you will need to take definitive steps to do so. No more “winging it” with a halfhearted attitude. You will need to actually stop and reflect on what you need to do in order to attain success.

2. Monitor your decisions and their outcome

This can all start with keeping a journal of your intuitive decisions and noting which decisions worked out well, which ones worked out poorly, and which decisions were somewhat of a mixed bag. Keeping and accurate log of all your decisions will allow you to examine these decisions on their own individual merits.

3. Reflect on your inner motivations & reactions to those decisions

Writing down (or typing down) your ideas and opinions on your decisions will allow you to determine how to improve them in the future. Of course, it needs to go without saying you must be honest with all your assessments and self-reflections or else the process will not be one of much value. You want to look for improvements upon making reflections and not look towards making excuses. Be mindful or this or else you will discover your ability to enhance your decision making abilities will be limited.

The above three points will also make you more conscious of the fact that intuitive decision making is something that can be developed and improved. To assume that improvements are outside of your capabilities means you see intuitive decisions as innate or magical. That is not the case as there is a science to the process. You just have to figure out your own approach to improving on the science.

This article has been written by the Silva Method Team.

For over 5 decades the Silva Method has helped millions of people around the world achieve their highest potential by working with the mind. By expanding the mind’s capabilities through meditation, creative visualization, mental exercises, and self-improvement, graduates of the Silva Method have gained profound achievements and lasting transformation in their lives.

The Silva Intuition System is a powerful program designed to heighten your intuition in order to make the right decisions, follow your destiny and passions, and bring out your inner compass. While conventional science will have us believe that we are limited to the 5 senses, there is one sense that has been left hidden for many people and that is your intuition. It is your most powerful and precious sense.

For more information please visit: http://www.silvaintuitionsystem.com

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“The secret of life is to die before you die and find that there is no death.” Eckhart Tolle – The Power of Now

That’s one hell of a powerful quote don’t you think? but what on earth does it mean? How can you die before you die? and how can dying paradoxically be the secret of life?

Well it’s only in the second ‘die’ that Tolle refers to physical death. The first ‘die’ actually refers to the death of our identification with mind.

Throughout our lives since we are very young we form a self-identity. This is who we think we are which is partly based on our experiences and partly formed by our social environment – that is how people see us and interact with us.

We have a nexus of ‘evidence’ – images, memories, impressions, beliefs – that make up the mental profile we have of ourselves. A cumulative life-history that gives us a sense of self. It’s a long list full of “I am this, I know that, I have this, I love this, and I wish that”.  I think you get the idea.

We attach these things to our own self. That is to say we identify ourselves with them. In other words, we identify ourselves with external things or partial and fleeting perceptions we have about our world and how we feel about it.

We don’t do this intentionally or with purpose. It is a default ‘program’ of the mind to make associations between things, identify fixed points of reference and make sense of reality by categorizing things and experiences.

There is no fault as such in this. The problem comes when that program completely runs your life unconsciously. This means that you are not conscious of the fact that you can be different or more than that image or identity you have of yourself.

You run the risk of attaching yourself to a false identity. This is what some spiritual traditions call the illusion of mind and of the self. You become completely entrapped in that reality like there is nothing more outside of it.

The essence of the problem is that because you identify yourself with certain beliefs, ideas or external things you strongly believe that if you lose them you will lose who you are (this is why we react badly when we feel that one of those things – like our beliefs – are being challenged or threatened). Or else that in order to be more complete you need to get more of those things like possession, social status, recognition, knowledge, special abilities, relationships and what have you.

The truth is that none of these will actually bring completion. When you get them you realize that you’re still not there and you search for more down a bottomless pit. It brings eternal dissatisfaction which no self-gratification can relinquish.

Death, according to Tolle, is the stripping away of all that is not you. It is the stripping away of those beliefs encoded by society, those fears, those assumptions, those half-baked truths that become your internal reality after many years. Death is when that bubble bursts and you see yourself as you truly are. You understand that you are much more than you thought.

This brings us back to the quote. To die before you die is a way of saying that you strip off those illusions before you physically die and realize that there is no death for you are more than your physical embodiment and those limited perceptions you identify yourself with.

To die before you die is realizing that you are not what you possess or achieved or your inclinations and dispositions. It’s understanding that your being is much more than your having or your doing. It’s peeping in your naked true and authentic self and being more alive than you can ever be.

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1. Developing Awareness – Part 2
2. Zen Proverbs, Koans and viral codes of the mind
3. Self-Sabotage & the Subconscious Mind:Overcoming self-sabotaging behavior

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What is it with Zen proverbs really? Or even more so – Koans? Dry, cryptic, mind-bending and thought provoking up to the point of sounding perfectly nonsensical! Why do they fascinate us so much yet we love to hate them and shrug them off as some eastern-mystical hogwash? Think of the classical Koan: “What is the sound of one hand clapping?”

Interestingly they have found their way in western pop-culture probably starting through the 50′s beat generation and then mostly seeping in with other eastern-inspired notions and ideas in the 60′s counter-culture (That time Zen started being introduced in America through a handful of masters and Gurus from the East who established schools and retreats).

We have romanticized the idea of Zen sayings and rendered them iconic in movies – stereotypically as some long-bearded old Asian sage inciting timeless words of wisdom to his now-ready student or disciple. Karate kid comes in mind since there is now on the screens the 2010 version of Karate kid with Jackie Chan – an all family fun movie which I’d probably love to watch.

Anyway, whether we have installed them as some background furniture in our western pop culture or not, the fact remains that old zen sayings,proverbs or Koans are not digested quite easily by the western mind. The famous depth-psychologist Carl Jung would have probably explained this as a deep-rooted difference between the western and eastern psyche – the western one being and extrovert and outward looking while the eastern one being more introvert and inward seeking. I think this is probably right on many counts.

Zen proverbs, but to a larger degree Koans, are in a way intended to hack the mind and puncture a hole through its veil of reality. It is meant to invoke a sudden moment of clarity and the grasping of certain inner truths (hence why it comes more easy to introverted characters).  The short cryptic message is a code that like a virus is meant to shock the sytem. It is meant to be the Neo in the matrix so to speak – the code in the matrix that awakens itself and the whole system.

Zen masters usually hand down a Koan to their students for them to come up with an answer if they’re ready. The point is that a Koan cannot be cracked open by analyzing it rationally for it doesn’t make any rational sense. It is meant to bypass the student’s rational mind  and keep sinking down through deeper layers of his or her subconscious where it is ‘worked upon’ in an intuitive and synthetic way rather than in an analytical way. The idea is implanted deep inside the student’s subconscious where it remains there like a key swimming inside the mind until it finds the right lock to open. Then zap! – awakening!

I find this as a curious way of looking at it but yet again it’s probably me, a western mind, trying to make sense of it by using metaphors and points of reference embedded in our own western culture. Maybe so but what the heck? In the meantime I’ll leave you to enjoy some nice (and not so cryptic) Zen proverbs in the slideshow above.

Related posts:

1. Self-Sabotage & the Subconscious Mind:Overcoming self-sabotaging behavior
2. Striptease of the mind: A peep into your naked self

I am a big fan of Eckhart Tolle’s writing.But having read his books more than once, I know that ‘fan’ is not the ideal word to use and it is a concept he wouldn’t definitely include in his vision of spiritual evolution.

The thing is that ‘fan’ or fanatic implies a person motivated by an irrational desire to pursue something or be engaged in something. It very often reflects black or white thinking in the form of  an obsession with an idea or  an object of desire. Fanaticism in fact is associated with religious extremist views or for instance ‘ultra supporters’ of a sports team where in both cases, negation or contradiction of their zeal may result in aggression, violence and all sorts of irrational behaviour. In short, it is the over-reaction of the blind and self-centered ego whether in individual or collective form. I have wrote about this before in the article ‘Why Passion is such a bad thing‘.

So I’ll unsubscribe to that term with reference to Eckhart’s work.

The first book of his I read was ‘A new Earth‘ and it was the one following his tremendously successful best-seller ‘The Power of Now‘.  It was one of those books which I can definitely mark as a life-changer. I remember being sunk in it for a whole week and re-read it once or twice thereafter. It swept across and struck a deep chord with many of my views on life and spirituality.  The only other book which I can remember to have touched me with such depth was ‘Man and his symbols’, conceived and edited by Carl Jung.

For those few of you who haven’t read Eckhart Tolle’s ‘The power of Now’ or ‘A New Earth’, I strongly recommend that you do as soon as you have time. In the meantime I will give you a taste of it in the form of some selected quotes in the above slideshow. I am sure that this will also be an excellent refresher of those who have read his work and are touched by it like myself.

Enjoy!

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We live in a world in which egocentric views,short-sighted decisions, disrespect for our natural environment, wars over ideologies, etc (the list goes on a couple of paragraphs) are still prevalent and recurrent themes even now at the dawn of the 21st century.

Idealists like myself like to believe in an emerging culture of creative thinkers & leaders that will slowly guide us to break free from the old beliefs & power structures until we reach a tipping point after which global change starts accelerating very fast on its own accord.

Some people choose to refer to this as the global paradigm shift in the way we see the world, some others refer to it as the evolution of human consciousness. Others talk about the transcendence of individual & collective consciousness from the grips of the ego.

The latter is a nice metaphor which I opt to use for its ability to fit in diverse fields of human knowledge such as Spirituality, Jungian Psychology, Metaphysics, Consciousness studies, Systems thinking and others.

I see the world as still being dominated by ego-consciousness simply because the majority of individuals on this planet are still held by the grips of their ego. The rite of passage from ego-based consciousness to a more transendent eco-consciousness is an individual one as much as it is a collective one. Spiritual teachers like Andrew Cohen in fact believe that this shift in human consciousness operates collectively and synergistically within a group or network of like minded individuals with the same intentions & obectives.

This notion struck me as very plausible. In fact I very much believe that just like our language, thought,behaviour & belief systems do not operate in isolation but are influenced and partially determined by our social environment, so is our spiritual development. We have to start seeing things from an ecological point of view and not a mechanistic one because life & consciousness, like all other things, are networked and highly interconnected. It is no coincidence that many disciplines are now giving a lot of importance to understanding phenomena in terms of network dynamics and complex systems.

The shift from ego-based consciousness to an eco-based consciousness is also a naturally painful one. Parallels can be drawn. In our lifetime, growing up, accepting changes,taking responsibility, breaking away from the mold and leaving our comfy cocoon is never a smooth transition. But it’s part of life if we are to mature and wisen up.

I would like to suggest a few points to contemplate and meditate upon in order to open up one’s mind to the possibilty of eco-consciousness. One of my intentions is to integrate these perspectives in my general world view and habits. Here they go:

1.Don’t take it personally: It’s not about you.

We are emotional and subjective creatures by nature. The concoction of high emotional arousal together with taking things too personally or subjectively can be a lethal one. Throughout history millions of murders, torture, wars, suffering, etc was purely the result of these ingredients. Taking things too personally makes us irrascible, touchy,stressed out and often hurt.

Entering eco-consciousness means above all to feel and understand that it’s not about us, that we are tiny fleeting fragments of the whole and that our concept of the self, no matter how strong and real, is only a construct. We hold no special position in the general scheme of things even though it naturally feels that way since we are looking at the world from our first-person point of view. Understanding this is hard but an ultimate liberation. Imagine seeing things with clarity and objectivity even if you are being criticized, taunted or ridiculed. Imagine keeping a cool head instead of losing perspective or being hurt.

This is not a nihilistic position as some tend to complain. It’s not aimed at destroying the sense of self or not looking after your personal rights and freedom but about reframing your reality through a broader perspective in which the self is only a part of the whole.

2.Everything is interconnected: Are you a node or an end?

Another important shift is that from having a sense of seperateness to a sense of oneness and unity. This is a recurrent theme in many spiritual traditions but again it is naturally a counterintuitive one since we are programmed to identify ourselves and the world as different objects seperated by physical boundaries.

Modern science is also reaching a point of understanding the interconnectedness of everything in the universe at the very basic quantum level of matter. I very much suspect that this interconnectedness happens also at the level of consciousness including our states of mind,emotions and thought but we have yet to understand this scientifically.

Try to imagine yourself being connected to a universal network. You can either be a node, that is a medium or conduit that connects and conveys energy,love, positive emotions and good vibes or an end terminal that doesn’t connect to anything else. When you are a node, you are a mover and shaker of life. You give to others around you and you bring forward a lot of things but you also receive a lot of things. You are tapped into the universal stream. The more you are open, the more will flow in you and out of you. The more you are generous, positive, helpful, creative and motivate, the more you are reinforcing the network of life.

The opposite is also true. The more you are selfish, disengaged, negative, suspicious, resentful, envious, etc, the more you are closing yourself to the stream of life.

We have to start seeing the dynamics of life in terms of this sort of network fluidity. This is very much in line with Taoist philosophy.

3.You can affect people,situations and futures: Take responsibility

This is closely tied to the previous point. Since we are so highly interconnected to the web of life, everything we do has some effect on other people, the enabling or disabling of circumstances or some future course of action that in turn influences other people and outcomes. Life is an intricate balance and since we are plugged in the system every single action has a footprint on that balance. Ancient wisdom has repeatedly come up with this notion such as in many native American tribes or pre-christian paganic & shamanic cultures.

Think about those words you’ve heard as a kid or that particular episode in your life so many years ago that still remained impressed in your mind and which still bear influence on the way you see life. Do you get the point? Even little actions from one person can leave an effect in the consciousness of others many years and miles away from its origin.

Hence shifting from a more ego-centric to a more eco-centric worldview implies being more sensitive to how you responsibly act and react within the fine balance of life. More in this article.

4.Your perspective is always partial by definition: Keep on looking & listening

In the first point I mentioned the peril of seeing things personally and subjectively. In the same vein, it is equally dangerous to lock ourselves within a fixed and narrow view on life. This happens all the time and is the cause of so many quarrels between people,groups,cultures and nations.

It is not having a particular stand or viewpoint on life which is problematic but blindly holding on to it at all costs and discounting others’ views or the possibility that your perspective needs to change or grow. Think objectively about how certain perspectives you held on to very strongly in the past changed. Could that happen with your present ones?

We always see life through certain filters – time, place, culture, beliefs,objectives, likes and dislikes, etc. This is a convenient necessity but one which could hold us blind or tunnel-visioned.

Keeping an open-mind means keeping your views and theories open to correction and change.

5.Everything is impermanent: Loosen your grip on things

Possession is also a trait of the ego-based consciousness. We live in a world were possessions matters. It is not just material possessions but also relationships, status, achievements,influence and power. We measure wealth and power in terms of possessions.

The value we give to possessions comes mainly from two basic beliefs: The belief that resources are scarce or limited and that whatever we possess has permanence in time. Both are wrong assumptions. Resources are not scarce as we believe. They are neither permanent although permanence is a relative thing (something that outlives you could be relatively permanent but not absolutely so).

Contemplating on the notion of impermanence is important. Sometimes we trust that things will remain the same forever but they obviously don’t. Those of us who stay attached to this idea are the ones who will find it hardest to accept changes in life. The step to eco-consciousness involves evading this limitation. It involves grasping the essense of the dynamicity and impermanence of life and embracing it.

6.Be a critical thinker but not judgmental

Being critical and judgmental can be two different things. Being critical and analytical is a positive thing unless not done in a one-sided and narrow way. Adopting critical thinking means being rational and keeping balance so as not to be overcome by the irrational side of our being which begets poor judgment based on irrational fear, dogma, bias and preconceptions.

Being judgmental on the other hand, means being harshly critical to others even when it is clear that this does more harm than good. Being judgmental is not an action but a predisposition. It is not healthy since it promotes dissent,hostility, negative feelings and unhappy relationships.

7.Develop your awareness

I have written before about the subject of awareness on previous occassions. I regard developing awareness as being the one most essential thing to expand oneself on all levels of being – physically,mentally & spiritually. If I had listed these points in order of importance (which I haven’t) awareness should be the first one.

Awareness is the key to everything – literally. Awareness is the tool that punctures through the veil of our distorted reality and limited self-centred views. It connects us with our true selves, with our purpose in life and with our outer reality. This is what makes it such an important asset in our shift in consciousness.

8.Love is the supreme guide

If we are all interconnected at some level in a highly networked web, then love is the binding force that strengthens that web. It is like a fluid that runs in the network and reinforces the connections through which it passes. There can be no eco-consciousness without having love as a supreme guide.

9.Accentuate positive sentiments & feelings,attenuate negative ones

If we are to be healthy nodes in the web of life, we need to switch on and maintain the right qualities. Letting our negative emotions such as guilt, fear and pessimism run high may force us into builiding barriers which closes us down and throws us into egocentricity.

Accentuating feelings such as hope,loving-kindness and compassion makes us cultivate positive states of mind which in turn is reflected in the way we interact with others and the world around us.

10.Scale up your thinking: From local to global to Cosmic

I see a lot of people from where I come from who are so stuck in local thinking. Local thinking makes us think small, limited and detached from more distant realities people are living in. Local thinking is one of the hallmarks of egocentricity.

When one broadens his views and appreciates that the values and issues other countries and cultures live by are also important and of relevance, one starts thinking more globally. It is then that one understands that there are problems and issues that affect all of us on a global scale.

The next leap in thought, that from global thinking to cosmic thinking, is more of a mental excercise since one cannot have any direct ‘cosmic experiences’ but it is a good excercise nonetheless. There are so many things to contemplate on and Man has been pondering on the universe and his relation to it since the beginning of time.

Astronomic data and theories brought alive by stunning images of our home and neighbouring planets, distant galaxies, nebulas and even celestial phenomena in our own galaxy have been an enormous injection in our collective psyche over the recent decades. We have almost grown accustomed to the idea that we are not only inhabitants of a planet but of an endless universe of possibilities and natural phenomena. The more we ponder on this wonderful vastness the more we entertain the idea that we are very probably not alone either but there are possibly a large number of other beings who can be considered our cosmic brothers and sisters.

In a way this has given us an intimation with perceiving and conceiving things in a more cosmic’ way. I think that our collective consciousness has been scaled up one notch in this direction.

Individually, however, we can do more than that. We can contemplate more often, wonder, imagine and dream about the universe we inhabit and our relationship and belonging to it as a species.

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This is a question that I often hear when people are in doubt, confused or lacking enough confidence in external information to arrive at a sound judgment.

I am however not at all pleased to use the term ‘instincts’ in the title, or anywhere else for that matter. The word ‘instinct’ generally means having a preset behavioral pattern which is genetically encoded and inherited. In other words it is a behavioral template that organisms follow unconsciously and automatically. It very much alludes to a general lack of free-will and creativity.

I believe that the real ‘instincts’ that guide us through indecisive or difficult moments in life run in opposite direction to unconscious and automatically responsive behavior.

In fact it involves our ability to momentarily ‘awake’ from those unconscious cycles of behavior and see through the veil of socially and individually constructed realities. It is a temporary transcendence beyond the compulsive patterns of thought and emotional habits that are ultimately not authentic but socially induced.

Trusting your ‘instincts’, or as I prefer calling it ‘listening to your heart’,is like connecting to a ‘web of consciousness’ in which energy and ideas flow naturally and freely. I have written something about this in the past here.

Of course many people might discard this notion of ‘web of consciousness’ as metaphysical mumble jumble. I think that this notion is a little bit ahead of its time and this is why it might be cynically labeled as metaphysical hogwash with no scientific basis whatsoever.

Yet I believe that time will tell a different story. Future exponential growth in science and the interdisciplinary understanding of our reality – That is the nature of Consciousness, complexity,hyper-dimensional space, Quantum fields and the interdependence of information in the Universe  – will enable us to better understand and appreciate that our consciousnesses are linked and communicate at different dimensions of reality.

Back to the question: “Can I trust my instincts?” or in better words “Should I listen to my heart?”. The answer is a definite yes. Listening to your heart means, amongst other things, listening to your self in a more complete way.

We often read off a situation with a very partial and limited view of reality. We can reason out something on purely rational grounds or just act on it in a way that is socially accepted as viable or good. Yet by not listening to our inner motivations and feelings we are only tearing off a few pages off a book without actually reading the whole story.

As I said in other articles, I think that wisdom is when your knowledge and reason are aligned with your heart. If not, even the brightest intellect can be consumed by internal conflict between reason and feelings, or minds and hearts.

In fact listening to your heart, is more of a passive thing rather than an active thing. It doesn’t involve doing more but actually doing less – such as setting your mind free of habitual thinking and switching off your ‘social filters’. It is like the ancient Chinese concept of ‘Wu Wei’ or effortless action. It’s about being still and in that inner stillness your mind and heart resonate together in a more complete self or whole.

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I might be breaking away from the crowd and from the common chatter of all things wordly but today I don’t care.

I feel like writing about one of my long-held spiritual beliefs. If you are a loyal reader of this blog but not in the vein of a deep and non-mundane subject then I humbly apologize!

Put plainly and simply I believe in the reincarnation of souls or to use a Buddhist term – the trans-migration of souls.

This view diverges from the strong ultra-catholic setting of the country I was born in. Still, it is not that uncommon to meet people holding alternative beliefs to the simplistic view of eternal life and heaven and hell in this part of the world, let alone in the more secular parts of the west. More people are believing in reincarnation, or suspect that there is a good ounce of truth in it, even if this is not totally in line with their religous background.

For me it wasn’t a choice of fancy or randomness. I didn’t wake up one morning and said to myself that I would like to believe in reincarnation. It was basically an understanding that ‘clicked’ and maked sense.

To begin with, the notion that we have just one life followed by an eternal life, presumably a spiritual one (although the Christian doctrine never had a clear picture of this and a lot of lines are left blank) never made much sense to me. I was always more convinced of a dynamic and evolutionary stance on life and reincarnation answers that call.

The Spiritual Evolution

I see reincarnation as a necessary part in the evolution of spirit and consciousness. Successive incarnations lead to spiritual growth and evolution at some deeper level. Each lifetime gives us the opportunity to learn & experience, but most of all to step outside our limitations and create our destiny and improve on our past. In fact, I do not believe that we reincarnate into plants or lower animals but the other way round. The norm is an evolutionary path forward.

We all have this basic choice to make: either be stuck in stagnant waters and repetitive behavior or consciously break barriers and go forth and spiritually evolve. All of us have different paths to follow. The funny thing is that this is not apparent in the physical world. We have more or less the same biological inheritance – we all have bodies and subject to the same physical limitations. Yet we are all souls of different ages with different pasts.

Some are old and have lived many lives while others are much younger. Many others are still in their first incarnation. Did you ever notice or suspect a difference? Did you ever talk to someone and said to yourself: “This is an old soul!”. You see it in his or her attitude, perspective on life, wisdom and strength of spirit and heart.

On the other hand you meet people who are as shallow as a puddle and will remain so even if you plant them in the best social conditions possible.

Different Paths

This insight on reincarnation has opened the doors on many other questions in life. Older souls tend to see life with more depth and breadth and hence have more potential to be expansive and creative. Think about the great minds of Science and art. Genius composers, Scientists that changed the world through their discoveries, poets, writers, Philosophers, etc.

What made Einstein such a remarkable scientist and human being? Sure, you might say, it was his contribution to Science as in his General theory of relativity or his work in photo-electricity (to which he was awarded with a Nobel prize).

But his achievements are based on his out of ordinary potential to perceive and conceive life in an out of the ordinary ways. And this is not so because he owned a different brain. All brains are physically the same and work within the same parameters (with the exception of enhanced or impaired functioning). Einstein’s brain was not different at all.

Also, social upbringing can help or counter-help but does not determine human potential. How many remarkable men or women have achieved extraordinary feats but were raised in lots of hardships  and adversary conditions? even siblings are a proof of this. Brothers or sisters in the same household with the same upbringing can grow up to be very different in nature and capacity.

The Distinguishing Mark

So what is the distinguishing mark? My answer is this: The number of well-used incarnations.

The words ‘well used’ make another point: “Someone could have lived 90 times but wasted half of them while someone else could have lived 30 times but have made the very best of each and every one of them.

So this is the general distinguishing mark: Someone who is in his first incarnation or have lived just a couple of times is very different than someone who has lived say, 200. yet we can only perceive this difference through intuition because at the surface it cannot show. We appear to be equal but the age of our spirit is not.

In many ways your present life is determined by the quantity and quality of lives you have lived before and your next one by how you live this one.

So live well because you definitely don’t live once but have still many more to go!

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