Shifting Sands: Dealing with Impermanence
A Philosopher of ancient Greece before the time of Socrates, named Heraclitus, used to profess that everything in the Universe is in constant flux and that nothing remains the same. “You cannot step in the same river twice” Heraclitus used to say. This is because all the observable world and even the imperceptible one is changing all the time even if it may appear stationary or permanent from our limited subjective observation.
This is true in so many levels and has been echoed in many philosophies and folk wisdom across cultures and centuries all the way down to modern science. The physical world is in constant movement. Matter and energy is exchanged from one place to the other. Even our own bodies never remain the same. As we grow each and every atom in our body is changed many times and replaced by new ones. In a way you can say that the body you have now is completely different than the one you had 5 years ago although it looks more or less the same.
Everything Must Go
Nothing stays the same. This is something that we all observe as time passes by, sometimes to our dismay or anxiety because we cannot come to grips with change, loss or drastically new things.
We all get through that moment in life when we ponder and reflect back on our past and realize that so many things have irreversibly changed or come to an end. Of course, aging is one of the most obvious signs although not every one is affected by aging in the same way.
It doesn’t mean that we always get nostalgic or panicky when we look back at our past. We get a lot of nice memories of wonderful moments we passed with loved ones or friends in lovely places or in special episodes of our lives. But there are other times where we get attached to our past or those happier moments in life and so we end up getting all emotional especially when the present gets a bit tough or the future is more uncertain than usual. As a line from one of U2’s old song goes “We glorify the past when the future dries up“. (more…)
You Only Live Many Times – Part 1
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.
Why Passion is such a Bad Thing
I have been annoyed for some time now about the frequent misuse of the term ‘Passion’ in the personal development arena. I must admit beforehand that I was also guilty of the same mistake in one or two of my past articles.
The thing is that passion is most frequently used to mean a positive quality that is essential for personal development, Happiness, goal setting and finding one’s true purpose.
Even the laymen use of the word falls into this misconception. People talk about passion almost with reverence. “He is very passionate about his team” or “He loved her passionately“. It seems as though passion is a very respected quality of a person or of a culture.
I know something about this being born in a southern Mediterranean culture.Southern European people will openly boast about being passionate, hot-headed and warm-blooded people. In Sicily, for example, there were many cases, in the not so distant past, of murders in which people were acquitted or their sentence heavily reduced because their crime was not just any crime but ‘a crime of passion’. That means that a man (it’s almost always a man who is absolved with a crime of passion) gets away with killing his wife because he caught her having sex with another man and in a moment of blind fury he followed his irrational but ‘justified’ rage. (more…)
Save the World: Live in Balance & Inner Harmony
Life is in perfect balance & harmony. It is in dynamic balance or equilibrium, meaning that although it is in constant flux, with things coming and going out of existence, the net effect is total balance.
It is also in harmony because its different forms fit in and blend together. Observing nature you can see a lot of example of co-evolution and interdependence between life forms.
One life form depends on an opportunity or set of circumstances put forward by another at the right time and in the right amount.
Even violent burst of nature such as natural disasters are in harmony with the cause and effects of life seen through a larger timescale.
The Predicament of Modern Man
It is partly due to our nature and partly due to the hectic and chaotic environment we have created that we often fall out of balance and lose harmony within ourselves and with nature. This is the predicament of modern man. (more…)
The Strength of Non-Resistance
Ancient Eastern Philosophy has taught a lot about the concept of non-resistance. This view has been deeply rooted as a cultural way of life as can be most popularly seen in the martial arts for example.
Most internal martial arts such as Tai Chi, for instance, are built on this principle of non-resistance and ‘action without action’ (Wei Wu Wei) or effortless doing. The idea behind this principle of effortless action is that when you don’t resist or work against the energies around you but actually work or flow with them, you become aligned and in equilibrium in such a way as to obtain a ‘soft and invisible power’.
The adept martial artist knows how to use the power and momentum of his opponent to overcome him with out exerting any force or power.
Non-resistance is like the nature of water. The strength of water lies in its ability to flow around obstacles and in its suppleness. Its force is soft yet powerful.
On the other hand, resistance is friction, an act of opposing, blocking or impeding something. It generally implies working against natural forces as opposed to working with them. (more…)
5 ‘World views’ the world can do without
Photo by Texture crazy
The world has been shaped and coloured by myriads of political ideologies, cultural dispositions, religious beliefs and spiritual affinities. It is also strongly influenced by the zeitgeist or the collective spirit of the moment.
Some of them have been good and perhaps even though strongly resisted or fought over at first, they were conducive to the right social change.
Some other ideologies were however pointless, unproductive, incurred suffering or waste of life and in the end only benefited the ruthless few in power.
In today’s world there still are general collective mindsets or beliefs, we call ‘worldviews’, that even though not directly harmful are at best a hindrance to human creativity but can turn into hatred and violence at their fiercest.
I have picked up the top five worldviews which I personally believe the world would be a better place without.
I’m sure there are more but I think that the ones below are general enough to capture further and more specific forms of worldviews.
