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.

Carl Gustav Jung had stated that modern Man is in a pathological state of neurosis because as cultures and civilizations evolved, Man became more rational and control-driven but in the process his psyche became more disassociated from it primitive and spiritual roots. He got rid of superstition but also lost meaning, balance and harmony in the process. He became disenchanted with the world of spirit and soul.

So it seems that as we culturally evolved our consciousness became more separated and cut off from the universe around us. This pathological state of neurosis, as Jung describes it, is the cause of so much stress, anxiety and depression – the three most common symptoms of the modern world.

As we lost our link with the spiritual dimension, we lost our balance within ourselves and harmony with the natural world around us.

But if loss of balance and harmony are such a common trait of our time, then it follows that restoring balance and harmony should also be a major top priority concern for humanity and its future. Is it not?

I cannot imagine how the world can survive if the human mind remains eternally unawake or if Man grows more out of balance with himself and in disharmony with his environment.

And this is why so many visionaries, futurologists, spiritual teachers and bleeding hearts are continually reminding us that there must be a shift and evolution of consciousness for humanity to survive. There must be a radical shift in our way of doing things whereby we restore the balance by getting more in touch with our spiritual nature and the intuitive, feminine side of our psyche.

We have to relearn our ancestral paths and regain ancient wisdom blended with life-enhancing technology. But we have to come to that point as a collective by starting from the individual.

Future Possibilities

We must find ways to regain that balance in our everyday lives. And this has become my latest contemplation – is there a universal language, a blueprint to easily teach the path of balance and harmony to individuals regardless of their cultural background or mental disposition? Perhaps this is not possible. If no one came with a simple answer in millennia it means that there is no simple answer period (the simplest and most powerful answer that comes to mind is meditation but this has remained far from being taught and practiced universally as there are religions that do not recognize it – specifically Roman catholic and Islamic cultures).

Or perhaps now is the opportune time as we have more technology and relatively more understanding of the human brain. Who knows? I am imagining a holistic system incorporating known traditional techniques such as visualization, breathing, meditation, basic Tai Chi movements together with highly advanced biofeedback devices with sensors and intelligent software (attached to our brain and nervous system via wireless micro-electrodes) able to entrain the mind into coherent patterns of activity such as those obtained by seasoned meditators. The difference is that instead of needing many years of meditation it takes just few minutes and can be practiced at schools since an early age.

We have programmed humanity for ages through educational and religious institutions with wrong types of programs such as fear, scarcity, competitiveness, greed, attachment to superficial values, and God knows what. Wouldn’t it be better to program it to become more attuned with itself and its environment? To restore balance and harmony?

If the generations to come had pretty accessible ways to learn how to develop mental balance and harmony from an early age through simple ancient and modern practices then it would mean that stress, anxiety and depression not only can be tackled but prevented from arising in the first place. What would this mean on a global scale? Think of drug abuse, suicide, crime, domestic violence, road accidents, bad decisions, sore relationships, intolerance, street violence and a million other things being drastically reduced. Think of more people being calmer and happier. What would the net effect be? Happier and healthier people in society would mean a synergistic positive effect. It would mean (or perhaps I am drifting off too far here) the so much talked about quantum leap in the collective human consciousness.

Related posts:

1. 5 ‘World views’ the world can do without
2. You Only Live Many Times – Part 1
3. The Strength of Non-Resistance

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.

# 5 We are separate from the rest

This is a belief we have by default because we are subjective creatures within a body.

We grow up to believe that we are distinct and separate from other people, other sentient creatures and nature around us. This belief is reinforced by culture.

How does this affect us and the world at large?

Believing that we are separate and distinct fuels short-term decisions based on self-centred interests. It also makes us feel spiritually disconnected which is partly the cause of the neurosis of modern man.

Think about spiritually rich cultures such as the native Americans who believed that  they were one with nature and an integral part of the circle of life.

# 4 Scientific reductionism/materialism:

Often referred to as the classical view of Science, it is the held assumption that every phenomena in nature, including the subjective experiences of consciousness can be explained in terms of chemical and physical processes.

This general scientific worldview, which is still advocated in some scientific circles, has created an aura of disenchantment with the world and the universe around us.

I do believe that everything can ultimately be explained scientifically but to reduce it to the chemical and physical processes is a very flattened view of Science.

After all we only know such a minute fraction of matter, the visible universe (let alone the invisible universe such as dark matter and energy), the hyper-dimensional space, life forces and subtle energies.

Existence is too broad and rich to be reduced to such a flat line of explanation.

#3 Anthropocentrism:

The view that humans are at the centre of the universe and have the right to dominate over all other creatures.

Anthropocentrism is more of an attitude than an explicit worldview.  We feel that everything on the earth and beyond belongs to humans.

In religion, anthropocentrism is the naïve belief that God created existence for Man to enjoy.

This idea allowed Man to cumulatively exploit nature, abuse of the earth’s resources and lack respect to other non-human sentient creatures.

#2  Fundamentalism and dogma-driven fanaticism:

No need of any introduction. Any religious or political ideology that is based on strict dogma or blind faith is an accident waiting to happen.

Dogma-driven religious or political fanaticism (of any religion or political view) is one of the guises of the ego. It is about the ego’s attachment to an irrational mindset which it won’t let go of.

Religious fanaticism is the latching onto a set of beliefs, the narrow interpretation of some holy scriptures (dogma) or symbols and doctrines in such a way as to deny or exclude any alternative form of belief (religious intolerance), rational counterarguments (the anti-scientific stance) or in some cases, any secular way of life (as in theocratic societies).

Fundamentalist views are very often based on authoritarian, male-centric and ultra conservative structures.

It is inevitable that such worldviews very often cause high emotional arousal, hatred, intolerance, ethnic turmoil, fear-based indoctrination and even violence and blood-shed.

# 1  Nationalism/Fascism:

All in all the ideology is ultimately based on the illusion of the ego and the irrational fear of all that is different and new.

Nationalism and its extreme fringes are based on the idea that a nation constitutes a homogenous cultural identity that should be protected from the erosion and infiltration by other cultures and ethnicity.

If you strip it down from fanfare, ideological mumble jumble, theatrics and rhetoric you would realize that it is the reaction of a very basic human fear – the fear of the other, the unknown and the different. Nothing more, nothing less.

It is about the ‘us and them’, the ‘they are different than us’, ‘our culture’, ‘our nation’, ‘our women’ and other crap like that.  It feeds on the misperception of separateness or in many cases racial and cultural superiority.

Nationalists would arduously deny that cultural norms are relative and that national identity is just an illusion, a fabrication of the ego to rationally justify its irrational fears. They would argue that their way of life is absolute and supreme. Any learned man would see the shallowness and outright stupidity of this.

Nationalism is the cry of the collective ego to keep away the different and the unknown and safeguard that which is known – that which they can identify with.

But identity is the word of the ego. Identity equals attachment. To identify yourself with something or someone is to attach yourself to that something in a way that you would be very emotionally upset if that attachment is undermined or shown to be inauthentic.

Related posts:

1. Save the World: Live in Balance & Inner Harmony
2. Experiments in Faith and leaps of Science

Photo by mslori411

“Awareness implies that you are not only conscious of things (objects), but you are also conscious of being conscious. If you can sense an alert inner stillness in the background while things happen in the foreground – that’s it! This dimension is there in everyone, but most people are completely unaware of it”. Eckhart Tolle – A New Earth

I wasn’t planning doing a second part to ‘Developing Awareness’ today, exactly following the first part. I was planning to let some other few articles in between.

However, I was flipping through pencil-written bookmarks and side notes I left on Tolle’s  book*, when I came across the verse quoted above.   It struck me a second time as being an important practical tip worth noting and sharing.

I would also love to hear your thoughts on this.

The alert stillness in the background:

This phrase says it all. For me it completely defines what I feel during mindfulness meditation.

It can be called stillness because your awareness feels still, centered, grounded and solidly whole but at the same time it is alert. Sounds like a contradiction but it isn’t.

The alertness comes from the freshness of being grounded in the present and the aliveness of giving soft attention to your surroundings and experience. You are there present with your being not floating in some hazy daydreaming or in anxious thoughts about things you have yet to sort out.

This alert stillness can be described to be in the background because it doesn’t come out in the forefront of your consciousness and awareness in any obvious way like thoughts or perception. It is subtle and sedimentary. It is felt when the constant stream of thought subsides and there is less intensity in the forefront (that is why some point at the ‘gap between thoughts’ as the access point to your inner awareness). The foreground noise is cleared and so the background signal emerges clearly.

When I first succeeded in having a proper mindfulness meditation experience it was nothing like I had previously expected. Before that day I had imagined that in a purely meditative state, the mind will be purely absorbed in nothingness as if no thought existed. When I then experienced a state of mindfulness meditation, I could exactly describe it as “an alert stillness in the background while things happen in the foreground.”

Thoughts were still happening in the foreground (although less in number and intensity) but they did not distract me or annoy me because my awareness was grounded in the alert stillness in the background.

Does this ring any bell to you whether in meditation or otherwise? Did you have any experiences of the alert stillness in the background?

Space Consciousness:

Tolle uses the concept of ‘space consciousness’ to describe this undercurrent of awareness.  Space consciousness can be distinguished in contrast to ‘object consciousness’.

Object consciousness is when your reality is fully anchored to the world of objects and believe that there is nothing more to it. It is unfortunately the reality of most people who take life at face value. For them the only concrete reality is that that of things, objects, thoughts and petty human conventions. There is nothing more than that.

“Space consciousness means that in addition to being conscious of things – which always comes down to sense perceptions, thoughts and emotions – there is an undercurrent of awareness.” A New Earth

This Dimension is there in everyone:

This awareness Tolle is pointing at is easily missed because of its subtlety yet it is there in every human being. It is there in you right now. It is always present there in the background but we are never taught to single it out. We take it for granted that outer reality and thoughts about that outer reality is everything there is.

If you do not have a concept of something, you can’t see it even if it stands right in front of you and slaps you in the face. We can only recognize patterns that we have a previous concept of. It’s the same thing with the awareness of our inner stillness – our space consciousness.

Since we are not guided into being aware of it, we never identify it even if I’m sure that everyone experiences it at some point in time.

The bottom line is this: If you have at least a foundation of it as a concept and recognize that it exists, the mind can more easily identify it when it arises.

The second step is watching out for it. I suggest using the observation on awareness I laid out in part 1.

Once you recognize it as part of your experience you know where to look for it next time because you would have opened up the space for that possibility. You would start having a ‘feel’ of your inner space – your space consciousness.

*(Even though I read the book some time ago I still keep it as a reference for some notes and concepts. The book was given as a gift by my special friend Valerie who I thank from my heart. )

Related posts:

1. Developing Awareness – Part 1
2. A Note on Happiness
3. How to Meditate while Being Active

photo by h.koppdelaney

Awareness is fundamental to all human activity. It is the basis of all our mental states and processes, creativity, perception, knowledge and culture. Everything starts from awareness. It is the portal between consciousness and the world around us.

Recently I have become more and more intrigued by the idea. The more I learn about it, the more I realize how it pervades everything we do and that by learning to focus it, expand it or redirect it consciously, we can transform ourselves by gigantic positive leaps. It’s the key to greater inner peace, happiness and self-mastery.  In fact there is no possible way one can walk on the path of self-mastery without learning to direct his awareness.

The different faces of awareness:

At a very basic level, you are aware of everything you do. When you walk around, prepare coffee, look for your keys, drive home, read, etc, there is always awareness going on otherwise you do not operate. However, many of these tasks happen on a subconscious level rather than on a conscious one.

When you start learning to ride a bike or drive a car, you are conscious about all your steps and movements. Once you learn the task, it starts becoming more automatic and subconscious. You are no longer conscious of every thing you do while you are driving but you are still aware at some level (obviously so, otherwise the roads would be a catastrophe everyday). This type of awareness however is not very thick and focused.

There is another level where your awareness is more focused.  For example, when you are interested in something, you start paying attention to it which means that you slightly focus your awareness on the object or event.

When you concentrate on something or you are totally absorbed in the task at hand (what psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi called being ‘in the flow’), your awareness is focused like a laser beam on the subject, closing off all signals from the rest of the environment that might distract you.  Your awareness intensifies and deepens on the subject in the present moment. There is a strong sense of aliveness in it because your heightened awareness enriches the perception of the world around you and your relationship to it.

This type of awareness, as observed from studies carried out on seasoned meditators such as Buddhist monks, is linked with a certain coherence in brain wave patterns. In our day to day mental tasks, our mind is somehow ‘fragmented’ and our thoughts point out at different directions. Our brain wave patterns are incoherent.

The diagram above shows the 2 basic levels of awareness

Individuals who have trained their mind through practices such as meditation, have the ability to consciously redirect their awareness to higher levels of consciousness and ‘defragment’ their mind to a more coherent unity. This why meditation promotes calmness, focus, improved memory and heightened awareness, amongst a long list of benefits.

The good news is that this ‘higher-level’ awareness, so to speak, can be trained and developed.

Being aware of your awareness:

The first step to developing higher awareness is being conscious of it. You need to start training yourself to be aware of your awareness. By getting in the habit of observing how it behaves you start learning to redirect your focus from subconscious awareness to conscious and more coherent forms of awareness.

In short, this means being more conscious and pro-active of your usually passive and subconscious actions, beliefs, emotions and reactions to life. This is why awareness is directly linked to self-mastery.

I invite you to try out these short but insightful mental observations. They only take a couple of minutes.  They are simple and can be carried out as many times as you like, anytime, anywhere. The more you do the more you grasp the feel and movements of your awareness (don’t do these steps in one go – try them out each at a time at your leisure).

Here we go:

1. Take time to notice what it feels like to be aware. Stop for a moment to be aware of your awareness. Don’t classify it or judge it, just notice it. How does it feel?

2. Now find any object (could be your own body or feelings) and be aware of it for more than 30 seconds without distraction. Is it any different from being aware for just a fleeting moment? Does your awareness solidify with time?

3. Are you at all aware of your internal sensations? Try to be aware of your current state of mind – is it relaxation, boredom, curiosity, impatience? What about your feelings? Your energy levels? Is your awareness more inclined towards internal or external stimuli?

4. How about your awareness of the present moment? The awareness of external and internal sensations that unfold moment by moment in the present. Can your awareness hold on to your present ongoing sensations without drifting off in thought or imagination in the past or future?

5. When you observe your environment, does your awareness shift from one object to the next hastily and erratically? Or is it more gentle and observant of each item? Try to move your awareness from one thing to the next and speed it up then slow it down. How does the difference feel?

6. Try also noticing the difference between expanding and narrowing your awareness of your environment. I find it easy to do this on my body before meditation. I focus my awareness on just my breathing first. Then after some time I expand it outwards to include the other bodily sensations such as my hand, feet, head, etc. I also expand it towards my internal feelings and states of mind then narrow it down step by step to my breathing again.

7. Another thing I do when doing mindfulness meditation is shifting my awareness across sensory modalities. From seeing to hearing to touching to tasting (not always), to smelling, and ultimately internal sensations. This and the previous exercise are the most useful steps in developing and expanding your awareness.

When you start getting closer in touch with how your awareness behaves and affects your everyday tasks, you also start to understand how to give it more space to grow. You start finding it easier to consciously direct it, focus it or expand it. This can have big positive effects that you start slowly observing in yourself day after day.

You become more focused when you do something or you start becoming more aware of things you don’t usually do. Your mind becomes more open to ideas and feelings. You become more in tune with yourself and your environment.

You also communicate better because you become more sensitive to the subtle messages in other people’s behavior.

And ultimately you also start feeling expanding as a spiritual being because your consciousness is expanding. Awareness is the food of consciousness. So the more you enrich and open up your awareness, the bigger the natural growth of your consciousness.

In part 2 I’ll be writing about the relationship between awareness and emotional balance and also about how to develop awareness through meditation.

Related posts:

1. Developing Awareness – Part 2
2. The Strength of Non-Resistance
3. Increasing Your Positive Self-Awareness

Photo by Noel A.Tanner

One of the biggest ongoing debates in the last two centuries is definitely the one between the conflicting views of faith and science.

For too long now it seems that these views are not only irreconcilable but mutually exclusive. In simplistic terms, faith is commonly associated with the belief in a divine power which is not grounded in the senses, experience or reason. Science, on the other hand, is associated with the objective inquiry into the nature of the universe through experimentation, critical assessment, logic and reason.

Mixed messages of faith:

I was brought up in an ultra-conservative Roman Catholic country with a very fine line of divide between church and state. As a young inquisitive mind growing up in that cultural background I had learned to despise all those authoritative arguments about faith, dogma, and the narrow worldview of catholic doctrine they used to teach us at school.

I remember arguing with the priest that use to teach us religion class (which was compulsory of course) about the irrationality and blindness of dogma and he’d always answer with the same old answer – “It’s a matter of faith”. I used to hate that answer. I thought it was such an excuse for an answer when you don’t have enough reasons to back your arguments.

This is what mostly creates the conflict between reason and faith. It’s the reluctance of some people to have faith understood and assessed with a more evaluative undertone. They say that’s impossible because reason and faith are incompatible. Faith is faith and that’s the end of it.

Faith has another side though – a much more positive one which I have come to understand under a different light.

A broader understanding of faith:

I have described the dark side of faith as that irrational and dogmatic standpoint sometimes verging on fundamentalism and intolerance at its extreme fringes.

The thing is that faith is very often associated with religious loyalty rather than spirituality. It’s about the faith in God, the teaching of the scriptures, deities or the sacred laws of some religion or other. This again can be dangerous and self-defeating because people having faith in this sense run the risk of attaching themselves to some idea which is not authentically their own but as portrayed by the religious institution they belong to.

But I think that there is another aspect of faith which needs to be understood: One which is more religion-neutral in the sense that it shares a common characteristic amongst different faiths.

Faith is when your heart and mind are set firm in some direction even though the feedback you get from your current circumstances point elsewhere.

This is what is called a leap of faith. It is the ability to leap beyond the walls of your current reality and keep your mind and heart focused on a different one even though it is incredibly hard to do considering that circumstances can be pretty adversary at times.

Ask and it will be given to you:

Another important thing about faith which is very often not considered is that people of faith have the implicit understanding that their consciousness, through their prayers, believing, asking or wanting is a determining factor of how things unfold in their lives.

That is to say that one’s beliefs and intentions affects the way the future unfolds in the physical world. Their asking initiates a process which is then answered to and taken care of by that divine force they have faith in – God, the universe, etc.

In the words of Luke the evangelist: “Ask and it will be given to you…”

Experiments in Faith and Intention:

If you ever heard about the Intention experiment , you would have already guessed where I am getting at.

The intention experiment is probably one of the largest and most interesting experiments happening at the moment. Thousands of people from around the globe are participating in this collective experiment in which the participants are asked to focus their intentions at the same time on a particular object or outcome such as the healing of an organism.

The experiment started with small objectives such as having a hundred meditators focusing their mind on a picture of a plant’s leaf in a laboratory thousands of miles away. Special measurements and photography then verified if there were any positive effects on it which in almost every case it resulted that it did.

Then the website started putting up cases every week of people having some sort of problems such as terminal illnesses and participants enrolled in the experiment are asked to put their focus on the person with the intention to heal him/her.

The project is founded and led by journalist and writer Lynn McTaggart, author of ‘The Field’, ‘Living with Intention’ and ‘The Intention experiment’.

McTaggart’s idea is based on her scientifically oriented inquiry about the power of intentions as she studied and interviewed master healers, Quantum physicists, Buddhist monks and Qi Gong masters around the globe. Her findings point at the astounding relation between consciousness and the universe and to the increasingly popular notion that consciousness affects matter. (The experiment became also part of the main plot in Dan Brown’s latest book ‘The lost symbol’)

Having faith in the laboratory:

One thing which would be very interesting to find out in such experiments is whether people with a strong faith are better ‘intenders’ than those that are non-believers. A controlled experiment such as in the ones carried out in the intention experiment can be set up and the data properly analyzed to check out for any significant results.

I have a feeling that such experiments would show that people with strong faith have a significantly higher success rate at intending an outcome than those that do not or the control group.

But this is not all there is to it. It would clearly show an important feature of faith which has been disregarded – the idea that faith is deeply tied to the phenomenon of consciousness and like consciousness it stands the chance of being understood in a richer and more holistic way as our view of science evolves.

The old view of science is dying:

Back to Science.   In the post-war era a strict view of science known as the ‘classical view of science’ emerged. This view, which is now making way for a broader and richer paradigm, can be summarized in the three following relevant points:

• The world of objects and natural phenomena are separate and independent from us, the observers.
• Only knowledge ultimately based on empirical observation is scientifically valid and the data extracted is objective and value-free.
• Any phenomena can be explained by reducing it to the lowest-level material processes such as chemical and physical processes – a view known as reductionism.

The great scientific leap forward:

Since the birth of Quantum Physics till present, new evidence has shown that all the three points above are wrong. Physicists studying phenomena down at the level of the smallest particles in the universe have realized that:

• Our mere observation influences the outcome of the experiment. Hence consciousness is intrinsically interdependent with the physical world.
• Knowledge and data are not completely objective and value-free since our subjectivity plays a part in it.
• There are other dimensions of reality apart from our 3-dimensional physical one and hence our understanding of phenomena cannot be reduced to only those dimensions.

New bridges are being built:

What was once a big rift between Science and faith will start to narrow down. As paradigms change and old views are abandoned, both sides are starting to move towards each other until the conflict will start to ease and the line of divide blurs out.

On the one hand, faith is standing a better chance of being understood as a natural rather than super-natural phenomenon and its relations to consciousness given wider attention.

On the other hand, the general scientific view has been changing in the past few decades from one in which reality is flattened to its underlying physical and chemical processes, to one in which the conscious effect of the observer on reality is embraced.

Time will tell.

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Related posts:

1. 5 ‘World views’ the world can do without

photo by elaine faith

As I was reading the article “A gentle honesty” on the blog ‘Beyond Karma’ the other day, the Zen saying “After Enlightenment, the Laundry” came to mind.

In the article, Kaushik, the author of the blog and the post in question, was asking how it is that sometimes after some experience of deep inner awareness that awakens us from our limited patterns of thinking, we return back to our same old selves?

To quote Kaushik’s own opening lines:

“A strange thing about awakening is frequently we feel we are very conscious, but then life throws something at us and we react in the same conditioned way we always did. It’s a humbling experience, and that’s the point of it.”

How is it that after some brief moment of enlightenment we relapse back to the same old habits and limited views?

This naturally leads to other questions such as “is enlightenment or spiritual awakening ephemeral”? Is it some short excursion beyond our boundaries just to give us a taste of what it’s like to be in a higher state of consciousness?

From the divine to the mundane

I find these questions to be genuinely pertinent and important.

Did this ever happen to you? Did you ever experience those rare and beautiful moments at some point in your life when you suddenly see things with perfect clarity? A sort of a blissful moment accompanied by deep insights that reveal different depths of you inner and outer reality?

Such experiences make you feel you are well beyond your everyday perception of your existence.  In actual fact you truly are. This is why it is called a transcendental experience because it transcends beyond the limits of the self-centered ego and connects with the higher states of your consciousness, the divine aspect of yourself.

Some time after the experience has gone, however, we feel sucked back into our normal mundane reality and back to our average worldly experiences and petty everyday problems. We find ourselves on the merry-go-round again with others going hectically about their busy daily life without any hint of that spiritual spark we just held in our hands just some time before.

Some things start tasting a little bit bitter when the sweet after taste in your mouth starts to fade away doesn’t it? It’s like finding yourself doing the dishes or taking out the garbage after a few weeks of mind-expanding traveling. Or as the saying itself goes, finding yourself doing the laundry after a moment of enlightenment.  It just feels like one reality shatters the other.

The illusion of the two realities

Here is where we should be careful. Actually it’s not one reality shattering the other in the sense that entering one state annihilates the existence of the other. They truly are one and the same reality although one aspect of it is more conditioned than the other.

The sense behind ‘after enlightenment, the laundry’ is actually mirroring this little dilemma but in the same breath also prescribing a way out of it.

The dilemma arises because we tend to see everything from a particular point of view. This is an inescapable position for every sentient being. So, when we change our point of view or our depth of perception and state of consciousness, we feel that one ‘reality’ started where the other stopped.

This is not truly the case. The statement ‘after enlightenment, the laundry’ can be seen as being said by a third-person who objectively observes that both states are actually the same from his point of view. Nothing really changed. That observer can be our inner self – the core of our being.

Another thing the Zen saying points at is that sometimes we are slaves and victims of our own expectations when we think that these enlightened states of mind are a one way ticket – a point of no return. Even life-changing experiences such as transcendental states of consciousness brought about by meditation, near death experiences, big transitions in life or just simple contemplations are just moments in time.

On some level these experiences are irreversible. They have changed us forever or at least opened some door in our reality which will remain open.

On some other level, however, the experience is transitory and finite. At one moment we are elated with the transcendental state of mind, soon after we are carrying on with our normal daily agenda.

Embracing the continuum

Accepting this continuum with grace is the solution behind the apparent dilemma. If we get entrapped in the expectation that some brief moment of enlightenment will change us into a super version of ourselves is what brings forth the disappointment.

It’s a truly liberating notion to grasp that the core of our being, that undercurrent that lies beneath our thinking and perception, is the same whether we are in a state of enlightenment or doing the laundry. If we understand this, and feel it with our hearts, we have escaped the dilemma and accept our ‘mundane reality’ with peace and enthusiasm.

Accepting the mundane more open-heartedly however does not mean denying or forgetting your spiritual self. You have to cultivate it and keep the spark shining through.

As Elizabeth Gilbert, author of the sensational best-seller ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ said when asked about how she felt when returning to America after a year of travel on a spiritual quest to find God:

“There is a small, new, holy part of me which I hold onto and treasure very carefully – cupping it in my hands like a freshly lit match. I try to protect that new part of me as much as possible from the sheering winds of 21st Century America. (Generally, this means avoiding particularly spastic invasions of too much television, consumer debt, competition, over-consumption, success-pressure, greed and other forms of our daily cultural life.) This is not to say that I walk around in constant, perfect bliss, or that I’m not still capable of exploding with rage at minor frustrations, but I do live differently now. “

Related posts:

1. Developing Awareness – Part 2
2. Pearls of Wisdom: Tolle on Spiritual Enlightenment

photo by Mara ~earth light~

The notion of practicing compassion for other fellow humans has been with us since the beginning of time. After all, Man is a social creature in need of meaningful social connections in order to grow on all levels of his being.

The concept of compassion however has in recent times been appraised in value. Its importance is starting to be understood under the new light of a drastically changing world where people are getting more connected, economies collapse and new global crisis emerge.  Compassion is becoming increasingly tied to the future of humanity. In order for Humanity to keep the balance against the impounding waves of change we need to grow collectively in mind, awareness and in consciousness.  One essential ingredient for this growth is cultivating compassion and loving kindness

Compassion compels action and social change

“You know, there’s a lot of talk in this country about the federal deficit. But I think we should talk more about our empathy deficit — the ability to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes; to see the world through the eyes of those who are different from us — the child who’s hungry, the steelworker who’s been laid-off, the family who lost the entire life they built together when the storm came to town. When you think like this — when you choose to broaden your ambit of concern and empathize with the plight of others, whether they are close friends or distant strangers — it becomes harder not to act; harder not to help.” Barack Obama

President Obama mentions the empathy deficit but why does he put emphasis on it?

What his words imply is that real concern about the future does not stop around financial and monetary issues. These are important but to stop there is shortsightedly missing the whole point about positive social change.

Yes, the economy is a driver of social well being and change but both well being and social change are also driven by something which runs deeper than the balance books and the cash tills. It is driven by social cohesion, understanding, comprehension, extended cooperation, empathy and compassion.

Compassion is empathizing with other beings that are suffering and left behind. It is exactly “the ability to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes” and see their predicament with their own eyes through their own perspective.

Compassion is the deep desire to free others from suffering. It is the understanding that we are not alone and that others have exactly the same desire to be happy as we do and the same right to attain it.

Compassion begets positive social change because it compels action. When you empathize with the suffering and pain of others “it becomes harder not to act; harder not to help.” This means that when you genuinely open your heart and mind to the problems of others, you shift your perspective in such a way that you are inclined and motivated to help and alleviate their pain and suffering. Action is a natural consequence to compassion.

Action brings about change. Even better, action grounded in compassion, in the awareness and understanding of people’s problems and with the intent to improve their condition brings about positive change and one step closer towards the diminishing of suffering in the world.

Society is a living system. It is a dynamic network through which millions of interactions take place every second and through which ideas, joy, love, energy and compassion can flow between human connections – the nodes of the network.

When empathy and compassion are missing those connections can break and bend. What follows is an ever increasing segregation and detachment between groups of people and individuals giving rise to misunderstanding, inequality, intolerance and unhappiness running from the individual to the social.

Buddhism on Compassion & Loving Kindness

The practice of compassion and loving kindness is central to the Buddhist way of life. The Dalai Lama made it his special mission in this lifetime to spread the teaching of compassion and loving kindness.

I think it is not a coincidence that he chose the teaching of compassion to be his lifetime work in this particular time we are living in. I believe that this is a particularly ripe time for the world to wake up and expand its consciousness, cultivate compassion and sow the seeds of love. There is no better time.

In Buddhist philosophy, compassion is the deep desire and highest motivation to free all sentient beings from suffering. However this notion of compassion is not rooted in subjectivity, judged according to proximity or executed through uncontrolled emotions.

This means that true compassion is unconfined. If I am compassionate about my family but not for those who suffer in far away places or for those whom I dislike then it is not true compassion although it is still a good starting point.

“True compassion is not just an emotional response but a firm commitment founded on reason. Because of this firm foundation, a truly compassionate attitude toward others does not change even if they behave negatively. Genuine compassion is based not on our own projections and expectations, but rather on the needs of the other: irrespective of whether another person is a close friend or an enemy…This is genuine compassion.”  The Dalai Lama from ‘The Compassionate Life’

True compassion is not rooted in the ego. Sometimes we feel distraught by some tragic story because we cannot bear the thought or the emotion of what it ought to be like to pass through that experience. We feel sorry but at the same time we want to stay detached because our heart is not strong enough to bear it. This is because we are seeing it from our own ego-centred standpoint which is natural for an untrained mind.

This has happened to me lately. I went to visit my parents one day. The day before a tragic traffic accident happened where the lives of a whole family were lost including a 3 year old girl. The car they were in was smashed beyond recognition. The story was all over the papers. I did not want to look at it nor the photos of the family. It was like my heart couldn’t bear it. I didn’t want to think about it. I must however admit that this is not compassion. It is feeling deeply sorry but with a detached heart.

Compassion is seeing the suffering of the world with an open heart – a strong heart.

“Compassion is not at all weak. It is the strength that arises out of seeing the true nature of suffering in the world. Compassion allows us to bear witness to that suffering, whether it is in ourselves or others, without fear.” Sharon Salzberg

Expanding our consciousness through compassion

The natural questions that springs out of this is “Ok it’s nice to help others when needed but what good does it bring to soak into the sufferings of others?”, “doesn’t this dull your mind or depress you?”, “does compassion has any other value besides being an ethical or moral thing to do?”

I understand that these are legitimate questions and they should be asked freely.

The answer is simple but not straightforward at the same time

When we understand the concept of true compassion as held by Buddhist teaching and hopefully practice it in our daily lives, we are doing something more than just doing the ethically right thing and helping others that are in need. We are doing more than being responsible humans who reach out for other people.

What we are doing is expanding and shifting our consciousness.  We are freeing ourselves from the tyranny of the ego-consciousness because when we “put ourselves in someone else’s shoes” we are shifting our perspective and center of focus from the self to others. We expand our view and the purpose of our lives.

We start to break away from the self-centered whims and desires that hold us from expanding ourselves. We start breaking the illusion that we are separate from others and the world around us. In fact the Buddhist notion of compassion is intimately tied to the understanding that we are one and the same. Separateness is ultimately an illusion.

When we come to realize more and more of the interconnectedness between all sentient beings, we start to realize that compassion is not only a polite or ethical thing to do. It is the only sensible thing to do. It is the way forward for humanity.

Compassion is a way of realizing ourselves. When we are compassionate and seek to free others from their suffering, we are effectively freeing ourselves. We are part of the grid network. We are connected to it and if we contribute just a little and do our part to expand it by showing compassion and loving kindness to others then we are also expanding ourselves. This is the great web of life.

Cultivating compassion through meditation

There are many ways to practice compassion and loving kindness.  Like most things it takes time and commitment but it can be done in small and easy steps.

Meditation is one way through which compassion can be cultivated. It is good to know that scientific research is now starting to discover through various tests that compassion helps the mind to better cope with stress and conditions such as depression.  Here is one such article from the science daily.

At this point I am tempted to jot down a few practical tips on practising compassion meditation but that would be a bit pretentious from my part. It’s better to leave that to people who know way more than me about compassion.

Here is a short video of 9:56 mins  from Angela Carole Brown in which she gives a guided meditation on Compassion for beginners. It’s a very good place to start.

I’ll leave you to it. Enjoy and may compassion be seeded in your heart.

Related posts:

1. A Note on Happiness
2. From Ego-Consciousness to Eco-Consciousness:10 Meditations

“Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence” Aristotle

Photo by Hadrien

Every living being in this world seeks happiness whether s/he is aware of it or not.  It is the meaning and purpose of life as Aristotle had noted.

“Isn’t it obvious?” I hear you say. Yet is it really that obvious I dare ask again?

If it were that obvious why aren’t billion of dollars being spent in researching the ‘Science of Happiness’? Why aren’t political systems based on the pursuit, achievement and safeguarding of Happiness? Why aren’t there too many religions that instead of attaching themselves to Dogma and authority reorient their beliefs on the basic Human need of Happiness? Why isn’t Happiness a shared point of reference between political, ideological and International transactions?

Something is not that obviously straight forward to me.

A New Earth & Eckhart Tolle

The answers came from a book that I have read during the last year or so and which has profoundly influenced my perspective on life. The book is Eckhart Tolle’s  A New Earth.  Written by a real contemporary Spiritual Master, the book touches on many insightful and profound truths that seem to unknowingly spark off something inside the reader. There is that “A Ha! So that’s what it is!” kind of feeling in everyone who I know has read the book, including myself.

One of these insights is the fact that the human mind is by default dysfunctional since it is caught by the grips of the ego consciousness. The ego consciousness is that little Mr. Hyde in us that sabotages our every attempt to break free from our old patterns of behavior or self-destructive habits such as negative thinking, limiting and self-defeating thoughts, anger, greed & the incessant desire for having more than others and being better than others.

The Ego & its subconscious machinery

The ego-consciousness makes us self-absorbed and self-centered. It makes us blind and shortsighted. It makes us feel special and cut off from the rest.

There is always that ‘I and others’ or ‘’us and them’ kind of standpoint which breeds other negative repercussions such as prejudice, labeling, intolerance, hatred, etc. The ego consciousness is also a trickster. It comes up with apparently rational arguments in our ‘self-talking’ such as to justify our dysfunctional beliefs and subconscious irrational fears.

The Collective Ego

On a social level, the ego has its collective presence too. The world news is such a testimony to that. Everyday we hear about mass attacks on human lives from religious extremists with fundamentalist beliefs, violence spurred by racial or ethnic hatred and intolerance, political standoffs between countries due to a clash of ideologies and cultures.

This is the collective ego at work that makes us perceive the world through a self-centered orientation, making us narrow minded and blind to the needs and rights of others. We attach ourselves blindly to the shallowness of our own self-created and self-perpetuated system of beliefs & values in such a way that change and acceptance become the worst enemies for the ego because they threaten to uncover its covert trickery and end its reign.

The Transcendental Self

On the other end of Human nature there is what is often referred to as the Transcendental self. This is the nemesis of the ego. It is the part of us which transcends beyond the limited and self-centered vision of the ego and gains insights into the real nature of things without being obscured by the delusions of mind. It is free from attachment to thought.

The Transcendental self is not rooted in the conditioning of past habits or future worries but is rooted in the now, in the only moment which is ever real because everything happens in the now. Tying oneself to the past or future will only bring stress and anxiety while it forces us to live our lives on autopilot (which is the opposite of being awake).

The Transcendental self is not self-absorbed. Its vision is wider and feels and accepts that s/he is part of the universal being. S/he understands that all life is interconnected at some level and that all our actions have consequences which incur other consequences in an interdependent Universe of cause and effect.

A person who has transcended beyond his limiting ego-centric view on life is a person who is self-actualizing, takes his destiny in his own hands and co-creates his life rather than just reacting to it with worry, anger, guilt or attachment.

The Reactive vs. The Creative self

Two people can behave quite differently in a same situation. Imagine a situation whereby a man, Mr.A is driving along his way when some other guy thoughtlessly but abusively drives in the main road from a side street and almost makes Mr.A loose control of his car and send him into a possible life-threatening accident.

Mr.A, after getting out of his shock, hoots the horn at the other guy which promptly and cheekily replies with his middle finger. Mr.A gets wrathful to the point of foam in his mouth and steam coming out from his ears. He chases him, swears at him, hoots at him, swerves on him, calls him names, and after a long ride completely off route where he was going, finally decides to call off the chase.

But that’s not the end of it. On the remainder of his trip Mr.A drives with thoughts of revenge, anger, frustration, disbelief and then spends the rest of the day having a mental picture of the guy with all the things he could have said or done to him. Not to mention, the physiological stress and harm, Mr.A wasted his day by running a very vivid and negative documentary in his head.

Now imagine the same situation happening to Mr.B. Car comes out, Mr.B tries to avoid him, takes in a deep breath, makes sure he has full control of the car and himself, slows down then drives off just to forget about it as soon as he turns on the first corner.

Mr.A and Mr.B were victims of the same circumstances but while Mr.A held himself hostage of his own ego, Mr.B was free and made a choice not to hassle himself with the emotion arousing thoughts for the rest of his day.

The Unhappy Ego

The ego-driven self is locked into a powerless state of dysfunction and is very limited in finding happiness. It always wants the next best thing hence eternally dissatisfied with what it has. There is no appreciation of the present moment.

The ego loves a reaction as shown in the case of Mr.A. It feeds on it like a vampire feeds on blood. It is reactive rather than creative, hence its shallowness and shortsightedness.

It reacts as soon as it sees someone else being better than itself or to someone who said or did something that arouses a negative emotion. It will attempt its very best to react to the other person’s actions by trying to win over an argument with intellectual prowess, bitch back, pass on demeaning and insulting remarks, do or say something to show his/her superiority at something and so on down a very long list of silly and futile things the human mind can come up with. Worst thing is that we are not conscious that all this ever happening to us.

The Science of Happiness

Recent studies and Research in Cognitive Psychology and Positive Psychology are time after time discovering and verifying the age-old insights in mind, consciousness and happiness as outlined in brief above. Most of this ancient knowledge derives from Buddhist teachings but now is finding its way further into mainstream western thought and Science. I agree with his Holiness the Dalai Lama when he once was quoted in saying that Buddhism is after all a Science of Mind.

By slowly embracing a relatively more Holistic approach to Science, modern Cognitive Psychology is starting to recognize, through scientific tests, the validity of this ancient wisdom. (If you’re interested in this I recommend checking out the works of Jon Kabat-Zinn here)

Amongst some of the interesting findings, which throw light on the intersection between the old and modern understanding of the mind and happiness there is:

• Meditation has been shown to have many beneficial effects to mental health in general such as significantly reducing stress & anxiety, heart problem risks and depression. It also promotes general happiness and well being

• Attaching oneself to material objects, ideas or a narrow framework of thought causes a kind of black or white mode of seeing reality. Often this brings a loss of perspective and eventually anxiety or depression. The opposite is equally true. People who tend to see things in perspective without blowing up negative happenings tend to be more relaxed & happy.

• People who isolate themselves, are hostile to others or feel cut off and different from the rest have bigger chances of feeling jaded and unhappy. On the other hand, people who receive or give emotional support have a higher chance of being happy.

• Those people who introspect too much on negative things, are self-absorbed and self-centered have more chances of being depressed. Patients suffering chronic depression tend to use the ‘I’, ‘Me’ & ‘Mine’ a lot. Happy people tend to see life and goodness in others.

• Happy people also tend to be people who are not fatalists or who think in a disempowering way. Very often they recognize that they have the power (and the responsibility ) to make a positive change in their life.

Going back to the questions I put in the beginning, it is starting to become more and more clear to me how happiness is the realization and moving away from a rather ego-driven consciousness to a more transcendental one. The only problem is that this is not at all obvious and no one of us is born with a operating manual to mind and happiness.

Related posts:

1. Expanding consciousness through compassion & loving kindness
2. Developing Awareness – Part 2

When these words of wisdom were told to me I was still a young man. The real depth behind their meaning was not apparent to me yet.  Their wisdom was concealed by my unripe age. Not that they are cryptic or anything but rather because it’s one of those sayings which unfolds and reveals itself to you as your experiences in life grow and mature.

There are three fundamental notions that the saying points at:

1. Authenticity

2. Trust

3. Manifesting your destiny or Life’s Purpose

The lesson is simple as much it is abysmally deep: When you learn to discover your authentic self amongst socially constructed preconceptions, distorted self-images and learn to trust the natural pulse of your heart’s true desires then you will manifest them in your life. You will manifest your life’s purpose

Finding your Authenticity

The quest for authenticity, self-discovery, soul-searching, or call it what you like, is one of those things that has always been a popular note on anyone’s life diary.

But what is really meant by authenticity or self-discovery?

Many people who either have succeeded in their path to self-discovery or otherwise would all agree on one thing – that the authentic self is not something that is found along the path as one backpacks around the world, breaks through his normal parameters of existence, searches through every monastery or whore house in the world, capsizes his life’s agenda or anything that sounds bizarre and abnormal as possibly can.  Finding your authentic self is not done through adding or doing anything extravagant to your life. Actually, it’s not achieved by adding anything at all but on the contrary by stripping off what you already have – the blinkers and veils that skew one’s perspective on life.

We live most of our lives contending to the fact that we are what we are – what Mother Nature made us, how our genes determined us or how our past experiences have formed us. This deterministic worldview instead of inspiring us to go beyond our limitations and explore our inner world with open eyes holds us tightly firm into one position of thought and action. We think that we are what we are and so we cannot change. According to this view we are nothing more than our life-story, all our thoughts and experiences put together in a concept we call the ‘I’. This is a self-defeating start which will take us nowhere far.  It’s the first stumbling block towards self-discovery.

Another firm conviction is that life is limited and scarce in resources and not abundant. We believe that what others gain is taken from ours.

More importantly, it makes us believe that we are separate and special from the rest and that others’ successes are a threat to us.  We fall into a self-centered orientation which makes us lose perspective on life and especially of ourselves. It cuts us off from the source of abundance, life and the universe. It disconnects us from the network.

We are all connected to the same network and to the same source of limitless abundance which is life itself. Life is interdependent and if we think in a self-centered way, we are disconnecting ourselves from it and also from ourselves. This limited way of thinking also distorts our own image. We can’t see clearly who we are and what we want if our vision is obscured by a self-defeating and self-centered vision of life.

Building Trust

Once we can shift our perspective by understanding our authentic selves as part of a greater network of interdependent consciousnesses, we can more easily let go of the notion of self as being a powerless independent entity struggling for limited shared resources.

The more we change that the more we are able to trust in ourselves and in others. Things become easier since we are able to respond adequately and within perspective. As Stephen Covey would put it, we become response-able or responsible. Being responsible means, amongst other things, being able to be in charge of your life and destiny. It means listening to your heart’s calling without being sucked into negative patterns of thought and conditioning. It means trusting your heart’s true messages and not the short-sighted call of the ego.

It means being a healthy node in the network of life.

Manifesting your destiny

The natural consequent to listening to and trusting your heart is the true manifestation of your life’s dreams and goals.  This always sounded as something extremely big to me, and by all means it is. What excites me though is the prospect that it is possible and within any human being’s reach.

Many enlightened people along history have made reference to this basic truth in many different forms. A recent and very popular comeback to the idea which took the self-development bookshelves by storm was renamed ‘The secret” or “The Law of Attraction”.  This is very much referring to the same principle.

We all have within us the power to manifest our destiny but as we grow up in this world that capacity is blocked or obscured by our conditioning into limiting beliefs and distorted visions of ourselves. It’s rendered ineffective by the self-centered and short-sighted whims of our egos.

When people learn to transcend beyond their limitations, or to make reference to a Hollywood all time favorite, escape the Matrix, they are no longer held back into the parameters of the socially constructed illusion and mediocrity. They become co-creators of their life and destiny. They become self-realized beings with the potential of shaping their future instead of just reacting to it.

Wake up to your Life

This all sounds very good talk but I’m sure most of you are asking – how can something sounding so esoteric and transcendental have any proximity to my everyday mundane life?

Well the straight answer is that it has so much more than we dare think.

Here are a few things that I do and follow as a regular practice to manifesting my destiny (I started this a few days ago so I will keep you posted as I go along):

• Contemplate frequently on the fact that life is interdependent and connected. This helps entrench the perspective that I am not isolated but part of a holistic universe.

• I try to be conscious about the extent of my responsibility on the things I do and everyday occurrences. This has been a recent life-changer for me. I have started to grow from a ‘passive slacker’ attitude to a more proactive and self-disciplined attitude to life.  This comes out from the realization that I am a proactive agent in the cause and effect cycle of my life.

• Contemplate on the fact that life and the universe is infinitely abundant. I try to break free from the limited belief that life is limited and resources are scarce.

• Believe more in the fact that I am not what my past has made me. This is a self-incurred limitation. I try to believe more in the fact that my positive actions today will bring forth positive results tomorrow. I can break through the threshold of self-imposed limitations.

• Be more positive. This has been another life-changer for me. Accentuate the positive vibes and good moments while attenuating the not so good ones.

• Try to listen more to my heart’s true desires. This was somehow a bit harder for me to come by since one has to considerably slow down for this. One has to peel off the non-essential needs and goals (counter-intuitively even the so much needed immediate financial needs!) and listen to the more long-term and soul enriching needs of the heart. This has to do a lot with authenticity as explained above.

• Think vividly and visualize my goals.

• Expect them to happen because I am now starting to become more and more connected to the source of abundance and my heart is starting to unlock from useless and false expectations.

When your heart is open, then life can flow through it. Life will follow it and destiny will be naturally manifested.

Related posts:

1. Heart Driven Success
2. A Note on Happiness