How Present Are YOU?

You’re attending a Thursday night Murli, the teacher calls your name and you suddenly notice you haven’t heard what she has been saying for a few minutes and what she is asking you. In a split second your attention is back in the room and you realize you had drifted off to your text message and then to email and then to an aggressive driver in the red BMW M3 who had cut you off in the morning and were going through the analysis and living the experience all over again. Sunday Murli... ditto! During the moments you were mentally absent in the Murli class, you missed Baba’s message of vital importance that the teacher was teaching you as to how to be mentally present in the Murli and for that matter anywhere you are physically present. The teacher called your name because she noticed your mental absence, in other words, you were not mindfully present. 

Drifting away happens to all of us. When we are not speaking, we tend to think 650 – 1000 words a minutes. What is important is to recognize that our mind has drifted away and tell our mind to come back to the Murli, where you need to focus. Repeat this exercise every time you drift away and soon you will be mindfully present wherever you are. 

The Deepest Addiction! We live in the age of increasing distractions from text messages, apps, phone calls, emails, daily family chores, work, friends, nasty boss, meetings, stock market fluctuations and so on. Here again, we need to be mindfully present where we are physically present. Mindful presence can also enable you to clear your mind of thoughts to seek inner peace. 

Resisting Reality! We sometimes notice that our feelings of sorrow, irritation, frustration and all our fears are arising from all those moments when we lose our self in our mental compendiums of fictional tales leading us to constantly go astray with thoughts. The inner signs of being fully present include a quiet mind which is no longer busy running stories of our past or future, or of other people’s lives. The full presence can be achieved with the practice of mindful presence – notice the thought that comes to mind and then tell the mind to refocus where it needs to. 

Seeing Through the Illusions! When you are watching an action movie in a theatre while gobbling up popcorns and soda, you are fully aware at all times that you are sitting in a chair in a theatre and that there is no reality in the movie, it is just a movie, an illusion. You are therefore not moved by the characters, plot, action or the images on the screen. You are a detached observer! Not because you do not care but because you are resisting the movie maker’s attempt to manipulate your emotions....you are mindfully present in the theatre for enjoyment. 

Discovering Inner Peace! There normally comes a moment in the lives of those who consciously search for real relaxation, otherwise known as inner peace, when they realize that actually their real world is within their self. The ‘real’ world is the inner world of our consciousness. It’s just that it’s not even ‘inner’; it is the self, itself! 

Action: Consciously practice being a detached observer of things happening around you and in your mind and be mindfully present where you chose to be physically present and tell your mind to refocus where you need your mind to. Repeat regularly in different environments so you get a hang of it. 

Adapted from Mike George’s article,” How Present Are YOU?”© 2012

Happy New Year: 2014

Meditation changes Gene Expression

Image Courtesy: http://handbookofawesome.com

Meditation is a practice in which an individual trains the mind to enter self-consciousness, either to realize some benefits or as an end in itself. Some of the earliest references to meditation are found in the Hindu Vedas. With evidence growing that meditation can have beneficial health effects, scientists have sought to understand how these practices physically affect the body. 

A study by researchers in Wisconsin, Spain, and France, believed to be first of this kind, investigated the effects of a day of intensive mindfulness practice in a group of experienced meditators, compared to a group of untrained control subjects who engaged in quiet, non-meditative activities. After eight hours of mindfulness practice, the meditators showed a range of genetic and molecular differences, including altered levels of gene-regulating machinery and reduced levels of pro-inflammatory genes, which in turn correlated with faster physical recovery from a stressful situation. 

"Most interestingly, the changes were observed in genes that are the current targets of anti-inflammatory and analgesic drugs," says Perla Kaliman, first author of the article and a researcher at the Institute of Biomedical Research of Barcelona, Spain (IIBB-CSIC-IDIBAPS) where the molecular analyses were conducted. The study was published in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology. 

Mindfulness-based trainings have shown beneficial effects on inflammatory disorders in prior clinical studies. The new results provide a possible biological mechanism for therapeutic effects. The results show a down-regulation of genes that have been implicated in inflammation. The affected genes include the pro-inflammatory genes RIPK2 and COX2 as well as several histone deacetylase (HDAC) genes, which regulate the activity of other genes epigenetically (that is, through changes in inherited gene function that do not involve changes in DNA sequence; epigenetics is the study of heritable changes in gene activity which are not caused by changes in the DNA sequence) by removing a type of chemical tag. 

Gene is the fundamental physical and functional unit that contains the inherited information that is found in the DNA. Genes are actually a subset of a cell's DNA. DNA is the material inside the nucleus of cells that carries genetic information. 

Perhaps surprisingly, the researchers say, there was no difference in the tested genes between the two groups of people at the start of the study. The observed effects were seen only in the meditators following mindfulness practice. In addition, several other DNA-modifying genes showed no differences between groups, suggesting that the mindfulness practice specifically affected certain regulatory pathways. 

However, it is important to note that the study was not designed to distinguish any effects of long-term meditation training from those of a single day of practice. Instead, the key result is that meditators experienced genetic changes following mindfulness practice that were not seen in the non-meditating group after other quiet activities -- an outcome providing proof of principle that mindfulness practice can lead to epigenetic alterations of the genome. 

"Our genes are quite dynamic in their expression and these results suggest that the calmness of our mind can actually have a potential influence on their expression," says study author Richard J. Davidson Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "The regulation of HDACs and inflammatory pathways may represent some of the mechanisms underlying the therapeutic potential of meditation-based interventions," Kaliman says. "Our findings set the foundation for future studies to further assess meditation strategies for the treatment of chronic inflammatory conditions." 

 Adapted from University of Wisconsin-Madison News article, “Study reveals gene expression changes with meditation” © 2013

Have YOU Realized Your Power, Passion and Principles?

Do you feel powerless as you engage with whatever life throws at you? On a scale of one to ten, how passionate do you feel on an average day? Do you feel guided by consciously chosen principles or you feel rudderless? You see, there is an intimate connection among power, passion and principles which arise from within you and they diminish over time in absence of self-awareness and consciousness. 

The Power to Change: A simple definition of power is ‘the ability to influence future change’. That ‘change” can be internal within your consciousness or external as applies to anything in the world. Most people try to change others but eventually realize that they cannot, and end up with frustration and stress. 

Ending the Habit of Disempowerment: In order to become powerful, you need to eliminate ways in which you give away your power. That means, restore your awareness of the truth that you are totally responsible for what you think, feel and act in response to others behavior. Your cholesterol goes up over time not because someone gives it to you but because what you think, feel and act in response to others’ behavior. Every time a situation comes up, take a deep breath and remind yourself, “I will not react to others, I am my own master and I will exercise complete control over my thoughts, feelings and actions.” 

Measuring Your Passion: Often, passion is confused with desire, lust and even anger. But the true passion is the natural enthusiasm for doing something that you are consciously and joyfully choosing to do. Passion involves a ‘want to do’ attitude as opposed to ‘have to do’ attitude. When in passion, you are motivated, you are fired up, you are never tired and you find every reason to pursue what you are passionate about. Real passion emerges when we are creative and that is when we lose sense of time.

The Values that Guide: Once our purpose is discerned, it’s our values that will guide our creative purpose into actual action. Those values will either enhance or sabotage the quality of our creativity.

The Values Question: When asked what they value (care about) most, the majority of people immediately respond with family, friends and health. The underlying reason for family and friendship is the value of love at its highest form and for health, they value peace within. Thus the presence of ‘love’ and ‘peace’ within our consciousness make us genuinely and sustainably happy. And when love is our guide, our purpose will automatically serve to nurture and sustain others in benevolent ways. 

The Deep connection between Power, Passion and Principles: The thread that connects these three characteristics at consciousness level is, of course love; love is the highest vibration of the energy of our consciousness. Love is a creative force of relationship and connection. It creates the intention to serve, benefit, give and nurture others free of any desire for anything in return. Love is the state of consciousness and you are most powerful when your consciousness radiates love. As we direct the energy of love, you will find yourself ‘influencing future change’ in creative and benevolent ways ...inside and out! ! Love is our power, it is our purpose, it is the cause of our passion and it is what gives us the capacity ‘to value’, and principles. We only need to untangle all the inherited illusions about what love is and is not, in order to be it and do it ...once again! 

Action: End disempowering yourself by consciously reminding yourself that you are in control of your thoughts, feelings and actions while dealing with others, especially those who you think are difficult to deal with. Influence their thoughts, feelings and actions with your benevolent ways. 

 Adapted from Mike George’s article “Have YOU Realized Your Power, Passion and Principles?” © 2012

Are YOU the Master of Your Mind?

From our own experience, we know that our mind is where everything ‘happens’...first! It’s where we plan, create, envision and generate our responses to others. It’s the place in the inner space of our consciousness where our successes begin, our stresses are generated and failures shaped. 

Restoring Mental Mastery - Just about everything evolves through our mind, revolves around our mind and involves the use of our mind. That’s why it’s useful to check your level of mental mastery. Have you just surrendered to whatever arises, whatever is triggered, whatever arrives...in your mind? Are you the master of your mind or a slave to what’s on your mind? For thousands of years in India, the primary practice for mental mastery has been the art of meditation simply because meditation returns us to our deeper ‘inner space’, our most natural state with inner peace and power that is prior to the mind, prior to thinking. It is a state of consciousness where there is no need to think. However, our thinking is shaped naturally there by the wisdom of our heart and the purest vibration of the energy of our consciousness which we know as love. 

Levels of Reality - However, it is not possible to remain in our ‘inner space’ until the mind is mastered; there are three insights to it: 1) you are a being of consciousness and mind or thinking is one of the ‘faculties’ of you; 2) the mind is like a window through which images of the physical world ‘out there’ come ‘in here’ to the non-physical awareness of consciousness i.e. you; and 3) There are five levels of reality linked to our mind; a) the world as it is (without any interpretation); b) what you consciously focus on in the world before interpretation; c) your interpretation of what you focus on; d) your inner world of beliefs and memories (close your eyes and daydream/remember/judge the memory of another); and e) you (the one that is ‘doing’ all the above, the one who is creating the other four levels of reality!). However, we need to be able to discern and decide how to engage with that world in ways that are beneficial to the physical health of our body and to the wellness of our being! 

Don’t Get Lost in the Movie! - Becoming the master of your mind, with the ability to discern the different levels of ‘reality’, requires the practice of ‘detached observation’. This is also the main/primary step in the practice of meditation. It can be likened to sitting in the movie theatre but not losing the awareness of one’s self as ‘the viewer’ of the changing colors and forms on the screen; not easy for most of us as we believe the whole point of going to the movies is to lose our self in the movie and to escape from the reality. In meditation, like in the movie, the self becomes aware that, ‘I am simply observing whatever is happening on the screen of the mind’. As a result, you become aware of two things: first, Inner peacefulness that brings a feeling of stability and serenity and second, a growing awareness of your self as the master of your life. 

Auto Interpretation - During the process of developing the practice of ‘detached observation’ you will also start to notice how you automatically interpret and filter whatever you see with your physical eyes, and feel with your subtle senses, according to previously formed beliefs and experiences. This we know as ‘perception’. The more you ‘notice’ this, the more you will become aware of your own biases and prejudices and more you can shed perception and become ‘detached observer’. The practice of meditation and mindfulness are therefore essential to mental mastery i.e. being the master of your first faculty which we call ‘mind’. 

Being is Deep - Being the master of your mind means living by your consciousness and not living in your mind. Meditation is essentially the practice of living from the depths of you, from the depths of your consciousness. From the depths of YOU, you can see and you can receive the world as it comes into and onto your mind. Yet, you are also able to remain calm and quiet, cool and peaceful, and therefore you are able to bring the wisdom of your depths, sometimes referred to as the wisdom of the heart, to bear as you consciously create your response to ‘what’s on your mind’! 

Action - Take five minutes every day and consciously detach your self from what is going on in your mind. Notice exactly when you are pulled back into what’s on your mind. 

 Adapted from Mike George’s article “Are YOU the Master of Your Mind?” © 2013

Do YOU Live in the Problem or the Solution?

No matter which language you speak, we all share a common language called, ‘problemian’. It sounds like, “There’s a problems with... I have a major problem... You know what I think the problem is... The problem with you is...”! ‘Problem’ essentially means I am having difficulty (either mentally or physically) with something, someone or some situation, and I don’t know how to make things easier. How quickly we can overcome the problem and find the solution depends on how creative we can be and there are seven approaches to finding a solution: 

1. Rational: The rational approach is best used for those practical ‘on the surface’ issues and situations. It’s a useful approach when we believe there are problems around anything to do with arranging, organizing and co-coordinating. For example how to organize the chairs in a room, how to distribute the tickets fairly, how will guests be served, all require a reasoned, logical and common sense approach. Nothing deeper or more subtle than a rational strategy is usually required. 
2. Casual Analysis: Sometimes we don’t realize that we are only fixing the symptoms but not the cause of the problem. So some problems benefit from analysis prior to solution seeking. For example; I’m feeling stressed, why because there is a growing sense of fear, why because I think she might leave me. On further analysis I might find that the reason why she might leave me is that I always see myself in a negative light and I have low self-esteem. So the solution is to rebuild my self-esteem and thus keep her from leaving me. 
3. Intuition: Intuition is another word of our innate wisdom or our natural ‘knowingness’ of what is true. It’s something we all have at the heart of our consciousness. It’s useful for those difficult relationships and situations which have more subtle, unseen dimensions. Sometimes a doctor sees a patient and without examining the patient, the doctor intuitively feels that the patient is a lot sicker than she appears or the patient feels and could face a health catastrophe and directs patient to undergo some test for unexpected health issue. The test results show hidden health issue, proving intuition to be correct. 
4. Consult the Three Es - Experts, Experience and Extraordinary Thinking: The problem with the plumbing system requires ‘the expert’, the specialist, the trained professional! Our ‘experience’ however often contains the way we tackled something similar in the past and it always pays to consult the memory bank for previous problem solving experiences. ‘Extraordinary thinking’, on the other hand, is imagining what someone wiser, maybe even someone we know would do in a situation like we are facing at the moment. 
5. Envision and Live in the Solution: What do you do when the problem of a conflicted relationship arises? Take a moment to reflect on the state of the relationship. Then create a vision of the outcome you’d like to see where a harmonious connection and exchange is restored. This vision will empower you as to what we need to do to get there.
6. Cultivate a Deeper Self Awareness: Seeing through the perceived problem, identifying its deepest origin, remaining focused with clarity until a creative solution is found require a state of consciousness that is curious and calm. It’s only when we restore our true self-awareness as peaceful and loving beings, that we can access our inner peace, from which comes our inner power. This is the foundation for our capacity to remain calm, stable and able to be creative when things don’t go as planned. 
7. Dissolving the Problem at Source: When we decide there’s a problem we make that decision within our own consciousness. It is simply a perception, an interpretation. That’s not to say that the situation on the ground out there doesn’t exist. A million starving people can be a BIG problem or simply a fact that invites us to respond to do what we can to alleviate the condition/situation. If we can stand back and see without emotion we may generate a greater clarity and the solution for the problem, if not, we will see starvation as a problem that cannot be solved. 

 In reality, there are no problems; they are just the situations, that is how in reality the world is. It is not the way of avoiding the world around us. It is a mindset that frees us from seeing things as wrong or as a problem. Practice to see things as a situation and not as a problem and you will find a solution.

 Adapted from Mike George’s article “Do YOU Live in the Problem or the Solution?” © 2012

Diwali Celebrations 2013

Do YOU Have a Hierarchy of Needs?

Do you have needs? The gospel according to Maslow is known as The Hierarchy of Needs. The idea of needs, and the opinion that we have some, if not many, seems to have become a cornerstone of many schools of psychology and psychotherapy and, well, numerous other therapies. From a spiritual point of view, we are spirit and not form, as such our body may have needs but we do not!

So let us explore the spiritual answer to the oldest question, Who Am I? in light of the Brahma Kumaris’ revelation that we are a spirit and not a form.

The Basic Biological/Physical Needs: Even at the most basic physical level the ‘spiritual perspective’ might cast a little doubt over the veracity of Maslow’s ideas. From the spiritual perspective, when we acquire food/shelter/clothing etc. we are not doing so for ‘me’ but for our body. Our body has need; we must take care of it. Taking care to our body is quite different from desiring something for me!

The Need for Security: All ‘things’ come and go. Material ‘things’, including all forms ‘out there’, come and go. Mental ‘things’ including all thoughts and feelings ‘in here’, come to pass...literally! But the one and only thing that never passes or goes anywhere is the soul! If this is fully ‘realized’ then security and survival cease to be relevant. Our need to be secure arises from the belief that we are a form that we occupy. And forms can be threatened and destroyed but not the soul.

The Need for Belonging and Love: A need for belonging is often confused with the search for a sense of identity. We learn to identify with ‘ideas’ like family, club, profession, nation, religion and race etc. so that we may derive the feeling of belonging. From a spiritual point of view this is a form of insanity! At the very least it is very non-spiritual! It is also what gives rise to the ego or the ‘false self’ or misidentification. And as for love, in summary when we realize love is what we are, then the need to find it, acquire it and keep it falls away, to be replaced by the giving of it in whatever way is appropriate to the situation/scene/circumstances etc. Only then is true love known.

The Need for Esteem: When esteem is believed to be dependent on and defined by achievement, status and reputation we can see how this ‘apparent need’ drives much of human activity in the world today. Esteem essentially means estimation, which means value, which means worth which is always momentary; on status, which can be lost at any moment; and on our reputation, which can be destroyed by a few keystrokes! Once again the spiritual point of view reveals an awareness of real worth as something that is only found deep within the self...itself! It is an awareness of our value that arises only from the act of giving of our self without seeking any return. Arising in parallel to this inner source of worth is the awareness of the impossibility of loss, which is the foundation for the ultimate sense of security; nothing real can ever be lost.

The Need for Self Actualization: From a spiritual point of view the idea of self-actualization means self-realization. In order to crystalize ones true potential one first has to realize who/what one is. Someone who knows they are a spiritual being has no need to grow or fulfill anything. They are intuitively aware that they are already all they can ever be i.e. nothing needs be developed; nothing real can be added to our authentic self. Fulfillment is already a reality i.e they are already endowed with the capacity to be loving, peaceful and creative.

Adapted from Mike George’s article, “Do YOU Have a Hierarchy of Needs?”© 2012

Are YOU Missing Out?

According to almost universally accepted wisdom, at any given moment on our journey through time and space, otherwise known as ‘life’, you are where you are meant to be. Nevertheless, we tend to spend significant amounts of time wanting to be somewhere else. It’s the moment when we accept ‘life’ has just passed us by again! This is also the moment when we start creating and sustaining the habit of thinking we are ‘missing out’ on something. Unfortunately, this habit ensures that we are in the state of absence from both the places; our presence is weak where we are at the moment and absent from where we want to be. 

There are a number of forms that the ‘I’m missing out on something’ thought and feeling can take. 

1. Aspiring to Acquire: It usually begins in childhood when we learn to perceive the lives of others to be better than ours. ‘They’ seem to have more, live more and be more.
2. It’s more fun elsewhere: When we hear stories of how much fun people had last night or last week we start to look for evidence that yet again there is something happening elsewhere and that we are not in the right place at the right time to be part of the fun. 
3. I will miss some special moment with some special people: If there is an attachment to and/or dependency on another, especially to someone whom we consider to be ‘very special’, there can develop a tendency to believe that when we are not with them, we may be missing out on some special experience that can only be had in their presence. 
4. Others may get ahead of me: Our competitive conditioning often takes over and we either drive ourselves onwards to make sure we don’t miss out on the approval and accolades in life. Or we give up, sit back and create an inner fate for ourselves that sounds like, “I am always the one who misses out”, so what’s the point? Often referred to as ‘learned helplessness’, this thinking can paralyze our enthusiasm at any moment and drive us into depression. 
5. Unlimited Possibilities: In an interconnected world, we are constantly tempted to be present anywhere and everywhere at any time of our choosing. As we find it somewhat difficult to be omnipresent; it’s inevitable that we may conclude that we are always missing out on something somewhere all the time! 
6. Something is more likely to happen to them than it is to me: If we allow ourselves to become impressed by other people’s wonderful experiences we may start to believe that nothing wonderful ever seems to happen to me. 
7. The last time I was here I missed something there: The memory of believing that we missed something important in the past ensures we become edgy and nervous in our decision making in the present as we are anxious that it won’t happen again. 

For the person with the ‘missing out’ habit of thinking, their grass is always greener on the other side of that hill! The belief that we are missing out obviously has its roots in the belief that our happiness, fulfillment and self-worth lie somewhere ‘out there’ in a place where we are not present. It’s a sign that we have forgotten how to be content within our self wherever we are. It’s a sign that we have lost our awareness of our innate worth. It’s a sign that we expect some thing or someone in the world to take responsibility for our happiness and make our life fulfilled.

And so we become inwardly skilled at creating many reasons and imaginations to believe and feel we are missing out on something somewhere. And yet we know that in reality we can never be anywhere other than where we are. Imagination is not real, it is speculation; curb it. It only creates anxious discontentment. 

The truth is, you can never miss out on anything ‘real’ as long as you believe things and places are more real where you are right now. 

Learning to be present, learning to be content in the present, knowing for sure that there is nothing ‘out there’ that can give you stable and sustained sense of self-worth and personal contentment, is the only way to free yourself from the gnawing and sometimes extremely subtle anxiety that we should be somewhere else. 

Action: At the end of the day run through the events of the day in your mind and count the number of times you thought you would like to be somewhere else. Plan to focus on being fully present where you will be next. 

 Adapted from Mike George’s article, “Are YOU Missing Out?”© 2010

Are YOU Ready for the Ultimate Makeover?

People spend billions of dollars in pursuit of an improved self-image or makeover; facials, hairstyling, nails, nipping, tucking, liposuction scrapping and exfoliating and so on! It’s an exercise in feel good, in appearance improvement. Nevertheless, for the true makeover to happen, it must come from within; nip those negative thoughts in bud, tuck away those feeling of helplessness, scrape out those layers of habitual neediness and exfoliate those long beliefs and misperceptions. That is, a true makeover is inner makeover in which you scrub your entrenched habits of self-sabotage to purify your soul. Here are seven steps for inner makeover: 

Stop BLAMING and Start CREATING: Stop blaming others for your problems. Start thinking creatively; ask yourself, how I could have responded differently. 

Stop WORRYING and Start LIVING: Some people constitutionally worry about chances of things going wrong, others having low opinion of them or even about things that happened in the past. Stop these worries and work on how you can think, converse and act in a detached manner and start living in present. 

Stop REGRETTING and Start FORGETTING: Thinking that you could/would/should have made a better choice, worked harder, paid more attention, acted with more detachment and responsibility is fictional. Stop it. Start forgetting the past because it happened in the past. Remember the past only to learn from it and to deal with the present in a more detached manner. 

Stop RESISTING and Start ACCEPTING: It’s seems that we are fated to live a life of subconscious resistance; whether it’s someone else’s idea, or their desire, or their opinion, or just ‘them’, we square up against them, even when we cannot justify our behavior. In such moments we are essentially killing our contentment and generating anxiety. So ...stop it! Start accepting everything the way it is. It doesn’t mean agreeing, but stop disagreeing. It doesn’t mean condoning, but stop condemning. As you do, you will start feeling calmer and projecting more positive energy around you; you will start connecting with others in a way that builds and nurtures the relationship. 

Stop TAKING and Start GIVING: Any impatience means we cannot wait to receive. Wanting, having, keeping, holding, grasping, are all forms of taking. It’s not wrong. Notice there is always a tension, an anxiety, perhaps an intense fear, that sits behind each. This is how to make yourself stressed. So ...stop it! Start releasing, offering, sharing, giving and you’ll also notice you naturally start receiving. There will likely be the feeling of a very different energy that comes not from others or from the world, but from your own heart! Wise is the soul who lives to give. Happy is the soul who cares and shares. Clever is the soul who receives, but never takes, in order to give! 

Stop THINKING and Start FEELING: We tend to live based on what’s ‘on’ our mind, consequently, our thoughts create our emotions and images in our mind. When the world around us turns out to be different than our own image of it, our emotion and image in our consciousness are disturbed; we become uneasy. We make this mistake so often that it feels normal. We then become addicted to our emotions and forget how to really choose our feelings within our consciousness about anything that happens outside of our self. Stop living based on what’s on your mind. Start consciously choosing what you feel, by controlling your mind. You will then become the master of your mind. 

Stop DOING and Start BEING: It is tough to stop being a compulsive doer! The imperative is to do more in less time. It is not difficult to become an action-addict, especially when there is the fear of being left behind. We even feel we have to do something in order to relax and do nothing! We believe we have to be seen by others to be always doing something, working on something, creating something. So we chase feelings of importance, fulfillment and worth through action. So... stop it! Stop being an action-addict. Allow the things to happen, to occur, to appear, as they will! Can you just be with others without trying to advise them, find out about them, fix them, make them feel what you think they ‘should’ feel? If you do, you will feel the reality and the power of ‘the being’ that you are. And you will know that that is all you are. And that will be enough! Quite enough! 

Action: Take each step and ask yourself, “Why is it not so easy for me to do this?” Reflect slowly! Try to master each step.

Adapted from Mike George’s article, “Are YOU Ready for the Ultimate Makeover?”© 2013

Are YOU in Conflict with Anyone?

Being in conflict during the course of our lives is inevitable. Depending on the dynamics, these conflicts either blow over or we get stuck in them or they get escalated. Although the basic ingredients of all conflicts remain the same regardless of the issues at stake, the characters involved or the history of the relationship, the real causes are difficult to see and understand due to distracting and binding emotions. Here are five key ‘insights’ about conflict which may help you walk your own path to liberation from all conflicts everywhere and for all time! 

INSIGHT 1 - Your responsibility within your conflict situation is your contribution to the conflict. The Shift from Dissolution to Resolution: The process of responding to any person or situation happens within you. No one can make you feel anything without your permission. Your fear or anger towards others is your creation, not theirs and hence your emotions or your behavior making them the perpetrators. If you detach yourself for a moment from the conflict and think quietly, you will realize that the conflict and therefore your contribution to the conflict begins with your negative perception of others, within your consciousness, not by others and is sustained within your consciousness. This is why a conflict resolution begins with conflict dissolution; one party has to dissolve its contribution to conflict so that the process of resolution can begin. 

INSIGHT 2 - The quality of energy you put into the conflict will be the quality of energy you will get back. 

The Shift from Wanting to Giving: What you give is what you get, and what you get is the return of what you have previously given; the law of ‘you reap what you sow’. When you become aware of this law you become more careful about the quality of energy you give to others, regardless of who they are, or the situation that you share with them. At a subtle level we radiate attitude, and at a gross level we radiate behavior. Either way what ripples out from us will likely return in a similar form. In a conflict situation this begins with giving respect to the other. 

INSIGHT 3 - You cannot make anyone do or be anything because you cannot control another human being. 

The Shift from Control to Influence: In any conflict situation we are essentially disempowering our self and giving our power to the other. We also believe that others are responsible for our happiness which is obviously not true. Similarly, we cannot control others, however, we can influence the others. If we do, it completely changes the dynamics of the relationship. When we do, we have made the shift from control to influence. 

INSIGHT 4 - The resolution of all conflict begins at the mental level when you accept the other as they are. 

The Shift from Resistance to Acceptance: If you ever want to mentally and emotionally disarm another person in a conflict situation simply accept them as they are and their position as it is. It does not mean you ‘agree’; acceptance is not agreement. It doesn’t mean you ‘condone’ what they have said or done. It does mean you can begin to communicate and travel together on the journey towards resolution. Acceptance is not the only step, just the first step in a real relationship. 

INSIGHT 5 - You are mentally attached to an outcome that is not happening in the physical dimension – only detachment can help you. 

The Shift from Attachment to Detachment: In all your conflicts you have an image in your mind of the result that you want – it may be something to do with a situation or a behavior that you want from another. The truth is the conflict is happening because of your attachment to that specific result. The method you are using to create the result is the wrong method, sabotaging the outcome you want. Before we can resolve conflict it’s necessary to dissolve our part of the conflict and that means learning the art of detachment. 

The reality is, human relationships are messy. People including ourselves are unpredictable. Every exchange is different. Many seem difficult. That means the above insights and their application are not rigidly sequential as stated. Resolving conflict is not about clever techniques and neat methods. Once you are familiar with the wisdom that sits behind the insights, once you see the validity of the internal shifts, then the appropriate behaviors will emerge naturally. You will intuitively begin know when to apply each insight, or a combination, and in which particular moments. 

 Adapted from Mike George’s article,“Are YOU in Conflict with Anyone?”© 2013

Have YOU Restored Authentic Happiness to Your Life?

Almost everything we do and pursue is motivated by the search for happiness. Yet we do not know what exactly happiness is or how to experience it. Consequently, it’s been confused with many feelings clouded by false promises and illusions. Happiness is a state of being. But it’s hard to pin down an accurate description of happiness as it is a state that you ‘feel’ and the words that we use for different feelings mean different things to different people. If you are authentically happy, you will likely come up with three predominant feelings - contentment, bliss and joy. 

Authentic CONTENTMENT occurs when, without any attachment, you are able to accept everyone as they are and everything as it is, at all times in all places, at all moments! Authentic contentment occurs naturally when nothing and no one can disturb you; when you no longer ‘desire’ anything or anyone to ‘make you’...happy! 

Authentic happiness includes a BLISS that arises naturally when we are internally free. And we become internally free when we have no attachment, no fear of losing. Watch and listen to the young starlings on a warm summer day as they learn to fly. They are ‘delighting’ in their freedom to fly because they are not attached to fear of falling down while flying. It’s a great metaphor for spirit, for our self. 

Authentic happiness includes a JOY that arises naturally from deep within when you are engaged in the process of bringing your true peaceful and loving nature, your true state, into the world through your thoughts, words and actions. These are the primary forms that we all create when we realize that we ourselves are not a ‘physical form’ but the energy of consciousness itself. 

In real life, our consciousness gets polluted with many toxins, we call beliefs. And we must watch out for them: 

Toxic Belief No 1 - Acquisition makes me happy! We believe that if we acquire certain objects, certain ‘partners’, then we will find happiness. In reality, however, acquisition brings only temporary happiness but pollutes our consciousness by creating an attachment. 

Toxic Belief No. 2 - Achievement makes me happy. This is the belief that has us continuously setting goals for using our time and energy in striving and struggling towards their achievement that delays our happiness until the goal is achieved. 

Toxic Belief No 3 - Excitement equals happiness. Parents pass on the illusion that excitement is happiness when they take us to our first circus or match. They become excited and call it happiness so we believe them. Excitement is what happens when the water boils. The molecules are excited, they are agitated. But happiness is not agitation. Happiness is a state of contentment with a natural flow of joy from our heart into the world. 

Toxic Belief No 4 - Happiness is dependent on others. We all know the moment when we have said, “I was so happy when you said that! You made me so happy.” Does someone else make you happy? It seems that way. We forget that we are ourselves responsible for our own state of happiness. When we make our feelings dependent on what other people, it’s probably one of the hardest toxins to eliminate from our consciousness. 

Toxic Belief No 5 - Happiness is the result of attachment. “That’s mine; this is my house; my car; my money; my partner”. These are moments when we are really saying we need to be attached to things to be happy. But there will be frequent moments of anxiety, tension, worry and even panic as we ‘fear’ losing what we are attached to. 

Toxic Belief No 6 - Happiness is relief from pain or suffering. Perhaps the most common confusion around happiness is when pain is confused with suffering. However pain relief can never be authentic happiness. Authentic happiness is only possible when we are able to accept the physical pain and differentiate it from suffering. Pain is physical but suffering is mental and emotional which is always entirely our own creation. 

Toxic Belief No 7 - Happiness is only possible when there is success. Brilliantly conditioned, we believe that success equals winning. That include winning our survival! So we live in fear of losing, fear of not surviving, which creates many unhappy moments. Then we start to compare our successfulness against others successes, inducing more unhappy moments!Trying to be more successful today than yesterday, more successful than others, is what turns life into an ultra-serious journey, a joyless expedition, a discontented sojourn. 

There are probably many more toxic beliefs contaminating our consciousness and sabotaging our natural state of contentment, our original bliss and our pure joyfulness,. But recognizing them, and realizing how they are inducing feelings of discontent, joylessness and frequent moments of grumpiness is the first step in the purification of our consciousness. The spiritual process of the purification of our consciousness includes the elimination of the toxins that have been absorbed along the way. 

Adapted from Mike George’s article, “Have YOU Restored Authentic Happiness to Your Life?”© 2013

Are YOU a Believer or a Knower?

You took foundation meditation course, attend the weekly murli classes, visited Madhuban, Mount Abu! You were inspired, you felt genuinely changed by the experience. You returned home with an enthusiasm of new YOU! You are more aware of others, less reactive, more patient, more a listener and a less talker. A few days pass, you get into daily routine and you are back to your old self. And again you search for new ways to unleash your inner potential by attending a self-improvement course. So why do we find it so hard to change? 

The Mind is Set by Belief: The answer can probably be encapsulated in the word ‘mindset’. Until our mindset changes, our thoughts and decisions, attitudes and actions, will not change significantly or lastingly. ‘Mindset’ means the beliefs we have assimilated and to which we are subconsciously attached. They shape our perceptions and our interpretations. They are the root cause of our consequent habits of thought and action. 

Until we consciously do something about our programmed belief system nothing much is going to change in our life. But changing our mindset is NOT about casting out the old and assimilating, adopting and affirming a new set of beliefs. It can bring some short term results at a superficial level but the original beliefs are so entrenched in our subconscious that they sustain and nurture our habitual thoughts and behaviors. Thus there is always a ‘dualistic mental struggle’ between believing in the negative and believing in the positive. 

Stop Trying to Change: So stop trying. Only then is it possible to rediscover the truth. Truth is not belief! Beliefs are a product of dualistic thinking as such, the beliefs have opposites, and hence the mental tension in the thinking, “Should I believe or not believe?” So what is truth? What is the truth that lies beyond right and wrong, beyond believing and disbelieving, way beyond faith and doubt, beyond positive and negative? It is consciousness itself.1 Remember your primary responsibility:After a lifetime of conditioning in which we learn to believe it’s ‘the other’ that makes you feel what you feel, and therefore think what you think, and do what you do, it’s not easy to remember ...no it’s not them, it’s me! Take responsibility for your own emotional state. 

The Shift from Belief to Truth: It’s only when we fully ‘realize’ our true state, which is to realize and know your true nature, that all those beliefs, positive or negative, right or wrong, good or bad, become toast! Belief itself becomes redundant. When you are ‘in’ your true state of conscious awareness then the idea (belief) that you need to ‘believe in’ yourself, believe in the project, believe in the product, just sounds a bit silly! 

Here are some examples of how the dualistic tension of beliefs can be dissolved by the singularity of truth i.e. by realizing and living from your true nature. 

The Anger Beliefs: We tend to ‘learn to believe’ it’s OK to be angry at others, at the world, and even towards our self. Parents and managers may have even learned to use the emotion of anger to scare others into compliance. Then, when someone comes along and says anger is not a good idea, not a healthy emotion, they resist this belief and even argue for their anger! So the anger is good versus the anger is bad conversation gets underway! It’s only when the truth of our inner peace is felt and realized to be our natural state of being, a state that is always there, ‘prior to’ our thoughts and beliefs, that the ‘anger OK/not OK’ argument is seen to be futile and irrelevant! Why? Because hidden in the deep inner peace of our being is the awareness that we don’t depend on anyone else for our feelings of peace, happiness, contentment, joy! This realization of complete inner freedom kills one of the deepest beliefs that most of us learn, which is that we are dependent on others, on events, on the world, for what and how we feel! 

The Belief in Loss: Similarly, fear arises from ‘the belief’ that we may lose something or someone in the future. Sadness arises when we ‘believe’ we have lost someone or something in the past. These beliefs and emotions then shape other reactive, defensive behaviors including withdrawal, avoidance and attack. Only when we truly, deeply realize that everything and everyone are simply passing energies that come and go, like wind and rain, sunlight and snowfall, can we be free of fear and sadness. Sometimes these realizations are called spiritual. They ‘happen’ within our consciousness which is within our spirit or soul. 

Action: Initiate three discussions with three people you know well and practice letting g of belief and reaction and experience the feeling of not having to defend your belief. 

Adapted from Mike George’s article “Are YOU a Believer or a Knower?” © 2012

How Difficult are YOUR Conversations?

Conversation is a double-edge sword; both spoken and unspoken words communicate and set the dynamics of a relationship. Some people breeze through any relationship being warm, calm and accepting person and an empathic listener; at the other end of the spectrum, people go off like a box of fireworks in almost every encounter. Most people converse somewhere between the spectrum ends; some even oscillate between the ends of the spectrum from relationship to relationship. 

Generally, there are three factors that underpin a conversation. These are context, history and expectation. Context usually refers to an existing/perceived situation. History usually refers to previous encounter(s) and its associated baggage. Expectation is about our wants of others such as behavior, favor, acceptance, etc. 

So here are eight suggested guidelines to drive hazard-free down the conversation lane: 

1. Remember your primary responsibility:After a lifetime of conditioning in which we learn to believe it’s ‘the other’ that makes you feel what you feel, and therefore think what you think, and do what you do, it’s not easy to remember ...no it’s not them, it’s me! Take responsibility for your own emotional state. 
2. Respect is the secret ingredient: Any previous negative experiences (memories of suffering that you attributed to the other) or any previous negative judgment about the other will not allow you respect the other. A conversation without mutual respect will flounder and animosity may flourish. You won’t be able to affirm their innate worth and goodness as a human being unless your vision of them ascribes value to them. 
3. Resistance only leads to persistence so.. stop it! Once you have accepted that it’s you who is responsible for what you feel it’ll be easier to dissolve your resistance to them, even when you don’t agree with them. Resistance kills our capacity to hear the other clearly and eats away at our ability to understand them. Acceptance does not mean you agree with them but it makes conversation easier. 
4. Listen from your heart as well as your head: Listening from the heart can instantly soften a difficult conversation and remove most of the ... difficulty! Instead of being concerned just with their facts and your feelings, you become equally interested in the feelings of the other. Listening from the heart is a skill that develops a deeper connection with the other that leads to pleasant relationship. 
5. Be like a bendy toy: Entering a conversation with wants and conditions will make the conversation difficult. By being flexible, willing to compromise and acknowledge other’s feelings, you will improve your conversations and relationship with the other. 
6. Avoid presumption and assumption: When you make an assumption or presumption you become ‘closed’ around your own conclusions about their motivation, intention and behavior. Even better is to genuinely care about the other. When you can care for and about the other, you will do a lot of ‘asking’, which in turn will naturally reveal and dissolve your assumptions. 
7. Drop the past and pick up the future: Don’t dwell in the past by continuously going over the past. Ask only once what happened and what, if anything, can we learn. Then ask yourself how do we go forward, how will we deal with the same situation/issue next time. Revisiting the past tends to descend to blame- game and makes conversation difficult. 
8. Never DEXTIFY: When challenged, never Defend, EXplain and jusTIFY. Instead, ask before telling. This helps create space to restore openness in conversation. Remember, the root cause of a difficult conversation always lies within us, not with them. 

 Action: Identify 2 people with whom you tend to have difficult conversations and then practice each of the strategies listed above to improve conversations steadily.

 Adapted from Mike George’s article, “How Difficult are YOUR Conversations?”.© 2013

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