Meditation is...Life Enhanced II

Last month, in the first part of this 2-part series, we discussed how meditation enhances life. This month, let us see how meditation enhances brain development and help us achieve higher grades in school, better career advancement and healthier living.

As we discussed last month, meditation can have positive mental and physiological effects on anxiety, stress (which in turn lowers blood pressure), depression, chronic pain, etc. In fact meditation is a sort of self-directed neuroplasticity, that is, effect of thoughts on the brain. We humans do not use the full capacity of our brain. What this means is that you can teach an old brain new tricks. For example, prisoners of war who were placed in solitary confinement (no distractions) developed unusual cognitive capacities that they did not have before because the only activity they were allowed to do was to think. The POWs were essentially exercising their brains. Similarly, when you meditate and focus on Jyotirbindu, a point of light, even for a few minutes a day, you eliminate all the distractions, thereby by placing your brain essentially in a solitary confinement for a few minutes, your brain develops increased capacity for functions such as memory and understanding complex problems and relationships.

As you continue to practice meditation and focus your attention to Jyotirbindu and inner consciousness, you will have a growth in the number of physical neurons and neuronal connections in sections of your cortex. Those sections are: the right frontal cortex, related to concentration; the right insula, related to emotions; and the right parietal and temporal lobes related to touch and sound. A recent study also showed that after eight weeks of meditation, brain imaging showed reduction in the volume of the amygdala related to anxiety and stress and an increase in the number of neurons and neuron connectivity in the hippocampus, related to emotion, learning and memory, thus increasing the brain function capacity. Amygdala is an almond shaped mass of nuclei located deep within the temporal lobe of the brain that performs a primary role in the processing of memory, decision-making, and emotional reactions. A very recent study showed that meditation increased connectivity in centers of cortex, spinal cord and cerebellum as well. What’s more, the longer people practiced meditation, the more the increased cortical surface area. Another study showed that the meditation decreased the Default Mode Network (DMN) activity. DMN is responsible for daydreaming and non-focused internal thoughts which can include memories, thinking of the future, thinking about others and reliving past experiences. This implies that the mind wanders less during meditation. More significantly, a new type of Default Network appeared that not only increased focus and decreased daydreaming, but also increased self-monitoring.

In other words, advanced meditators had a new type of “Default Mode” with more ability to control thoughts and emotions, and greater ability to stay focused on the present. What this means is that if you make Raj Yoga your way of life and meditate regularly, you can get better grades, advance your career, improve your relationships and enjoy healthier living.

Tao of the Traveller

Meditation is ... Life Enhanced I

In last month’s article, Take Care of Your Self Holistically, we discussed three elements of holistic care of yourself. Meditation is so crucial and intertwined with our life that we will discuss it in a series of two monthly articles; this is the first in the series of two articles.

Just as we get school and college education and learn pleasure and pain of our physical body while growing up, we need to learn stability, non-reactiveness and calmness of our mind from inner consciousness of our soul. Meditation gives us this control over our self which in turn enables us to eat well, exercise and face and embrace even the unpleasant or painful aspects of daily life. The stability and non-reactivity we develop through meditation elevates us to be more compassionate human beings, with pure non-reactive, non-judgmental presence with awareness of the present time in the present time. Meditation gives us the awareness of our thoughts which in turn enables us to disentangle ourselves from our habitual and toxic thoughts, words, and behaviors and connect with our experience, with ourselves, and with others in a healthier and detached way. Twenty three studies conducted in early 2000’s show that meditation is intimately linked to improvements of attentional functions, cognitive flexibility, working memory capacity and some executive functions. These improvements may lead to better grades in school, advancements in your career and better understanding and therefore relationships with family, friends and co-workers!

It is natural for our mind to wander frequently at all times. We are often lost in daydreams about the past or the future, completely oblivious of the present moment. Most of these mental distractions often produce stress, anxiety, fear, worry, and all sorts of emotional suffering. Similarly, have you noticed that sometimes you wake up in the morning all stressed out because of a bad dream? Daily practice of meditation develops our ability to pay attention to our present time – The Now Experience – helping us to overcome pre-occupations and attachments so that we can clearly see what is happening in our actual experience of the present moment. Instead of finding ourselves at the mercy of worry, fear, anger, bad dream and the like, we grow in our ability to choose how we want to act in situations, often in ways that might have been beyond our reach before.

Brahma Kumaris practices meditation with eyes open, being mindful and aware of our thoughts in the same way we practice homework examples of math and science. In meditation, we use Jyotirbindu, the point of light, as an object of awareness and focus. And soon after we focus on Jyotirbindu, all sorts of thoughts, feelings, and sensations are likely to distract our attention and we could find that we’ve forgotten all about Jyotirbindu and mentally moving along with these thoughts and feelings and ready to respond to sensations. When we realize we’ve been distracted, the appropriate response is to simply and gently return to awareness of our focus on Jyotirbindu. As for sensations, delay your response as much as possible. As you continue to practice meditation, you will gain enhanced control over localized (alpha rhythms in the primary somatosensory cortex where) sensations from different parts of body (are "mapped" by the brain). Thus you reach a stage when the sensation fizzles away without you needing to respond. In a newly published neurophysiological review, Brown University scientists propose that meditation enhances control of alpha rhythms and helps people overcome persistent stimuli such as depressive thoughts and chronic pain signals.

Practice meditation daily for a few minutes and gradually increase the meditation time to a fixed amount that suits your lifestyle. Meditation will enable you to get more out of your life than you ever imagined! When you teach your children tradition, culture and lessons of life, make Brahma Kumaris' value system, teaching and meditation a part of your teaching.

Take Care of Your Self Holistically

Have you taken time out to take care of yourself today? Know that if you don't prioritize taking care of yourself, your self will be taking care of you! Your lack of care for you will manifest itself in small ways at first – in the form of fatigue, stress, anger, frustration or getting lost in thoughts and worries. Then, over time, if your self is not cared for properly, serious health problems such as high blood pressure and cholesterol, diabetes and even heart disease could ensue.

So, how do you take care of yourself? Good diet, exercise? Well, therein lies the secret. Take a holistic care of your self to achieve that perfect or near perfect balance between you and the environment you live in. This approach requires eating well, exercise AND meditation. Eating well and exercise keep your body healthy but unless your mind is equally healthy, you are only partially taking care of your self. In fact, unlike food and exercise, meditation is an invisible curator of your health, your consciousness, your being. With mind unhealthy, you will not be able to take care of your complete self.

Eat Well: Eating well is a vital part of looking after your self. Eating well maintains immune system of your body. A balanced diet includes fruit, vegetables and wholegrain bread or cereal.

Cut back on salt and sugar. Ditto for saturated fats and trans fats. They can push up your cholesterol levels and increase your risk of heart disease. Unsaturated fats, on the other hand, can reduce your cholesterol levels and provide you with essential fatty acids.

Exercise: Exercise is vital for your physical and mental health. It strengthens your body’s immune system. It helps you deal with stress and lifts depression. Physical activity also helps boost your energy level, self-esteem and posture. It makes your heart stronger, keeps you supple and reduces all sorts of diseases including heart attack, stroke, diabetes undesirable blood lipid, cancer, osteoporosis, etc.

Meditate: What eating well AND exercise are to your physical body, meditation is to your mind and hence to your entire being. Meditation is the crucial component of the regime of taking care of your self. Make meditation part of your daily routine. It is the easiest activity and requires a least amount of physical effort. If you cannot eat well or exercise - both of which require preparation and equipment - due to your busy, fast track life, you can easily and must take time out of your routine at least for meditation which can be done anywhere including a crowded place where you can neither eat well nor exercise. Just as you drink coffee to break your work routine, meditate to break your hectic routine to calm and reset your mind and to enable it to invoke built-in immune system of your soul that helps develop positive thinking.

While the immune system of the body works automatically, the one for soul needs to be consciously and mindfully activated every day and that is exactly what meditation does. It is the immune system of your mind that keeps your mind healthy, allowing you to think positively, eat well and do daily exercise. Meditation empowers you to take care of your self holistically to restore your consciousness, your being, to a state of consistent wellness!

What has been established by Brahma Kumaris for decades on meditation is only recently – in 21st century - being re established by the western institutions such as the University of Wisconsin at Madison and the University of Massachusetts that meditation induces faster physical recovery from a stressful situation and it can reduce employee stress and burnout respectively. In fact, if you cannot bring yourself up to eating well or exercise, start with meditation to reenergize your mind which in turn will empower you to eat well and exercise leading to your overall wellbeing. Meditation is power within you. Deploy it.

Is YOUR 'Other' Immune System Working?

In the year 2011, for which the data is available, Americans spent 17.9% of its GDP (Gross Domestic Product) on healthcare. That is more than $8,608 per person. By comparison, we spend next to nothing on the wellness of our being. While intimately connected, good physical health is different than serenity of wellbeing. Our education never teaches us how to understand our self, how to think, why we feel what we feel and what impact many of our decisions will have on our wellbeing. 

Symptoms of an UNWELL being might include - stressed, grumpy, critical, resentful, defensive, resistant, closed, depressed and frequently unhappy for no apparent reason! 

While the signs of a WELL being would probably include - contented, easy, open, warm, accepting, flexible, enthusiastic, and upbeat with a sunny attitude regardless of what is occurring. Some people with ill health may remain well in their being while others with perfect health may almost always remain unwell! 

• The Root Cause of Illness and Unwellness: We grow up without being able to recognize our feeling beyond crude measures of pleasure or pain, good or bad, high or low of our physical body devoid of the knowledge of their causes. We never learned to manage mindfulness of our mind, that is, to guide our mind to think and act to cultivate inner peace and wellbeing, and we arrive in adulthood without the ability to recognize how our ‘belief systems’ are causing all our moments of mental and emotional misery. However, just as our body has a built-in immune system to maintain its health, our being, our consciousness, our soul also has a built-in immune system. While the immune system of the body works automatically, the one for soul needs to be consciously and mindfully activated every day. 

• It is All About Energy: Imagine a group of you sitting around in harmony and enjoying the company of one another; laughing, excited, joking and suddenly Mr. Grumpy walks in angry, moaning and complaining; on his way to this cheerful get together, he was cut off by the same red hot M3 BMW driver who had cut off Mr. Grumpy last month. The group exuberance instantly converted into the dis – ease with a silent thud! 

• Body AND Consciousness: When a deviant energy such as Mr. Grumpy enters our consciousness we suffer from dis – ease, called our ‘belief’ and it deviates or distorts and weakens our consciousness similar to a deviant energy in the form of a disease or virus finding its way into our body and affecting our physical health and making us feel pain. In order to be able to identify the exact belief that causes each dis - ease within our soul there has to be a clear recognition that the energy of our body is different from the energy of our ‘self’. One is a visible and tangible energy and the other is invisible and intangible. 

• Three Phases: The immune system of the body has, in essence, three phases in the healing process; the recognition of the symptoms, the diagnosis of the cause and the healing effect of the cure. Similarly, the immune system of the soul has three stages; awareness of the feelings of dis - ease, realization of the cause and cure of the dis - ease and the transformation of the energy back to the consciousness when the cure is implemented. 

By activating the immune system of our soul it becomes possible to eliminate our dis - ease and restore our consciousness, our being, to a state of consistent wellness. We know we are well again when we are able to relax at will, be at peace with the world, respond openly and compassionately to others, fully accept the way life is unfolding in the world drama around us, and be able to give selflessly of our self. So how do we activate immune system of our soul? Practice to become mindful of your surrounding and thoughts in your mind at all times. Then guide your mind to get rid of all wasteful thoughts soon after they occur and stay calm under all circumstances even if you are cut off by red hot Me BMW – perhaps, the driver was playing his role by cutting you off. Mindfulness about the drama around you and maintaining calmness is the immune system of your consciousness.

 Adapted from Mike George’s article “Is YOUR 'Other' Immune System Working?” © 2013

Maha Shivratri: 2014

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