“One night I put my head down on the table where the computer sat and I cried; I just want to know what creates reality. How did I do this to myself? I accidentally hit the enter key and there it was, a quote from Neville Goddard; “Imagination creates reality” and I burst into tears of relief. I knew instantly that was true. My life passed by and I saw all the things I had called to me. I knew it was true.”
I recently decided to retire from the hustle and bustle life. I have a comfortable enough life and I am happy, especially, on the inside. I have a mission. I want to share my joys and experiences, to extend joy, and to increase happiness and abundance in joy.
I came upon Neville Goddard a few years ago, similar to how Rita (above) describes her discovery. Now, I have time to listen to Neville’s lectures and read about his life and his accomplishmens. He was a teacher, as am I. He discovered a personal importance of imagination and spirituality, as do I.
I’d come upon his work, probably 10 years ago. I listened to some of the lectures and I liked his message. He was addressing some of my doubts about the ‘law of attraction’ teachings that were popular at the time. Neville was clearly saying that our imagination and our genuine abilities are activated when we connect with our divine nature.
I’ll have more to say about him in the future. Meantime, here is a brief introduction.
Neville Goddard
Neville Lancelot Goddard (1905-1972) was a prophet, profoundly influential teacher, and author. He did not associate himself as a metaphysician, with any ‘ism’ or ‘New Thought’ teaching as commonly advertised by these collective groups. Goddard was sent to illustrate the teachings of psychological truth intended in the Biblical teachings, and restore awareness of meaning to what the ancients intended to tell the world.
Program description
This is a reading of a 09-09-1968 lecture by Neville . There is only a TEXT version of this lecture by Neville’s students. We now offer a read audio version of this lecture to you.
I’ve been wanting to get back here again, posting blog updates, articles, and recommendations for self-improvement. So, I’ll look forward to connecting more often again with my WordPress friends.
Empathy is the ability to see the world as another person, to share and understand another person’s feelings, needs, concerns and/or emotional state… understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another… not trying to solve the problems of another, the goal being to share the experiences of feelings; to let them know you’re there and that how they feel matters to you.
Being an empath is much more than being highly sensitive and it’s not just limited to emotions. Sometimes life is unconsciously influenced by others’ desires, wishes, thoughts, and moods.
If sensitivity is a deficiency and a burden, we become weary, needy and very vulnerable… retracting joy into fears and upsets… and self-destructive harm. At this layer of development, the adolescent or adult empath will model co-dependent behaviors… children that are not growing up in an openly accepting loving home may begin modeling co-dependent behaviors before even two years old.
All of us need strong, healthy community supports, shared language at these, and empaths may need to have opportunities to unload the burden of fatigue and emotional upset. With belonging, progress to cultivate personal preferences and learned practices that increase healthy social interaction within the support community. This will strengthen mind, body, extend calm and help remaining grounded.
Empaths need not resign themselves to belief founded on anxiety or past emotional upsets that they must suffer the consequences of a tel-empathic interaction. With guidance from adepts, you may even begin to alter the mood and emotion of others… adjusting them into your calm. Insecurity and immaturity, lack of awareness, inappropriate co-dependent behaviors, use of manipulation, psychosocial drams, etc. can be addressed.
A happy empath extends joy. The ability to perform so, to extend joy always reduces any vulnerabilities.
“Authentic wisdom is the ability to monitor yourself at all times to determine your relative state of weakness or strength, and to shift out of those thoughts that weaken you.” Wayne Dyer, 10 Secrets for Success and Inner Peace
I was reflecting on authenticity and that as I am out and about or busy with my work that the love that I seek is not really Love… but that it is a state of consciousness in my mind and that it really is based on body sensations and notions, however subtle, that are not true and wholesome like the ideal of love. True love does not come and go and it cannot be found in the world and as I stayed with this, with the stillness, I knew love cannot be found one moment and then lost in another. This presence with Love is timeless, without objects and it might be characterized, although there are no properties in the stillness, I’m saying it is a Self-knowing, Self-recognizing peaceful and serene consciousness of I know this awareness.. a consciousness I recall the experience of as like I’d been in a deep sleep and it is refreshing like a deep object-less sleep.
John Wheeler demonstrated “the universe is a self-referential ‘strange loop’ in which physics gives rise to observers, then rise to information, which in turn gives rise to physics.” What we find here is something quite similar. We’ll discover that mirror relationships create a strange loop as well. An observation changes the perceiving when we focus upon the lessons, changes the information, changes the relationship, changes the information, changes the evolution, changes the observers, changes the physics.
Within, consciousness is fractal-holographic to the exact same awareness and health and state of mind in our every fiber as the mind is aligned. It is as though the past is healed when we heal an emotional wound in the present. THIS IS TRUE: When a pattern occurs in the present and it is healed, the pattern is healed throughout the past… everywhere.
David Bohm’s interpretation of quantum mechanics, overall worldview, and Special Relativity use what he referred to as the holomovement. Holomovement is “undivided wholeness” in process of becoming by “universal flux” not static oneness. By dynamic wholeness-in-motion, everything moves with an interconnectedness as though separared in space and time and yet is always every thing connected with everything else. Bohm expanded his ideas in his book, Wholeness and the Implicate Order, 1980. He included this in Special Relativity afterwards in 1981.
In this note (post), I include a course for you in holo-mirror, holo-movement. This is VERY POWERFUL work as this video demonstrates:
At 13:41 Gregg presents a graphic with a list of the seven mirrors:
1. Mirror of the Moment
2. Mirror of that which is Judged
3. Mirror of that which is Lost/Given Away/Taken Away
4. Mirror of Most Forgotten Love
5. Mirror of Father/Mother
6. Mirror of Your Quest into Darkness
7. Mirror of Self Perception
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— everyone is a mirror —
every important person is an important mirror
— this always applies —
every important person is an important mirror
— everyone is a mirror —
seven mirror patterns
The First Mirror is my presence in the now moment… what we reflect by others in the present… what we radiate in the moment.
The Second Mirror is only very subtlety different but it reflects back to us that which we judge. It is what we have been wounded by and have an emotional charge on. It can be something we have done in the past that we have not forgiven. It is good to discern however that when we condemn another with an emotional charge we are most likely judging ourselves. This mirror is more difficult to understand as most people find it difficult to see the deeply wounded emotions within. We often think we have forgiven people and situations, when in fact they weaved subtlety into the very fabric of our being.
The Third Mirror reflects back to us something we have lost, given away or had taken away. When we see something we love in another it is often something we have lost, given away or that has been stolen within our personal lives. Every relationship is a relationship with the self and often we try to reclaim what we lost, gave away or had taken away as a child. All of which can be reclaimed within self. When we give away our power to another person, we suffer a form of soul loss, without realizing we send out a subtle frequency that others can feel, if they are experiencing the same energy loss, you will attract the same pattern of behavior back to you.
The Fourth Mirror reflects back to us our most forgotten love. This could be a way of life, or a lost or unfinished relationship. Often it is a past life where a wrong conclusion from a prior experience was made. These will recreate themselves over and over and over again until the conclusion is registered in the soul as wisdom. This is the most difficult to come to terms with as we all have made these sort of choices in our life, to leave someone, a place or much loved home, the pain of such a decision will imprint upon the soul or body hologram, once the lesson has been recognized you no longer attract these circumstances to you.
The Fifth Mirror reflects back Father/Mother. It is frequently stated that we marry our father or mother. We may display both healthy and unhealthy patterns we learned as a child. Our father and mother are often like Gods to us and so we will often reflect aspects of our relationship with them onto our partners. We often choose our partners based on our relationship with our parents.
The Sixth Mirror reflects back to us the Quest for Darkness or what is often referred to as a dark night of the soul. This is where we meet our greatest challenges, our greatest fears, and have been gathering the tools from life to confront and deal with. The most important thing to remember is that our soul is giving us the opportunity to grow and evolve, this will help us remove the vibration of victim. If we see these as opportunities for spiritual growth and from a perspective of soul advancement, they do not have to be feared; it is just passing through our life, asking us to seek answers from within rather than relying on others for answers.
The Seventh Mirror reflects back to us our self-perception. Others will perceive and treat us according to how we perceive and treat ourselves. If we are under a low self-esteem and do not accept our wisdom and beauty, others will not acknowledge them. If we are angry, bitter and unloving to others, they in turn will often react in the same way towards us. If we find another perception of ourselves, we alter the world. Maybe it is time to be kind, loving and compassionate with ourselves and others.
Combine mirror work with asking yourself… “Am I playing a role?” If you can recognize that you or the other is playing a role as Victim, Rescuer, or Persecutor, you will be able to accomplish far easier use of the mirror lessons.
This Essene work is tremendously powerful but very subtle.
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Pay close attention to the training.
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The ancient Essene had a very sophisticated understanding of interpersonal human relationships and the role of emotion in those relationships. It’s the role of emotion that we have carefully sifted out of our Western experience up until very recently. Now, as we go back into these texts, we see that it is emotion that proves the power and, when coupled with logic, true magic and miracles occur.
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Qualities that we see in the people around us are directly related to our own traits that attract the mirroring others.
Social laughter is correlated with an elevated pain threshold Laughter Produces Endorphins,
Study Finds:
“Laughter is very weird stuff, actually,” Dr. Dunbar said. “That’s why we got interested in it.” The simple muscular exertions involved in producing the familiar ha, ha, ha, trigger an increase in endorphins. Laughter contributes to group bonding and may have been important in the evolution of highly social humans. .
In five sets of studies in the laboratory and one field study at comedy performances, Dr. Dunbar and colleagues tested resistance to pain both before and after bouts of social laughter. See: Social laughter is correlated with an elevated pain threshold
I connected with more than 1600 friends at Facebook during this past year and my work consumes most of my online time. I hope you will drop on by my FB page if you’d like… really.
Leo Tolstoy wrote a story, The Three Hermits. His friend Nicholas Roerich summarized the tale:
On an island there lived three old hermits. They were so simple that the only prayer they used was: “We are three; Thou art Three have mercy on us!”
Great miracles were manifested during this naive prayer.
A local bishop came to hear about the three hermits and their prayer, and he decided to visit them to teach them the canonical invocations. He arrived on the island, told the hermits that their heavenly petition was undignified, and taught them many of the customary prayers. The bishop then left on a boat. He saw, following the ship, a radiant light. As it approached, he discerned the three hermits, who were holding hands and running upon the waves in an effort to overtake the vessel.
“We have forgotten the prayers you taught us,” they cried as they reached the bishop, “and have hastened to ask you to repeat them.”
The awed bishop shook his head.
“Dear ones,” he replied humbly, “continue to live with your old prayer!”
New Year’s Resolutions Being LOVE sending LOVE as best we are able…
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I always make a set of resolutions for a new year and I always keep them… I am quite sensitive to being sure that I can keep my resolutions by making progress, not by perfection. One part of my resolutions this year is to make better use of social media. I want to continue my personal growth and use what I discovered in these past years as a blogger as good experience for my own personal growth. I’ve learned a lot about myself through blogging. I use what is best for me and I move on in growth to process what you guys say I can do to improve me. I post what I discover and it may therefore be helpful to you. We need each other. [Note: I use Facebook more so also now because I am making faster progress there.]
In past years, going back to the first time I used social media to help me at making a resolution, I set out for a year to eliminate regrets; well, more specifically, to rid myself of discontented futile regrets… having no regrets seemed far too difficult. So, I set myself out to dismantle the regrets of my past. I hope to write about eliminating futile regrets in the future. It was quite a useful and positive resolution for me.
This morning, I read advice posted via Doug Christman. The blog post included a quotation that I loved.
“The fact is that those who do not see themselves but who see others, who fail to grasp of themselves but who grasp others, take possession of what others have but fail to possess themselves.”
~ Chuang Tzu
The blog post is linked below. I like the advice in this post as well. The advice relates to using social media and to self-discovery. I want to add some commentary. My hope is that I will complete my own making of yet another perfect resolution (for me) in time for 2015. I’m getting closer. . Here is some of what I think that the article may do for improving upon a solution. The post makes reference to social media as though using social media is a problem. Possibly it is a symptom of suffering. However, I think using social media is for me a tremendous blessing. Also, the post addresses suffering from relating with others – what I call ‘over relating’ with others.
First, problems themselves are not the source of suffering from over relating with others. Lack of a cohesive spiritual evolve-ment is the problem of mental suffering – over relating with others is a symptom. Using social media as an escape for interpersonal relating in the real world certainly is not solution. The suffering in the real world continues or changes but continues and it is likely to somehow also inject its pain into our social media use.
We tend to want to control others rather than our own reactions – however, relating requires giving of consideration and being understanding. Listing a set of prescriptive resolutions that are reactive isn’t a solution. We’d end up with New Year resolutions that crumble and fail in the first hours of 2015 if there isn’t a spiritual solution in the lessons. I’ll stick for this post to the advice as was listed in the blog post.
1. Spend less time on social media and get back to real life. This is probably not a solution for anyone that is feeling a lack of self-esteem and general good feeling about themselves. Instead, use daily interactions to improve relationships. The situations that cause upsets or low energy are symptoms of suffering that may be going unnoticed if we’d not have a reason for using our time more wisely. Perhaps use social media less. However, making use of social media to accomplish goals and to connect with experts and to learn about self-awareness is a better use of social media.
2. Stop worrying about how other people view you. Good advice! People that cook up dramatic representations – of their victim stories – of pain and suffering – of what (they say) is being done to them – believe they have a need to vent or get justice or to change the other guys. Meantime it may go unnoticed internally… they are the source of their own discontent… of their own irritability… and of their own restless complaining. They need help; and yet, they don’t know how to seek and receive the help that they desperately need. Getting in a mentoring program and recovery from processing themselves as the abused victim is a step into personal freedom from worrying about how others may be understood. Seek to understand more so than to be understood… find mentors that understand how this works.
3. Stop listening to other people’s views and advice on what you ought to be doing. I like the advice: “Just listen to your own inner voice and intuition.” However, we are not the masters of the universe. The advice included, as well, “Use your own divine “Global Positioning System (GPS)” for where you need to be and what you need to be doing. You will find that you will feel so much more connected and you will embrace your life with a positive and optimistic perspective.” I’ll add that if advice is a source for suffering, then perhaps the suffering really is internally generated by rebelliousness and instincts that are over working and undermining the relationships.
I like the fourth one, as is.
In fact, it really may be the key point of blog posted list.
4. Focus on your own goals, desires and wishes. Consider what you’re doing or what you should be doing, and then do that. Don’t worry about what other people are doing. Mind your own business. You need to stay focused and always know what is worth keeping in your mental toolbox and what would be worth pitching. Ask your Higher Self for guidance. Spend your time thinking and doing things that are helping you be happy, healthy and in harmony with your true authentic self.
Do you make New Year resolutions? Are they helpful and doable? What might you add to this topic on resolutions?
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Here is another source that I looked at;
helping me as I set out this year-end
to make a New Year’s resolution:
This Saturday morning (1/3/2015), I will be joining a mentoring the mentor group. It was my desire to form one this year and I was unable to do so. However, last week, a mentor asked me to mentor him and I felt inspired to ask him if we could do our work together with another mentor associate of our mutual acquaintance. He agreed and so did the other man… and so, it got set into motion. I am very happy about this development. I know we will all reap benefits from this work with each other.
My blogging here on WordPress is much less since August. In 2015, I probably will post here only 3-7 times each month and additionally, I will continue to also reblog posts that I love. My contact page is the best source for getting in touch with me if we haven’t already created a way that works for doing this..
Fear and anxiety thrive when we imagine the worst. Breathing is the short circuit for anxiety. Focus on inner peace and stillness.
Seek becoming greater aware.
AWARE an acronym:
A: Accept the anxiety. Don’t try to fight it.
W: Watch the anxiety. Just watch it like it is being projected onto a screen, and when you notice it, scale your level of fear and start to breathe longer on the out-breath.
A: Act normally. Carry on talking or behaving as if nothing is different. This sends a powerful signal to your unconscious mind that its over-dramatic response is actually not needed because nothing that unusual is going on.
R: Repeat the above steps in your mind if necessary. Repeat until the fear is not stressful and until you feel relaxed about whatever you choose to do next.
E: Expect the best. One of the greatest feelings in life is the realization that you can control fear much more than you thought possible.
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Most people are often in a state being preoccupied… forgetful of inner peace (true self); not really present at least during some of their time. Is your mind caught-up sometimes by worries, fears, by regrets, anger, by obsession? That is the state of “being forgetfulness” — here but, not here…. Caught-up by being preoccupied.
“Kindness in words creates confidence.
Kindness in thinking creates profoundness.
Kindness in giving creates love.” ~ Lao Tzu
A guide to personal freedom … disengaging from the matrix.
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Awareness
Step 1 Awakening free will and personal freedom
I’ll borrow from Transcendentalist, Ralph Waldo Emerson. If you have time to ponder this, you may agree: “For non-conformity, the world whips you with its displeasure.” It may seem as “clapped into jail by his own consciousness.” Personal fulfillment requires disengaging from society and embracing physical and intellectual solitude … “Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members,” Emerson argues. Let us not cease making progress. There is a way to accept what is and be free.
Step 2
Being Loving Kindness
Loving-kindness meditation practice is mindfully practicing kindness for positive growth; practicing systematically developing qualities of loving-acceptance. Loving-kindness acts as a form of self-psychotherapy, a way of healing the troubled mind to free it from its pain and confusion. Loving-kindness has the immediate benefit of sweetening patterns of mind.
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Step 3
Unconditional Love
Now, join Harold W. Becker as he hosts this hour long powerful presentation of inspiration and insight on how to become aware of, embrace and experience unconditional love throughout your life.
Marianne Williamson dives into some of the world’s greatest challenges and the concept of how our global society is experiencing a global mutation. The points she makes will motivate you to think of what we can do—and think—as a collective unit, to overcome society’s challenges, heal our spiritual malignancies, and thrive through this global shift.
Open Yale Courses (English) – Open Yale Courses provides lectures and other materials from selected Yale College courses to the public free of charge via the internet.
MIT Writing and Humanistic Studies – The MIT Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies gives students the opportunity to learn the techniques, forms, and traditions of several kinds of writing, from basic expository prose to more advanced forms of non-fictional prose, fiction and poetry, science writing, scientific and technical communication and digital media.
Merriam-Webster Online – In this digital age, your ability to communicate with written English is paramount skill. And M-W.com is the perfect resource to improve your English now.
National Novel Writing Month – Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.
Lifewriting – A complete text of the 9-week writing class a professor taught for years at UCLA.
1. The Practice of Living Consciously 2. The Practice of Self-Acceptance 3. The Practice of Self-Responsibility 4. The Practice of Self-Assertiveness 5. The Practice of Living Purposefully 6. The Practice of Personal Integrity
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Branden introduces the six pillars — six action-based practices for daily living — providing a foundation for self-esteem and explores the central importance of self-esteem in the five areas of the workplace, parenting, education, psychotherapy, and the culture at large.
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No one may be successful if bypassing their basic needs for self-esteem. The ego is not a thing to fight against. It is not even available for debate. The ego is a sense of needs that we may mistakenly believe is the self. However, by opening to greater self-awareness, we come to understand that the ego is just a function of temporary needs messages. I hope that this program and the related links are helpful. I know I attain growth by reviewing of these basic life skills.
MIT OpenCourseWare – MIT OpenCourseWare is a free web-based publication of MIT course materials that reflects almost all the undergraduate and graduate subjects taught at MIT. Tufts OpenCourseWare – Tufts OpenCourseWare is part of a new educational movement initiated by MIT that provides free access to course content for everyone online. Tufts’ course offerings demonstrate the University’s strength in the life sciences in addition to its multidisciplinary approach, international perspective and underlying ethic of service to its local, national and international communities. HowStuffWorks Science – More scientific lessons and explanations than you could sort through in an entire year. Harvard Medical School Open Courseware – The mission of the Harvard Medical School Open Courseware Initiative is to exchange knowledge from the Harvard community of scholars to other academic institutions, prospective students, and the general public. Khan Academy – Over 1200 videos lessons covering everything from basic arithmetic and algebra to differential equations, physics, chemistry, and biology. Open Yale Courses – Open Yale Courses provides lectures and other materials from selected Yale College courses to the public free of charge via the internet. The courses span the full range of liberal arts disciplines, including humanities, social sciences, and physical and biological sciences. webcast.berkeley – Every semester, UC Berkeley webcasts select courses and events for on-demand viewing via the Internet. webcast.berkeley course lectures are provided as a study resource for both students and the public. UC San Diego Podcast Lectures – UCSD’s podcasting service was established for instructional use to benefit our students. Podcasts are taken down at the end of every quarter (10 weeks Fall-Spring and 5 weeks in the summer). If you’re enjoying a podcast, be sure to subscribe and download the lectures. Once the podcast has been taken offline, faculty rarely approve their reposting. Johns Hopkins OpenCourseWare – The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s OpenCourseWare project provides access to content of the School’s most popular courses. As challenges to the world’s health escalate daily, the School feels a moral imperative to provide equal and open access to information and knowledge about the obstacles to the public’s health and their potential solutions. Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative – No instructors, no credits, no charge. Use these self-guiding Carnegie Mellon materials and activities to learn at your own pace. Utah State OpenCourseWare – Utah State OpenCourseWare is a collection of educational material used in our formal campus courses, and seeks to provide people around the world with an opportunity to access high quality learning opportunities. AMSER – AMSER (the Applied Math and Science Education Repository) is a portal of educational resources and services built specifically for use by those in Community and Technical Colleges but free for anyone to use. Wolfram Demonstrations Project – Wolfram brings computational exploration to the widest possible audience, open-code resource that uses dynamic computation to illuminate concepts. Free player runs all demos and videos. The Science Forum – A very active scientific discussion and debate forum. Free Science and Video Lectures Online! – A nice collection of video lectures and lessons on science and philosophy. Science.gov – Science.gov searches over 42 databases and over 2000 selected websites from 14 federal agencies, offering 200 million pages of authoritative U.S. government science information including research and development results. The National Science Digital Library – NSDL is the Nation’s online library for education and research in Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics. EnviroLink Network – A non-profit organization, grassroots online community uniting organizations and volunteers around the world. Up-to-date environmental information and news. Geology.com – Information about geology and earth science to visitors without charge: Articles, News, Maps, Satellite Images, Dictionary, etc. Scitable – A free science library and personal learning tool that currently concentrates on genetics, the study of evolution, variation, and the rich complexity of living organisms. The site also expects to expand into other topics of learning and education. LearningScience.org – A free open learning community for sharing newer and emerging tools to teach science.
This time, I want to share a video that delves into what people are saying about their progress of evolving by meditations – it ought probably give us a sense that meditation is a system, sure; beneficial too, yes; but also that meditating is very personally experienced.
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Meditation and the Power of the Mind – YouTube Published on May 2, 2012 A documentary that explores the practice of meditation and it’s effect on the mind and body.
To find the path to long life and health, Dan Buettner and team study the world’s “Blue Zones,” communities whose elders live with vim and vigor to record-setting age. At TEDxTC, he shares the 9 common diet and lifestyle habits that keep them spry past age 100.
For the the last five years, I’ve been taking teams of scientists to five pockets around the world where people live the longest, healthiest lives. We call these places the Blue Zones. We found a Bronze-age mountain culture in Sardinia, Italy, that has 20 times as many 100-year-olds as the U.S. does, proportionally. In Okinawa, Japan, we found people with the longest disability-free life expectancy in the world. In the Blue Zones (Sardinia, Italy; Okinawa, Japan; Loma Linda, Calif.; and the Nicoya Peninsula, Costa Rica), people live 10 years longer, experience a sixth the rate of cardiovascular disease and a fifth the rate of major cancers.
How do they do it? Forget fad diets, crazy workouts and syrupy self help cliches. The world’s longevity all-stars practice simple, common-sense habits as a natural part of their daily routine. We think of these habits as the Power-9:
1) Move naturally — be active without thinking about it. Identify activities you enjoy and make them a part of your day.
Inconvenience yourself: ditch the remote, the garage door opener, the leaf-blower; buy a bike, broom, rake, and snow shovel.
Have fun, be active. Ride a bike instead of driving, for example.
Walk! Nearly all the centenarians we’ve talked to take a walk every day.
2) Cut calories by 20 percent. Practice “Hara hachi bi,” the Okinawan reminder to stop eating once their stomachs are 80 percent full.
Serve yourself, put the food away, then eat.
Use smaller plates, plates, bowls, and glasses.
Sit and eat not in the car or standing in front of the fridge.
3) Plant-based diet. No, you don’t need to become a vegetarian, but do bump up your intake of fruits and veggies.
Use beans, rice or tofu as the anchor to your meals.
Eat nuts! Have a 2-ounce handful of nuts daily (it’ll stop you from digging in the chip bag).
4) Drink red wine (in moderation)
Keep a bottle of red wine near your dinner table.
Keep the daily intake to two servings or less.
5) Plan de Vida: determine your life purpose. Why do you get up in the morning?
Write your own personal mission statement.
Take up a new challenge learn a language or an instrument.
6) Down shift — take time to relieve stress. You may have to literally schedule it into your day, but relaxation is key.
Don’t rush – plan on being 15 minutes early.
Cut out the noise – limit time spent with the television, computer, or radio on.
7) Belong / participate in a spiritual community.
Deepen your existing spiritual commitment.
Seek out a new spiritual or religious tradition.
8) Put loved ones first / make family a priority.
Establish family rituals (game night, family walks, Sunday dinners).
Show it off: create a place for family pictures and souvenirs that shows how you’re all connected.
Get closer: consider downsizing to a smaller home to promote togetherness.
9) Pick the right tribe — the people surrounding you influence your health more than almost any other factor. Be surrounded by those who share Blue Zone values
Identify your inner circle. Reconsider ties to people who bring you down.
Be likable!
Sound too simple? Remember, simple doesn’t mean easy; I don’t recommend trying to change all these behaviors at once. Pick two or three of the Power-9 to work on at a time. Research has shown that if you can sustain a behavioral change for six weeks, you should be able to sustain it for the rest of your life. Which, as the world’s centenarians have shown us, should be a long, long time.
Krishnamurti claimed allegiance to no nationality, caste, religion, or philosophy. He spent most of his life travelling the world, speaking to large and small groups and individuals… more
Freedom from the Known
TRANSCRIPT
Pursuit of Pleasure Jiddu Krishnamurti
We said in the last chapter that joy was something entirely different from pleasure, so let us find out what is involved in pleasure and whether it is at all possible to live in a world that does not contain pleasure but a tremendous sense of joy, of bliss.
We are all engaged in the pursuit of pleasure in some form or other – intellectual, sensuous or cultural pleasure, the pleasure of reforming, telling others what to do, of modifying the evils of society, of doing good – the pleasure of greater knowledge, greater physical satisfaction, greater experience, greater understanding of life, all the clever, cunning things of the mind – and the ultimate pleasure is, of course, to have God.
Pleasure is the structure of society. From childhood until death we are secretly, cunningly or obviously pursuing pleasure. So whatever our form of pleasure is, I think we should be very clear about it because it is going to guide and shape our lives. It is therefore important for each one of us to investigate closely, hesitantly and delicately this question of pleasure, for to find pleasure, and then nourish and sustain it, is a basic demand of life and without it existence becomes dull, stupid, lonely and meaningless.
You may ask why then should life not be guided by pleasure? For the very simple reason that pleasure must bring pain, frustration, sorrow and fear, and, out of fear, violence. If you want to live that way, live that way. Most of the world does, anyway, but if you want to be free from sorrow you must understand the whole structure of pleasure
To understand pleasure is not to deny it. We are not condemning it or saying it is right or wrong, but if we pursue it, let us do so with our eyes open, knowing that a mind that is all the time seeking pleasure must inevitably find its shadow, pain. They cannot be separated, although we run after pleasure and try to avoid pain.
Now, why is the mind always demanding pleasure? Why is it that we do noble and ignoble things with the undercurrent of pleasure? Why is it we sacrifice and suffer on the thin thread of pleasure? What is pleasure and how does it come into being? I wonder if any of you have asked yourself these questions and followed the answers to the very end?
Pleasure comes into being through four stages – perception, sensation, contact and desire. I see a beautiful motor car, say; then I get a sensation, a reaction, from looking at it; then I touch it or imagine touching it, and then there is the desire to own and show myself off in it. Or I see a lovely cloud, or a mountain clear against the sky, or a leaf that has just come in springtime, or a deep valley full of loveliness and splendour, or a glorious sunset, or a beautiful face, intelligent, alive, not self-conscious and therefore no longer beautiful. I look at these things with intense delight and as I observe them there is no observer but only sheer beauty like love. For a moment I am absent with all my problems, anxieties and miseries – there is only that marvellous thing. I can look at it with joy and the next moment forget it, or else the mind steps in, and then the problem begins; my mind thinks over what it has seen and thinks how beautiful it was; I tell myself I should like to see it again many times. Thought begins to compare, judge, and say `l must have it again tomorrow’. The continuity of an experience that has given delight for a second is sustained by thought.
It is the same with sexual desire or any other form of desire. There is nothing wrong with desire. To react is perfectly normal. If you stick a pin in me I shall react unless I am paralysed. But then thought steps in and chews over the delight and turns it into pleasure. Thought wants to repeat the experience, and the more you repeat, the more mechanical it becomes; the more you think about it, the more strength thought gives to pleasure. So thought creates and sustains pleasure through desire, and gives it continuity, and therefore the natural reaction of desire to any beautiful thing is perverted by thought. Thought turns it into a memory and memory is then nourished by thinking about it over and over again.
Of course, memory has a place at a certain level. In everyday life we could not function at all without it. In its own field it must be efficient but there is a state of mind where it has very little place. A mind which is not crippled by memory has real freedom.
Have you ever noticed that when you respond to something totally, with all your heart, there is very little memory? It is only when you do not respond to a challenge with your whole being that there is a conflict, a struggle, and this brings confusion and pleasure or pain. And the struggle breeds memory. That memory is added to all the time by other memories and it is those memories which respond. Anything that is the result of memory is old and therefore never free. There is no such thing as freedom of thought. It is sheer nonsense.
Thought is never new, for thought is the response of memory, experience, knowledge. Thought, because it is old, makes this thing which you have looked at with delight and felt tremendously for the moment, old. From the old you derive pleasure, never from the new. There is no time in the new.
So if you can look at all things without allowing pleasure to creep in – at a face, a bird, the colour of a sari, the beauty of a sheet of water shimmering in the sun, or anything that gives delight – if you can look at it without wanting the experience to be repeated, then there will be no pain, no fear, and therefore tremendous joy.
It is the struggle to repeat and perpetuate pleasure which turns it into pain. Watch it in yourself. The very demand for the repetition of pleasure brings about pain, because it is not the same, as it was yesterday. You struggle to achieve the same delight, not only to your aesthetic sense but the same inward quality of the mind, and you are hurt and disappointed because it is denied to you.
Have you observed what happens to you when you are denied a little pleasure? When you don’t get what you want you become anxious, envious, hateful. Have you noticed when you have been denied the pleasure of drinking or smoking or sex or whatever it is – have you noticed what battles you go through? And all that is a form of fear, isn’t it? You are afraid of not getting what you want or of losing what you have. When some particular faith or ideology which you have held for years is shaken or torn away from you by logic or life, aren’t you afraid of standing alone? That belief has for years given you satisfaction and pleasure, and when it is taken away you are left stranded, empty, and the fear remains until you find another form of pleasure, another belief.
It seems to me so simple and because it is so simple we refuse to see its simplicity. We like to complicate everything. When your wife turns away from you, aren’t you jealous? Aren’t you angry? Don’t you hate the man who has attracted her? And what is all that but fear of losing something which has given you a great deal of pleasure, a companionship, a certain quality of assurance and the satisfaction of possession?
So if you understand that where there is a search for pleasure there must be pain, live that way if you want to, but don’t just slip into it. If you want to end pleasure, though, which is to end pain, you must be totally attentive to the whole structure of pleasure – not cut it out as monks and sannyasis do, never looking at a woman because they think it is a sin and thereby destroying the vitality of their understanding – but seeing the whole meaning and significance of pleasure. Then you will have tremendous joy in life. You cannot think about joy. Joy is an immediate thing and by thinking about it, you turn it into pleasure. Living in the present is the instant perception of beauty and the great delight in it without seeking pleasure from it.
Results of a study conducted with the use of the Wim Hof method suggest that a person can learn to consciously control his immune responses. Wim Hof is a Dutch world record holder who is famous worldwide for his ability to resist cold. For this incredible invulnerability to cold, he was commonly nicknamed “the Iceman.”
Scientists led by Matthijs Kox of the Radboud University Medical Center in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, studied his method, which is similar to the Tibetan Tummo technique (yoga of inner heat) and involves third-eye meditation, breathing exercises and cold exposure, and used it to train 12 volunteers to fend off inflammation.
In the framework of the study, 24 volunteers, including 12 people trained in the Wim Hof method and 12 who did not undergo any training, were subjected to the inflammation test, during which they were injected with a strain of bacteria that provokes flu-like symptoms.
As a result, volunteers who underwent training with Hof method reported fewer and less intense flu-like symptoms than those who did not. At the same time, trained volunteers produced smaller amounts of proteins related to inflammation, and higher levels of interleukin-10, an inflammation-fighting protein.
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I’ve updated this post by adding comment and content. So, Wim Hof first caught the attention of scientists when he proved he was able to use meditation to stay submerged in ice for an hour and 53 minutes without his core body temperature changing. Since then, he’s climbed Mount Everest in his shorts, resisted altitude sickness, completed a marathon in the Namib Desert with no water, and he’s proven in a scientific laboratory setting that he’s able to influence his autonomic nervous system and his immune system, at will.
Almost everything Wim has done was previously thought to be impossible, but he is not a freak of nature.
To demonstrate that any human can learn his methods, Wim offered to teach Matt Shea and Daisy-May Hudson to climb a freezing cold mountain in their shorts without getting cold. But when Matt and Daisy signed up for the training, they had no idea that the so-called Iceman was planning to lead them on a psychedelic journey across Europe that circled the chasm between science, spirituality and mystery. Watch this:
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I love science breakthroughs.
Now, if you’ve been following this blog and and links that I provide, you possibly have been undergoing changes and looking back over time, I wonder if you are aware that there is by now a new more present and capable and confident you. Every day, I kept at this. Its been more than seven months now since I began my every day is a perfect day to improve back in December. If you missed any of it, you can use the archive. I added a new category: I can improve today. If you don’t already have a daily improvement routine, take a lesson every day or two and I’ll think you’ll notice a difference in a few weeks. I have more than 75 posts in this category.
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Thanks for visiting.
Eric
I assist spiritual authors,
artists, and bloggers.
Is it possible for meditation to be utterly effortless? To experience the depths of being in any given moment of our lives-not just while we practice? Not only is it possible, explains Eckhart Tolle, but it is the very way we come to touch the essence of meditation. Tolle discusses the methods of meditation and their purpose: accessing the richness and power of pure presence.
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Who is Eckhart Tolle (Amazon)?
Spiritual teacher and author Eckhart Tolle was born in Germany and educated at the Universities of London and Cambridge. At the age of twenty-nine a profound inner transformation radically changed the course of his life. The next few years were devoted to understanding, integrating, and deepening that transformation, which marked the beginning of an intense inward journey. Later, he began to work in London with individuals and small groups as a counselor and spiritual teacher. Since 1995 he has lived in Vancouver, Canada.
Eckhart Tolle is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Power of Now (translated into 33 languages) and A New Earth, which are widely regarded as two of the most influential spiritual books of our time. In 2008, A New Earth became the first spiritual book to be selected for Oprah’s Book Club as well as the subject of a ten-week online workshop co-taught by Eckhart and Oprah.
Eckhart’s profound yet simple teachings have helped countless people throughout the world find inner peace and greater fulfillment in their lives. At the core of the teachings lies the transformation of consciousness, a spiritual awakening that he sees as the next step in human evolution. An essential aspect of this awakening consists in transcending our ego-based state of consciousness. This is a prerequisite not only for personal happiness but also for the ending of violent conflict endemic on our planet.
Eric 
Eric
the Hunt for Truth 