Sunday Family Humour 14 - Personal Advancement 21st November

Personal Advancement 28th November

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Quickstep

Continuing from last week

7 – Beginning to analyse the mind.

We will already be detecting improvements in the condition of our body, and we will already be conducting our practices regularly.

Now we are going to start work on the mind. Until now, we have had very little understanding of our own mind, which has caused us embarrassment on many occasions.

We are going to begin by analysing our own mind. We are going to determine why we think in certain ways.

When we think, for example, "I would like an ice cream", then we can analyse where the thought came from. Often we can trace it to a recently experienced advertisement or someone else eating an ice cream, but often it goes far deeper. Such as "I have always liked ice-cream, and it is a long time since I had one, and there is no reason not to have one today".

This is not an exercise in denial - if we want an ice cream, then we have one, but while eating it, we work out for sure why it is that we wanted it.

This example is over-simplistic. However, it helps to demonstrate a method by which we can take control of our thought patterns, simply by watching our thoughts. By being conscious and readily aware of what we are doing and thinking at any one time, we can learn to examine the ways in which we think.

A Breathing Practice to Calm Your Mind

November 19th, 2021

By Nick Polizzi

Guest Writer for Wake Up World

Today we’re going to embark on a journey into India – to learn a powerful breathing practice that’s easy to do. It will calm your heart and quiet your mind…

The technique is called Nadi Shodhana Pranayama, or alternate nostril breathing. In Sanskrit, the word “Nadi” means channel or flow, the word “Shodhana” means clarifying or purifying, and “Pranayama” means to take control of one’s breath.

During this practice, you’ll experience a sense of peace almost immediately. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Studies indicate that, over time, it can improve cardiovascular health and lung function, as it balances your heart rate. This in turn reduces your stress, which we know is good for overall physical and mental health. There is also strong evidence that alternate nostril breathing improves brain function.

Nadi Shodhana Pranayama has a long history in yoga and ayurvedic medicine as a reliable way to achieve mental, physical, and emotional balance.

For me, it’s a go-to when I’m stressed.

And it’s safe for just about anyone.

Unless you have a serious cardiovascular condition like COPD or asthma, you can do it right now with no fear. (And if you do have a condition, it’s probably still safe, but ask your doctor first.)

What have you got to lose? Here’s how to do it:

Nadi Shodhana Pranayama (Alternate Nostril Breathing)

Find a comfortable chair, floor cushion, or mat. Sit up as straight as you can, but don’t strain. This is not a yoga pose.
Let your left hand rest gently in your lap. Bring your right hand up to your face.
Place the index and middle fingers of your raised hand lightly against the space between your eyebrows.
Close your eyes.
Take a nice, long, easy deep breath through your nose – inhale then exhale.
Close your right nostril with your thumb, and then inhale slowly through your left nostril.
At the top of your in-breath, close your left nostril with your ring finger, so that both of your nostrils are closed.
Pause for a moment.
Release your thumb from your right nostril and exhale (keep your left nostril closed).
Pause again for a moment.
Now reverse the process. Breathe in slowly and steadily through your right nostril. At the top of the in-breath, close up both nostrils again, pause, and then release your out-breath through your left nostril.
Pause again. Repeat the breathing process, alternating nostrils. Do this several times, slowly and mindfully.

Here is an illustration with the basic positions:

Well? What do you think? If you did this practice even for just a few minutes, you probably feel more relaxed.

Am I right?

Take a few minutes and try this whenever you need to calm your mind, and then share it with friends. Better yet, share it with enemies (or people you disagree with)!

Stay curious,

Nick Polizzi

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Making the Transition from Fear to Courage

By Paul Lenda

Guest Writer for Wake Up World

Many souls around the world today are still living much of their lives and consciousness in the state of fear. It’s sad thing to see but it’s a reality that can been seen all around us. Many systems (various social, political, religious, and others) within society perpetuate the energy of fear, and such systems will continue as long as the consciousness of courage does not exist within us.

By having courage, we are able to stop experiencing the fear being perpetuated by those systems and take off the illusory shackles imposed by them.

The transition from fear to courage is a very big step and often requires much effort and energy, but it is entirely possible with a little determination and perhaps some external support. Not only is it beneficial for us to confront our inherited fears but also for society as a whole. The less power that the systems within our cultures and societies have through their use of fear, the quicker they will disappear into the sands of time and liberate consciousness wherever it may be imprisoned.

Fear limits the growth of our personality and inevitably leads to a nature of inhibition and repression. When we exist in a state of fear, we put up an impenetrable boundary between ourselves and our own self-actualization.

It takes a bit of energy to transcend this level of consciousness, which is why we see so often that some people gravitate towards those who seem to have conquered fear and who offer to lead them out of the slavery that it holds. Unfortunately, these individuals whom they are attracted to are many times oppressive totalitarian leaders who take advantage of those who follow this logic.

It is unfortunate, but the subjective consciousness state of fear is a limiting, prevailing, and habitual state of expectancy that can be projected onto essentially any and all aspects of one’s life. Stress becomes the primary byproduct of the fear and creates its own problems as well, which are too many to mention here.

Embodying Courage

The perpetuation of fear will be stopped in its tracks once we embody the consciousness of courage. Courage allows for exploration and accomplishment thanks to our focus of awareness being on exciting, stimulating, and challenging parts of life. Progress occurs when courage is emboldened.

There is a passionate willingness to experience wonderful things that have not been explored before. Fear will been faced head-first thanks to a significantly-higher level of energy and any previous hindrances are gone. Self-esteem will go through the roof because there is a sense of “I can do this” which becomes progressively self-reinforcing. Productivity soars to new heights.

In courage, there is enhanced confidence that one feels within their being. There is an empowerment of the self, thanks to the realization that a person is not dependent on external factors. Everything that one ever needed has been within his or herself the whole time. Freedom is finally experienced as the shackles of fear are taken off and thrown away.

The significant shift from fear to courage allows for a person to now be able to realize and work on manifesting his or her inner potential. This potential can be aligned with one’s sense of an overall mission or goal in life that will be the primary focus from then on out. Pursuing our life goals would not be possible if we had a consciousness of fear since it would inhibit any action towards manifesting such goals.

With courage, our overall level of happiness grows immensely and everything is seen in a more positive light. People are perceived as being more friendly, societal problems are not seen as hopeless as they used to be, and many other positions of awareness are shifted. The evolution of consciousness from fear to courage can change our lives in such a dramatic way that we’d feel we’re living in a different reality than before.

Taking Responsibility

There is perhaps one factor that is more important to be mindful of beyond all others which has to be realized if we wish to make the transition from having fear to having courage: accepting personal responsibility. This critical action is a requisite for the shift from fear to courage and requires that a person gets rid of the idea that he or she is a victim of a perpetrator.

All social belief systems that are based on the suppositions of blame and excuses have to be transcended so that we can shift away from fear. None of this is easy since courage requires a higher input of energy than fear below it does. However, whether it is through the inner determination of oneself or the outer support of others, this critical transition is certainly an obtainable reality.

Understanding the differences between these two sates of consciousness is important to know before the process can begin so that we know what we’re working with. It can take a day or it can take a lifetime, but whatever the pace may be, once it occurs, the sense of self-empowerment can be the satisfaction one has always felt was needed in order to accomplish a most-fundamental self-realization.

The Unconscious Conditionings of the Mind

16th March 2015

By Frank M. Wanderer Ph.D

Guest Writer for Wake Up World

The Ego-dominated mind plays its games in daily life, and creates the characters and scenarios necessary for the games. The content of such a scenario is determined by the individual’s environment and upbringing, that is, the culture in which we grow up. As a result, entirely different scenarios are created in the various cultures of our Earth.

At the beginning of our journey, we identify with these scenarios. The scenarios provide us with the sense of a solid identity. The patterns of thoughts fixed in the scenarios are manifested in various mind games during our daily life.

In the course of our journey leading to Consciousness, our objective should not be creating a positive character, and thus a pleasant scenario, but finding the Existence behind every scenario. The first step is examining the scenarios, these conditioned thought-patterns, in the light of Consciousness. Let us first examine some of our most extensive mind games that are rooted deepest.

Ambition

Ambition is perhaps the comprehensive mind game, providing one of the deepest roots of Ego.

An elementary endeavour of every Ego is growing: to be “more”, larger and powerful. They strive to be higher and higher in the hyerarchic structure of the world, conquering more and more territory. The individual’s ambitions grow and grow, reaching larger and larger areas.

Ambitions are planted in a child by parents and teachers. Parents tend to think of an even yet unborn child as someone who is going to achieve the parents’ own’s unfulfilled ambitions.

With the educational means of reward and punishment, children are conditioned to excel among their peers, to be the best, strongest, most beautiful, etc. When the children meet the parental–and thus the social–expectations, they are rewarded, when not, they are punished. They therefore soon learn to be ambitious.

These ambitions, though based upon the past, always aim at the future. All through our lives we pursue illusionary objectives, spurred by various ambitions.Naturally, it is not impossible to satisfy an ambition, but it is immnediately replaced by a thousand others, as there are so many areas of life where we have not yet reached our ambitions.

That is how we chase senseless goals all through our lives until we die, when we realize that everybody leaves this world empty-handed, even those who lived their whole lives chasing mirages of past and future.

Look into yourself to see what is in you now! See what ambitions are driving you along on the sea of life and in what direction?

Every moment spent awake we face two alternatives. A choice is to be made between the ambitions stretching between past and future or the quiet, simple, pure emptiness of the present moment, full of vibrating life. It is-however-only the latter that brings the Witnessing Presence!

The Mind Game of Becoming Something

This mind game is closely associated with the life-long pursue of ambitions, and reveals the mechanisms of ambitions.

The Ego at all times strives to achieve something. The mind creates a mental image, an ideal about it. An ideal means that you are still not what you are supposed to be.

The Ego projects that idealized image into the future, and reveals the way leading to the goal. That image generates a permanent stress, tension and anxiety in the life of the Seeker. If the Seeker achieves the desired goal, or abandons it as unattainable, immediately finds a new one, an even more ambitious, or one that is easier to achieve, and another one, and so it goes until death, or the moment when the Seeker realizes the futility of the whole process.

We are therefore constantly on the road, straying from one mental image to the next, and identify with these images, and derive our identity from the images.

When we start dealing with spirituality, our mind creates an image that we need to implement if we are determined to be successful. The image means that we need to find Presence, through the way the mind imagines it. The essence of this ideal is to be permanently conscious, to be Present all the time, in all details of our life.

The Ego, is however, aware that for most people it is an impossible venture, so the Wanderer often has a sense of self-accusation and self-depreciation, as the ideal image is impossible to achieve (the Seeker is not spiritual enough). This state of mind is, eventually, a good foundation for the mind game of guilt.

In the course of our Journey we need to realize that we do not need to become anything, because we are already in possession of the characteristics that we have been looking for so far, pursuing an image projected into the future. All we need to do is shift our focus of alert and conscious attention from the edge (Ego) to our center (witnessing Presence). The mind games impede us in that process!

The “I Want Even More” Mind Game

From all this it is easy to see that the Ego-dominated mind will never be satisfied, as it longs to achieve more and more in life. The individual wants to be rich, when they are rich, they want power, when they have power, they want fame. When material wealth no longer satisfies them, they begin to seek “spiritual wealth” and so forth. Once an objective has been achieved, a sense of relative satisfaction may follow, but sooner or later anxiety returns and the chase for more and more starts again.

This mind game takes the Seeker into a psychological time frame, as the goal to be achieved is projected into the future. In this way Now, the Present moment is reduced to a moment necessary for achieving the goal, and the vividness and beauty of it is lost.

The Seeker is, however, able to suppress the voice of the Ego: “I no longer listen to this nonsense, your pretension! It is not an illusory Self that I want to reach. I want to find my real Self!”

As a witnessing Presence one is able to observe these games of the mind and is also able to overcome and laugh at it! What more does one need than what is offered by the present moment? Once you have learnt how to dissolve in the present moment, and you are able to enjoy it, you will have no problem in disregarding the empty chit-chat of the Ego, the mind!