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I like the difference between old individuals and elders as shown by the author Suzzane Simard. As the author says not all individual are elders nor all elders are old. The marking sign of an elder is wisdom, not just knowledge. People may have knowledge but not wisdom. Wisdom grows like a Mother Tree connecting, nurturing and protecting the young plants. As an elderly and old member of the family and my community I help the young members of my family and the community at large when they need guidance from me. My heart gets richer when I help, guide and nurture those who need help and support.
As I was growing up I needed help, support, empathy and emotional nurturing in my life. I was blessed to have some elderly folks in my life to provide guidance, empathy, love, and nurturing. The elderly people provided shade and support I needed to survive and flourish. They taught me by their living example how I can go through the thick and thin in my life. They were my great teachers and they have laid the foundation of living wisely. I am very grateful to them. My experience has the been a great teacher for me. Only conceptual knowledge is not enough. Deep knowledge comes from living the knowledge, by practicing and wisely applying that knowledge to real life situations. It is organic teaching and organic learning. I have learned that it is not how long we live but how well we live that matters. Namaste!
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I like the way Anthony De Mello shows the contrast between Worldly Feeling and Soul Feeling. Soul feeling arises from within us. It is characterized by joy, intimacy, nourishment, and fulfillment. No body takes away soul feeling from me as it is generated and sustained form within. Worldly feeling comes from outside sources such as someone praising me , admiring me, think highly of me. Such worldly feeling fluctuates as it comes from outside sources. It comes and goes. Self-generated soul feeling is generated from the depth of our being. It endures and gets richer and deeper. It is rooted in our being.
I am a teacher and a counselor. I have enduring love affair with teaching and counseling. Teaching and counseling fill the cup of my life. I have been teaching and counseling for the last 75 years. I am not tired, bored and unfulfilled by following my inner voice. When I feel good and great about me by the praise and admiration I receive from others that make me feel good and great, the glorious feeling stays for a while and after sometime it evaporates. This week I was invited as a guest speaker to give a talk at Governors Sate University to undergraduate and gradate students majoring in School Psychology. I told them the reason for my being a teacher and a counselor. It has been my cup of tea for all these years. When I do what I love to do like teaching, counseling and meditating I feel deeply happy. The reward comes from within. It is unending. It is very joyful and fulfilling. I am connected with it and not attached to it. Fulfillment, love and joy are the criteria of soul feeling. Hope and pray we all find our path that creates and sustains inner wealth of joy, excitement and fulfillment in our life. Namaste! Here is my reflection to the excerpt of Parker Palmer's interview:
For me as a human being, all quests-intellectual, ethical, and spiritual- are important. Intellectual quest without being bound by ego is important for thinking and for processing my thoughts and emotions and to understand me, others and the world. Moral or ethical quest without "oughts" is important for me to walk on the moral path. The spiritual quest is essential for knowing and realizing my true nature, who or what I am.. In this state I do not feel bound by my own self-created "altitude". This is the state of unitive consciousness in which other states with "attitude" get dissolved. I feel grounded and connected with existence, the "being". Spiritual practices keep me grounded in what is and relate to what is rather than my own fabrications of the reality. I feel free from my self-created prison and self-ignorance. In deep meditation state I experience the distance between me and the ground going away and I realize that at the core of our being, we all are one. As the great theologian Paul Tillich says," the ground of being." It has taken a good amount time to know who I am. Remaining awake when I go into the sleep of delusion and working on what makes me fall asleep has been very helpful to me. The challenge for me is not to go back to "sleep". Self-awareness is the key to stay on "the ground of being." Getting feedback from my own self and from others is also helpful to me for walking on the spiritual path. Namaste! Here is my reflection to the excerpt from Chaz Howard's book, Bottom:
There have been times when I have been deeply hurt. And there have been times in my life when I have hurt others too. Such experiences have made me realize that we all have the potential to hurt ourselves and hurt others close to us. It does not mean we are bad or evil. We do bad or evil things. When I relate to hurt in this sense I feel empathy for me and for others. Such empathic understanding of my own wrong doings helps me heal my wounds and the wounds I have created to others. Realizing and accepting the fact that we are human beings prone to doing wrong things and making mistakes. We are not perfect. I hold my wrong doing hand with empathy and compassion. Being empathic and compassionate to me helps me for my self-redemption and also redemption for the other person. Self-awareness is the guiding light to me and it helps me evolve and grow in the realm of goodness, kindness, love and compassion. Namaste! As writer Judy Brown mentions, a breathing space is needed for fire to burn between the logs.
Balancing life in all areas of our life is the key to to living wisely. Too much or too little can't burn the fire of life. Too much food or too little food intake has an impact on our life energy. How much we eat and what kind of food we eat has a strong impact not only our physical and mental health but also on the environmental well-being. Moderation in all areas of our life. Too much of even a good thing, like eating too much good food can create health problems. Being born and raised in a simple- living family laid the foundation for moderation in my life. It has taught me how to to create a balance in different areas of my life. My parents taught me when to talk , what to say, how to talk and when to be quiet. These are the gifts of life that I have received from my parents and I am very grateful to them for such gifts. Being mindful of what is going in my mind, talking a pause, and decide what is the right thing to do. It's creating a balance between when to between presence and absence. It is learning when to yes and no. What to take in and what to reject. As I have mentioned before this principle applies in all walks of my life. May we learn the art of balancing our life for our personal life as well as social life. Namaste! In all wisdom traditions that I know of, "Who am I" is the fundamental question raised by spiritual seekers. There are two Selves: Ego-self and the Witnessing -self. The ego-self is a convenient construct to organize all the separate experiences occurring in the mind. I is necessary to relate to the ever-changing world. The challenge that I face in my daily life is not to be bound or attached to the world created by the mind. This passage authored by Culadasa (click here to read it) reminds me of the story of Two Birds narrated in the ancient book of wisdom Mandukya Upanishad:"Two birds, inseparable companions, perch on the same tree. One eats the fruit, the other looks on. The first bird is our individual self feeding the pleasures and pains of the deeds. The other is the universal self, silently witnessing all."
To me spiritual growth is a life-long journey with a few ups and downs, pleasures and pains, successes and failures. When my vision is blocked by selfish desires I tumble and I hurt myself and hurt others related to me. Such experiences have taught to me to be aware of inner mental world and not get bound by my self-serving desires. With mindfulness and self-awareness practice I have been able to walk on my path without falling down. Like the second bird in the Upanishadic story I relate to the world with witnessing consciousness. This way I live in the world with humility and gratefulness. Namaste! Acceptance-based inner work is one of the core components of the Mindfulness paradigm. We know the flowing water of a river is far less likely to contain impurities than trapped water. Trapped water is an incubator for harmful bacteria and is often contaminated. We need to let the river of feelings flow to avoid the harmful effects of trapped feelings. Our feelings are experienced in our body and if we do not let them come and go mindfully, they become toxic and cause physical illness. Since body and mind are interconnected the blocked toxic energy creates mental stress and causes mental health problems. In order to prevent and avoid the harmful effect of suppressing or blocking emotions we need to do the inner work for our physical, mental, and emotional well-being. And so when we are open to our feelings as they arise, we recognize and acknowledge them, accept them, investigate and let them go mindfully. This is the way we free ourselves from the grip of our negative and harmful feelings and emotions. This is the way we cultivate skills of emotional regulation and emotional resilience. This way we can cultivate our Emotional Intelligence.
We are social beings. We are connected with people. We have a variety of interactions with people in our life. Our inner work is essential for our personal well-being as well as our relational well-being. When we do the inner work we create a wholesome environment within ourselves which facilitates the creation and the sustenance of healthy interpersonal relationships. This way we can cultivate our Social Intelligence. Social Learning and Emotional Learning are as important or perhaps more important than Intellectual Learning. And this is what we need to do in schools and families and the community at large. We know the cause of suffering in our personal and interpersonal life and also in the social and political arenas. We need to wake up and work on these problems diligently. We are also spiritual beings. We have the potential to self-realize and get enlightened. The light of wisdom shines within us. It is our own inner light that removes the clouds of delusion and opens the door to seeing Reality-Truth- that liberates us from the self-created suffering. This is a spiritual journey. All wisdom traditions teach us different ways of liberating ourselves from ourselves. As the Rigvedic sage says,” Truth is one. Paths are many.” The Bhagavad Gita shows four Yogas-spiritual paths- of awakening, self-realization and enlightnment: Path of Self-knowledge called Gnana Yoga. Path of Selfless Service called Karma Yoga. Path of Devotion called Bhakti Yoga and the Path of Meditation called Dhyana Yoga. Gautam Buddha realized and taught the Eightfold Path of liberation. One has to find one’s spiritual path and follow it earnestly, patiently and diligently. This is also inner work. Such inner work cultivates Spiritual Intelligence. Inner work is for physical, mental, emotional, relational and spiritual well-being. And as we know sometimes for doing this inner work we may need a Guru to guide us or we may find our own path by ourselves. Satsanga, compassionate presence and support of like-minded people can be very helpful. May we find our path of liberation to live mindfully, freely and fully! Let me conclude with the wise words of a wise teacher Thich Nhat Hanh. Embrace Strong Emotions Do not fight against pain, do not fight against irritation or jealousy. Embrace them with great tenderness, as though you were embracing a little baby. Your anger is yourself, and you should not be violent towards it, the same thing goes for all your emotions. I recommend reading the story written by Delshad Karanjia and below are my comments about it:
Mulla Nasruddin's behavior indicates that he had already assumed that his wife Fatima was hard of hearing. On this assumption, he keeps on asking the same question "What are we having for dinner?". The angry tone of his voice was escalating getting louder and louder. He had lost his patience, pushed the door and repeated loudly the same question though he was right there in front of her. He himself behaved as if she was deaf. His misplaced inference made him act foolishly. It was a counterproductive stance. Such a stance caused a lot of headaches and conflicts in close relationships. I have learned from my personal experiences to listen to the other person without making inferences in advance about the other person. I have learned not to prejudge the other person's stance but to keep my mind open and receptive. This way I relate to the other person amicably and fruitfully. How do we relate to others who have different philosophies and ideologies without judging them is not always easy but it is worth trying and beneficial. We all make inferences about other persons in our life. The problem arises when we prejudge them with a closed mind. As we know inferences and prejudgments are born in our mind and we remain stuck with them if we do not examine them and change them for our good and good of others in our life. I usually ask four questions in communicating with the other person: What do I want to communicate? How do I communicate? When do I communicate? And where do I communicate? Such questions help me to be engaged with the other person constructively and creatively. May we cultivate the art of listening and responding to others in our life. Namaste! I appreciate this essay on Four B's of Resilience and Strength authored by Dr. Soul Levine. The application of the four B's-Being(personal), Belonging(social), Believing(Ethical/Spiritual), and Benevolence(a sense of awareness of kindness and generosity) in our daily life. Practicing these four B's in my everyday life I feel myself like a whole person physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually and socially. This way of living has been the foundation of my everyday life. Or like the author says they are the "foundation of our emotional footprint".
My sense of self-worth is shaped and sustained by implementing the four B's in my everyday life. I know I am not perfect. Being aware of my faults and limitations and working on my short comings kindly and compassionately helps me walk on the path of living spiritually. Self-examination, self-awareness, alertness and vigilance, owning wrong doing, patience, forgiving and correcting are the ingredients of my living a joyful and meaningful life. May I remain awake and implement the Four B's in my daily living! Namaste! Here are my thoughts after reading the excerpt from "I Am" by Jean Klein, a philosopher of Advaita Vedanta:
Silent awareness or witness consciousness is as J Krishnamurti says is "choiceless awareness", or emptiness or suchness or isness as the Buddha says. Silent awareness is stillness in the mind. In such stillness bodily sensations arise and go, thoughts arise and go, emotions arise and go. I experience such silent awareness when I am fully absorbed in doing what I am doing such as reading, listening to music, and meditating. In such experiences the observer and the observed become one. The wave becomes the ocean. It is a spiritual union. What is freedom? Freedom from whom or what? When the subject-object dividing line is dissolved it is an experience of oneness. In such unitive consciousness there is an experience of oneness, the Divine Union. To put it in Non-dual Vedantic term, it is Self-realization. Namaste! |
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