In my early thirties in the sarcophagus of the great pyramid. There is no place like this on earth. Ginger Duke and I spent 16 hours alone there in 1984.
I’ve been meditating on and off since my mid twenties. I see it as one of three things most important to our growth as souls in the space/time continuum. Now we have a Harvard study that says meditation regrows our brain. Regrowing the brain is man amazing discovery.
Study senior author Sara Lazar of the MGH Psychiatric Neuroimaging Research Program (as well as a Harvard Medical School instructor in psychology) stated that meditation practitioners aren’t just feeling better. They are literally undergoing changes in brain structure that create the associated sustained boosts in positive and relaxed feelings.
Here is a link: http://simplecapacity.com/2015/12/harvard-mri-study-meditation-rebuilds-your-brains-gray-matter/
Have you ever felt like an imposter? Most people do at times in their lives. I know I have experienced being trusted to do something that I have learned either in school or on my own and thinking, “who am I to be doing this?” Well, eventually we accept that we really do know how to do the things we do. But what about the new things? What about our work?
“What holds us back from being more confident at work is often a sense that we are fundamentally different from those who succeed.
Too often we leave the possibility of success to others, as we believe our own negative self talk and see our own flaws so clearly. This gives way to the “imposter” syndrome, where we incorrectly believe others to be perfect and ourselves to be lacking.
We know ourselves from the inside, but we know others from the outside, from a narrower and more edited source of information. We suffer – needlessly – from this negative belief we are an imposter, and a fraud.”
This is a self esteem issue and this video below is a clever and succinct explanation with added good advice.
Here is the link to the web page where I discovered this. You might like this website.
There is a woman, Teal Swan, and she has a wealth of knowledge she shares. This video is has a point of view about jealousy and envy that is really interesting.
I summarize her view this way: Envy is the emotion we experience when we have an extreme desire for something someone has that you don’t think you can have and believing you are not worthy of it. Jealousy is the emotion we feel when we are afraid of losing something of great value to us. So, on occurs when we want to keep what we have and the other occurs when we want to get what we don’t have. In both cases we are in fear. This is a form of lack.
“Don’t set your mind on things you don’t possess…but count the blessings you actually possess and think how much you would desire them if they weren’t already yours.”
Marcus Aurelius
Jealousy and envy exist when we are in lack and see ourselves as separate from all others. If, in fact, we are all one, then anything anyone else has or gains is already part of us. Its the ego concerned with a threat.
Jealousy a precious thing your going to lose.
Envy, what precious thing do you not have and want?
What do you believe you lack? Make a list of how many ways you do have that thing in your life. Or, think of a person who has significantly less than you do in your area of lack and imagine how that person would feel looking at your life.
Jealousy and envy are very powerful in that they tell us precisely what we want and what we need.
In relationships jealousy often arises because of a third party threat and we do what we can to eliminate the threat to our connection with someone. We feel unincluded. Better to use the feeling to deepen our connection with our partner and ourselves.
Jealousy happens to all of us at sometime. Soothe yourself by accepting it is okay to feel the way you feel. Now look at your beliefs, feeling this way means there is a painful part in you connected to this feeling. Emotions are connected to your thoughts. Thoughts create emotions.
I have often thought of ideals as a means to determine what choice to make when presented more than one choice. However, recent events have made it clear to me that though sometimes that is effective sometimes it isn’t. I am having to make a choice amongst alternatives and as I read my ideals I realize there isn’t any one alternative inherently better than the other. So how to make a choice?
Perhaps the answer lies in imagining which direction allows the greater expression of your ideals. A means of understanding this better would be to imagine two polarities. One polarity is the mob nature of crime syndicates versus the nature of working at a flower shop. If your ideal is love, then the flower shop is a much better choice than the mob.
So, I am looking at my spiritual, mental, and physical ideals and asking myself, which choice allows the greater expression of my ideals. Maybe this is how it’s supposed to work when the alternatives are relatively equal. Maybe it is like planting in the most nurturing soil, which will allow for the healthiest plant?
I was brought up in a environment based on shame. My mom, bless her, had a capacity to make you feel like you were innately bad. As Brene explains: “Shame drives two big tapes —“never good enough” —and, if you can talk it out of that one,“who do you think you are?”The thing to understand about shame is, it’s not guilt.Shame is a focus on self, guilt is a focus on behavior.Shame is “I am bad.”Guilt is “I did something bad.”…. Guilt: I’m sorry. I made a mistake.Shame: I’m sorry. I am a mistake.”
This is a very entertaining talk that deals with a common topic influencing many of us, lessening our self-esteem. For women, shame is, do it all,do it perfectlyand never let them see you sweat.
Research by Mahalik at Boston College.He asked, what do women need to do to conform to female norms?The top answers in this country:nice, thin, modestand use all available resources for appearance.When he asked about men,what do men in this country need to do to conform with male norms,the answers were:always show emotional control,work is first,pursue status and violence.
I listened to an interview with Debbie Reynolds brother. The reporter was trying to elicit drama surrounding Debbie’s death but her brother was having none of it. He said, she willed herself into the transition we call death. Long ago I read Viktor Frankl telling of his experiences in the concentration camp in Germany during WWII. He said he witnessed people who had had enough of imprisonment. He said they indicated they had enough and they would go to sleep and die. They weren’t ill when they did this.The mind has an amazing ability to create reality or leave the body.
When watching TV, I mute commercials and avert my eyes as much as possible from them. In the late fall and all through the winter they remind us it is cold and flu season. I suspect a great many people get a malady because their told its the season. This falls under the heading of placebo and nocebo. I have many articles on this powerful phenomena in my News and Studies section of my website.
Debbie Reynolds story of her death is a testament to the ultimate power of our mind. The power to stay or leave this life. What a gift she left us to contemplate.
The mystics, the enlightened ones all say we are one. Quantum physics says everything exists in a sea of energy modulated into near infinite dimensions. The forms within those dimensions are created by consciousness. Now I am going to make a leap and say that the more connected we are to other consciousness resonating with high ideals and values the happier and calmer we become. When Jesus said I bring you a new commandment, love one another, this ideal was meant to supplant the effects of living according to laws of what not to do. And, we know whatever we are thinking about preceded with a not or don’t (e.g., don’t think about green elephants with pink monkeys dancing on them) will be seen in the mind symbolically, as thoughts and words exist symbolically.
Robert Waldinger is reporting on a study run for decades and the results say that good connections with others is the primary indicator for health and happiness. Reviewing this study has made me even more grateful for the people in my life that share the love I have to offer and reflect that back to me. I know you will like this video. It may change your life significantly for the better as you apply this knowledge.
Of course, I am someone who works with the mind and knows the mind can do miraculous things. Sometimes I can forget that it is important to question assumptions underlying our belief systems. For example, I have not questioned the theories on stress. I have read and believed that stress is bad for us all. And of course, if we believe stress is bad for us could stress be otherwise? I say not because our beliefs totally influence our reality.
So, I have not questioned the assumption that stress is bad for us until today when I watched this video. What if the effects of stress fall within the area of mind where placebos also reside. Could stress not be all that stressful if we believe it isn’t? The video below is interesting because it seems that if you don’t believe stress affects you negatively it won’t. Ah, the power of belief.
