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Some years ago, some parents in the USA had an interesting conversation with their local elementary school administrator. They were concerned about the type of education their children would receive so they set up a meeting to interview the administrator, with the idea that they were prepared to ... Views: 96
People espousing their philosophy of how to act in the world are often confronted by a disconnect between their statements and their own actions. They frequently tell children, for instance, ‘Do as I say, not as I do.’ If we assume that the person is not simply motivated by pure self-interest ... Views: 16
Taking the right attitude when feelings of failure or depression arise in the course of the spiritual practice is essential to navigate through these moods with the least disruption. Sri Aurobindo implies that the standpoint should be in the separate witness consciousness, which he distinguishes ... Views: 2
The ancient Greek philosopher Plato described the method of teaching utilized by Socrates, known today as the “Socratic method”. Socrates understood that education was not the process of stuffing knowledge into an individual, but rather, as the root of the word ‘education’ implies, a drawing out ... Views: 376
In the yoga sutras of Patanjali, the power of concentration is extolled. In particular, the one-pointed concentration on any particular object unites the seeker with the object such that they become one. At that point, all of the secrets of the object are delivered up to the person undertaking ... Views: 112
There are different kinds of engraved plaques for any budget and occasion. They come in different material and size choices. You can choose either laser metal, solid wood or glass. Every plaque can be customized with your logo and text. You can upload your desired information to a skilled, ... Views: 679
In the opening chapter of The Life Divine, Sri Aurobindo sets forth the proposition that “… all problems of existence are essentially problems of harmony.” We can see the reality of this statement both in the way we respond internally to circumstances, events and our reactions to them, as well ... Views: 388
We all have loses in our lives or times where we feel deeply about a situation or experience. There was a time in my life that I blocked myself from feeling my experiences deeply. I would actually apologize for having them.I just stuffed them down and didn’t allow myself to feel. The mindset for ... Views: 1256
Great thinkers of the world like Kant, Hegel, Aristotle etc accept that a certain supreme authority exists which has created this world. And yet they were unable to throw light fully in this realm of thought. All the religions of the world like Christianity, Hinduism, Islam etc accept that God ... Views: 1289
The Mother advises us that we are generally not aware of the action of all the subtle forces and how they interact to cause circumstances that occur in the external world. She further notes that with awareness, many accidents could be avoided. This reminds us of an incident reported some time ... Views: 182
I would first like to dwell on the conditions necessary for life to exist.
We have air. The plant takes out carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and replaces it with oxygen for other creatures to breath. The herbivores keep the plants in check as the predatory animals keep them in check. The ... Views: 967
The Taittiriya Upanishad presents a methodology or practice to gain direct knowledge of the Eternal. The seeker is asked to practice tapasya, variously translated as concentration in thought, or concentration of force by Sri Aurobindo. Tapasya cannot be easily or completely understood through ... Views: 226
The quest to understand the nature of consciousness, and “who am I?” spans back through the past history of mankind. Some of the exercises undertaken by the ancient sages remain relevant into the current day, as the Mother illustrates in her example below, which derives i its original form from ... Views: 387
Once we recognise that we cannot trust the mental faculty to keep the vital desire-soul in check, the question arises as to how it is then possible to truly examine the underlying motives and wellsprings of our thoughts, feelings and actions without falling victim to the kind of bias that the ... Views: 426
An Expanding Consciousness Recognises the Inherent Oneness and Mutuality of All Existence
Posted on December 9, 2024
When we identify with the ego personality, we view the world as being separate and apart from ourselves, and we look at other beings as either competition for resources or ... Views: 98
Usually when most people go to sleep, they simply ‘let it happen’. This carries with it all of the mental, emotional, vital-nervous, and physical energy pent up in the being at the time, into the sleep state. Add to this mix the state of fatigue that prevails, and it can lead to restless, or ... Views: 441
The ability to concentrate the mind allows us to function in the world in a coherent manner and to create results in whatever field the concentration takes up. Without concentration, the mind would jump from one perception, one impression, one idea to another randomly and instantaneously as new ... Views: 368
As the seeker begins to shift the consciousness inward, he becomes aware of forces, powers, and realms that are the native venues for our physical, vital and mental energies and activities, as well as existing in and by their own form of reality and under rules that do not necessarily match up ... Views: 331
Ancora Imparo, Still Learning the True Freedom
In a sketch of Father Time, Michelangelo inscribed beside a child’s carriage, “Still I learn.” This was nearing the end of this life, the great master, yet “Still I learn.”
Ancora Imparo, is a fantastic way to re-create your life and find the ... Views: 1127
To begin, he paid extra interest to real bees, but he also grew to become extra
mindful of them in other means. Quickly soon after our
psychic reading, he noticed a
flyer to get a humane society fundraiser on which a bee was touchdown over a
canine’s nose. Cute graphic, certainly, but ... Views: 1279
We frequently try to ‘know’ things based on a particular capacity of our being; however, this may not always be the correct way to appreciate and understand what is actually taking place. Trying to understand music, for instance, by applying the logical intellect and trying to parse the sounds, ... Views: 167
One of the key elements of Raja Yoga, based on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali is the practice of samyama, which is a one-pointed concentration that is so complete that it merges subject, object and the process of knowing into one unified whole. By this practice, one knows everything about the ... Views: 126
How do we determine whether there is any such thing as a ‘yoga-force’? Some treat it as a form of self-delusion, some as hypnotic suggestion, some as some form of ‘placebo effect’ of the mind, some as simply the action of other forces that we simply define as ‘yoga-force’ without any objective ... Views: 173
“The liberation of the individual soul is therefore the keynote of the definite divine action; it is the primary divine necessity and the pivot on which all else turns.” This is the first step but what must also be recognized is that as individuals here and there achieve new states of ... Views: 396
When I was young, probably five years old or so, I was given a chocolate brown dress. You might wonder the significance of this brown dress because what little girl wears brown? What a boring color for a little girl! Well, the adornment on the dress was stripes of aqua colored piping which ran ... Views: 1819
Islam is the most practiced religion in the world. Muslims are present in almost every region of the world. It is the psychology of every Muslims to get to know about their religion, its aspects. It is the Interest of the People to get to know about the events which occurred in the Islam, and ... Views: 964
The normal mental process begins relatively simply. We hear something and accept it in our minds, and eventually we repeat the thought to others and thus, a thought-form moves through the mental atmosphere and touches many minds. Teilhard de Chardin referred to the mental force permeating the ... Views: 230
The popular imagination about the existence and characteristics of vampires has developed from the famous novel by Bram Stoker, Dracula. From that book we get the picture of beings that survive many hundreds of years, who are shapeshifters , and who drink the blood of their victims, preferably ... Views: 188
Great Spiritual Teachers have always counseled humanity that the world has meaning. Our soul has descended from the divine, and it has come here with an attainable purpose - a need for worldly experience, spiritual awakening, and perfection, before it returns once again to the divine. They tell ... Views: 2252
Theoretically, being an empathic or clairsentient being is the same thing, however, one has a heightened sense. The term empath, or being empathic, seems to be the buzzword over the last 10 to 15 years. Whether this is due to the advanced population of crystal, rainbow, and indigo children, or ... Views: 2259
I used to wonder why some people seem complacent about life as it is and others seem to question everything and know there is more than our five senses tell us. I still sit and watch others wherever I go, rarely finding anyone who makes eye-contact or expresses curiosity about others or their ... Views: 1345
Are you holding back because you feel vulnerable to revealing your true self? Each one of us is dealing with something and I believe that is why we tend to hold back our honesty and instead put on a mask to hid our true identity.
I feel confident that we are all trying to bring out our ... Views: 1456
We all know that getting to the destination of our dreams requires taking consistent action steps and continually pushing forward. So why don't we "just do it?" Why do we procrastinate, remain complacent, become paralyzed, or shrink in fear? Why, even when we know what we should be doing or the ... Views: 926
Are you where you want to be in life?
This is kind of a hard question to answer, isn't it? People ask this question occasionally in life, though, so it is worth thinking about.
It seems like a pertinent question for anyone to think about. However, answering it implies you know the ... Views: 1173
Accountability and confidence are invaluable attributes to help anyone move in the positive direction towards success. When you invoke and understand these 2 attributes, you just might make magic happen as you strive to transform your life and reach your highest potential. Okay everyone ... Views: 1264
We tend to confuse artistic and various intellectual pursuits as somehow being spiritual accomplishments. These are, however, developments of the higher emotional and mental spheres to a great degree, except when they are channeling energies of the lower vital levels of our being, which, in ... Views: 481
While they are not a substitute for spiritual sadhana, art, music and literature nevertheless have a role to play, both as a means to access and express the inner aspiration and as a way to bring to the external being some of the force of the spiritual development taking place internally. Those ... Views: 459
Whatever you do will come back to you!
The slightest misery one gives to any living being does return back to him - such is the law of Nature! So, the pain given to other’s bodies will be reflected in the same way to one’s own body indeed.
However, these are all effects of one’s past ... Views: 239
The current paradigm within which we are deeply rooted and that is ingrained in every cell of our body is cultivated solely around fear-based thinking. Research shows that 70% of our thoughts are precipitated from fear. Imagine that! How did we come to reside in such an environment permeated ... Views: 1417
Every organization whether it be for profit or non-profit are in their line of business in order to gain something – it’s most likely in their vision statement. My vision statement, for example is:
The fulfillment of the human spirit through the empowerment of every individual on the ... Views: 1404
Probably the single most damaging undertaking is the practice of judging ourselves. We judge ourselves, we project how others might judge us as well we judge others in relation to our own self-judgments. You can imagine how much energy this takes moving throughout the day.
In my previous ... Views: 1296
You probably thought that since we are talking about spirituality in business that love would be the L word for this week. No. Everything we’ve discussed and much of what we will be discussing engages and exercises the muscles of love. No need to go there today.
Though we spend hours with our ... Views: 1276
Noticing is the most powerful tool for cultivating awareness and for bringing valuable spiritual concepts to the workplace. Most importantly though, is having the intention to notice, in order to notice whether you are noticing or not.
Notice, for a moment, what is occurring within your work ... Views: 1324
One evening as I was laying in bed, preparing for a restful night of slumber, a voice from inside my head said: “I want to live my own life?” I was shocked with this outburst as I am one of the most independent individuals I know; I live a thousand miles away from my husband, on a secluded ... Views: 1340
Xenophobia is defined at Wikipedia as “an unreasonable fear or hatred of foreigners or strangers, or of that which is foreign or strange”.
My sense is that we are all xenophobic. We are all wary of new people, new things and ideas that, though proven by research to be effective means to ... Views: 1270
I'm experiencing resistance to writing this blog. I feel angry, frustrated and distracted by, well … It’s more that I’m allowing myself to get distracted; that way I can avoid being with what I don’t want to be with.
You might be asking – as I would, if I were you, why I’m resisting writing ... Views: 1429
In the preceding page, a passage from The Synthesis of Yoga by Sri Aurobindo was cited. The Mother is commenting on her impressions while reading that passage.
The challenges involved in changing the awareness and consciousness radically enough to recognise that the apparent primacy of the ... Views: 41
Spiritual practices that focus on liberation from the nature attempt to achieve that liberation through abandonment of the external life and a one-pointed concentration on the spiritual consciousness. The integral Yoga has an additional goal of bringing the higher spiritual forces and knowledge, ... Views: 488
Many people confuse aspiration with prayer. They are however, actually two different things, and while they may support one another when they align, it is not necessary that aspiration lead to prayer. Aspiration refers to the inner state of consciousness that arises from the psychic being in a ... Views: 371
When spiritual seekers attempt to implement the technique of the separation of Purusha and Prakriti, they generally go through a stage where they try to utilize the mind to observe. The mind, however, is not the instrument for the actual shift to the standpoint of the Purusha; in fact, the mind ... Views: 101