Welcome to everyone, and especially to new subscribers!
Another serving of mental, spiritual and metaphysical
nourishment for your pleasure. If you have any suggestions
for future content in this newsletter, please send them to
Welcome to the very first issue of the Aspire To Wisdom Ezine!
We really want to make this an ezine you look forward to. Future
issues will cover a wide variety of life-changing concepts and
issues; both metaphysical and personal development.
First of all, may I express my gratitude to those of you who
subscribed to this ezine a while ago and then heard nothing more
of it. Thank you for your patience. I can assure you that you
will now be receiving it monthly as promised. I hope you will
feel that the wait was worthwhile.
Let me get one thing perfectly straight right upfront. I am NOT
a guru or enlightened being in any way, shape or form! Those
of you who know me personally will be the first to agree! I
am merely a finger pointing at the moon, and not the moon
itself. I share with you my thoughts and what I have learned
to this point in time, with the attitude that we often teach
what we most need to learn. I am a fellow seeker on the path
and it is my joy to share some water with you along the way.
If you have any thoughts on how we can improve either this ezine
or the website, please do feel free to e-mail:
and let us know. If we get enough feedback of interest and
value, we may add a reader's letters' section. So feel free to
get in touch.
We are also prepared to consider articles for publication here,
although they must conform to the theme of the ezine and the
editor's word on their inclusion is, alas, final!
Regards,
Asoka Selvarajah
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One of the most important things you can do in life is to simply find time for yourself. By this, we don't mean opting out of society or "spacing out". Value yourself enough to give yourself time to simply be, without any expectation of goal or result. Paradoxically, by doing this, we can often achieve far more in our externally focused lives than we otherwise might.
When our lives are primarily externally focused, it becomes easy to lose sight of the gameplan. What are we doing all this for? What is the point of it all? Like too many stressed out corporate "high-fliers", we may reach the very top of the ladder, only to find that it is leaning against the wrong wall. The joy of simply living all too easily evaporates as we postpone our pleasure for some unspecified future date.
We don't allow ourselves to be happy NOW, but instead promise ourselves that when we have got that promotion, or fallen in love with that ideal partner, or had that baby, bought that new hone, or become a millionaire, THEN we can be happy. Meanwhile the present time, which in truth is all we ever really have, quietly slips away.
The biggest trap is to work for money. Many people do this assuming that once a certain amount of money has been amassed in the bank, or once they can see the sheer immensity of their assets laid out before them, THEN they will be truly happy. Again, it is an utter illusion. The truth is that you have to prepare your mindset for wealth first or else (a) you will never truly achieve it because your inner mind will forever act to keep you within your comfort zone or, (b) if you do achieve it, you will not have developed the habits of mind to be content with it anyway.
Tony Robbins tells about how much he wanted to become a millionaire but once he actually achieved it, the thrill lasted for about ten minutes. After that, everything felt just the same as before. Yes, there are many millionaires who are happy. However, there are many who are as equally miserable. In fact, many of the latter would agree that their prime cause of sorrow is the money itself; fear of losing it, dissatisfaction at not being as rich as so-and-so who is worth ten times more, etc. The key point is that money itself is not the determiner of happiness and purpose. A correct state of mind IS.
Capturing our purpose is THE most important thing we can possibly do. It is not the work of a moment, an hour or even of a few days. It is an
ongoing project that brings more riches each and every day. By doing this, we discover who we really are and why exactly we are here. The truth is that you are here for a purpose. You manifested into this life for a reason. So how do we go about discovering this purpose?
The first thing is simply to make time for yourself. Treat yourself as
precious and important and find times to be alone in quiet reflection upon your life. Many people meditate to gain deeper insights about themselves. This is certainly immensely valuable. However, if you feel uncomfortable with meditation at this stage, then simply creating moments in the day when you can ponder and wonder can be deeply beneficial.
At several points in the day, try simply closing your eyes and taking a
deep breath. Turn your attention inward and remember whatever it is you need to, and as you let your breath out exhale all your tension and
concerns. David Kundtz, in his excellent book "Stopping", calls these
brief moments in the day "Stillpoints". They are easier to do than
meditation because they only take a few seconds. However, if you do about fifteen or so of these a day, it can make a tremendous difference to your inner calm and perspective on life.
You can also do what Kundtz calls "Stopovers". These are slightly longer breaks lasting from several minutes to several hours, where you take time to specifically do NOTHING. This is important. There is no agenda. You simply give yourself time to BE. You listen to your body and what it has to say.
You listen to your inner intuition and gradually develop the ability to
hear its valuable insights. You develop Openness and gradually by-pass the inner critic that filters out what you heart's desire really is with
negative thinking and being "realistic" By giving yourself more time to
simply be and experience your own "beingness" without preconditions , you gradually awaken to what your soul's purpose is, one step at a time.
Copyright Asoka Selvarajah 2000. All Rights Reserved.
Asoka Selvarajah is a writer on personal growth and
spirituality,
and the author of "The 7 Golden Secrets To Knowing Your
Higher
Self". His work helps people achieve their full
potential, deepen their
understanding of mystical truth,
and discover their soul's purpose. Learn more about his work
We referred to this excellent book in the article above.
This is a book for our times. Hectic, pressured, unclear about the future, all of us need to STOP. This book is not about slowing down, adjusting our pace. It is about Stopping.
This means doing nothing at all for a period of time - anything from a few seconds to a few hours to even a week, a month or more. Immensely practical, this book shows you how to begin to integrate sweet drops of silence and peace into your daily routine, no matter how frantic it may be. It shows you how these moments, as they accumulate, will help you to re-focus and re-dedicate yourself to the things that really matter to you, and indeed to begin to recognize them at all, perhaps for the first time.
This is a book of immense wisdom but written in a simple accessible way with really practical advice on how to deepen your life without undermining it.
So much of what we do is governed by the opinions of others, or out of concern for what others might think. However, there is something much more pervasive going on. There is a process operating in the lives of all human beings called "social proofing" which basically means that we derive most of our social values, morals, imperatives and taboos from those around us. In a more universal sense, this is known as Entrainment.
Entrainment occurs in a wide range of physical and biological systems.
For example, if you place a number of pendulum clocks in the same room and set their pendulums moving completely out of synchrony, after a reasonable period of time, you can return to find all the pendulums moving in perfect synchrony to each other. It is well known that large groups of women who live in closed communities, e.g. nuns or female convicts, will tend to have precisely the same menstrual cycle. If you have ever watched those wildlife films on TV, you may remember seeing an entire shoal of fish, consisting of thousands of individuals, moving and turning as a single entity. The same happens with certain species of birds in flight. Yet, there is no known way that the individuals in such groups can communicate such global messages in such a way as to affect the whole group simultaneously.
Not surprisingly, similar processes occur in human society, but often in
areas where we believe we have conscious control. Think about it for a moment. How many of your social values, morals, and opinions did you consciously sit down and decide upon? If you are honest with yourself, you will have to admit that very few were a result of your own deliberate decisions. Most of it arises from "social proofing"; the beliefs and values of our friends, relations and work colleagues. In other words, many of the beliefs and values you cherish and might even die for had nothing to do with your own deliberate rational thought! You simply picked them up from elsewhere, literally without thinking!
Yet, it is so vital to take conscious control of these processes. To fail
to do so is to behave like a robot, to live life half-asleep, and to
seriously under-achieve compared to all you might be capable of.
Here are just a few common examples of social proofing that many of us buy into without much thought.
(1) Marriage. Roughly half of all marriages end in divorce, often bitter
and acrimonious, with severe financial/emotional consequences for one of both parties and any children that may have resulted. Of those that last the course, a large percentage are drab affairs in which the partners hardly seem alive at all. Yet we see in excess of 70-80% of the population cheerfully tying the knot to people that half of them end up despising within a few short years! Why? First, because of the expectations of society and of parents. Despite many changes, single people are still regarded as rather abnormal and deficient; and nobody wants to be thought of like that.
Second, in order to bring up children. But is this really the only way?
Are there really no alternatives? Ah, but then we would get into even more social proofing; the social/religious "immorality" of children born out of wedlock......
(2) Religion. Whether you believe that God is indivisibly ONE, or three personalities within the ONE, or a huge number of separate personalities, or even if you don't believe in God at all - much of it is a result of social proofing. Your beliefs of the intrinsic nature of God and the universe can literally depend on the accident of which country you
happened to be born in.
Can you imagine the social consequences of a Moslem in Yemen or Saudi Arabia converting to Hinduism?! When Christians glibly assert the Triune nature of God, they have no idea how much blood was shed in the early Church for decades on just this subject alone. Bishops and their entire congregations were literally murdered by rival "Christians" owing to differences in opinion so infinitesimal that it defies belief today that it could have caused so much death and misery. Yet today, Christians the world over buy into the Triune nature of God as part of the package without ever exercising the kind of independent thought that the early church has to at least be given some credit for. Social Proofing again. So even our philosophy of the metaphysical is often determined by others.
(3) Politics. Whilst it is easy to be socially or financially entrained
into voting for the same political party again and again, how many of us fail to see the wood for the trees when we don't even once ask ourselves whether Democracy itself is a valid political system to begin with? Why do we simply accept it as the best or only system possible? Because the politicians and the media tell us it is! And nobody around us ever questions it either. In the age of global telecommunication, international commerce, and the internet, why do we still buy into the concept of Nation States - an outdated concept that originated with primitive tribes and chieftains countless millennia ago?
(4) Education/Career. Do you think education is a good thing or a bad
thing? Do you believe that the smartest and best educated always end up the wealthiest, the most successful, or the most happy? Did you decide to go (or to not go) to university because you sat and deliberated over the pros and cons, or because everyone around you were either planning to go (or not go) themselves? If your father is a multi-millionaire, do you feel comfortable starting your own shoe repair business?
The list is endless. We could go on and on. Social Proofing is so
pervasive and subtle that we are close to having to admit that very few of our opinions are actually our own. Yet, we make major decisions in all aspects of our lives based upon ideas, attitudes, opinions and beliefs that we imbibed from society without a second thought! No wonder so many people's lives are unhappy or confused.
So what should we do? Get conscious! We need to question our most
comfortable beliefs and opinions in all areas. For the truth is that
whatever we believe, for good or ill, becomes our reality. We must take control of our thoughts and opinions or we will be in danger of remaining a comfortable conformist cog in an ever dysfunctional society, always looking to others to know how we should think, behave and act.
So learn to live outside the known and the norm. Take chances. Embrace the unfamiliar and the unorthodox. Try to examine your own cherished views and see whether they arise from your own rational thought processes or were imbibed from the social culture around you. Examine the situations and relationships that you now find yourself in. One good exercise to break the chains of conventional thinking is to ask yourself, "Knowing what I now know, if I had to do it again, would I do it?" This can apply to a relationship, work situation, anything. Asking this one question can set you free from a lot of unconsciously accepted bondage.
Whilst social proofing will always be with us, because it is almost
impossible to view ourselves totally objectively, we can certainly learn
to take conscious control and minimize its damaging effects. So take
control of your thought processes and literally question everything you
have grown up so comfortable with. By doing so, you can begin the process of giving yourself more choices and unshackling yourself from chains of bondage and conformity that you didn't even realize you were wearing.
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