Hello,
I have uploaded the entire text of an excellent metaphysical spirituality book entitled "God Idea Of The Ancients" by Eliza Burt Gamble. You can find it at:
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It has many interesting and valid mythological and mystical ideas, and engages in a comprehensive discussion of the many major religions. Enjoy!
Asoka
Filed under Metaphysical, News by 
The art of goal-setting is correctly said to be the key to
life-long success. At the same time, it is admitted that those
who set goals often fail to follow through. Yes, they
may be more likely to succeed than those who set no goals
whatsoever. However, how can you learn to set goals and then
follow through consistently to create the life you dream of?
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First, be in no doubt about the critical importance of
having goals, and preferably creating them in writing. What is a
goal exactly? Tony Robbins defined a goal as a dream with a
deadline. In other words, you define your dreams, and then come
up with a time estimate of how long it will take for you to get
there.
Tests repeatedly prove that those with such goals outperform
those without. In one US study, it was found that university
undergraduates with specific written goals constituted only 2-3%
of the entire student population. However, several decades later,
this 2-3% were found to be worth more, in financial terms, than
the other 97% put together! Admittedly, money in the bank is only
one measure of success. However, you can be sure that the same
general effect is true in arenas other than the financial. If you
have specific written goals that you review often, you are far
more likely to succeed than those who merely dream about the
future with no action plan at all.
-
The Basic Goal-Setting Method
The traditional approach to goal-setting is still very effective,
if sincerely persevered with. The first step consists of doing a
brainstorming exercise in all the major areas of your life. This
has also been called "blue sky thinking". The idea is to write
down your dreams without inhibition and without giving any
thought as to how you might achieve them. You simply list them
all, as if a genie is going to appear and miraculously give you
everything you ask for, just as long as you can write it down.
The goal areas should cover Health, Finances, Family, Career,
Spiritual, Social, and as many other areas as are important to
you.
Once you have these listed, then go through your lists and rank
all the items with a score from 1 to 5. Give the ones you really
MUST achieve a ranking of 1, whereas the ones that are nice, but
not that important can be ranked 5. Try to ensure that you have
at least one rank 1 item in each category. Then eliminate all
those with rank 2 or more, so that only the rank 1 goals remain.
You should have at least one of these for each life area.
Next, assign a time deadline to each goal that remains. For
instance, your goal may be to become a proficient landscape
painter. For this, you may decide to allocate a time deadline of
three years. Or you may decide to double your salary, and you
give yourself a one-year deadline for this. Come up with a
deadline for each, but make sure that you have at least a few
goals with a one-year deadline.
You may keep all of these many goals you have created for later
reference. However, the best thing to do is to set aside all
goals with a time horizon of more than one year for the time
being. Keep the one goal in each area that would make the biggest
single impact on your life if you were to achieve it. In this
way, you end up with one goal in each of your major life areas
that is achievable in one year or less. Multi-year goals are
certainly important, and you can even break them into a series of
one-year goals once you have learned the process. To begin with
though, sticking to on-year goals is best.
This is by no means the only goal-setting technique, but it is
one that is immediate, easy and effective.
Once you have elicited your goals, the next job is to break them
up into mini-goals. Rather than attempt to do one gigantic task,
you break it up into mini-goals, each with their own time
deadline. Thus, with the landscape painter goal, your mini goals
might be:
(a) Buy Art Materials (Deadline: 1 Week), (b) Join an Art Class
(Deadline: 2 Weeks), (c) Become proficient at Watercolors
(Deadline: 9 Months), and so on.
Some of the larger mini-goals may themselves be broken up into
components in the same fashion. You continue this process of
mapping the whole thing out until you are left with small
easily accomplished tasks. As they say, "By the yard it's hard,
but by the inch it's a cinch!".
Then, the next important thing is to do something EVERY DAY in
the direction of your goals. One thing you can do that will
accelerate them tremendously is to write out your top ten goals
every morning. This keeps them foremost in your mind. However, it
also triggers your subconscious to move the universe to manifest
them in reality. In fact, creating a short daily routine around
your goals helps to make them a real present part of your life,
and not just some hoped-for future. You should also review your
goals periodically and make any necessary changes. Often, you
will find you no longer want the goal for perfectly good reasons.
It also super-charges your goals to employ visualization. See
yourself doing/acting/being whatever you desire, and you
accelerate your progress towards that goal tremendously. If you
employ all the senses – seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and
smelling your imagined future – then you make the visualization
even more powerful. The inner mind cannot tell the difference
between imagined reality and reality itself. Therefore, it will
work to manifest your imagined reality, i.e. it will rapidly make
it real in your outer life.
-
Important Considerations Beyond Goal-Setting
All of this is sound advice regarding goal-setting, and will
produce tremendous results if acted upon. However, we have to
realize that life is more than just one long to-do list. You
should create goals, review them, and engage in visualizing your
future in each and every area.
However, at the same time, you have to also realize that life is
a process to be lived. Any discipline you wish to master is the
same way. There is really no time at which you can have said to
have mastered any discipline whatsoever. Scientists, artists,
musicians and all others at the very peak of their profession
will be the first to agree.
Therefore, although goals are important, an attitude of
commitment is even more so. You have to be willing to give what
it takes in order to achieve what you wish. Moreover, you have to
be prepared to give what it takes for as long as it takes, which
is often much longer than you initially envisaged.
Incessant practise of any discipline is vital to achieving any
form of mastery. This is a well known principle in martial arts.
Although it IS possible to learn to break a six inch wooden board
with a blow of your hand within a couple of hours, truly
mastering a martial art is a life-long endeavor.
In the West, we are too much oriented around "quick fix"
solutions. That is often why goal-setting programs fail. They are
either too ambitious, or else motivated by this "have it now"
mentality. Goals WILL help you achieve all that you dream of.
However, be prepared for the commitment of time and effort too.
It will also help you tremendously if you spend a lot of time
discovering the ONE major thing you really want to achieve in
life above all else. A person can spectacularly achieve any ONE
goal if that is the sum total of his/her endeavor. In other
words, if you want to be a top Hollywood screenwriter, you almost
certainly can be if you are prepared to make it the ONE THING
that matters to you. However, it will require years of
single-minded study, practise and patience to achieve. It IS
possible, but most people are not prepared to pay the price.
Conversely, if you are unwilling to do this, you can spread your
efforts across a range of worthy goals. You may not achieve world
fame with any of them, or even be outstanding, but you will
probably achieve a high degree of proficiency. It may be enough
to make you happy and contented.
Thus, achieving goals is not merely a matter of setting them. It
is also crucial to decide how important they are to you. You must
also determine what price you are willing to pay to achieve them.
The key is to make goals congruent with your life; set goals in
areas that you actually WANT to be increasingly important to you;
that you would happily get up early and go to bed late to
achieve. Once you do this, almost anything is possible for you
for it is truly said that:
"What the mind of Man can conceive and believe, it can achieve."
Copyright 2001, Asoka Selvarajah. 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. You can subscribe to his FREE ezine, and get his FREE ebook "Inner Light Outer Wealth" at:
http://www.aksworld.com/AspireToWisdom.htm?imk=Blog _______________________________________________________________
You have permission to reproduce this article in your ezine, website or offline publication as long as you do so in its entirety, and include both the copyright notice and the resource box at the bottom.
Filed under News, Personal Growth by
Terrorist events are never pleasant news. But this London bombing struck
home to me for several reasons. First, I was born in London, and
both worked and lived there for most of my life. Second, I have
regularly used those very stations that were hit by the London bombs
just a few days ago.
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For instance, Liverpool Street station is one I used each weekday
for four and a half years. And I have spent a lot of time sitting
reading in tube trains at Aldgate station (a stopping point to
change driver etc.) waiting for them to move on. And I used to
change train every day at King's Cross for another job.
So I have some empathy for what people are suffering at this
time. All we can really do is send out good wishes and prayers
for some healing to the situation, especially to those still
waiting for news of the missing (and most probably, dead).
There was a certain inevitability about it all though, which I am
sure has not been lost on Londoners, or those in the wider
country of Britain. They say that people in glass houses
shouldn't throw stones. Well, it seems that in recent years,
Britain and America have become the ultimate stone-throwing glass
house dwellers, or should we say their governments have. The
people on the street generally have more good sense.
The bitter irony is that the those making the big bombastic
statements, and taking the wild decisions that directly
endanger their own citizens, will never be the ones spilling
THEIR blood on the streets. Instead, they pledge OUR blood -
yours and mine – in their "firm resolve" in the "War Against
"Terrorism". They do it from the safety of their bullet-proof
offices, or from behind a line of twenty bodyguards.
It's easy to be brave when someone ELSE has to die for it, don't
you think?…
Conveniently, they never have to face the DIRECT consequences of
their behavior. Instead we do – you and I – as has been so
graphically illustrated this week.
And if we are going to use the word "war", then we cannot forget
that a war is not all one-sided. People die on BOTH sides. THAT
is what is meant by a war!
Perhaps that was a point missed by the big talkers. Maybe they
think that war only works in one direction, i.e. they order the
killing and it gets done. Sadly, it isn't so.
It's always the blood of the ordinary people – yours and mine -
that will be shed for this kind of thing. In airplanes, on
trains, as we work in our offices, or take our vacations. One
group of people deliver the rhetoric. Another group of people
die for it. Never the twain shall meet.
This is NOT to absolve, or to agree with, the people who
committed this dreadful act. However, it has to be understood
that the motives behind this kind of behavior are far more
complex than most of us would be prepared to admit. The causes
are complex, and so too must be the solution. Simply shooting
people dead either in England or Iraq ain't gonna to cut it!
However, the world has moved on from 9/11. People seem to be
seeing for themselves that simplistic word formulas from
self-serving politicians don't accurately describe complex
solutions. Nor do they provide a solution to deep-seated
problems. They're beginning to see through their leaders and
demand more than empty words.
Blair damaged himself and his party badly in the last election
through supporting the Bush war. However, the people seemed to have
forgotten the war and its consequences come election time.
Otherwise, they might have delivered Blair the ultimate bloody
nose by throwing him and his party out of power. Like the Americans
during the same period, they became predictably focused on their
own self-serving local agendas – health services, immigration, taxation,
and so on. The actions being perpetrated in Iraq in their name
slipped out of their minds.
I guess the London bomb incidents will remind them?…
As for Bush – the single most unpopular American President in
history since opinion polls began – he was only re-elected
through the FEAR of the American people. HIS campaign was to
essentially terrorize the people into believing that he was the
ONLY valid solution to keep the terrorists at bay.
Anyway, moving back to the London bombs, what was very striking throughout is the
mature way in which the British public on the street seemed to
respond to the situation. There seemed to be a quiet
determination not to be cowed or intimidated, but to get on with
their lives as before. There was not much baying for blood. No
hysteria or rage, even from those who had lost loved ones. It is
something to be proud of; this maturity in the face of ultimate
stress.
Maybe it is because Britain is very used to terrorist acts on its
mainland, unlike America, who seemed to have been living in a
fantasy world up until 9/11; totally unwilling to believe or
accept that its international behavior would eventually reap
consequences. Indeed, when 9/11 hit, many Americans simply
refused to connect the event to anything that the US might have
been involved in, and blankly wandered around asking "Why would
anyone do this to us, after all the good we've done?"
That's the commendable but innocent view of the public, naively
unaware of what their own government has been getting up to
around the globe.
The British are perhaps less easily fooled because they could
always see and understand the history of Britain's activity in
Northern Ireland and the direct consequences it reaped upon THEM
on the mainland. In other words, Cause and Effect were much
easier to track in Britain than with America, where vast oceans
separated the Causes from the Effect. In Britain, they were
faster and closer.
But Americans are finally beginning to pick up on this too. They
are beginning to understand the Cause/Effect relationship.
And it certainly has not been lost on Spain, who pulled out of
the "war" after the Madrid train bombing, and are now pledged to
trying to tackle the causes of terrorism (poverty, ignorance,
etc.), rather than simply going around killing people, and
somehow thinking that this will make things better!
Again, it has to be repeated that none of this is even slightly
approving or excusing what these violent killers do to innocent
people. However, the balance needs to be redressed. The
simplistic formulas of Good vs. Evil trotted out by politicians
are hopelessly worn out. We have heard them too much and too
often. They hold no water.
We have to start to THINK for ourselves, not let other people brainwash us.
No, terror is NOT a valid means of resolving grievances, such as this London bombing, and it
can never be. BUT neither can the actions carried out by our own
governments be properly justified either. A "quick fix" such as a
"war on terrorism" can never work, but can only create more of
the very thing it seeks to eradicate.
Instead, we have to seek to eradicate the causes that radicalize
young people into joining these terrible terrorist groups. We
have to deal with the REAL causes – not simply engage in name
calling.
Anyway, let us keep our thoughts and prayers with the people who
have lost loved ones in the London bombs, with those lying critically ill in
hospital, and with those who are making the great transition.
There is not much we can do about the world scene, to be honest.
So, let us direct our mental and spiritual energies where they
are likely to do some good.
Asoka Selvarajah
Filed under General, News, Personal Growth by
