Change the Subject or Leave the Room!

10/05/2004

Los Angeles

Did you know that we participate in life through our energy vibration and not our words and actions? 

Energy is life force and desire comes forth as vibration.  Whatever you are giving your attention to is vibrating and has vibration activated within you.  We receive and interpret energy vibration with our senses and we are very sensitive to it.

When you are passionate about something you have focused energy vibration and life force flows easily through you.  New ideas come to you and you can be very creative.  In anger and rage you have a strong resistance within you and the energy vibration is blocked.

Our feelings are indicators of our vibrational countenance.  At any moment if we are emotionally down our vibration is low and we are disconnected from the pure positive energy stream or life force.  We can not function properly and we are practically disallowing the well-being.  Our emotions are telling us in every moment whether or not we are in alignment or misalignment with our own desires.

We can raise our vibration by lowering our resistance and changing our negative thoughts.  We should pay attention to the way we feel at any given moment.  If we feel good and not carried away by our negative thoughts life energy is flowing through us.  When we are negative we are resisting the energy flow.  Be careful about other people’s energy floating around you and choose what feels good.  When people around you are negative change the subject or leave the room!

The Earth exudes palpable energy frequencies and is the source of pure positive energy.  We receive balancing energy from sitting on the rim of the Grand Canyon or other power spots of the Earth.  Mountains, forests, streams, water falls, and the sea are places that we can balance our energies.

When you live with joy you are a vibrational match to what you are reaching for, or you can not be the receiver of it, so find a thought that feels good and practice it.  When you feel good you have control of your vibration and you deliberately attract and create what you want.

It is natural to have clarity, be healthy, eager, loving, have desires, anticipate happy outcomes, love, sing, play, skip, be joyful and feel good.  Anything else is resisting the natural state of who you are.

(Summary of my notes from the teachings of Abraham)

What are Your New Years Resolutions?

03/16/03
Los Angeles

Today I had a meeting with my Awareness Journey group and because of the upcoming Persian New Year we talked about new years resolutions.  I shared the following guidelines with them to enable us to create what we want in the soon to arrive New Year.

1. Identify your intentions; what do you want and what is important to you.  Then try to talk about your intentions with others to become clearer about it.  Your inner being will guide you in the process.
2. Focus on your desires and intentions and what makes you feel good.  Feeling good is a high energy vibration and you will attract and create what you want.
3. Where you are going is where you are standing now.  Don’t let your past failures interfere with your desires and don’t come up with excuses.  You should change your perspectives and make a fundamental shift in your negative beliefs about yourself.  Remember, our pasts have no significance at this time unless we allow them to.
4. Appreciate what you already have and what is around you.  Remember, every morning is a new birth.
5. Avoid the negative and focus on the positive.  Say yes to life and have unconditional love no matter who is doing what.
6. Spend time with yourself to connect to your inner being and to receive guidelines and instructions related to your intentions.

It works!

Which One Are You?

07/10/2005

Los Angeles, CA

The conscious mind is the body’s creative computer and decision maker, and includes the right and the left brain.

The right brained person lives in the world of the sensory, feeling and intuition (it feels right).  The left brained person tends to view life in terms of pragmatic, analytical, theoretical and deductive (it is logically right).  In both cases there are hereditary predispositions involved.  Left brain strategies are used in classroom.

To determine which one you are recall an experience, observe which impressions are remembered first and with greater intensity:

• Remembering the details of the actual event is a left brain processing
• Remembering feelings about one self or other participants is a right brain processing

The individual only sees that which he wants to see and is programmed for.

Considerable conscious mind energy is involved in assessing incoming data, determining what stays and what gets filed.  Both left and right brain processing are present but one is dominant.  When the input is more than what the conscious mind can process mental breakdown can happen.

Scientists believe that we can actively reprogram our brain by asking the conscious mind to unlock and recognize the incoming flood of information.  Passive reprogramming is choosing not to ask but let life happen.

AMAZING!

06/08/2003

Los Angeles, CA

The years 2002 and 2003 were the period of my fascination with the teachings of the spiritual teacher Dr. David Hawkins.  Here are some of my notes summarized from two of his books namely Power vs. Force, and The eye of the I.

• All the information ever available to human consciousness is in a database of consciousness.  The database has the capacity to know everything and it is the origin of intuition, dream, guessing, and the foundation of genius, psychic knowledge, and foreknowledge.
• Thoughts belong to the database of consciousness of the world; mind only processes it in new combination.  There are no original thoughts.
• A question can’t be asked unless there is a potentiality of the answer.
• Pure consciousness is perception of timelessness, oneness, and that self is not finite.
• Whatever you hold in mind affects your body.  People can heal by changing their negative thoughts.
• People are run by their software programs (karma) which they are unconscious of; some are more evolved than others.
• One is not really ruled by the mind.  Mind reveals an endless stream of options and memories.  These options have payoffs behind them.  If the payoffs are refused there is a silent, thought-free space of joy that we can connect to.
• Presence of God (enlightenment) is in the now.  Everyone is actually safe in the now moment.
• Be easy going, forgiving and compassionate.  Give unselfish service.  Avoid negativity.  Do not be opinionated.  Don’t make judgment of right vs. wrong.  Understand rather than condemn.
• The real state of consciousness is free of negativity and full of joy.

Yesterday I Had Tomorrow

12/05/2000

Los Angeles, California

Today I had my regular get together with my friends in our Awareness Journey meeting.  One friend was in mourning for the passing of her husband who had been suffering from a long-term disease.

The discussion geared around celebration of her husband’s life instead of living in sadness and sorrow.

We discussed that according to the spiritual teachers:

• Coming to this world, staying and leaving are all natural states of well being.  We are not limited only to this brief experience of life.  Spirit which is who we really are, or source, is eternal.
• Our physical body is not who we are. The inner self never dies so we do not lose people after they are gone and their quality is always with us.
• Life and death are one, like the river and the sea.  Behind duality there is one identity.
• I can not lose my life because I am life.  This is proof of immortality.
• Once we give up our fear of death and accept our immortality we understand that we will never cease to be.

We then asked our friend to appreciate her own life and to remind herself that we are here for expression of life which is the expression of joy. 

Each day is a new day.  We play roles and wear different hats.  If the bottom line is against us today we should remember that there is a new tomorrow.

A Proper Cup of Tea

06/13/1999, Los Angeles, California

Today I had a meeting with some of my close friends in which we decided to embark on an awareness journey. To begin with we declared our agreement with all the spiritual teachers that life is a vehicle for waking up and that we each are in a life situation that we need to be in order to learn.  The question was how to respond to life situations and how to minimize the stress.

The help came from one of my favorite spiritual teachers Pema Chodron and her book "The Wisdom of No Escape".

According to her, there is no separation between sadness and happiness in life and we should not prefer one to the other.  We should be able to live fully with both and  hold both in our heart to experience balance and completeness.  This is what is behind rituals, carried on in different cultures. So whether it's making tea or doing other things it is a ritual in the sense of doing it properly while holding both the sadness and happiness in our heart.

"Our whole life could be a ritual.  We could learn to listen to the nature, we could reconnect to ourselves even if we are sad.  If we can hold it all in our heart then we can make a proper cup of tea.  Making a proper cup of tea means that you thoroughly and completely make that tea because you appreciate the tea and the boiling water and the fact that together they make something that's nourishing and delicious and that lifts one's spirit".


Can you make a proper cup of tea?

The freedom to look at myself

09/19/1995, Dhaka, Bangladesh

In the past few weeks I have been reflecting on whether I have a fixed way of being, or whether what I have learned from the Ontological Design workshops in the past have enabled me to be more flexible and allowing. In the process of exploring this I came up with a list of questions I needed to answer in order to make this judgment.

1. Am I open to learning and being a light to myself?
2. Do I believe that my self worth is my declaration of what I am about and what I stand for?
3. Do I believe that my self esteem is about the contribution that I am in other people's lives and in society?
4. Am I aware that my opinions, emotions, moods, and beliefs all contribute to my interpretation of the world and that my judgments could be based on my ungrounded assessments?
5. Do I know that life is uncertain and therefore I should be less upset and less controlling?
6. Do I make sure that my relationship with others is out of commitment and not attachment?
7. Do I know that my commitment to results is more empowering than my attachment to results
8. Do I know that my freedom, in the context of no fear, means that there is nothing to be afraid of and nothing to protect?
9. Do I know that everyone I meet is my mirror and when I judge them I am also looking at myself?
10. Do I know that most of the time I am not conscious of the choices I make, and as a result, I keep making other people wrong for what happens to me?
11. Do I know that when I feel resigned it is because I have failed to recognize my choice in the matter?
12. Am I able to make requests instead of having expectations, and am I convinced that if my request is declined  I am not necessarily rejected?
13. Do I know that when I keep complaining about life and things that don't work out, by focusing on the negative,  I am creating more of it,  and I am determining my future from the past?

Life is a conversation and I encourage you to have one of this nature with yourself.

Is my language effective?

08/25/1993, Baton Rouge, Louisiana

I was in a wonderful workshop in Baton Rouge this weekend which was about Ontological Design referring to  the capacity for each of us to design our "way of being" in the world.

The premise of training was that humans are linguistic beings and language can generate because it is an action.  We create our identities and our realities by our linguistic acts which are based on 1) a set of assumptions that we have learned, and 2) the history of the interactions we have had with others.

Ancient religions believed that each person is divided into body, speech, and mind, and speech shaped the world.  That is why we should always uphold the truth.

The coach believed that we can alter our identities and realities by standing in new distinctions and by being committed to THE effectiveness of our language.  We will then be able to create changes in the ways we observe, perceive, interpret, and talk about things so that it is powerful and empowering.

The big question for me was how much of my languaging had produced effective results in my life?  I knew that I needed to learn new linguistic distinctions in order to be able to make new interpretations of my breakdowns in life and I needed to have new sets of options for responding to those breakdowns.

Some of the distinctions that I learned and are close to my heart are as follows:

• I can only say I have integrity if I do as I say and as I promise.
• Keeping my promises is a commitment to myself.
• I have a racket if I keep complaining about other people and making them wrong, and if I am always upset about something.

• I am an effective listener if I can think of other people's words as a contribution, and believe that complete attention is love.  I should also listen not only to the words but more to the concerns being addressed by the speaker

• I can share because I believe sharing is access to good feelings in the heart
• I can shift who I am by shifting my commitment from having an answer, to living in the question.

I loved the training :-)

Set them free

07/04/1989, Jakarta, Indonesia

Today my daughter came home with her close friend.  Her friend was visibly shaken and emotional.  They both came to me and my daughter asked me if I could talk with her friend and help her feel better.

Her friend's story like most teenagers was about her boyfriend's lack of sensitivity and attention to her, and their possible separation.  I told her that:

• You can not expect him to think and to behave exactly like you
• You must realize that you do not possess him and like wise no one can possess you
• The beauty of a relationship is to be able to love and care for each other as if there is no keeping or controlling
• Jealousy and negativity do not help a relationship

They were both listening with deep interest and were seemingly much more relaxed.  I then read them a paragraph from a book that I was reading and it was so close to my heart.  The book was "ONE" written by one of my favorite writers Richard Bach.

"When you love someone, when you know they're ready to learn and grow, you set them free.  How could you learn, how could you feel your experiences if you knew I was there, a shield between you and your choices".

Am I resisting something?

06/10/1991, Los Angeles, California

When I am disturbed or under stress I challenge myself with a few questions:

Am I resisting something in my mind?
Am I labeling something as good or bad?
Do I resent something because it is against what I believe?
Do I wish to change something but I can't?

I have learned that:

Our resistance is the operation of our ego which blocks our acceptance
Our resistance to any form of life force brings us suffering
Our resentment and resistance is an obstacle to connecting to our joy

I choose to do the following:

Let go of my resistance and my holding on to myself and my stories and beliefs
Accept what is and open to the teachings of the moment
Meet the challenges of life and learn to soften and open

I take a deep breath and I feel the joy of life again.

It works!

Nothing to hang on to

10/20/1982, New Delhi, India

I am in New Delhi for briefing with WHO and taking up my new assignment to Indonesia.  Unfortunately my children are not with me and are expected to join a few weeks later.  I have anxiety over this and I am longing to be with them.  At the same time I am facinated by India, by the challenges ahead of me, and by the new world that I have stepped into.

While in New Delhi and in my spare time I started to explore the book stores.  By doing that for the first time I came across Buddha's teachings which ended up helping me tremendously in staying grounded during this very challenging period.
I learned that:

• Buddhism is a philosophy, a way of thinking and not a religion
• The teachings have one goal and that is to realize the capacity to be happier, wiser and clearer
• Buddha is a title: one who is awake to the highest reality
• Buddha said my teaching has only one flavour: Liberation
• He saw that ceasing of craving stops the cycle of bitrth, death and suffering
• After realizing this all his craving stopped and he became total luminous, clarity - Buddha

According to the teaching:

• Nothing is eternal
• Nothing is always pleasureable
• There is nothing to be afraid of or to protect
• There is nothing to hang on to
• The cause of suffering is clinging, craving, and desier
• Change is synonymous with life
• Wisdom is constantly seeing the things as they really are

The realization of teachings which of course is much more than what I have written here, gave me a sense of freedom and a sense of compassion for myself and others.  I felt empowered to stand firm and to face life's challenges.  This was the beginning of my awareness journey and after that other teachers and teachings followed one after the other.

Best of all, my children joined me after eight long weeks :-)

The eye of Spirit

08/12/1991, Jakarta, Indonesia

We are waiting in the hall of a movie theater and from a distance I can see that a man is trying to say something to others using hand signals.  A friend who knew the person told me that this guy has given up talking on purpose.  He is fasting by not talking for a while.  For him this is a spiritual practice which requires tremendous patience and tempering of his urgency to react to whatever people say, and to pass judgments.  A tragic event in his life has made him do this regularly.  He then said: this man has learned to view everything and everyone with the eye of spirit.

I learned a great lesson today.

Feeling Connected

03/10/1991, Jakarta, Indonesia

Today one of my colleagues who is here for a short-term assignment was expressing her concern about the war.  While listening to what she had to say I was remembering the history books about the empires that were created and later destroyed, and wars that had started and stopped.  I told her not to worry, hopefully one day all human beings will realize and embrace their own living connections to other beings.

Looking to be loved?

03/03/1991, Jakarta, Indonesia

I am sitting on the couch looking at the straight line of the smoke rising from a petchouli stick burning in a jar on my table.  The music is Angel Love of Aeholia bringing the waves of peace and "let go" to my mind.  The fragrance of petchouli reassuring me of presence of warmth and love all around me.

Just a while ago hearing a love song hit my mind and triggered my sad memories. Sad because I keep falling into the trap of my own illusions about love.

I remind myself that if we are looking to see whether we are loved or not, in that instant it is impossible for us to love.  One should not expect love but be the source of love.

Isness

08/22/1990, Calgary, Canada

I hear Nature breathing,
deeply and eagerly
the cold breeze sweeping the clear mountain
the sun, generously warm,
spreading the laughter of light
the blue sky holding back the restless clouds
allowing the grass and the trees to dance with joy
Nature just is,
and in its isness
it is the source of life
we, unable to be,
are struggling to become