Self Unfoldment through Bhagvat Gita

There are 3 types of people:
One who wants to clean all the garbage in this world – Sweeper.
One who wants to improve his own Self – Seeker.
One who neither wants to improve the world nor the self – Sucker.

If you want to change the world, if you do not accept this world as it is, you are disrespecting God. One who has no desire of changing/improving the world, One who accepts everything the way it is, that One is on the spiritual path. Only when one who accepts oneself, as is, is there room for transformation – room for reflecting inside and realizing the Higher Self.

Discussions and arguments clear problems.
Love dissolves, not solves, problems.

Most people think the Bhagvad Gita talks about Karma. It talks about Karma Yoga, not Karma. Karma Yoga is doing what is right and not doing what is wrong vs. doing what one likes and not doing what one dislikes. When one keeps doing right and not doing wrong, one’s likes/dislikes completely disappear. Then one is content doing right, is comfortable everywhere and is free from the bond of judgment and habits.That being is a Karma Yogi.

The Bhagvad Gita is about:
Mamatva (my-ness) – Dhritarashtra is a prime example of this Attachment – Duryodhana is a great example of attachment to worldly activities Karma Yoga – Arjuna is disillusioned; when all the options to war had been exhausted, the Mahabharata was declared; yet he doesn’t want to go to war with his Gurus, Elders and Family Members; so he justifies not fighting the war; he gives reason upon reason to call off the war. Krishna, with a smile on his face, reminds him of his Kshatriya duty, which is greater than the earthly bonds of relationships.

Swami Ji told us gently that the lesson from this is, “Friends, never justify yourself to anyone. When you are sure in your heart that you are doing right, there’s no reason for arguments/justifications/explanations/clarifications”.

We do not realize the value of what we have; we take it for granted. Space is always around is but the Sun comes and goes everyday. Since the Sun is not always in our lives, we realize its value. There are many, many shlokas singing the praises of the Sun but not one glorifying the Space – the Space, in which the Sun moves, because of which the Sun rises and sets, goes unnoticed.

Swami Ji asked the audience, “Do you love and respect me?”. Everyone said, “Yes”. “If you get upset with someone here, will you start fighting with the person?” Everyone said, “No”. “Why? Because you love and respect me, you don’t want to misbehave in my presence. You may appear calm outwardly while your mind says, ‘Just let Swami Ji leave then I will show him’.” Everyone knew the feeling and smiled. “God is everywhere. If we realize God’s presence everywhere, all the time, we won’t lie, hurt, cheat. In your everyday life, while doing all your routine activities, experience this presence and you will not go wrong”.

You don’t need replies to your questions. You need answers and solutions. The solution resides, within your heart, right where your question originates.

Among many other gems, he left us with – When you leave home, your make-up is not complete without a smile. When you interact with others, your actions are not complete unless performed with Love.

He repeated many times, “You cannot change anyone except yourself” and “If you are bored (with yourself), can you imagine how boring you must be to others?”. However, someone still asked him at the end, how to spread this message of love and bliss.

Excerpts from a spiritual discourse by Swami Anubhavananda satsang in 2001
 

How to make this New Year your best New Year

The power of Imagination

"Whatever the mind can conceive and believe,
the mind can achieve."

— Napoleon Hill

With just a little practice anyone can enter a state of mind that improves human capability... a state of 'heightened awareness,' where anything is possible! 1. The Power of the Imagination The autonomic nervous system controls your pulse and your glands. But your imagination can also take control... you can choose what you will think about. And what you think about can change your physical body. Imagination can cause you to age faster... or age more slowly... it can cause an ulcer... or heal an ulcer. Medical case histories are filled with stories of people who were literally scared to death. What would a coroner write on such a death report—"cause of death: imagination"? Here is an interactive example of the power of the human mind: First, suspend your natural disbelief, just for a minute, while you try this exercise. It's easy and everyone can, do it. It will only take a few seconds. First relax and take a deep breath and clear your mind; now use your imagination and try to clearly picture this in as much detail as possible: You have a bright yellow, ripe lemon in the palm of your hand. Rub the skin of the fruit with your hands. Feel the texture. Smell it. Now pick up a sharp knife and slice slowly through the lemon. Juice squirts and runs out of the lemon onto your hand. Put a drop of juice on your finger and touch it to your tongue. Is it terribly sour? For most people, just a simple little exercise like this will cause their mouth to water. Doctors will tell you that mouth-watering is an involuntary reflex of the autonomic nervous system. Or, to put that in layman's terms, you can't physically control it. However, you can use your imagination to think of lemons... and that will do the trick. Does it make you wonder... what else can the imagination control? It is vastly more powerful than most people realize. We've all had the experience of preparing for something important; maybe a big speech, maybe calling a potential employer, client, or even a first date, when simply "imagining" what would happen caused our hearts to race and our palms to sweat. But can the imagination control influences from outside the body? The answer is yes! We have known for a long time how powerful the imagination can be, but until recently few have dared to study it. Today, however, scientists in many health disciplines are looking into "relaxation and visualization" techniques. (The word "imagination" is more accurate than "visualization" because the most powerful visualization techniques, involve all of the senses, not just the "visual.") 2. Imagination: A Right-Brain Activity It was Albert Einstein who said that most people use only 10 percent of their mental capacities. By implication he was saying that his brain was no different from anyone else's, that he had only learned to use more of it than other people. Our brains function as two halves, a Right Brain and a Left Brain—two brains with two very different functions and points of view. One of the most exciting things you'll find in your alpha level is the ability to listen to your Right Brain. In normal waking consciousness, the Left Brain rules. It is logic, it is ego, it is the little voice inside your head that nags you and tells you that you can't possibly do this. The Left Brain helps you remember to balance your checkbook, brush your teeth, and take out the garbage. It's the timekeeper. It is also your primary mode of functioning on a daily basis at work. It likes to understand the world one thing at a time in a proper order, using deductive reasoning. The Left Brain "can't see the forest for the trees." The Right Brain, on the other hand, thinks globally. It is creative, intuitive, and instinctive. It is ruled by feelings and sensations. It understands everything all at once, in inexplicable leaps of faith. The Right Brain allows baseball players to catch a fly ball without sitting down with a pencil to figure out force, trajectory, and wind speed. Outfielders see the bat hit the ball, and without stopping to think, they intuitively start running to the spot where it is going to fall. If you ask great musicians to look at their fingers while they are playing, the music will invariably stop. At its best, music flows freely from the Right Brain. Great musicians learn how to put their Left Brains on hold while they play freely from their emotional Right Brain. 3.  Reprogramming Your Mind to Change Your Life Psychologists say that the harder you try to break a habit, the more certain it is that you will fail! This seems paradoxical, and yet most of us have had this experience. What you think about generally becomes your reality. If you are constantly thinking about your bad habit, it will never leave your mind; it will never go away. For the most part, people are very good at negative self-programming. Do you do this? When you get home from work, you plop down in an easy chair, take a deep breath, settle into a comfortable state of mind, and then start thinking about everything that went wrong during the day. If you go over in your mind everything that has gone wrong and everything that can go wrong, then what are you creating? You are reinforcing your troubles, deepening your problems, and prolonging your difficulties. Parents, teachers, clergy, doctors, and bosses are very good at correcting what we do wrong. Few ever show us what is right. We internalize this type of teaching and use it on ourselves. You can learn to break lifelong habits, almost effortlessly! Now that you understand this, you're going to stop thinking about your problems and start thinking about solutions, right? If only it were that easy for you. The bad news is that you are programmed to think the way you already do. The good news is that the alpha level is where basic programming can be developed for your mind. It is like the DOS, or system level, in a computer. A good hypnotist can bring you to an alpha level and give you mental programs to follow. In a Las Vegas act, you can be asked to walk like a chicken—and you will! In therapy, a hypnotist can help you break habits, like smoking. But the strength of hypnotism is always limited by the willpower of the participant. No hypnotist can make you stop smoking if you don't truly want to stop. There's an axiom in psychology that says when the will and the imagination are in conflict, the imagination always wins.

The lesson you never got taught in school: How to learn!

The lesson you never got taught in school: How to learn!

Meditation Is the New Yoga: Bringing Mindfulness Into the Workplace

Meditation Is the New Yoga: Bringing Mindfulness Into the Workplace

Online Training for Power Searching


http://www.google.com/insidesearch/searcheducation/

Today is the first day of rest of my life as a winner

When thoroughbreds run they wear blinders to keep their eyes focused straight ahead with no distractions, no other horses. They hear the crowd but don't listen. They just run their own race, the race of their dreams. People will always try to knock you in life and knock your dreams. In a peculiar way, that's not a bad thing. In the end  it gives you an opportunity to prove, you want it enough, and that you are strong enough to keep going. Life is not supposed to be too easy.
   The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it. The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor the favor to the man of skill. Its not that the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but rather the one who is most adaptive to change. The key to adaptation is recognizing the ongoing need of moderate change. Your perspective is the way you look at the future and the problems you are trying to solve. Your perspective determines your destiny.
    Avoid retreating to your comfort zone. Your focus should not be on protecting what you have, but rather on adapting the next big thing. Once you accept the inevitability of perpetual change, you can abandon your quest to gain control and instead go with the flow. The right questions don't change as often the answers do. You will only answer the problems you are trying to solve.
                     Let's look at my few life strategies. The first strategy is to become one of those who get what they want. I would like to break the code of human nature and find what makes people tick and learn why I and other people do what we do and don't do some things.
The second strategy is to create my own experience by acknowledging and accepting accountability for my life. I want to understand my role in creating the results that I get in my life. I want to learn how to choose better and have better. The third strategy is to identify the payoffs that drive my behavior and that of others. I can control the payoffs to control my life.
The fourth strategy is to get real with myself about my life and everybody in it. I want to be truthful    about what is not working in my life and stop making excuses and start yielding results.

Here are 13 lessons I learned on how to think and act like a winner:
1. Don’t make excuses
Sometimes you might find yourself in the midst of an unfair situation. In such a situation, it’s easy to make excuses and most people do. But winners are different. They don’t make excuses or blame the situation. Instead, they focus on what they can do to get the most out of it.
2. Be comfortable being uncomfortable
Like it or not, growing in life often means moving out of your comfort zone. Why? Because in order to grow you need to expand your personal capacity and that requires you to take on new challenges. For that reason, you need to be comfortable being uncomfortable. Only then can you do the things that are necessary for your personal growth.
3. Have a strong desire to perform and excel
For the winners, simply meeting the standard is not enough. Their goal is exceptional performance. That’s why they often become their own worst critic. Whatever it is you are doing, strive to become the best that you can be.
4. Focus; one step at a time
To get things done, you need focus. But it’s difficult to do that if you look at the whole thing. So you should instead focus on just the current small step that you are in. In the author’s case, when going through a very difficult training, he simply focused on getting to the next meal. By focusing on doing that, he eventually overcame the big challenge.
5. Don’t dwell on past mistakes
Winners make mistakes just like other people, but what makes them different is their attitude toward mistakes. They don’t dwell on them nor let them hinder their actions. Instead, they learn their lessons, block the negative thoughts, and move on.
6. Know your window of opportunity
Whatever it is you are trying to accomplish, you should be aware of its window of opportunity. Something that looks promising today might become worthless a few months from now. By knowing the window of opportunity, you can use your resources wisely.

7. Adapt

The world is changing and changing fast. So if you want to thrive, you must be able to adapt. Some people insist on doing things the old way, but winners know that they need to change. They are willing to adopt a new way of doing things.
8. Make simple plans
Related to the point before, there is no point in making complicated plans. Why? Because they may become obsolete before you can execute them. So just create simple plans and go from there. This way you can react more quickly to new developments.
9. Be humble
Many people want to take credit for themselves, but winners know that they can’t achieve things by themselves. They also realize that there are others out there who can do what they do. So instead of bragging about their achievements, they stay humble.
10. Master throttle control
Winners know when to wait and when to act. When they need to wait, they wait patiently. When they need to act, they act decisively. They know how to read the situation.
11. Prepare for contingencies
Winners prepare themselves for bad situations. They know that things could go wrong so they prepare themselves beforehand. Do you have a plan B for your career? Have you built an emergency fund? Good preparation helps you recover quickly when things go wrong.
12. Be a team player
Winners know that they work best by being in a solid team, so they become good team players. They work with teammates with whom trust and responsibility are the norm. Working in a solid team will multiply your effectiveness.
13. Stack the odds in your favor
Though they work hard to improve their skills, winners know that luck still plays a role. That’s why they do what they can to stack the odds in their favor. Sometimes it means waiting until the time is right before taking action. Sometimes it means building a support system. Whatever it is, you need to learn how to maximize your chances.