Get Real! – Learn Meditation

It has become an increasingly dominant belief that positive thinking is necessary for health, wealth and success in all things. But a new study* by  psychology professor Joseph Forgas at the University of New South Wales, says ‘it ain’t necessarily so’.

The study has found that feeling sad makes people less gullible, improves their ability to judge others and also boosts memory. It seems that people in a negative state are more critical of, and pay more attention to, their surroundings than happier people. The happy folk it seems are more likely to believe what they are told.

Dr Forgas said "Whereas positive mood seems to promote creativity, flexibility, cooperation, and reliance on mental shortcuts, negative moods trigger more attentive, careful thinking paying greater attention to the external world,"

He went on to add "Our research suggests that sadness … promotes

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Technorati Tags: Body Mind, Body Mind Spirit, Meditation Practice, self realization

7 Reasons To Learn Meditation

If you are thinking about learning meditation, have done it and let it slide, here are 7 really significant reasons to learn to meditate and keep practicing.

1: Meditation Improves Physical Health

The amount of supportive information for how meditation improves our physical health is vast. In the simplest and  most basic terms I believe the benefits derive from one thing. When we meditate we consciously choose to relax the body while keeping the mind alert. This was termed the ‘relaxation response’ by Dr. Herbert Benson after his groundbreaking research into the physical effects of meditation. In essence all bodily function improve towards optimum function in the absence of stress in the body.

The relaxation response of meditation allows the body to de-stress and allows the Autonomic Parasympathetic nervous system which governs all major bodily functions, immune, cardiovascular, digestive, reproductive etc, to move towards the optimal state of homeostasis – a stable constant condition. Here is an article dedicated to the  health benefits of meditation.

2: Meditation Improves Mental Health

That the body and mind are continually effecting each other is now pretty much undisputed. It follows then that as the body benefits from meditation so the does the mind. Clinical research has proven that meditation reduces anxiety and even depression. But more than this

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Technorati Tags: Health, Meditation, Meditation Benefits, Meditation Practice, Meditation Tips, Mind Body, Personal Transformation, Self-Identity, Spiritual growth, spiritual practice

God, Spiritual Oneness & Separation

If it is that God and our true nature is One-ness, then why is it that it is not our living experience?

Indian spiritual philosophy addresses the God concept in a way that supports what I am saying. It sees God in two aspects – the manifest and the un-manifest. The un-manifest is the purest state of conscious, beyond description or comprehension Within it is all potential existence. The manifest aspect is this consciousness in expression as the entirety of manifestation. There are many similarities in the Taoist philosophy of yin and yang with yin as the un-manifest and yang as the manifest.

My perception of why Oneness or Unity isn’t our lived experience is this. In the process of entering into manifest existence as an individuated point of life within that existence, we experience separation in the transition from un-manifest to manifest. This ‘moment’ we could call the ‘birth’ of our soul. Why is this experience of separation necessary if in truth there is only One? The one word answer I see is ‘creation’. The purpose and design of the One in manifest existence, is the evolution and expansion of consciousness, or put another way, the endless creative manifesting of the One, in appearance and form.
 
A huge hindrance we have in embracing and understanding this is our conception of the One as God, is

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Technorati Tags: Body Mind Spirit, God, Healing, Liberation, Personal Transformation, self realization, Self-Identity, Spiritual Awakening, Spiritual Evolution, Spiritual growth, spiritual life, Spirituality, Subconscious

Leaping Into The Unknown

 I tend to believe that human beings in their general nature are lazy, as such we tend to stay in our comfort zone. A comfort zone can be physical, emotional, mental and even spiritual.  it takes something extra to push ourselves beyond the safe and known. I believe that extra something is an impulse from our soul.

When we do manage to extend ourselves that bit further, in whatever way, there is usually some benefit or reward. This can be as simple as we feel good about ourselves and hey that’s no small thing. when that pay off has greater attraction  than our resistant to doing  whatever it is, we tend to keep doing it.

 I began performing on stage when I was around 17 or 18, possibly it saved my life and certainly I fell in love with it. I can still remember walking off stage after my very first public performance feeling like I was walking on air. The stage gave me the opportunity to be somebody other than the angry young man that I was. It was a kind of freedom.

It wasn’t long before I became strangely attracted to dance. I’d never really seen any  but something in me  started pushing in that direction. I really came up against my laziness when I started  to dance. Dancers train really hard to make it look really easy when they perform, hours and hours and hours of training. obviously to be a dancer,  passion and love for it is greater  than the efforts of all that hard work.

Pretty much from the beginning I was interested in exploring the body itself as the site of human experience. Then when I was 25  the healing ability showed up and added another dimension to my exploration.

When I’m actually going with all of this is June 29th 1996. At 6 AM on that Saturday morning I began a 36 hour performance entitled “36 Hours In-Quest-ion". I’d been

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Karma And Relationships

In relationship, more accurately with intimate/committed relationship there is karmic compatibility. This means that both people have the same unresolved/unhealed/incomplete energy (not in every way of course – but in significant areas).It’s that pesky Law of Attraction again.

This ‘karmic’ energy usually manifests as a polarity, one person holds one end of the spectrum and the other person the opposite. In  manifest behaviour/characteristics, it then looks very different – opposite in fact. The relationship then dances around the ‘appearance’ of this duality as the two people seek resolution within themselves.

When one steps out of this dance and chooses to find healing within themselves and without the drama of the

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Technorati Tags: Healing, Karma, Liberation, Relationships, spiritual wisdom, Spirituality