Mantofa Articles Directory

It seems that there is a contradiction between the psychology of transcendence and the spiritual idea of transcendence.

Psychologists believe that through the proper application of intelligence and self-cognition one can have a full and enjoyable life, with wealth, health, and a great relationship, as well as a sense of communal belonging and contribution.

Those in spiritual groups, in particular of an eastern orientation, believe that one has to get rid of the lustful ego that craves only fleeting things and to unify with divine consciousness.

The most popular compromise to resolve this seeming paradox is that you have to build up the self and let it go. In Vedic philosophy this is expressed as becoming a householder in the first stages of life then retiring to pursue transcendence.

Yet most believe, because of cognitive dissonance, that they should choose one view or the other.

Thus, there are those who believe that they should be worldly and experience the world as it appears to be.

Then there are those who believe that they should reject the world and dedicate themselves to getting out of the misery of the cycle of birth and death.

Here is another way of understanding this paradox.

The self is a transcendent consciousness. It is not limited to a particular body or a particular lifetime. Because it is not anything in particular, the “I” is not an “it.” This is why Buddhists say there is “no-self.”

Similarly, the world itself is entirely illusory. I don’t mean this metaphorically or even psychologically. At the subatomic level, again there is no substance. There are just probability patterns that literally flit in and out of existence! For example, an electron can appear under an observing instrument then disappear, then reappear again. There literally is no stuff! This is why the Vedantists say that the world is Maya, or illusory.

Yet to all purposes, on the macroscopic level, both an intelligent being and an intelligible world appear to exist.

On this level, personal growth and advancement is necessary, not because it means anything on a cosmic scale, but because there is literally nothing else to do with this adventure of life. You can either resist evolution and suffer all kinds of lack or you can embrace evolution and the refining of mind and enjoy fulfillment of resources and experiences.

Thus, when you look at things from the view of levels of perception, all contradictions disappear, just as the contradiction of day and night disappears when you understand that the sun and earth are in a cosmic dance.

It is possible to be engaged in the world and to actually enjoy it and at the same time to enjoy meditation and contemplation to experience the inner sky of blissful freedom. It is by no means an easy path, but after a while, they will support each other. Material success and harmonious relationships will give you the opportunity to retreat to your inner work. Similarly your inner work will contribute to your increase of abundance and maintaining a loving relationship with others.

Saleem Rana would love to share his inspiring ideas with you. Hunting everywhere for a life worth living? Discover the life of your dreams. His book, Never Ever Give Up is offered at no cost to stimulate your success. http://www.theempoweredsoul.com/enter.html

The only way to live a happy, prosperous, successful and fulfilling life is to learn to express the love that is within you. When you meet yourself, others, and the life that you express with love, then you will change everything for the better.

Who you are is an incarnation of love because what you seek, above all else, is to be well, safe, and happy; and that is what love provides, an assurance and promise of well-being.

The absence of love, the varying degrees of hatred, create conditions of distress that destroy the cells of the body and ruin the structure of a life, causing only illness, aging, stress, and destruction.

The human condition as we know it, in all its distressing dilemmas, is made possible only because of this denial of love.

Apathy, grief, fear, lust, anger, and pride which lead to poverty, illness, and loneliness all arise out of a denial of the love that is your very nature.

Love does not have to be invented. It is fully manifested in a new born. However, with social conditioning, it gets covered up quickly, as the little person is consistently denied assurances of well-being. Criticism, punishment, expressions of coercion, cause love to hide, become distorted, and retreat from full expression.

Even when avatars come to teach love, pointing out that your real nature is only love, they are met with various levels of resistance. Those who oppose them have a lust for power because they mistakenly believe that only force creates favorable conditions.

Yet if you look at the history of this world, you will always see that force only destroys, both the enforcer and the enforced. It does not replace what love does; it does not assure well-being.

All the disasters in our own lives and the world as a whole is a result of this substitution of force for love. We force ourselves, we force others, and we create institutions that assure the expression of force.

Yet force does not create safety, and enforced compliance does not create a better world.

Ironically, it is very simple to change everything to start working for you. In all cases where you want to apply force, apply love.

Within a week, your life will be much better. Within a year, you will not even be able to recognize your life.

As you learn to be more loving, you will not only affect your own life, but the lives of all those whom you touch. They will, then, pass on your blessing to others.
You will literally be changing the world; not by doing anything special, but just by being more yourself, the self that is naturally kind, loving, and nurturing.

A return to love is the answer to discover the life that you really want to live.

Love, like sunshine, can light up all the dark places in your life and heal the wounds of the world.

We are all in this life together, all hoping for some miracle that will right wrongs and make the crooked places straight; but the power that we seek to do good is our own lovingness. All we have to do to change everything for the better is gradually build up our courage to express it.

The great wisdom of life will not be discovered by your mind but by your heart. You, in your own divine splendor, are the light of the world, the promise of hope, and the assurance of better things for all beings everywhere.

If you ask for the happiness, prosperity, success, and fulfillment of the world, this is what will come back to visit you in your quiet hours. At every moment you have the choice to turn the mundane into the magical.

Saleem Rana would love to share his inspiring ideas with you. Hunting everywhere for a life worth living? Discover the life of your dreams. His book, Never Ever Give Up is offered at no cost to stimulate your success. http://www.theempoweredsoul.com/enter.html

Revenge, the desire to hurt others who have hurt us, only bears bitter fruit. It hurts those whom we have inflicted our wrath upon. And it hurts us, because no single act in the universe goes unrewarded. From that singular act, our own consciousness is wounded by the expression of our animalism.

Nations pride themselves on the swiftness of their retribution but inevitably collapse in on themselves because the seeds of discontent that they sow, hurts all of life. Rome, the greatest civilization that the world had ever known, built on the finest arts and sciences known to the ancient world, the epitome of legal and architectural order, collapsed from within, destroyed by its own impulse to use its mighty force to strike out and subdue.

Today our world is dying because of this impulse to strike out.

We are destroying each other at an alarming rate, both individually and collectively.

And even the earth itself, is collapsing at a faster rate than we can repair. Scientists now estimate that by the year 2050, we will have exhausted the earth of all its natural resources.

The science that we celebrate, the genius of our efforts, are wasted on destructive uses. Instead of using the power of the nucleus to build great civilizations we are busy using it to stockade bombs.

Billions of dollars that could be used to heal the broken places on our planet are used to send people to horrific deaths.

When we seek to hurt life, we hurt ourselves, for we are life.

Revenge it is said is a dish best served cold; but whether it is served with cold deliberation or hot reaction, it is a dish in whose very preparation we imbue a poison that will return to destroy us.

The greatest illusion is this: that we can hurt and not be hurt, that we can wound another and remain unscathed. When we inflict harm upon another, we inflict harm upon ourselves. What goes around comes around. A rudimentary study of history will prove this.

When we love, we reach out to align with life, to nurture and make others better, and in that act, we redeem ourselves from our own past follies.

This love is a precious act. It is our extension of spiritual power in the world. It is a moment of sympathy and support that we have for life. When you bend down and help a child tie its shoelaces, you are tying up all the knots of the world. When you listen in silence and understand another’s intention, you are spreading the meme of empathy through all of time and space, for thoughts are cosmic waves that do not know any barriers.

As we extend love to others, it comes back to us.

Yet we cannot love others unless we love ourselves as well.

We cannot live without making mistakes of judgment and do things that we will later regret, because we are na

You are awesome. You are the light of the world. And in this brief essay, I will prove it to you.

Your body is a superb machine whose functional details keep scientists in a state of awe and wonder. They estimate that your body has enough power to run a whole city for a week.

Your mind is a computer that has billions of interconnected neurons. You may have enough raw brain power to run a galaxy.

Yet there is something even more amazing about you. You are self-aware, the creator of yourself, and your own creation. You are more than a person, much more. You are a consciousness whose only limit is your own self-belief and imagination.

And, whether you admit it or not, you are here on this planet to do something great with all this raw power and potentiality. You are a creator and you are in a place where creation is necessary. In fact, your internal guidance system, your emotions, will tell you whether you are on track or off track. If you are happy, you are doing something creative and feel fulfilled. If you are unhappy, you are conforming to a reality that does not bring out the best in you.

On the surface of things, it may seem that you have little free-will and are limited in both creativity and imagination. It may also seem that you are pressed in and coerced to do things by stronger forces. And it may also seem that you are different from others, living in a separate objective world of your own.

Yet the study of quantum mechanics shows that at a fundamental level everything is only energy and that this idea of separation is really some kind of hallucination we all share in common because our senses are not subtle enough to observe the fluid interconnection between all things.

Furthermore, a radical subjectivity informs your entire experience of life. That is, you can never not be yourself, and even when you name something as objective, it is a statement that arises from your own subjectivity.

Finally, you are nothing but your own expression of choices, which you bring into existence through creativity and imagination.

This life that you live is the clay that you shape. You are the geometer, organizer, and designer of your life.

As Dr. Joe Vitale said in the movie, The Secret, “You are the Michelangelo of your own life. The David you are sculpting is YOU.”

What you think and feel on a moment by moment basis influences all of life because everything about you has some kind of influence.

This is a big concept.

Here is how to understand it.

Think of a row of dominoes leaning up against other dominoes, when there is a change in movement in one, it affects all the other dominoes.

Here is another way to understand it.

Scientists estimate that the flapping of the wings of a butterfly can affect the air currents in a way that gradually magnifies over a distance until it causes weather changes

Of course, all this is very, very subtle. You will never know whether your bad mood affects an international crisis in a war-prone area or whether your good mood creates an act of kindness in a city far away from you.

It has been said that the vibrations of someone with deep wisdom can affect all of humanity. This is easier to understand. After all the history of ideas shows that all that is necessary to influence billions of people throughout time is the ideas of a few people.

What all this means is that beneath the apparent separation between human beings, we are all one; and beneath the apparent lack of power we display, we hide a mighty power.

What you say, think, and do matters. Not only to you, but to everyone. Sometimes it is obvious how your influence spreads. But most often it is subtle, very subtle, hardly noticeable to you, like the flapping of the wings of a butterfly.

Saleem Rana would love to share his inspiring ideas with you. Hunting everywhere for a life worth living? Discover the life of your dreams. His book, Never Ever Give Up is offered at no cost to stimulate your success. http://www.theempoweredsoul.com/enter.html

Welcome To Mantofa Free Articles Directory