(souljourney) What We Attract?

We are often puzzled by what happens in our life, wondering why we have experiences we do not really want.

The Law of Attraction, a universal law, determines the kind and character of our experiences and we participate in this law by our very nature.
We attract what we are, and we attract who we are. What we are is our personality nature, and who we are is our soul nature. We have both natures, so we need to understand how they function.

If we are 'reactors' we will attract people and situations that trigger our reactions. If we see ourselves as victims we will attract people and situations that seem to victimize us. If we refuse to take responsibility for our actions we will find someone or something to blame. If we do not accept ourselves we will have relationships in which we experience rejection. If we do not manage our economy we will find plenty of occasions to spend more than is prudent.

When we identify these characteristics of our personality we are describing what we are – reactors, victims, irresponsible, non self-accepting, unwise in our personal economy, and so forth.

Every one of these occasions or situations that we attract are totally determined by what we want to justify or validate in our thinking, feelings and behaviours. What they are in a deeper sense are opportunities to overcome the limitations of our personality. We need these opportunities to prove to ourselves that re-enforcing limitations does not bring satisfaction or happiness. And we need them to challenge ourselves to understand ourselves and life more, and to free ourselves through making choices for change.

Who we are also attracts the circumstance we need. Our essence determines who we are. This essence, in a more profound sense, is soul. As soul, we are beautiful, powerful, wise and loving.

As soul we attract people and opportunities to relate in loving ways without fear of rejection. We recognize needs and respond to them courageously without fear of failure or feelings of inadequacy.

As soul we are aware of the need in others to be authentically themselves, so we support and empower them to follow their inner light.

As soul we look past the chaos of human life and see the underlying universal order. In this order we understand how the diversity of life is purposeful and adds to the inherent beauty of all things.

As soul we attract to our awareness the natural inner goodness of all people, despite appearances to the contrary. As soul we are forgiving and compassionate to ourselves as well as others.

When we have experiences in our life that we don't like or don't want, we need to ask ourselves what is in our personality that is attracting that reality.
Our challenges and difficulties are there to prompt us to express more of who we are so that we attract and experience real quality.

When our challenges are pushing us to gain greater understanding we must do that so that the soul quality of faith can manifest in our lives. Faith puts us in intimate contact with what is real and true. Faith is heart-knowing.

When our challenges are asking us to let go and open up we must release some attachment or restricting thought, belief or behaviour pattern so that hope can manifest in our life. Hope is a trusting attitude and feeling that all is meaningful and everything experienced is useful for creating a better future.

And when our challenges are demanding that we make different choices and act in new and different ways, we have an opportunity to manifest 'caritas' (charity) which is love in action.

What we attract in our life is most often challenges to force us to be more genuinely who we are, authentically expressing beautiful, loving, intelligent and supportive actions and attitudes so that the world may be positively affected.
Our life is purposeful. That purpose involves the meaningful expression of who we are as a contribution to the good of all.

The degree of consciousness we have about who we are determines what we attract and is also the measure of the quality we contribute to the world through our relationships.

Exercises:
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1. Identify some personality characteristics that you possess, and see how you attract that reality in your experiences.
2. Identify some real challenges you experience and ask yourself these questions with regard to the purpose of each challenge:


- what do I need to understand?
- what do I need to let go of ?
- what do I need to open up to?
- what choices do I need to make to change?

karmic order of our consciousness

A karmic order of consciousness / Mukul Sharma / ET

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Ever since the late 1980s philosophers and theologians alike have been in a tizzy. That’s because of the work of an American neuroscientist called Benjamin Libet who found a brain signal, the so-called “readiness-potential” which occurred a fraction of a second before any conscious decision took place. It means whatever action we think we are aware of performing has, in fact, already been initiated by the brain a few milliseconds earlier.

The awesome implication is that if our decisions are prepared unconsciously by the brain, then our feeling of “being in control” of what we are doing has to be an illusion that only occurs afterwards. Like, suddenly, the whole question of having a free will goes out of the window because it appears something else decides before we do.

(And if milliseconds were not enough, researchers in Germany last week discovered that many decision-making processes in the brain occur automatically and without involvement of our consciousness — up to ten seconds before we consciously make up our minds what to do. That’s not all; they even found that it was possible to predict from brain signals which option a person would take before he or she actually took it.)

Desperate for some last-minute rearguard action, scientists are now saying that all is not irrevocably lost because the “something else” that decides before the “we” does is also a part of us. It’s our brain after all, they maintain.

That our unconscious is only part of the continuum that culminates in the conscious and, as such, is as much a participant in making choices as we, as aware individuals, are. But this reasoning sucks because if we’re not aware of what we’re doing then we might as well be automatons acting mechanically along some dictates of an internal programme.

What if, on the other hand, the feeling of a separate, individual self that seems to us to be in command of our actions is really and truly an illusion like a lot of spiritual philosophies proclaim?

What if there is no such thing as an integral ego which rules our lives and to which we mistakenly become subservient, to the extent that all our choices look as if made solely by us? What if life’s choices are, instead, predetermined by what has happened earlier — or ordained not by happenstance but by a natural law of cause and effect? Then the findings of science would indeed have been anticipated by karma.

(souljourney) How Natural Order Affects Us

How The Natural Order Affects Us

We are always affected by the presence of the natural order. External nature and our inner nature are both composed of the same universal principles and energies. All living beings – and everything that exists is living – in one way or another, incorporate the following:

- They maintain what they need for self-survival
- They are part of a whole
- They contribute to the greater by their very existence
- They are unique
- They evolve and transcend themselves
- They communicate constantly between themselves and other beings and living systems

Whenever we see, hear, or are in other ways sensing, anything natural outside of ourselves we are creating the possibility of being impressed by its natural energies. What makes the possibility a reality is our openness to receive the impressions. These impressions resonate the same natural energies within ourselves. A peaceful external natural setting induces a brain state of peace within ourselves. A perception of beauty outside of ourselves awakens feelings of beauty within ourselves.

Partly for this reason the phenomenon of ‘crop circles’ is an interesting one. This phenomenon has been around for centuries, but is attracting much more attention now. Many of the more recent ones are extremely intelligent and sophisticated, containing in symbolic form complex mathematical representations of natural, universal principles. Thus when we look at them, those same universal energies are stimulated within us. This then creates an evolutionary push. One recent ‘crop circle’ beautifully represents images of the seven chakras – far more beautiful to me than any drawings of chakras I have ever seen. Because of modern media, millions of people are seeing those images. This brings the fact of the chakras, along with their potential energies, into the awareness of a significant portion of humanity whether or not they understand anything of what is represented. This then awakens new potentials for growth.

There is an incredible amount of communication going on between human beings which we are not very aware of, as well as between all living creatures. We are not just passive receivers of these influences, but also active contributors to it. This is how life on this planet changes and evolves.

We know, for example, that when we are close to someone physically or otherwise what is in our heart affects their brain state and consequently their thinking and feeling. Research has been done through ECGs and EEGs to show that the person being influenced produces brainwaves that entrain with the heart rhythms of the one influencing. You can imagine, then, not only what influence you might have on people close to you, but what influence we can have collectively on humanity by what we hold in our heart. You are probably aware of the research many years ago that demonstrated the effect of human thought on plants.

You have likely also heard of the ‘hundredth monkey effect,’ which is that when a certain number of monkeys perform a new type of behaviour then all monkeys will perform that behaviour. The principle involved has been referred to as critical mass and labelled in the 70’s as ‘the tipping point.’ This influence or contagiousness applies to everything, including such things as the spread of new ideas, fashions, epidemics and consciousness.

When sufficient numbers of people adopt the new consciousness of compassion, caring and service, humanity will break through into that new consciousness. A tipping point will be reached and the new consciousness will become commonplace.

This principle stands opposed to the idea of gradualism – that change can happen only gradually. You personally have probably experienced breakthroughs in your own expansion of consciousness. And from this you can assume that if the principle works in an individual life it also works in our collective life. There are many examples of this in society, so we can be assured that it will also apply to the planetary change in consciousness now underway.

Exercises:

1. Reflect on instances when you have been either positively or negatively affected by other people around you.
2. Recall instances when your perception of beauty or attitude of love toward another affected them even without your verbal expression.
3. What influence does nature have on your states of consciousness?

Aristotle’s Email – Or, Friendship In The Cyber Age

Tim Madigan ponders the mysteries of friendship.

Cause it’s been forty years or more,
Now Martha please recall,
Meet me out for coffee,
Where we’ll talk about it all.’–
Tom Waits, ‘Martha’ (from Closing Time)

In Book VIII of his Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle categorizes three different types of friendship: friendships of utility, friendships of pleasure, and friendships of the good. Friendships of utility are those where people are on cordial terms primarily because each person benefits from the other in some way. Business partnerships, relationships among co-workers, and classmate connections are examples. Friendships of pleasure are those where individuals seek out each other’s company because of the joy it brings. Passionate love affairs, people associating with each other due to belonging to the same hobby organization, and fishing buddies fall into this category. Most important of all are friendships of the good. These are friendships based upon mutual respect, admiration for each other’s virtues, and a strong desire to aid and assist the other person because one recognizes their essential goodness.

The first two types of friendship are relatively fragile. When the purpose for which the relationship is formed somehow changes, then these friendships tend to end. For instance, if the business partnership is dissolved, or if you take another job, or graduate from school, it is more than likely that no ties will be maintained with the former friend of utility. Likewise, once the love affair cools, or you take up a new hobby or give up fishing, the friends of pleasure will go their own ways.

However, friendships of the good tend to be lifelong, are often formed in childhood or adolescence, and will exist so long as the friends continue to remain virtuous in each other’s eyes. To have more than a handful of such friends of the good, Aristotle states, is indeed a fortunate thing. Rare indeed are such friendships, for people of this kind are rare. Or as my mother used to say, “Make new friends but keep the old, for one is silver and the other is gold.” Such friendships of the good require time and intimacy – to truly know people’s finest qualities you must have deep experiences with them, and close connections. “Many a friendship doth want of intercourse destroy,” Aristotle warns us!!

And yet, for us living in the frenetic 21st Century, it can be difficult to maintain such ties. Friendships of utility and pleasure come and go quickly as we move from job to job and relationship to relationship. But for Aristotle this need not be a tragedy. Since the interchanges of both types are less intense or permanent, their endings are not necessarily detrimental to one’s self. But to lose a friend of the good – ah, there is tragedy indeed.

Email has added a new wrinkle to Aristotle’s threefold schemata. Thanks to it, and the wonders of the internet in general, it is now easier than ever to stay in touch with people from throughout one’s life. Old acquaintances, long forgotten, can be found relatively easily through Google searches and services such as classmates.com, where you can often track down old school chums you haven’t spoken to in many a moon, for a fee!

Some psychologists have been studying a recent phenomenon: old lovers coming together again, sometimes after several decades of being out of contact. Nancy Kalish’s book Lost & Found Lovers: Facts and Fantasies of Rekindled Romances (William Morrow and Company) provides a fascinating introduction to such ‘rediscoveries’. Today thousands of people in their fifties and sixties, after divorcing or losing a spouse, wonder whatever became of their first love. After a quick Google search or two, they often find out that their old lovers too are now alone, and the original romantic spark is rekindled. Aristotle, who understood the intensity of friendships formed in youth, would not be astonished by this!!

While I haven’t (yet) re-established connections with lovers from long ago, I have availed myself of the opportunities of Google to find former classmates, teachers and friends from years past. I’m amazed at how quickly, even after twenty years or more, we can pick up where we left off. There’s something about email’s democratic nature that makes it easy to send a message to someone you haven’t talked to in decades. A phone call out of the blue seems too potentially disturbing, and a written letter seems too formal; but email makes it seem quite natural to contact acquaintances from years ago. Should they choose not to answer, one can shrug it off with an “Oh, well, that’s how it goes.” But should they reply, it can be the continuation of a beautiful friendship.

Often discussions of personal relationships in the Cyber Age dwell upon the negative ­– the superficial connections, the dangers of identity theft, and information overload. Aristotle does warn us that, at least where friendships of the good are concerned, there are limitations to just how many it is feasible to handle. He writes, “To be a friend to many people in the way of the perfect friendship is not possible.”

Still, it seems to me that email has made it possible for friendships of all three categories to thrive and prosper in ways Aristotle could never have anticipated. Of course nothing beats personal proximity, but in our highly mobile society this is often not feasible. Email has given new opportunities for continuing friendly ties from a distance.

Dour old Arthur Schopenhauer once sarcastically wrote that if you really want to know how you feel about a person, take note of the impression an unexpected letter from him makes on you when you see it on your doormat. I would amend this by saying that an unexpected email from a friend from the past can brighten up one’s day tremendously. As Aristotle reiterated more than once, we humans are social creatures. Email has added to the social realities of our lives.

© Dr Timothy R. Madigan 2007

Tim Madigan is a US Editor of Philosophy Now. He teaches philosophy at St John Fisher College in Rochester, NY.

http://www.philosophynow.org/issue61/61madigan.htm

(cosmic uplink) empathy,agent of change.

Empathy, the agent of change - 09.April.08.Wed.Economic Times.
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Ka, Roberto Calasso's meditation on Rigvedic myths opens and ends with the flight of Garuda. The divine eagle, which later became a mount for the god Vishnu, was intrigued by the invocatory question posed in the 10th book: "Who (Ka) is the god to whom we should offer our sacrifice?" The search for the answers occupies the rest of the book. One branch of inquiry goes back to the father of creation, Prajapati, who predates even Brahma, the grandfatherly preceptor of the Hindu pantheon.

Like Proteus, the Greek god of ever-morphing shapes, Prajapati, too, is said to be "shapeless". But being the "only lonely" one can be scary. Not surprisingly, Prajapati "didn't even know whether he existed or not". This state of Prajapati's existential ambiguity vibes well with the spirit of the Rigvedic Nasadiya ('not there') Sukta, which grapples with enigmatic questions about who or what might have been present, if at all, before the birth of the universe.

Assuming it was Prajapati, how does one account for the rest of the bewildering biodiversity? The answer provided by Rigvedic seers reveals an intensely human bias: it is to relieve his crushing sense of loneliness that Prajapati divides himself. Prajapati's creations are thus sparked by the desire to gain self-consciousness.

This is also echoed in the popular traditions of India. The legendary singer of the Patiala gharana, Ustad Bade Gulam Ali, for example, had a musical explanation for cosmic loneliness. This he said was epitomised in the notes of the twilight raga Marwa. The enigmatic scale lacks the parental pancham and its ancestral shadja is more like an absent father, always on tour. So Marwa invariably creates a restless mood, the Khansaheb said, which was reflected in the deepening of twilight into night's mysteries. It is to relieve this poignant state that the God made Man, and gave him Marwa, the maestro famed for soulful thumris added, to remind us of our Maker.

A similar insight crops up in behavioural economics in a relativistic garb: "Most people don't know what they want unless they see it in context," says Dan Ariely in Predictably Irrational. "We don't even know what we want to do with our lives - until we find a relative or a friend who is doing just what we think we should be doing. Everything is relative." But one can change everything with empathy. For as the Sufis say, the human heart is capable of every form.

Mind over matter ( sp quotient)

Many years ago in the 17th century the French philosopher and mathematician, Rene Descartes, once and forever famously “thought” and, for that reason alone, declared that he must “be”. Cogito ergo sum; I think, therefore I am. But Descartes was the last person in science for a long time to argue so positively that ideas had an autonomous existence which were not dependent on any material structure.

However, as far as the whole mind was concerned, he didn’t disengage it from the brain altogether and postulated that they mutually networked at the pineal gland. It was a kind of interactive dualism that science was to reject for more than 350 years. Mainly because, thereafter, the mainstream materialist view came to be that solidity and matter on the one hand and mind-like entities on the other, constitute not only two different realms of ontological being but that mind by itself probably doesn’t even exist — being at most a tenuous epiphenomenon; something unable to cast a shadow on reality; the ghost in the machine. Then Einstein happened and he managed to irrevocably demonstrate the equivalence of matter and energy with e = mc squared. The equation showed that something considered insubstantial, ethereal and subtle could, indeed, be reduced to tangible stuff like rocks and material substances. Still, energy was not the same thing as, say, consciousness. But quantum theory came along next and this finally required the actual active participation of human awareness in psychophysical events. Interestingly, neither the content nor the timing of these events is determined, even statistically, by any known law because the theory considers such events to be instigated by choices made by conscious agents. Or as physicist Henry Stapp of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in the US puts it: “This quantum conception of the mind-brain connection allows many neuropsychological findings associated with the apparent physical effectiveness. According to this quantum approach, conscious human beings are invested with degrees of freedom denied to the mechanistic automatons to which classical physics reduced us.” In other words, a completely deterministic account of the physically described properties of nature is no longer viable. The mind and our consciousnesses play as big a part as our brains in resolving matters of existence.

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