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Creating A Garden
Sanctuary NEW!
by Trish Whynot, D.C.Ed.
"Sanctuary is where we take care of our soul. It is both a place and
a state of the mind and heart-a refuge to hold dear and to reverently
give." suggest Christopher Forrest McDowell and Tricia
Clark-McDowell, owners and stewards of the Cortesia Sanctuary. Intention
to designate a space as sacred is what transforms it to sanctuary status.
When we raise a location in nature to sanctuary status, we gift it with
elements that bring delight to our heart and soul. A sacred space is a
place where we allow nature to touch our humanity and where we allow our
humanity to touch nature. The intent is not to control nature, nor for
nature to control us, but rather a place where we as people and nature can
come to know and enjoy each other.
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Spiritual Addiction
by Adyashanti
A spiritual person can become addicted to
spiritual highs and miss the experience of Truth. Spiritual addiction
occurs when something great happens and it feels as if you have received a
hit of a great drug. As soon as you have it, you want more. There is no
drug more potent than spiritual experience. The intellectual component of
this addiction is the belief that if you just had enough of these
experiences, you would feel great all the time. It’s like morphine. You
get a hit of it in the hospital because you break your arm, and you think,
“If I had a little drip going all the time, life would be relatively
pleasant no matter what happens.” Spiritual experiences often become
like this, and the mind puts them into its familiar pattern, thinking,
“If I had this experience all the time, that would be freedom.”
Soon you find that your condition is not
much better than that of a common drunk, except that drunks know they have
a problem because it’s not culturally acceptable to be a drunk. The
spiritual person is very certain that there is no problem, that his or her
inebriation is unlike the other forms of inebriation, and the whole point
is to be spiritually inebriated forever. That’s the mindset of an
addict: “I got it and I lost it. I need it. I don’t have it.”
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Alleviating
Anxiety with Zensight Process
NEW!
by
Carol Ann Rowland
Rachel looks in the mirror and notices a mark on her cheek. Immediately
her breath becomes shallow, her heart races, her chest tightens, and she
feels nauseated. She checks the spot more closely, and sees that it’s
just a speck of dirt. She washes it off and tells herself firmly that she
is fine – it wasn’t the beginning of skin cancer, it was nothing.
It’s gone. She is okay.
Although she keeps telling herself she is okay, hours later, Rachel still
doesn’t feel okay. What if seeing that spot was a “sign”? What is
she is about to develop skin cancer? What if she already has skin cancer
and she just hasn’t seen it yet? Should she go see her doctor? Recurring
thoughts of cancer hover in the back of her mind for the rest of the day.
Weeks later she notices she is still spending an increased amount of time
inspecting her skin for unusual marks or blemishes.
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____________________ Where In God's Name Did We Go Wrong?
by Jean-Claude Koven
When people ask me if I am religious, I tell them I love God far too much
to be religious. "Oh, then you must believe in God?" they
inevitably ask. "Of course not," I reply with a smile,
"does a fish believe in water?" For me, God is all there is.
What's to believe?
Although the world's major religions all
agree that God (however they define the term) is omnipresent, it seems
that very few of their followers - including their clerical hierarchy -
actually understand what omnipresence really means. And therein lies the
source of the world's ills.
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Basic Chi Control
by Rachel Carlton Abrams, M.D.
Within each of us is the transformative, life-giving power to heal, to invigorate and to bring exquisite pleasure. In the Universal Tao tradition,
taught by Mantak Chia, each person can learn to feel their own vital energy,
or chi, flowing through them and to direct that chi throughout the body to
heal and bring pleasure.
Taoism is the foundation of Chinese philosophy and medicine. It is a comprehensive physical and spiritual system that helps individuals to reach
their highest potentials. It is perhaps best known in this country as the basis for Traditional Chinese Medicine, which includes acupuncture, herbal
therapy, nutrition, massage, the energetic meditation called Chi Kung (pronounced
"chee kong"), and the martial art called Tai Chi Chuan ("tie chee
chwan"). The Universal Tao system was developed by Mantak Chia to teach
Taoist meditative and exercise techniques to balance the body and increase
and refine one's vital energy, or chi ("chee").
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Article ____________________
Happiness
by Swami Sunirmalananda
What is Happiness?
What is happiness? Happiness is a pleasant feeling in the mind. I eat a sweet. It brings a pleasant sensation to my mind. I hear good music that I like. This brings a pleasant sensation in mind. I call all this happiness. When, again, I eat the same sweet, and hear the same music when a tragedy has occurred in my life, I don’t enjoy it. If my relative has passed away, and if someone plays the same music that I like most, I will say: ‘Stop it! I hate this!’ The same music fails to bring joy and happiness.
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Article ____________________
Why Even Bother? The Importance of Motivation
by Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D
If, from the meditative perspective, everything you are seeking is already here, even if it is difficult to wrap your thinking mind around that concept, if there really is no need to acquire anything or attain anything or improve yourself, if you are already whole and complete and by that same virtue so is the world, then why on earth bother meditating? Why would we want to cultivate mindfulness in the first place? And why use particular methods and techniques, if they are all in the service of not getting anywhere anyway, and when, moreover, I've just finished saying that methods and techniques are not the whole of it anyway?
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____________________ Break Through the Barrier Between You and True
Peace
by Guy Finley
If we wish to find peace we must understand something of its life. Here
are a few such facts: Peace is the natural radiation of a living Now; it
is one with that Light whose life is the eternal present itself, even as
the emanations of light and warmth are one with the sun from which they
radiate. If our intuition can perceive that the above ideas are based in
truth, then we should be naturally moved to ask the following
question: If this peace we long for is inherent in this perfectly present
moment we call the "Now," what is it that keeps us from knowing
the fulfillment of its promise within us? Let's look.Click
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Your Job Is Bigger
Than You Think
by John Izzo
"There are no great
acts, only small acts performed with great love." --Mother Teresa
It was my first week of my first year in
graduate school. I had arrived in Chicago to study for the Presbyterian
ministry and it was the middle of the year. Aware that I must work to fund
my studies, I searched for a nice "save-the-world" part-time
job, only to discover that all these had already been taken. No work in
hospitals, social service agencies, anti-nuke organizations -- nothing.
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Is Your Life A Truman Show?
by Asoka Selvarajah
In the process of awakening to higher consciousness, things start to break
into our world from the "outside"...
Strange happenings that seem out of the ordinary. Strokes of good fortune.
Bizarre coincidences. Symbolic messages. The further you progress on the
spiritual path, the ever more common these become. Click
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Yoga And World Peace
by Megan McDonough
Last week my husband and I went to war with
each other. It was nothing as dramatic as a divorce or separation; just a
commonplace marital spat with intense emotion behind it. It all started
with what should have been a joyous occasion: a trip to the maternity ward
to visit a nephew and his wife who had just given birth to their new son.
After holding the baby and congratulating
the parents, my husband went on to rib my nephew who had gained some
weight. Women know that it is absolutely taboo to tell another woman how
much weight she appears to have put on, and even worse, to proceed, as my
husband did, to give instructions about how to get rid of the unwanted
paunch. I tried to divert the conversation to safer grounds. I failed.
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Zen In Everyday Living
by Tu Hoang
I seem to keep a lot of things on my mind.
Thinking about work and worrying about my job security, wondering about my
relationship with family and friends, trying to figure out where to invest
my money, having to buy a new set of tires for the car, engrossed in the
war on terrorism, seeing that all my buddies are getting married and a
thousand other things that gnaw at me throughout the day.
I am not the only one with a lot on my
mind. I have friends who are dissatisfied with their careers but work it
so they can afford the house and the baby. I know guys with beautiful
girlfriends and nice cars that still seek approval. I know girls with
great careers; lots of friends but can not find love.
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Working
The Body With Zen Bodytherapy
by Wildflower
Recently, I experienced a series of
Zentherapy sessions with Hudson area practitioner, Jim LaPeer. I found
each session to be a fascinating process of letting go of not only
physical tension, but mental tension as well. I experienced that when I
hold tension in one area of my body, I also tend to hold tension in
seemingly "unrelated areas." For example, when I consciously
released the tension in my hip, tension in my shoulder or neck would
release simultaneously.
I chose to go through Zen Bodytherapy
because, like so many people these days, I was experiencing a time of
major transition in my life and felt I needed to let go, both physically
and mentally, in order to see clearly what I needed to do. I met Jim
LaPeer at the holistic center, Gentle Currents in Greenland, N.H., where
he was seeing clients and I was offering psychic counseling sessions. One
afternoon we spoke at length about the work he was doing and I decided
that Zen Bodytherapy was just what I needed.
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Happiness vs. Peace
by Lisa Hepner It’s a
new year; traditionally, a time for reflecting on the past and preparing
and planning for the upcoming year. Although, I have learned from
reading The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, that nothing is more important
than the present moment.
Tolle says that “True salvation is fulfillment, peace, life in all its
fullness. It is to be who you are, to feel within you the good that
has no opposite, the joy of Being that depends on nothing outside itself.
It is felt not as a passing experience but as an abiding presence.
In theistic language it is to ‘know God’-not as something outside you
but as your own innermost essence. True salvation is to know
yourself as an inseparable part of the timeless and formless One Life from
which all that exists derives its being.”
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Conquering Epilepsy With
Maharishi Vedic Approach To Health
by Alex Kachan
Epilepsy is a tough health disorder. These
of you who have it know. I was diagnosed in 1990, during my military
service in the Israeli army when I began having sudden seizures, which
would make my body shack violently, lose control over my bladder and leave
me unconscious for hours. As a result I was dismissed from service but
although the fatigue and tension associated with military life have ended,
the disease kept on. My EEG, though, was normal. The CT scan revealed
nothing unusual and so my doctors could not identify the cause. Seizures
have come from time to time with no warning and occurred in many
embarrassing locations and circumstances...
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A Female Soldier Goes to Zen Heaven
by Donald Schnell
I arrived at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in 1974, in my 19th year, into
the heart of the 82nd Airborne Division at the John F. Kennedy Center. The
old timers called Fort Bragg “Little Hell.” The 82nd Airborne was the
first to engage the enemy on land to protect America’s freedom. Even in
peacetime, there was always a natural tension of readiness and alertness
among the troops and around the base itself.
Every other day or so a C-40 transport plane would arrive with a load
of America’s kids, gaunt, aged, gray-haired beyond their years. Some
shielded themselves with a barrier of hostility. They wouldn’t let you
get close, didn’t want to know anyone, didn’t want anyone else to die
in their arms. Some were hostile, some clearly mentally destroyed, forlorn
and withdrawn, being led around like zombies. The first ones off the plane
were in wheel chairs or on crutches, missing limbs, faced burned beyond
recognition. All would be greeted by mobs of defiant protestors.
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