Has the entertainment industry exhausted its ideas on limits of human potential? The last two movies I watched portrayed the limitless human potential as the power to kill, control, dominate. In “Limitless” the main character’s highest aspiration after attaining improved abilities was to run for a position of power to gain more power. In Luc Besson’s “Lucy” the main character played by Scarlet Johansson killed numerous people (including innocent victims) in order to survive and gain 100% of her abilities. With her powers to control others, she could have just as easily make her enemies feel human again and surrender their evil ways instead of causing a massacre. This would not have made a good movie, though.
We are so used to thinking that improved abilities mean more control and dominance, more physical and mental power over others. How about the power of love? Is it not the best kind of power transcending time and space?
What abilities would you like to have if you were limitless?
Do you know your style of learning? Better yet, what style of learning do you apply for solving problems and meeting challenges, be it professional or personal?
Applying the principles of harmony meditation I have come to a better understanding what my styles are and that in learning, just as in any other area of life, there are Eum and Yang (yin and yang) approaches to it.
For example, someone who excels in sciences may be struggling with humanities or languages. When I was in school, languages were taught mostly by brute repetition, and for a person with a Yang style of learning this won’t work as well as for a person with an Eum style of learning. One learns better by hearing, the other – by visualization, and these two functions are related to Eum and Yang.
Knowing yourself and your style of learning will save lots of hardship and disappointment. In some cases we need to apply the Yang style – think sharply and solve the problems quickly. More challenging problems require the Eum approach – thinking deeply for a prolonged period of time, getting immersed in the problem and having patience to endure the pressure.
Practice of meditation helps tremendously with the latter, especially for someone with a developed Yang style of learning. The Eum style may not bring fruits right away, but they are much sweeter and tastier.
When we grow patience and love towards ourselves, when we develop the ability to endure and observe our own thoughts and emotions, good or bad, new insights and wisdom emerges.
Most of all, proper practice of meditation should bring about tremendous benefits not only in stress release and personal well-being, but in learning and adopting valuable attitudes of consistent effort, openness, continuous improvement.
The question is – what is it I want to improve the most in your life? To me, the answer is clear. “Who am I?” is the only lifelong endeavor worthy of researching, developing, and sharing the fruits of with others.
I was browsing a spirituality section in the local Barnes & Noble – it looked pretty sad to me. Tarot reading, angel answers, psychic and astrology books – this is what Spirituality is reduced to on book shelves. This is what we have been warned against – lulling ourselves into a state of fake peace where some other supreme being or entity is supposed to send us inspiring messages and energy. “Explore the world of spiritual wisdom” is the underlying theme, but I wonder how much real change people are experiencing from reading these titles. I am not at all against these practices and as a matter of fact, I read horoscopes once in a while to receive encouraging messages. However, this is not true spirituality and it should not be called as such. The “side effects” of meditation and spiritual practices that rely on limited positivity are explained very clearly in Chapter 8 of “Harmony Meditation: from well-being to well-dying.”
In ZEN method for executive leaders today our teacher talked about a spiritual field which is different from the energy field. We were able to experience firsthand the relationship among energy, spirituality and chakras, and what the right attitude should be toward these phenomena and principles.
We learned that there are mechanisms that allow us to grow the ability to connect to higher purpose and wisdom. A study and practice of these mechanisms is the ultimate empowerment as it enables us to progress toward the bigger and brighter Self, toward the authentic alive peace with unlimited power and potential.
In certain situations we may need to make decisions based on limited information. Some rely on a gut feeling consciously or subconsciously. But do we question how well our gut feeling does in retrospect? It’s hard to say because we can’t live our lives in parallel universes.
As a rationally inclined person, I use the gut feeling as the last resort in absence of all other information. After contemplating and reflecting on my past “gut decisions”, here is a few things I’ve been pondering on about trusting the gut feeling.
It’s now a common knowledge that “gut” has its own decision making process via the enteric nervous system, also known as “second brain”, which “can and does operate independently of the brain and spinal cord” [wiki]. So in a sense we resort to the second brain in the gut to make important life decisions.
The second brain takes care of many essential life functions, and produces a myriad of feelings and senses. What we eat and how well we absorb nutrients and eliminate toxins will surely affect our overall sense of well-being. To get a scientific perspective, read an article by Adam Hadhazy “Think Twice: How the Gut’s “Second Brain” Influences Mood and Well-Being”.
So then, can we trust our gut feelings? It depends. There are exceptional individuals who stuck to their gut feeling against all odds and became highly successful. For example, Steve Jobs. For a regular person like me, though, gut feelings tend to be much more banal – being afraid of the unknown and resisting the change.
From a statistical perspective, the second brain operations are largely based on past information and build-in mechanisms of dealing with new information, such as unfamiliar food, feelings, or ideas. If we have an unsettling reaction to the latter, we’ll try to avoid it at all costs. What if it is really good for us and can prove highly beneficial in the long term? What if we need to stick our gut and overcome the challenge? Most of the time following the gut feeling means sinking deeper in the old familiar self and missing a great opportunity.
Of course, we don’t need to challenge every decision our second brain makes. This will be an impossible task. Then how to tell when it’s time to override that decision? The first essential component is the ability to observe one’s own gut feelings and reactions.
With practice of harmony meditation the frequency of moments when a person is successful at recognizing himself or herself resisting new challenges and is able to question the second brain’s defensive reaction increases substantially.
When these precious moments of awakening happen, we can gently steer ourselves out of the rut and see new opportunities. We can take charge of the course of our day and ultimately, our lives. What else do we need? Direction. More on that later.
“How do you know that your ego is not getting ahead of you?” – my friend asked me recently. Good question. I thought about it and realized that I examine my ego quite frequently, on everyday basis. I am just not calling it ego anymore, and it does not necessarily have a shameful and regretful connotation.
When we were children, we were taught what was good and what was bad, and there was not much in between on this scale of black and white. If we keep judging ourselves and others with this primitive binary scale of zeros and ones, likes and dislikes, love and hatred, saint and evil, we’ll end up in a living hell. None of the important life questions can be resolved by applying the same answer to all people and situations. Same with the ego – it’s not all good or bad, there is much more to be learned about our egos.
The ego does not only show up when we do something terrible. We could be sensing it even if we just think something judgmental or express ourselves in a non-optimal manner. That’s not a peaceful existence, but is there a solution? Yes, there is.
In ZEN method for executive leaders training I took recently, it became so clear why the usual ways of dealing with negative feedback of ego do not work. Our teacher Johwa Choi explained why the type of meditation majority of people are practicing these days may be good for stress relief and relaxation, but not for someone seeking answers to who they truly are, someone seeking for authentic change beyond the physical and energy phenomena.
I won’t do justice to what we learned over two days of this one-of-a-kind intensive weekend training in this short blog, but I will say this. If we perceive our ego as enemy, we don’t get to know it well enough, and we can never become whole. It isn’t an option to live ego-less unless we die or become saints. Then our teacher advises us getting to know who we are intimately, including ego’s clever mechanisms of self-preservation. One of the fastest ways to see and experience this intricate relationship between thoughts, emotions, consciousness, the ego and the truest self is via a powerful method called ZEN method – Zero Enhanced Nothingness. I wish Gilbert Chesterton knew of this method when he wrote: “One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.”
Through meditation one can and should develop a better sense of who he or she is. Gradually the screen lightens up with a wider spectrum of colors – different hues and shades of ego and truest self are coming to life. These colors may be dark and depressing at times, but switching to a brighter scale becomes easier and faster with practice. To me this is where true freedom can be found – a place of brilliant brightness with the ego playing under its embracing rays.
