Is Ego Necessary??.....

Ego causes most of the problems we face in dealing with others. Once we get rid of it, our true nature emerges, says John Bendix



To analyse the breakdown of an intimate relationship is a daunting task. Is it worth the effort? No one can answer this except the person caught up in such a circumstance. Even then, no one can be sure if their efforts will give them a better understanding of this complex dynamics. By delving into the connections that people have in their relationships, more mysteries than truths expose themselves. We start to realise the many different lines of communication that are available to each partner. Which ones are used and the manner in which they are used are open to each individual and hence the complexity. There is no formula to predict how a relationship may turn out. But certain truths did present themselves to me. By necessity, i researched all the available data and case histories that dealt with the ‘walk away wife’ phenomenon. I wanted all the information possible to try and figure out why my wife of 21 years wanted out of our marriage. Certain questions kept coming back to me. Did she fall out of love with me just like that? Was it depression, mid-life crisis, hormonal imbalances? Was i looking for reasons or just excuses to explain a sudden marriage break-up? My sons and i were at a loss to come to any cognitive reasons for such irrational events. Then the truth hit me. There were no real answers or solutions on the conscious level of the mind. I had to go beyond the mind of thoughts to the core of the problem, the ego. The ego that the mind creates in order to give it a means to confront the onslaught of the outside world. A world that it feels threatened by. Certainly, fear has its place in the dissolution of relationships, just as it does in most of our activities. I began to sense her fears. Fear of the future, of being inadequate, of time slipping by. I examined my fear of the future, of being alone, of divorce procedures, of isolation from my children or raising them alone. I realised that time, contributes greatly to fear. The past no longer exists except as bits of memory and the future is not here and is only an image in our mind of what might be. The only time that really exists is the present moment. There are as many ways to view the world as there are persons in it. The point of perspective is not how you view it but from where you view it. Through the evolution of the brain of modern man, the mind was created. A mind that is aware of its own thoughts. The mind is also in-charge of protecting the organism it inhabits. Working with the automatic system, which controls involuntary responses and functions, it creates defence mechanisms, which ensure the organism’s survival. To assist in the processing of the stimuli received from the senses and the responses to the outside world, the mind has created what is referred to as the ego. One that is geared to take on the onslaught of the world. It has a defensive nature that is constantly on alert for threats and attacks. The ego interprets the information presented to it by the senses and cognetively assesses them and through the mind, produces thought. These thoughts are then transformed, by the ego, into emotions. Emotions are the body’s response to thoughts. Our emotions arise out of these thoughts. The problems created in man’s responses to world are created by the ego going too far in its nature to perceive what is threatening to the organism and its self. It begins to believe it’s who we really are. A fallacy that creates untold damage to the world it inhabits. By believing itself to be who we are, it will also defend itself against all possible threats. Mental threats such as verbal assault can be viewed by the ego as possibly diminishing its foothold as the self. The thoughts created in response can create emotions such as hostility towards the person verbally attacking it. What real damage can the verbal assault have upon the organism? None, for it is a imagined threat but the ego does not differentiate between real and imagined and still feels threatened. These type of emotions are fed back to the ego who now puts itself on a higher level of threat alertness. A cycle has been created and induces the ego to perceive more and more stimuli as possible threats. That which we train our body and minds to do, can more easily be done. The world is now perceived to be a hostile entity with imagined threats all around us. All of us go through life at a level of threat alertness designed by our own egos. Some do not let such perceived threats dictate their responses while others are ready to take offence to the point of violence. It is the level of dysfunction that we allow the ego to obtain that determines our reactions. A runaway ego may even go to the state of mental paranoia. It is not what is said to us, felt, or thought about us that does harm, it is the ego’s reaction that creates the damage. The ego is in a constant state of self-enhancement to make itself feel more secure. It seeks to acquire more material goods, power, prestige, and so on. The emotional feelings, such as contentment, happiness, and fulfilment, that it receives in feedback from its acquisitions further push the ego to seek more. But just like drug addiction, this feeling is temporary. It is an insatiable thirst. The ego wants more at any cost. However, we can all do something to alleviate this dysfunction. But it cannot be done on the intellectual level. The mind is ill-equipped in this pursuit. By taking notice of how our mind and ego work, we can begin to function at a higher level. From the higher self, we begin to see the world as it really is without the judgmental nature of the mind interfering. The mind differentiates the world into groups with similar attributes, for that is one of its purposes. But the ego goes further and separates them. The higher self sees the world and its different features but does not considerate them as separate entities. It sees the connection that all things share. They are part of the whole all creation. The higher self sees itself as a part of this whole. This underlying truth transforms the way we interact with the world around us. This is the essence of compassion. The deep rooted sense that we are all connected. Who would do harm to someone or something that they know they are connected to or a part of ? My search for answers led me to see that the ego causes most of man’s problems in dealing with one another. When we dispense with the ego, our true nature is brought forth. (John Bendix is a spiritual writer based in the US)

Getting Rid Of Fear....

Free your mind of fear-based emotions such as anger, hatred or jealousy to make place for love and creativity, says Owen Waters


True freedom is the ability to express who you are... ...through a natural flow of love and creativity. Freedom is first gained within your consciousness. Then, because your outer life always reflects that which is within, you gain freedom in all aspects of your life. Often, much of this potential flow of authentic life experience is reduced by inner blockages. These blockages of the natural flow of love and creativity are formed by the fearbased emotions that come with the challenges of human existence. Fear is the common factor underlying all disharmonious emotions. For example, fear of inadequacy can lead to jealousy and hatred, fear can generate an over-reaction of greed while fear of being overwhelmed by life’s challenges can lead to control issues. Each of us arrives in this world with a life plan, which includes personal and societal issues that we intend to work through during the lifetime. It also includes the location and surroundings of birth, as also the friends and associates that we are likely to meet as life unfolds. The personal and societal issues that we adopt in our lives are generally based upon the consciousness. For example, one issue being worked through these days is equality of the sexes. The old reality demanded separation of the power of the sexes into societies based on either matriarchy or patriarchy. The new reality, into which we are shifting, requires an equality of the sexes; an integration of that which was formerly separated into two. Every woman and every man is now playing some part in this massive societal adjustment towards equality of the sexes. As the purpose of the entire human experience is to work through and transform such issues, it is appropriate that we seek a solution to all of these fear-based issues. When enough people pass through the gateway into freedom of the spirit, then suddenly, the whole world will wonder why it hadn’t seen such an easy solution all along. Society is building up to a critical mass where consciousness will flip from ‘you versus me’ to ‘you and me’, a shift from competition to mutual cooperation. Every day, more and more people are making this shift to heart-powered consciousness. With a little inner work, these individual transitions to the new reality happen sooner and more easily. Inner work primarily means daily meditation. When you make meditation your number one priority each and every day, then you are putting in the time that it takes to transform those societal issues within yourself and to work through your own challenges. During meditation, you also connect to a wider range of your own consciousness. The deeper layers of your own consciousness can provide you with insights that literally catapult you out of issue-based blockages. As you allow these blockages to dissolve into the light of spiritual consciousness, you become free to express your true nature and follow your inner joy. Spiritual study helps adapt your mind to expanded views of reality. Some concepts in spiritual philosophy also help along this journey into freedom of the spirit. For example, love and fear seem to act like two opposite poles of our duality consciousness. From the viewpoint of unity, love is all there is and fear is an illusion that detracts from the natural flow of love through you. Love is a basic component of the consciousness that fills the universe. Love, therefore, is always available and ready to flow naturally through your heart. You don’t have to earn or demand it, just let it flow. Another key philosophy gaining freedom is “Live and let live”. When you allow other people to be the way they are, your energy is not absorbed in anyone’s futile dramas. Instead, you are able to use all of your energy to follow your joy and help make the world a better place. You can recognise, love, and accept the inner essence of every person you know, regardless of their outward behaviour or how much it may seem to need improvement. It is this unconditional love that heals the world, person by person, and there is no shortage of its supply. Acceptance of yourself is also vital. Accept who you are now, unimproved, with your current motivations and be thankful that you are exactly who you are. You planned to adopt a certain package of feelings and circumstances in your journey through life. There is nothing ‘wrong’ with you at any point along the journey. Things that appear to need improvement are challenges, not faults, so enjoy the ride and gain the most from the experiences that you came to explore. Thomas Edison carried out over 6,000 experiments before perfecting the first electric light bulb, but he never referred to any of those experiments as failures. Instead, he called each one a step closer to success. Freedom from fear-based emotions allows true, unconditional love to flow through your heart and true creativity to fill your mind as you pursue your deepest inner joy. When you see fear as the hollow illusion that it is and allow your heart to open to everyone, then your actions are influenced not by fear, but by your unconditional love for the people around you and, equally, for yourself. Unconditionally loving yourself means allowing yourself to develop loving relationships where mutual cooperation, not competition or contention, becomes your daily reality. People’s greatest fears melt away in the face of heart-powered, inner awareness. Your intuitive insight is your connection to the part of your mind that knows each situation, even before it occurs. When you listen to that still, small voice within, you know where you need to be and when. With intuitive insight, you will never become caught up in unfortunate events that are not of your making. For example, if an aircraft is destined to crash, you simply won’t be on it. If you need information to bring yourself back to health, you will know where to find the answers that are the best for you. Even the fear of loneliness will never cloud your heart because, with love in your heart, you will never be left wanting for good company. Love and insight will pour from your heart if you let them. Give yourself the gift of true freedom, the freedom to express who you are through a natural flow of love and creativity. (Owen Waters is the author of ‘The Shift: The Revolution in Human Consciousness’)

Of Body And Soul.......

A spiritual approach to any pursuit, even as mundane as weight loss, may bring us to a deeper truth, says Trish Whynot

Since each of us is a physical and spiritual being at the same time, everything in our life has a physical and a spiritual aspect to it. Even those things that seem simply physical in nature, such as our bodies, are in truth also spiritual. It makes sense then that if we go deeply into our relationship with our physical self that we will soon find ourselves in the realm of spirit. At the root of everything lies our relationship with God. We find Him wherever we look, even when we look into our bodily self as we struggle with weight. A spiritual approach to any pursuit — even one as seemingly mundane as weight loss — always brings us to a deeper truth. Some people who have an aversion to God are drawn to this deeper truth, while others who profess to be spiritual are secretly avoiding the truth. We can be in denial of the existence of God or of truth, but that doesn’t diminish the existence of either. The crucial thing to realise is that the realm of spirit is the realm of truth. Here, we can’t pretend to be something that we are not — we can’t be in denial of our choices and the fruits they bear. Being brutally honest with ourselves is standing naked before God. As long as we stay hidden in our proverbial clothes or avoid the scale, the truth-teller, we can’t have a close relationship with our creator. God may denote the divine omnipresent energy that touches us every moment of the day. Going deep brings us closer to God because it allows us an opportunity to stand naked before him — open, honest and free of our proverbial clothes (the coverings that come between us and the truth, the various ways we avoid exposing our real selves). This is head-to-toe intimacy with God: naked on the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual levels. Removing our proverbial clothes is the first step toward total spiritual nakedness. Through meditation, we can invite God to bear witness. Here we can reveal the details of what happened (physical), how it felt (emotional), the story we told ourselves about the incident based on our past experience (mental), why we attracted the situation and exposure of that old wound for healing and growth (spiritual). Standing naked before God is inviting God to touch us — with wisdom, understanding, healing, joy. Let God offer healing where there were wounds and bring understanding where there was confusion. If seeking truth brings me closer to God, then avoiding truth separates me from Him. To continue with the allegory of weight gain, the guilt many people feel around weight gain is often really anger toward themselves—making them feel even worse about themselves. The guilty person can then either continue to avoid the scale (to avoid facing the truth). Feeling bad created the weight in the first place, and feeling worse just adds more weight. The person is literally weighed down with guilt. We are ready to face the scale when we are ready to own our choices and the results of those choices, forgive ourselves, have compassion, and make changes in how we live and cope. Let this issue become an opportunity to learn, heal and grow. Once the intention has been set to address the message brought forth by excess weight, identify and embrace the universe’s response to your request. Our prayers are always answered, but there is no shortcut to permanent transformation. Transformation requires effort and discipline. It is fulfilling and rewarding on every level from physical to spiritual. Let’s see Mrs X’s case: Physical truth: Mrs X’s most urgent truth was that she was making poor eating choices. Emotional truth: Acknowledging this truth led her to her next truth: that she eats for comfort when she is stressed. It was necessary for her to face the things that triggered her stress, allow herself to experience the stressful emotions she was escaping and learn to process them. Mental truth: This brought her to memories of verbal abuse that had stripped her of her self-esteem. Spiritual truth: Once we lifted the veil of shame and pain the belief had created, she saw the low self-esteem of her perpetrators and that she had been their scapegoat. The wound was exposed. She had been blamed for the worthlessness of others and had carried it as her own. She also saw that she was abusing herself with food. She had designated her body as her scapegoat. Standing naked before herself and God she requested love, forgiveness and healing. She saw the truth and was able to forgive her perpetrators for how their pain had come through them and onto her. She emerged more loved, and empowered with wisdom, understanding and compassion that she can thrive on. This is fulfillment at its best. When we let go of false beliefs about ourselves, space is opened in our hearts and minds for God to fill with love and truth. We no longer need extra sweets to make up for a lack of affection, fatty foods to cushion potential blows from abuse, or carbs to stifle our passion. We see our feelings as fuel for growth and healing and learn how to use them to experience God at work in our lives. Walking this path allows us to witness how our relationship with our world is divinely orchestrated based on our intentions rather than random and chaotic as we once thought. We can adopt new eating habits that nurture our new state of being. Once the real issues are addressed, eating healthily is easy and fun because there is no longer a purpose to unhealthy eating choices. And if we do find ourselves in some other struggle in the future, we know that it is just a heads-up from the universe, a signal that it is time to confront a truth that will bring us into even deeper intimacy with ourselves and God. When we make choices based on fear or shame, we are likely to avoid God, the source of truth and light, just as we avoid the scale. We don’t want him to see us; we flee from the truth as we avoid facing up to our own behaviour, whether it’s late night snacking or secret stashes of junk food. We tell ourselves we’ll talk to God when we are in a better place, just as we postpone pursuing our desires (buying that dress, seeking that relationship) until we lose a little weight. But avoiding the truth just prolongs our agony while it immobilises us. (Trish Whynot is a holistic counsellor in Middleton, US)

The Joy Of Effortless Living.....

Rajiv Vij

While attending the intermediate course of paragliding many years ago, i remember taking a short flight from the top of a 600-feet cliff and truly loving it. I recall marveling at the effortlessness of the 45-second flight – before gravity took over – and wondering how some of the experienced paragliders managed to stay up in the air for hours. As i learnt, it was their ability, like the migratory birds, to find progressive air thermals that allowed them to stay up and even travel long distances, sometimes up to a thousand kilometres. Were those long flights enervating for them? Never, they were always effortless and exhilarating, as they soared, in complete harmony with nature. Comparing that scenario to the way we live our lives, i often wonder why there is so much struggle to our existence. There appears to be this constant underlying stress all around us and the innumerable choices that we are surrounded with — products, services, careers, gadgets, leisure and so on — instead of empowering us, leave us feeling deprived. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could find a way to make our lives more effortless, balanced, and peaceful? A way to free ourselves from our daily dilemmas to creating a life where making choices were much easier, where we experienced minimal effort to move forward, and where we were fully supported by nature in all our pursuits. The key to this lies in gaining clarity about the purpose of our own existence. Why are we here and what are are we aiming to do? I do believe each one of us on earth is hugely gifted and has a special purpose — but do we take the time to discover it in ourselves; or are we just on a treadmill of activity going almost nowhere? Do you want to be more successful or do you want to make a more significant contribution? Do you want more money or greater happiness? What’s the role of family and friends in our life? What’s our commitment to community and environment? If you had to make a real choice, what’s that one thing that you would like your life to be about? On your deathbed, what is it that you would feel most proud about your life? I have reflected a lot on this and coached a number of people on this. Interestingly, some of the most powerful statements of purpose tend to revolve around an absolute and an inner goal — absolute in that they are not set relative to others and inner in that their progress is not measurable by external parameters of evaluation like career, money, fame, achievement. Examples would include statements like, “I want to be always happy”, or “want to lead a meaningful balanced life”, or “want to give back to society”, or “want to leave a legacy”. Many a times, they also include a component that is focused on others — “I want to be happy and want to make others around me happy”. As you think deeply about your purpose and begin to anchor your life around it, you may well be surprised with the wonderful direction your life may effortlessly begin to take. At a deeper level, we can comprehend the notion of purpose, and creating this joyful existence, in two dimensions — consider that we have two types of purpose in our lives. There’s the external purpose and then there’s the core purpose. The external purpose of living is the roles we choose in our lives — the roles at work and in our relationships; whether we want to be a business owner, an artist, a scientist, a tennis player, or a homemaker. Also, our role as a parent, as a child, and as a friend. Additionally, it includes our varied personal interests and pursuits. Often we build such strong identification with these roles that we lose perspective of our core purpose. That’s when the relentless pursuit of these external goals causes us to struggle and doesn’t seem to provide us with that illusory happiness, balance, and peace. What we really need then is a stronger alignment of our external goals with our true core purpose. The core purpose, it appears, may well be the same for all of us — to circle around undertaking the inner journey of self-realisation; to build greater selfawareness and deeper understanding of who we essentially are; to conquer our fears and anxieties and eventually to transcend ourselves. Once we make it the central theme of whatever we do, the notions of happiness, balance, and legacy are no longer illusory. As they say, “It does not matter what you do, but how you do it”. Once we embrace this purpose, it reflects in how we conduct ourselves in whatever we do – at work or in relationships. We are then less focused on how far we reach in achieving the external goals in life, but more on enjoying the inner journey of being on the right path. It provides us a higher meaning in everything. For a tennis player, it’s the difference between wanting to win a grand slam and being driven by the purpose of inspiring greatness among millions of fans and tennis players. For a writer, it could be between a desire to be famous and her purpose of helping innumerable readers experience their powerful inner emotions.

Knot just friends......

Tying the knot with your best friend may sound unrealistic and filmy; After Hours tells you more about this wonderful relation

Shehzad Poonawalla

He keeps your deepest secrets. She laughs at your silly jokes. Both of you share each others joys and sorrows, triumphs and defeats. The idea that best friends can fall in love and make the relationship work is more common in reel than in real life. Look at Chandler and Monica in Friends or Sally and Harry in the When Harry Met Sally. Although this sounds romantic and mushy, is it realistic? “Friendship perhaps is the best bond one can have but falling in love with your best friend can be a tricky proposition. You dont know if he loves you too and it involves the risk of ruining a good friendship,” says student Preeti Sahay. Entrepreneur Vishal Trivedi, who was dating his best friend says, “Being best friends with a girl and then dating her are completely different things. Suddenly you realise that you cannot be as open as before and the possessive streak comes in too.” Agreeing with Vishal, model Shriya Kishore says, “Any relationship requires maturity but more so in case of best friends, because you know intimate details about each others past. One has to be careful not to mention anything in the present relationship or you may end up hurting and losing both, your lover and your best friend.” Jatin and Ushma Agarwal, are one of these, who have been best friends for fifteen years and are happily married now. Ushma and her twin Urvi met Jatin at an engineering college and soon the trio formed their own little group. While Jatin is the hardcore party animal who took each day as it came, Ushma was totally the opposite. In fact, Urvi and Jatin got along much better than they ever did. “But it was during Urvis wedding that we started feeling a void and really discovered each others friendship,” says Jatin. “Although, everyone else thought we were meant for each other, the idea of walking down the aisle with my best friend had never crossed my mind,” says Ushma. But as time passed their friendship blossomed into love and in December 2006 they tied the knot. And have the equations changed since then? “Well, not really. We are still best friends who love each other. He loves adventure sports and music. I love fashion and family affairs. So we do a bit of everything,” says Ushma, who feels that the recent blockbuster Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na is quite similar to her story. Being best buddies has been an advantage for the duo. They know everything about each other and find it easier to communicate. They just love each others company yet they are conscious about intruding on each others private space. And isnt it this compatibility between friends that everyone looks for in a relationship too? “It sure is. I wanted someone who would plan my future and take care of my home and who better to do it than my best friend.”

The Art Of Being Present.......

There is an awakeness that comes from a clear mind, unobscured by wandering thoughts and preoccupations, and there is an awakeness that comes from a clear heart, willing to engage with life as gift and as an everunfolding revelation of the purpose of creation.
Such an awakened heart can’t respond indifferently to life because it sees the outstretched hand of the creator at every turn and in every particle of experience.
It cannot turn away from feeling, no matter what feelings may occur, because it perceives emotional depth as the great gift of individualized consciousness. This gift stirs the response of individualized life to the source of life as it displays itself in all living things.
To be awake and present is to take responsibility for noticing — for maintaining an intimate connection between the self that is, and the rest of the world that is. It is to know that within the domain of this relationship lies a profound revelation of the source of all within every gesture, every interaction, and every experience that takes place. It is to perceive the sacred in every moment.
In today’s overscheduled world, being continuously busy is sometimes a necessity but often a choice based on the drive for outer success, wealth, and the symbols of what is often taken to be a ‘life worth living’.
Being busy, as opposed to having time ‘on one’s hands’, is perceived by many as a testimony to a life that has merit, purpose, and meaning.
By contrast, idle hands — hands that remain receptive rather than active in relation to time, suggest that time is being wasted — that one could do more, achieve more, accomplish more. No matter if these hands are connected with one’s heart and with the heart of the world. For many, it is only the visible ‘doing’ of things that creates a sense of security and lets us know that time has meaning. The existence of a space of silence in which awareness can broaden is often not considered a gain. Nor is simply being here, responsive to the very air we breathe, considered a virtue.
Is it any wonder, then, that we, as a collective humanity, have forgotten the sacred art of being present, that we have placed ‘noticing’ on the back burner of experiential values. And what would we notice if we took the time to do so?
In order to answer this question, it is helpful to sit in one place, breathing quietly, eyes somewhat unfocused, listening, seeing, sensing. Though one can do this profitably in a bare room, it is easier, at first, to sit in an environment where there is just a little movement present. Now, close the eyes and pay attention to the other senses. Feel the comforting fabric of surrounding life as if it were an envelope or cocoon, gently cradling one’s essential self. Notice everything without discrimination, without opinion. Try to feel the intimacy of connection with what is.
Spending time for a few minutes each day being awake and noticing is a good way to begin the practice of being present. It is a good way to begin to expand one’s idea of what constitutes a meaningful life. And yet more than this is needed if one is to truly embrace what is, and to be ‘present in the present’. What is needed is the greater opening of the heart to the one self that exists within all.
This perception of unity and oneness has an opportunity to grow at any moment in which we interact with another soul. It is nourished by an absence of judgement and by a willingness to be open to the deeper levels of who that other might be. Such openness comes from a state of innocence and of childlike grace. It comes from knowing that the ‘other’ is part of the same ‘all that is’ as oneself, therefore of one heart, one breath, one life.
The gift of being present as it applies to relationships is that it brings love to every interaction, no matter how small or insignificant. It brings the divine into every perception, no matter how ordinary. And it brings gratitude into each moment as it unfolds.
As a sense of being present deepens and one’s capacity to notice flowers, the deep richness of life and of love can be found everywhere and separation nowhere. In this state, one senses only the one who lives within all. One feels the essence within every other. Here, consciousness can only affirm the greater life of which it is a part:
I am and you are. We are both of the stars and of the dust of the earth. We are both of the rocks and of the sandy shores. We are water and we are sky; we are earth, and we are air. We are the breath that life breathes through itself, in a single and continuous song of creation.
(Julie Redstone is a writer, teacher and founder of a spiritual centre for healing and transformation)

To Whom Do You Pray....

Joshua Eric Bryel

This question is more important than most think. The answer will colour all your experience. Those who answer that they do not pray are mistaken, for they do not realize what prayer is and the extent and power of it has in their lives.
Classically, prayer is, in essence, an act of communication. One communicates one’s desires to, presumably, some source deity who has power over his life or pow er to help him. Prayer is also an act of com munion with the source for expression of gratitude and reverence, deemed neces sary or recommended by the source, and for the reception of guidance or other sorts of upliftment and inspiration.
Continuing to define prayer by asso ciated meanings, the word “communi cate” means to connect, to join, in effect to become one. In prayer, there is always a desire to be aligned with the source to which we pray. To align with one’s deity is deemed ultimately desirable, if not im mediately beneficial. In this age of spir itual renewal, we are constantly work ing to align and attune ourselves with an ideal or an energy or some sort of great spirit that will bless our lives, and which many consider to be our true self.
Yet without realizing the real nature and extent of the act of prayer, many of us are sabotaging just that goal.
In the many books and workshops available on spiritual practices and tech niques, prayer is often highly recom mended. There are many related prac tices that are defined as forms of prayer such as dancing, drumming, singing artworks, rituals, even writing a prayer on a piece of paper or cloth and hanging it in the breeze. There is also a practice described involving what is called “con stant prayer”, which sounds like quite challenge considering the requirements of everyday life. Yet it is precisely this form of prayer that is the subject of this article. Whether you realize it or not, you are in constant prayer.
As I said above, prayer is essentially communication, and in this soup of con sciousness we live in, our every thought
communicates to everyone and everything around us. It communicates our beliefs and desires and fears and loves and hates Nothing is private and nothing is hidden It is widely accepted in our age of renewal that the state of consciousness affects every element of life. Yet more to my point is the fact that just whom we are trying to communicate our desires to, con sciously or unconsciously, moment by mo ment, is not fully realized.
What I am getting at is the fact that whenever you try to please someone, and are for some ego-based reason not being true to yourself, you are literally pray ing to them, attuning to them, and try ing to become like them in order to please them and get their blessing – or at least be left in relative peace. The moment to moment content of our minds and hearts and the acts that result, are this prayer It never ends. What we are is a constant song of prayer, alignment and attune ment to someone, and usually it is to someone who can neither hear nor help
Why do people neglect this true source within? Because of the persisting idea of there being powers outside of them One has to decide that false is false and that there is no separation: that all pow er is united within, and all that appears around one is an extension of one’s be ing. We have held back out of fear. The idea of guilt and self-denial is founded on this fear, and the source of fear is the idea of separation, of some other power being able to affect us in a way we don’ prefer. Yet if you decide your conscious ness is the source and generator of your existence, and that your aligned con sciousness is the divine source, you will know you have all the power that can ever affect your experience.
Involved in the confusion are the il logic and conflicts of our egos, all based on the idea of separation. If attunement means oneness with the source, we can say that prayer is an act of becoming one Then why do we pray to those we stead fastly hold separate from us?
We pray for approval, for validation for permission, for forgiveness — all from outside “sources” that have no real pow er over us or to help.
Prayer must recognize oneness as fact, for to perceive separation is to cre ate it, and power to create is always pro jected in the idea of separation. Teach ings such as “Seek ye the kingdom of Heaven within” speak to us of the source being the divine light of our own true self Attunement to our limitless inner truth cannot but bring us all the happiness for which we have been praying.
“To thine own self be true, for it must follow as the night the day that thou can’st not then be false to any man.” The ulti mate of prayer is, therefore, the recogni tion of our oneness with divine will and with all love and power, and via this route with all those we perceived as separate.
You can’t have it both ways. You can’ be a victim and a master – and you can’ be a victim at all. This is the key to free dom through constant aligned prayer.

Morality is Natural....

There are enough scientific studies to show that moral law is inborn in humans, not God-given, writes David E Comings

The idea that man needs God to tell us how to behave morally, to be kind and thoughtful towards our fellow man, to aid others without any promise of benefit to ourselves, is a central tenet of most religions. To emphasize the point, we are told that if we do not obey God’s moral law, we will spend an eternity in hell while if we do obey the moral code, we will spend an eternity of bliss in heaven.
Francis Collins of the National Institutes of Health is the head of the Human Genome Project responsible for sequencing the three billion base pairs of the human genome. In 2007, this eminent scientist wrote a book titled ‘The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief ’. He recounts that in his early years as a scientist, he was an atheist but one day, he had an epiphany and came to believe that man could not be a moral animal without the aid of a god given moral law. As a result of this realization, he became of person of faith.
This epiphany blew me away because although he was a geneticist, he found the extensive genetic evidence that altruism was an inborn genetic trait unconvincing. He also believed that while the development of all other living organisms on earth was the result of Darwinian evolution, the evolution of man was special and was guided by the hand of God.
Surveys have shown that most scientists, especially those in the field of the biological and genetic sciences, are non-theists, partly because they so strongly believe that Darwinian evolution was responsible for the origin of the species, including man. As a fellow geneticist, I was surprised that this eminent scientist was both disavowing the decades of research into the genetics of altruism and proposing that humans were so unique that God was required to guide the evolution of humans. This was uncomfortably close to the tenants of the Intelligent Design creationists.
I wish to just address the issue of altruism as an inborn genetic trait. Altruism is defined as aiding another individual while incurring personal costs to oneself. For example, if I jump into a raging river to save my son from drowning, I place myself at risk of drowning. This behaviour of being kind and helpful to others is a central tenet to of Christian thought, the golden rule, con sisting of treating others, as you would like to be treated.
One of the best examples of al truism in the animal kingdom is the behaviour of sterile worker honey bees who sacrifice themselves for the benefit of the queen bee. Darwin was quite concerned about altruism, fear ing that it seemed to directly con tradict his theory of survival of the fittest, thus allowing better genes to be passed on to the next generation. Worker bees are sterile and thus, derive no direct benefit for their altruistic acts and cannot pass on their genes. Dar win’s solution to this apparent con tradiction of this theory was to sug gest that the survival benefit did not always have to apply to the individ ual — it could also apply to the rela tives of the individual. Thus, a ster ile worker bee helping the queen to survive would help guarantee the preservation of the genes of the whole family. This became known as the ‘kin selection’ theory. As if his general theory of the evolution of the species were not enough of a problem for religions to swallow, Darwin was now suggesting that selfsacrificial behaviour, generally considered only to be within the purview of religion, was also biologically controlled and could occur in animals was well as humans.
The controversial issues of the genetics and evolution of altruism were addressed by some of the most brilliant and famous mathematical geneticists of the 20th century, including JBS Haldane, Ronald Fisher and Sewell Wright. Wright provided the field of population genetics with the term r, referring to the degree of genetic relatedness between relatives. For example, fathers and sons and brothers and sisters share half of their genes in common producing an r = 1/2. Grandfathers and grandchildren share 1/4 of their genes in common producing an r = 1/4.
However, it was a naturalist and student of economics, William Hamilton, who in 1963 published the equation that provided a framework for understanding the genetics and evolution of altruism. Hamilton was both a naturalist and a student of economics. The latter provided him with an appreciation of cost-benefit analysis. Hamilton’s famous equa tion was r x b > c, where b is the ben efit accrued by the relatives for an altruistic act and c is the cost of the altruistic act. Thus, if a father saved his son from drowning, the odds that his son would be saved (benefit) must be twice the odds that the father would drown (cost) for the altruistic act to genetically benefit the family The rearranged equation would be b > 2c (the benefit must be greater than twice the cost).
Inherent in the equation is the fact that the closer the relationship be tween the individuals involved in the altruistic act, the higher the r, and thus the greater the benefit to the family. This process that Hamilton defined mathematically was termed “kin selection” for its implications for evolution and natural selection Examples of altruistic behaviour ad hering to Hamilton’s equation have been described in a wide range of an imals including mammals.
Subsequent work involving the concepts of reputation and punish ment in societies has expanded the role of altruism in humans to include unrelated individuals in both small and large groups. These studies sug gest a selective advantage for altru ism involving not only small kin ships, but also larger societal groups Brain imaging studies indicate that cooperative behaviours that benefit the group, can activate pleasurable reward pathways, thus making al truism a pleasurable act.
Combined, the aggregate of these studies suggests that man is a moral and mutually cooperating animal not because God dictated the laws of moral behaviour, but because the genes for such behaviour were se lected for and evolved over time These behaviours were advantageous to early societal groups and indi viduals and groups displaying such behaviours were more likely to sur vive than those who did not. Moral law is inborn, not God given.
(David E Comings, author of Did Man Create God?, is a physician, hu man geneticist and neuroscientist)

How Happy Are You?

Being happy depends not so much on external circumstances as on your inner life, says Tony Wilkinson

Are you the happiest person you know? Not necessarily the luckiest, richest, or most successful, just the happiest?
If not, why not? Most people will reel off their current worries — the job, the kids, the car, the price of fish. I don’t mean to sweep these aside: problems need to be solved, if you can, or waited out until they disappear. But as far as living happily is concerned you have to face a crucial fact. If you can only live happily after all your problems are solved, you are never going to live happily, because when today’s problems are gone and forgotten, others will take their place. So either living happily is just impossible, or you have to do it in spite of your problems.
Being happy depends not so much on external circumstances as on your inner life. This means all your thoughts, perceptions, beliefs, emotions, desires, dreams — your entire mental and emotional scene. Happiness is about how you react inwardly to events, what you think and believe, how you feel, how problems affect you. It may sound obvious, but like many obvious things it’s something that is often forgotten when it matters most. We focus almost exclusively on our external lives, on getting and spending and having fun, and then wonder why we are not happy. But it’s when our inner lives are tranquil that we are happiest and we call this inner peace.
So how is inner peace to be achieved? Is it a question of religion, perhaps, or yoga? These can certainly help but only if they have a positive effect on your inner life. The difficulty is that inner life is based on patterns and habits — some you were born with, most you have acquired. You don’t choose, occasion by occasion, how you respond inside when something happens. This happens and you feel angry; that happens you feel sad; you pass the patisserie and you feel hungry; you hear a tune or smell a certain scent and it reminds you of a particular time or person? Things produce a response without you thinking about it or choosing how you feel, and they don’t necessarily leave you with inner peace. So the trick is to break the pattern. You can’t completely avoid problems, but you can change how you react to them by acquiring new habits that provoke peaceful inner responses. Training your inner life into different habits requires learning skills of thinking, feeling, and managing your beliefs and desires. These are very like the virtues many religions and philosophies advocate, but if you think of them as skills rather than virtues, you benefit from an important and liberating shift. Instead of “I must become a better person” you can think “I would live more happily if i worked on my skills”, so the change in attitude becomes a choice, not a duty. And to these remedial skills i’ve added an extra set of enjoyment skills, otherwise getting happier could turn out a very depressing affair.
This process is not something you can do overnight, it’s a whole new way of life, but the reward is what we all want most — happiness. There are five main skills you need to cultivate.
Mindfulness: Borrowed from Buddhism, this involves developing your ability to focus your thoughts in the present. The problem most of us have with thought is having too much of it — the worrying and nonstop mental chattering our minds are prone to. Mindfulness is a key inner skill because, as it gets stronger, it lets you focus on your own inner life and catch your habits in the act. Once you can see how you are ruled by them, the change you are seeking often happens of its own accord.
Compassion: Most religions rightly stress compassion. As well as being a virtue in its own right it is a practical skill that counteracts negative emotions like anger and hatred, which are terrible wreckers of happiness. Try it the next time someone annoys you: put yourself in their place and ask yourself what they might they be thinking or feeling to behave like that. Even bad people, let alone people who just mildly annoy you, often have a warped or mistaken view of the world which makes them do what they do. Wars are started and atrocities committed, for example, because someone decides that this is what their God wants. It doesn’t mean they should get away with their actions, in fact it may be necessary to take strong action to defend yourself.
Story skills: These are very useful for problems with your inner belief system, as they let you stand back and explore alternative versions of reality. Beliefs have great power over your life because a belief is something you take as fact. Start to think of your beliefs as stories, and it is easier to accept that other things might be true as well, or even instead. Even true stories only select the little bit of reality we are focusing on at the moment: no one story is the whole truth about any situation. From a different point of view we would see a different story, sometimes a whole different world. This is not about make believe, it’s about reframing situations to look at them from a different perspective.
Letting-go techniques: These are particularly helpful when we are unhappy not getting what we want. Generally, we are encouraged to keep wanting and to think that more will make us happier, whether it’s clothes or cars or even love. But wanting is a treadmill: as long as you have unsatisfied wants and desires you won’t be at peace, so to be happy you either have to satisfy all your desires, or let go of some of them. Letting-go skills also include forgiveness, which helps hugely if one of the things you think you want is revenge.
Enjoyment skills: This last group includes skills such as patience, humour and, especially, gratitude. You don’t have to be grateful to someone, it’s enough to cultivate gratitude for things. Our minds naturally scan the environment for dangers and resources, a useful mechanism when we were hunter-gatherers. But it can make us unnecessarily pessimistic — focusing on the 10% we lack rather than the 90% we have. Cultivating enjoyment skills will help redress the balance.
Acquiring all these skills takes time and effort. The important thing is to practise them until they operate without you thinking about them. Your practice routine will be very individual, because everyone needs to prioritise different skills depending on the specific issues that are holding them back from being happy, but keep the skills in mind and you will constantly find new ways to try them out.