A Spiritual Short-Cut to Emotional Tranquility, Less Stress and More Happiness

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Please note: the following post contains a spiritual practice that you should only attempt if you are relatively stable emotionally, self-aware and not under psychiatric care.

Also, remember to join us for tonight's Spiritual Life 1: Foundations teleseminar / webinar at: http://InstantTeleseminar.com/?eventID=21310599

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As you already know, we'll be examining the meaning of that nebulous phrase, "spiritual life", in my upcoming teleseminar series on the subject.  Whatever it means to you personally, though, there's little doubt you're interested improving your emotional life and increasing your subjective feeling of well-being.  

And that's a key point because it shows us that whatever spiritual life may mean to each of us, one common denominator is that it is somehow intimately related to our emotional being and, through that, to our very core as human beings.  

So what can you do TODAY to calm your mind, settle your emotions, shed your stress and remain increasingly tranquil no matter what's going on around you?  Well, there is one simple practice you could adopt that will do all this for you.  In its best articulated form, it's a Tibetan Buddhist practice, although elements of the ancient Christian mystical tradition and later Taoism both have equivalents.  Please note that you don't have to be a Buddhist to practice this - the results speak for themselves.

The Practice

Choose a day to start your practice.  It should be an ordinary weekday with nothing too unusual happening.  Here's what you'll do:

1. When you wake up, sit up for a few minutes in a meditative posture and focus on your breathing to calm your mind.
   
   
2. Once your mind is as calm as it will get, say to yourself, "Everything I encounter today is simply a projection of my mind.  Pleasant or unpleasant, everything I experience is no more real or substantial than a dream.  If someone acts in a way that is hurtful to me, I can simply remember this is just a projection of my mind so that a negative emotional reaction on my part would make no sense.  If something wonderful happens, I can simply remember that pleasant and unpleasant occurrences are always alternating, so there's no point in getting too excited."
   
   
3. As you take your shower, just say to yourself, "Here I am, washing this dream body with this dream soap."  And when you're getting your breakfast, realize you're pouring dream coffee into a dream mug.
   
   
4. As you go through your day, remind yourself continually that what you experience is a product of your mind.  And remind yourself that the more positive your emotional state now, and the more positively you can affect the state of other people, the more you are planting the seeds of positive experiences for yourself in the future.
   
   

This Spiritual Practice Has Several Advantages...

1. It reminds us that nothing we see or experience in our world exists in the same way that our senses suggest to us.  For example, all "material reality" is largely empty space and fields of energy.  There is no solid "matter" at all.  As Einstein once said, "Reality is an illusion... albeit a very convincing one."
   
   
2. It quickly severs the link between what happens to us and our habitual emotional responses, thus building our inner freedom.
   
   
3. It allows us to maintain a much calmer emotional life while at the same time building positive emotional content throughout the day.
    
   
4. In other words, events will no longer control how we feel.
   
   
5. We naturally find ourselves in the "place of the observer" - one of the principal goals of meditation and of deep prayer.
   
   
6. We find ourselves happier, with less stress and a lot more joy, all for very little effort.

Is there a catch?  Just one: this is a discipline and a practice - it doesn't work unless you do it.  One hint for you before you start - take it easy and begin with few expectations.  It's pretty common near the beginning to feel a sense of "Wow! This is SO cool!!" and then, a day or two later, to feel, "Damn, this is harder than I thought!"  

No worries, though.  That's all totally natural.  Just give it a try and feel free to share what you discover by commenting on this post or dropping us a line.  Enjoy!!

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger :-)

The 5-Step Process to Getting Clear on What You Really WANT

Few things are as important to your personal resilience as identifying your overall direction in life, getting clear on who you are, where you're going and what you really want.  Yet many are those who bumble ahead without first paying their dues at this toll house of life... and they pay for it down the road with confusion, uncertainty and unhappiness.

So this first step is critical.  And contrary to what some think, this is not about making a list of neat things to have.  This is not like making your Christmas list!  It’s not about making a list of every little thing you might like to have.  Would I like an electric back-scratcher?  Well, if someone offered it to me I suppose I wouldn’t turn it down.  But if no one offers it to me I’m unlikely even to think about it for years, if at all.  This isn’t even about getting all the stuff you really want.  This is about first and foremost finding out who you are.

The Critical "How To" Steps

First, make a list of everything you've been really interested in during your life.  Write that down.  You can use an ordinary piece of paper, a journal or a word processing program to do this – it doesn’t matter.  But it does matter that you do it in writing!   It’s good to ask other people who know you well if you’ve missed something.  Ask your parents, peers, siblings, or anyone who knows you well.  You should take a couple of days to do this.  Start today.  Then come back to it once a day for a couple of days.  After this and ONLY after this, go on to step 2…

Second, make a list of everything you've been really good at during your whole life.  Someone once wrote to me claiming he had been totally mediocre at everything his whole life.  I’m sorry, but I think there are probably some self-esteem issues there that are obscuring the truth, because  everybody I know has lots of talents, irrespective of their level of intellectual sophistication, their education, or any other factor.

Do the same thing here – take a couple of days.  Ask those who know you well.  Now comes the hard part…

Third , look for patterns.  You try to answer the question "why"?  Almost everyone skips the third step - big mistake!  The third step is harder to do, and there is not necessarily a right or wrong answer.  It's a voyage self-discovery.  This is not simply an intellectual process – it’s a process of feeling, of emotion, of the heart.  You can't force this process, so just let the answers come to you.  If anything does come up, write it down.  If you really don't see any connections, any unifying themes, don't worry and just move on to the next step.

Fourth, find out what really inspires you.  You see, it is not enough to know what you want.  It is not even enough to know what you're really interested in or what you’re very talented at.  What you need to know here is what overriding purpose inspires you deeply.  There could be more than one.  What turns your crank, what floats your boat?

You may have a huge interest in aircraft.  Any idea why?  Maybe you are a natural comedian.  Do you know what it is about comedy that turns you on?  What can you work on or think about for hours and lose all track of time?  What purpose, issue, field of endeavor or question fills you with inspiration and energy, so much so that you feel like you’re carried on a wave?

Fifth, do this exercise: take the lists of your interests, talents and the connections between them and imagine jobs you would be totally jazzed about having.  You can make them up.  For instance, if you’re the aircraft lover, imagine someone offering you the job of looking after the aircraft of the world’s largest aviation museum… with a huge budget for new acquisitions that you decide on!

Take your time and just imagine different jobs you could have related to your passionate interests.  REMEMBER: these jobs don’t have to be real.  Don’t let your cursed sense of reality get in the way – just have fun with this. 

The Temptations

After studying and experiencing various types of mindset work over the years, it seems to me there are some fundamental traps to avoid:

1. Worrying about your doubts.  The antidote is to go and do the things that will bring you results.  Usually these are activities that are just outside your comfort zone but, once you start doing them, they feel SO right.  Also, realize that doubt is a natural stage when you're about to do something new and different.  Just don't let it paralyze you ;-)
   
2. Sweating about not having clarity.   The antidote is to take action on the small things you are clear about.  And realize you can't force clarity.  All you can do is continually stay inspired and let the answers come.
   
3. Thinking "I'm not passionate about anything."  That's because you've let the fire go out.  I've studied martial arts for years and years, but if I don't keep up with what's going on, if I don't read, study and practice, I lose that inspiration pretty quickly.  So no matter what you're interested in, you pretty much have to toss logs on the fire of your inspiration.  That fire won't feed itself - you have to do that!  

If you follow this process and avoid these traps, you'll be amazed at how much more clarity you have on your life within a matter of weeks.  Now go for it!

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger :-)

Get Happier and Healthier by Doing This One Thing...

"The best of all medicines is resting and _______."

~ Benjamin Franklin

Hi everyone,

Care to fill in the blank in today's quotation? 

Read on to find the answer...

A recent study has shown that _______ causes you to secrete more of a hormone called GHRELIN, which has a few interesting side effects...

- It gives you energy
- Makes you more action-oriented
- Makes you more sociable
- and better able to overcome obstacles

Okay, I know.  You're saying, "Where can I get me some of this stuff?!" 

Relax - your body makes it.  Your stomach makes most of it and some extra comes from your kidneys, your hypothalamus and pituitary glands. 
Ghrelin has a notable anti-depressive effect and generally makes people much HAPPIER.

Of course, your system makes more of it when you're _______.

That might be part of the reason people practicing authentic ancient spiritual traditions are about the happiest folks you'll ever meet.  At least, that was certainly my experience of the Orthodox Christian monks of Mt. Athos in Greece. 

And they're certainly well known for their _______.


SO WHAT IS _______ ALREADY??!!

It's fasting.  The practice of going without food or sometimes food and drink for a certain defined period.  It's long been known that fasting kick-starts the body's cleansing reaction, causing you to release toxins.

And fasting it SIGNIFICANTLY contributes to longevity.  (If you want to live a long time, try not only eating a BETTER diet, but also eating LESS).  Some recent experiments with mice determined that cutting down the little rodent's food intake contributed to lengthening his lifespan by 30% or more and keeping him healthy at the same time.  For a human, that would mean the difference between a life plagued with health problems and coming to an abrupt end around age 80 versus a longer, disease-free life of closer to 106 years.  Sound good to you?

Fasting is also critically important to any REAL spiritual life.  By the way, that doesn't mean that ALL religious fasting is helpful spiritually, it just means truly spiritual people practice fasting.  There's a difference!  


Now, though, the evidence also suggests that fasting has a very positive, mood-altering side effect as well.  Again, this applies to INTELLIGENT fasting, practiced in MODERATION.  Don't succumb to the silly logic that if a little fasting makes happy, a ton of fasting will make you the happiest person on earth.  Wrong! 

So if you're aiming for personal resilience in your life, fasting will be an indispensable practice for you.  It will improve your mood, giving you the emotional resources to cope with the ups and downs of life.  It will help you detoxify, keeping you healthier.  And it will greatly facilitate your spiritual practices, such as prayer and meditation.  




NEVER DONE THIS BEFORE?

Then the best way to start is to ease yourself into it.

You can try spending a morning with nothing more than pure water, for example.  Then - and this is REALLY important - take note of how you feel physically, mentally and emotionally.



One of the easiest ways to incorporate fasting into your life is to set aside one day per week for it and then do a detoxification cleanse 2-4 times per year.  For your one day per week, you could start off, for example, by something as simple as drinking only pure water in the morning and then having only liquids (nutritious smoothies, for example) for the rest of the day.  

So, why not set aside a day to avoid this...

... in order to enjoy this?

 Believe me, your digestive system will be thanking you big time!

There are lots of varieties of fasting and we can't get into the details here, but you get the general idea.  

When regular fasting becomes part of your life, you'll LOOK FORWARD to it, knowing how great it makes you feel.

Remember to smile when you fast ;-)

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

Hard to Believe These Dinosaurs Still Exist...

Gobsmacked!

A few months back, my daughter mentioned to me that one of her friends would never even entertain the possibility that God or anything "spiritual" might be real because "it's not scientific".  

"What?" I replied, taken aback.  "Sounds like her mind is stuck in the '70s... and she wasn't born until the '90s!  You should tell her that her 'science' is a bit out of date."  

Truly, I'm always a little stunned when I run into someone who believes atheism is scientific.  Of course, I'm just as gobsmacked when an otherwise intelligent person informs me - as one did recently - that he considers alternative medicine to be nonsense and "witchcraft" and that he is happy to follow the advice of his allopathic MD exclusively.  "Well, that's your funeral," I thought.   


All these encounters remind me a little of my dear old dad who - and no, this is one hundred percent true - could never keep straight the difference between yoga and yogurt!!  To be fair, though, dad grew up in a much different time and was always open-minded enough to admit defeat if you could present him with irrefutable evidence.  After all, he was a lawyer!  


So what do you say to someone who's essentially stuck in the mechanistic worldview of the Newtonian Physics and can't break out of that paradigm?  What do you say when they accuse you of being unscientific, gullible, "new age" or plain stupid?

Here are some simple suggestions for you.  Just remember, what resonates with each person is unique, so be prepared to adjust your words accordingly ;-)

Helping to Open Their Minds

First, know why you want to engage them in conversation at all.  For me, it stems from the fact that the study of human resilience, which is the study of maximizing human potential, demands an absolutely unbiased, evidence-based and therefore scientific approach to understanding the nature of reality itself.  It's quite clear that if we allow ourselves to be slaves to preconceived notions and comfortable ideologies, we are not doing that.  


Second, remember there are four stages to any scientific discovery - 1. It's dismissed as rubbish, 2. It's persecuted as heresy, 3. "There may be something to this" and 4. "It's absolutely true and we thought of it first".


Knowing that's the case, consider the following short video, where Dr. William Tiller, professor emeritus of Stanford University, explains why some people, including scientists, just can't handle new information that challenges their assumptions:














Third, if they're talking about anything spiritual, you can inform them that the original versions of most of the great spiritual traditions espoused a scientific method based on using the human mind-body organism as the instrument of observation.  So, if they're really as scientific as they claim, they should logically be prepared to do one of two things: a) engage in the spiritual experiments these traditions have outlined in order to prove or disprove their claims, or b) admit their ignorance on the subject.  

To help you with this, you should read the short article on "True Skepticism" on Dr. Gary Schwartz' website here.  


(Also, feel free to share your copy of my book, The 5 Pillars of Life, with them should they want a more detailed explanation, or send them to the Global Resilience Solutions website to get their own). 



Fourth, be prepared to share with them some of the latest scientific evidence on human potential, including experiments in such things as distance healing, research into the human energy system, scientific validation for methods used in energy psychology, such as EFT, and more.


To get started, you can have a look at the works of:

• Dr. Rupert Sheldrake (UK biologist who has pioneered the theory of morphic / morphogenetic fields)
• Dr. William Tiller (Renowned US physicist studying subtle energy fields)
• Cyndi Dale (US author who has done extensive research into energy medicine across cultures)
• Dr. Gary Schwartz (Doctor of psychology, medicine and surgery at the University of Arizona and a researcher into the spiritual side of psychology)

There are lots of others, of course, so I'm not pretending that's a complete list by any means.  Hopefully, though, all this will help you more than hold your own the next time your run into someone who "didn't get the memo"! 

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger 

What "Internal" Exercise Can Do for You

Internal exercise is much different than what most Westerners think of when they talk about going to the gym or getting in shape.  

Internal exercises are different because they've been designed with the whole person in mind, because they reintegrate mind and body and because they are sustainable - in other words, they lead to long-term health and, unlike some forms of exercise, they're not prepared to sacrifice that for the sake of short-term gains.  

                            Hatha Yoga


What's the opposite? Have you ever seen someone running on a treadmill and watching TV at the same time, with their body doing one thing and their mind another?  There you have it - a recipe for limited results, where you're treating your physical life and your emotional / spiritual life as unrelated.  

                                          Tai Chi



What are the classic internal exercise forms available to you today?  Chinese Qi Gong, Tai Chi, Bagua Zhang, Xing Yi Chuan, and Indian Hatha Yoga are all viable options if they're taught properly.  Granted, Bagua and Xing Yi are the least common; however I thought we should list them in case you come across them!  

                            Bagua's circle walking exercise

The Short List of What Internal Exercise Can Do for You

1. Helps Your Heart: improves your aerobic conditioning, oxygen uptake and endurance, while lowering resting heart rate.
   
   
2. Improves Your Flexibility: May not seem that way at first, but you'll become much more physically flexible doing internal exercises like Qi Gong, Tai Chi or Hatha Yoga.  This will reduce your stress, release trapped tensions and help you become more flexible emotionally.
   
   
3. Banishes Your Worries: Chronic worry and anxiety can increase your cortisol levels, which unfortunately correlate with elevated blood pressure, depression, weight gain and increased insulin resistance.
    
   
4. Improves Muscle Tone: Contrary to popular belief, these exercises build muscle like crazy.  This superior muscle tone helps protect you from injury, back pain and even arthritis.  Moreover, these exercises target deep core muscle groups vital to many aspects of your health and promote the flow of blood, oxygen and energy (qi or prana) throughout your system.
   
   
5. Takes Off the Pounds: Internal exercises burn far more calories than most people think and, even better, as a practitioner you're more likely to improve your nutrition.  This will help you drop even more weight, if that's your goal, or at least arrive at your optimum weight sooner.
   
   
6. Lubricates Your Joints:  To keep your joints healthy, internal exercises take them through their complete range of motion.  This bathes the joints in nutrients they might not otherwise get, keeping them healthy, pliable and resistant to injury.
   
   
7. Balances Your Blood Sugar:  Internal exercises promote better sugar metabolic function, improve cholesterol balance and decrease risk of diabetes and its related complications, such as kidney failure, heart attack, blindness and limb amputation.
   
   
8. Kicks in the "Relaxation Response":  That's an expression coined by Dr. Herbert Benson.  Internal exercise brings your breath, movement and mental attention together, calming you automatically and shifting your nervous system over to the restorative parasympathetic circuit.
    
   
9. Builds Those Bones:  Because they favor weight-bearing exercise, internal systems tend to build up bone density and stave off osteoporosis.  Moreover, some systems have special methods for keeping the bone marrow healthy and the bones resilient.
   
   
10. Improves Balance and Coordination: This is a function of mind-body integration and translates into fewer injuries and accidents as well as enhanced mobility. 
    
    
11. Circulates Your Blood Better: Vitality is partly dependent on efficient blood circulation.  Internal exercises wring the venous blood out of your nooks 'n crannies, reduce the workload on your heart and also thin your blood naturally, reducing the likelihood of clot-induced heart attacks or strokes.
    
    
12. Builds Mind-Body Awareness: As you practice, you become more and more sensitive to how you use your body - your balance, weight distribution, the places you habitually hold tension and the psychological resistances you've built to life that translate into physical manifestations of stress.  And once you're aware of these things, you can change them consciously!
    
    
13. Immunizes and Detoxes You:  Internal exercise postures move your lymph fluid quite efficiently, boosting your immune system, destroying pathogens (including cancer cells) and promoting a natural detoxification of internal organs in general and the lower digestive tract in particular.  This release of toxins and improved immune system functioning provides a solid basis for long-term health and longevity.
    
    
14. Deepens Your Sleep: By circulating blood, energy and oxygen more efficiently, reducing your stress and inducing a never-before experienced level of control over your own organism, how could you help but sleep better?
    
    
15. Instills Happiness "Software" in Your Mind: If your practice goes beyond just doing the routine to "get some exercise", you're in for a treat.  Internal exercise systems are holistic tools for cultivating mind-body harmony and happiness at levels you've probably not felt before.  And these systems often have or are connected with meditative systems that can revolutionize your life (in fact, that's what they've been designed to do).
    
    
16. Ramps Up Your Relationships: As you become calmer, more flexible and more connected with the core of your own being, other people will more often crave connection with you.  Internal exercise helps you become more compassionate, more approachable and more balanced - secrets you can share with your loved ones and anyone else who will listen.
    
    
17. Spiritualizes Your Romance: Internal systems are indeed holistic - they have or are connected with repositories of expertise on conjugal relations that can show you how to deepen your emotional connection with your spouse, master your sexuality and spiritualize sexual union. 

Needless to say, there's lots more!  Of course, none of these benefits come without regular and consistent practice.  The deeper benefits only come if you make the effort to build your lifestyle on these practices and the principles that underlie them.  

If you'd like to learn more about one form of internal exercise, Chinese Qi Gong, and its origins in the world's most successful tradition for cultivating health and longevity, just go here.

 ~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

What About the PLANET'S Resilience???

Resilience... the word's Latin root means "to bounce back".  And what do you bounce back from?  You bounce back from an event that knocks you off your feet, interrupts "business as usual" and leaves you head spinning.  We often refer to these events as "disasters".

I was privileged to spend much of the past week at the annual World Conference on Disaster Management (WCDM) in Toronto, a high profile event bringing together some of the top people in the fields of emergency management, business continuity and disaster recovery worldwide. 



And disasters appear to be getting more frequent and more severe.  In 2010, some 373 natural disasters killed 270,000 people in 131 countries, severely testing the structural resilience of nations and the personal resilience of over 200 million human beings.  But what if some of those disasters weren't really "natural" disasters at all, as we tend to assume?

World on the Edge...

Enter Lester Brown, world renowned environmentalist, author of World on the Edge and head of the Earth Policy Institute in Washington, DC.  Lester's address to hundreds of conference delegates blew everyone away...

What if last summer's devastating heatwave in Russia, that killed 56 thousand people and destroyed 40% of the Russian grain harvest, had been centered on Chicago instead of Moscow?  Easy, world grain reserves would have dropped to 52 days of consumption from 79 (the lowest reserve we've experienced), grain demand would have wildly outstripped supply, we would have seen food riots in many places throughout the world and more failing states as governments proved unable to cope with the internal pressures.  

With the world demand for food rising as population increases by about 219,000 per day, grain production goes down, fish stocks are depleted and fuel prices rise, the natural support systems that underlie the global economy are fast unraveling, said Lester.  

As we continue to pour carbon emissions into the atmosphere, climate change accelerates, cutting into grain production (a 1 degree Celsius rise in average temperature means a 10% drop in harvest), melting polar ice sheets and advancing the spread of desert lands.  








If we lose the Greenland ice sheet, ocean levels worldwide will rise by 7 meters.  Aside from inundating many coastal cities, this would be catastrophic for global rice production, further endangering the food supply and showing just how interconnected the factors of food, water, population and climate change really are.

When massive floods hit Pakistan in 2010, as the Indus river and its tributaries overflowed during heavy rainfall, 2 million homes were destroyed, 2 thousand people died and one fifth of the country was inundated.  But was it really a "natural" disaster?  Global warming had already driven the ambient temperature to record levels, accelerating glacial melting in the Western Himalayas, where the Indus begins.  Combine that with practically no investment in the kind of reforestation and soil conservation that could have mitigated the flooding and you have the greatest "natural" disaster in the region's history.   

Plan B - Digging Our Way Out of This Mess

Sounds pretty bleak, doesn't it?  Good thing Lester came with a plan to save us!  And saving us is where it's at, according to him.  Although we often hear talk about "saving the planet", the real point is to save civilization.  After all the planet will still be spinning merrily through space.  Question is... will we still be on it?

The truth is, we don't know exactly where the tipping points are, the points at which human actions will have so severely crippled the ecosystems that these ecosystems are no longer recoverable on a time scale that means anything to us.

In 2009, John Beddington, chief scientific advisor to the British government, said that the world was facing a "perfect storm" of food shortages, water scarcity and rising oil prices by 2030.  

Soon after, Jonathan Porritt, former chair of the UK Sustainable Development Commission, said he agreed, except that the date would be more like 2020.

Fortunately, the measures we need to save civilization are within our grasp.  The Earth Policy Institute's Plan B has four pillars:

1. Cut carbon emissions by 80% by 2020.
2. Stabilize the world population at no more than 8 billion.
3. Eradicate poverty worldwide.
4. Restore the natural support systems of the world economy.

Can it be done within the limited window of opportunity open to us?  Easily, but only if we're willing to make the tough decisions right now.  Otherwise it's the usual "too little, too late" and we'll all be in line for a collective Darwin Award.


Doing this will require us to redefine national security and realize the greatest threats we all face are no longer armed aggression, according to Lester.  If we restructure the tax system, use our industrial capacity properly and move to the sustainable fuel sources of wind, sun and geothermal energy, we can accomplish all four priorities for a mere $250 billion per year - peanuts in the great scheme of things.  

What Do YOU Think?

Resilience and Sustainability are fast becoming the watchwords of our time, and with good reason - you can't have one without the other.  An unsustainable world economy based on consumption, environmental destruction and resource depletion will never produce a resilient world.  


Weight lifting and distance running have proven to be non-sustainable forms of exercise for so many, leading to long term physical damage that actually undermines our resilience.  If we're running our entire civilization based on this same kind of short term thinking, then it's obvious we're undermining our collective resilience.  


So what do YOU think of all this?  What will YOU do to help reverse the trends before we reach the point of no return?  Use the comment function below and share your views with all of us - we would love to hear from you! 


~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

 

The Documentary "Openings" and How to "Open" Your Own Heart and Mind

You can read the text below OR listen to this post on audio here:

Last week I spent a couple of days in beautiful Denver, Colorado, filming my segments in the upcoming docudrama "Openings" (You can watch the trailer here).

The producers spent hours before the actual filming going through the "brutal" creative process of "teasing" out of me what they considered the golden nuggets they wanted to capture on digital celluloid.  One of our discussions revolved around the whole question of how we human beings can become open enough to experience a significant shift in our lives....

The Space of Freedom

As a human being, you're only free to the extent that you can free yourself from your previous programming.  And the only place you can do that is in the "space" between stimulus and response.  The only way to become a truly free and therefore truly functional and happy person is to expand that space.

For example, if you have no psychological "distance" between the two, your responses will be distressingly predictable and egocentric - someone insults you and you retaliate, someone compliments you and it goes to your head, etc.  At this level, you're basically a lower animal, fleeing pain, seeking pleasure and incapable of amassing enough personal integrity to follow higher principles when the going gets tough.

So, needless to say, you'll never experience personal growth of any kind without expanding the distance between stimulus and response.   

The 3 Keys to Expanding the Space

The good news is there are only three things you need to do in order to cultivate and build up true internal freedom.

The first is simply that you need to make a decision to do so - you have to decide you want to grow beyond your own programming, free yourself from the emotional chains imposed on you by other people, their emotions, ideologies and delusions.  And, while a simple decision on your part won't achieve deep transformation on its own, it's a step that everyone of us must take.

The second step is that we have to be willing to humble ourselves.  When some jerk cuts us off in traffic, we have the opportunity to stifle that string of four-letter words, for example.  And that takes guts.

The third step is simply to practice over and over again.  Good thing life presents us with unending opportunities to do just that!

If you look at the three keys carefully, you'll notice that all of them have one thing in common - they contradict your ego.  So opening yourself to a larger universe takes a decision to work against your ego, as well as determination and work.  

The Magical Results

As you expand the distance between stimulus and response, you'll find that you become more open to and accepting of other people.  Your responses to life's situations become more flexible, appropriate and successful.  Your old programming no longer determines your words or actions.  And, perhaps for the first time, you sense a real change in your world as you let go of old baggage.  

This means your capacity to be aware of, to accept and to deal with your own emotional content will expand.  So, naturally, your compassion for and empathy with other people will go way up.  After all, if I can't feel my own heart, I sure can't feel yours.  And all deep human communication is, in reality, a heart to heart connection between us. 

This means the quality of your relationships will improve and, in fact, the quantity likely will as well, since people will be increasingly drawn to you.  Another way to say this is that your interpersonal skills will improve even though, paradoxically, these aren't "skills" or "techniques" that can be taught at all.

Besides all this, your overall level of psychological and physical resistance to life's challenges (which I discussed in a previous post) will drop, thereby reducing your stress levels and improving your health.  

And, by the way, don't ever think that you can grow spiritually if you haven't grown emotionally first.  That's a common delusion in our culture and is plain wrong.

That then is what it means to open your heart and your mind, to expand your consciousness and acquire true inner freedom and spontaneous happiness.   Sound good to you?  Then you're probably asking yourself how you can do this even faster and more effectively...

Accelerating the Process

If your body is significantly uptight and inflexible, if you're storing emotional tensions throughout your body's energy system and muscular structure, then any attempts you make to become more open psychologically will likely hit the wall pretty fast.  So yes...

...to open yourself emotionally, you have to open yourself physically as well.  The most effective way to do this is to use some form of what I call "internal exercise", such as Qi Gong, Tai Chi or Hatha Yoga, for example.  


The great emotional benefit of these exercises is that they put your mental attention inside your body and help you process emotions and traumas locked in your bodily tissues in a gentle and natural way.  For instance, you cannot possibly do Hatha Yoga's sun salutation properly and stay in a bad mood, nor can you do Qi Gong's organ meditation and feel like a victim.  Not going to happen! 


As every teacher of any of these three methods knows from experience, the more physcially flexible you become, the more emotionally calm you become.  


So if you would like to become more open to divine guidance (one of the main themes of Openings), enjoy far better relationships and improve your health on every level, then just start doing what's outlined here and enjoy the process!


~ Dr. Symeon Rodger