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What is Addiction?
Addiction is a complicated disorder and chronic dysfunction, which changes the operating function of the brain and body, which can also create dangerous damage to families, relationships between couples, workplaces, schools, and communities. When a person is addicted to any ... Views: 991
There are tales in the Puranas that indicate that even the Gods, if they want to evolve and develop, must take birth on earth in a human incarnation. If we look broadly at the evolution of consciousness from the gross material, to the vital, to the vital-mental and eventually to the mental ... Views: 336
What drags you down? I'll share what does it for me.
My negative thoughts can attack me on even the best of days. They are so persistent and so effective that I have come to call them The Undercurrent.
The Undercurrent is a quiet, unseen, and vicious tug that is always running just beneath ... Views: 1438
A powerful technique for inner growth and understanding is to sit quietly and simply observe one’s thoughts and feelings as they arise. Then, trace back any of them to where and how it arose. What triggered it? Where did it come from? Initially it is difficult to successfully carry out this ... Views: 240
Recently the question arose about how and in what form the witness consciousness survives death. This is not a question for either philosophical reasoning or religious dogma. Regardless of the opinion that these general approaches put forth, it is between the individual soul, as a unique ... Views: 296
We can identify the direction of the evolutionary development of the universe towards the expression of free will, despite the fact that at our current state we can recognise that there is apparently very little free will operative in our actions. In the physical world, Matter operates under ... Views: 292
We are educated and habituated to focus on our differences. We see different gender, different class, different racial characteristics, different religious backgrounds, different temperaments, different interests and focus, different value sets, different philosophies of life and living, ... Views: 146
Each society, each religion, each culture in the world has its own characteristic ideas and responses to the questions that arise during an individual’s life. Many of these are programmed into the individual in childhood, starting with prenatal conditioning based on the energies of the mother. ... Views: 280
Dr. Dean Ornish held a webinar on Sunday November 20, 2022 with the Vegan Society of Honolulu, Hawaii, in which he succinctly explained the role of suffering in the progress of humanity. For those who do not know about his work, Dr. Ornish has spent decades studying the impact of diet and ... Views: 470
Spiritual seekers are frequently advised not to indulge in or display any ‘powers’ that arise along the way. Patanjali, in his Yoga Sutras, describes a number of powers that can arise naturally through the practice of Yoga, and seekers throughout the ages have validated the reality of powers ... Views: 255
External impressions, sensations, impulsions, events all traverse the nervous pathways from the sense organs to the mind, which tends to react to these sensations and thereby remains in a constant state of disturbance. In the modern world, with our addiction to social media, mobile phones, ... Views: 140
The vital nature of man is a core existential element of our existence. In the past, those who took up serious spiritual practice frequently recognised both the power of the vital and the difficulty of bringing it under some kind of managed and focused control, and thus, they attempted to ... Views: 612
It has been famously stated that we cannot understand the system within which we are acting until we can shift our view to a standpoint outside that frame. As long as we are immersed within any particular system or standpoint, we are locked into the viewpoint and understanding embedded within ... Views: 360
When we think about what qualities within ourselves are aids to achieving conscious contact with the psychic being, the soul, we would likely not name ‘enthusiasm’ as one of them. The Mother, however, makes the case for this quality. Those things that motivate us to learn, to expand our ... Views: 366
The mind can be a powerful tool for spiritual growth, or it can become an obstacle under certain circumstances. Many devotees take the position that aspiration, devotion, surrender to the Divine is the only way forward. For those individuals that may indeed be true. Not everyone is capable of ... Views: 403
Of what possible value is the effort at mental, emotional, vital or physical progress to the soul if it cannot carry that progress forward into the next, and future lives. In his epic poem, Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol, Sri Aurobindo raises the issue: “But the oblivion that succeeds the fall, ... Views: 363
The witness consciousness is an extremely useful mode for the seeker to adopt in any attempt to overcome the limitations and deformations of the external nature, whether to try to attain liberation and release from the world, or, as Sri Aurobindo suggests, to work toward the eventual divinsation ... Views: 29
There is a dynamic that frequently occurs when an individual starts to actively take up the yogic path. At a certain stage of development, the need to bring peace into the being, and the need for a calm, quiet energy to support the practice of meditation may take center stage. At that point, the ... Views: 93
When the vital nature is involved, which individual has the power to control its impulsions and demands and keep it focused on the higher aims of life? The vital nature is a powerful and essential component of life on earth. It animates material nature and functions through the force of desire. ... Views: 346
Sri Aurobindo and the Mother make a distinction between the ‘desire soul’ of the vital nature and the ‘true soul’ which expresses the inmost being that is a direct spark of the Divine. They differ in their focus, orientation, and basis of action. The desire soul incorporates the drives of the ... Views: 356
A life focused solely on meditation, inner development, growth of knowledge, or on prayer and devotion, tends to avoid the implications of the ongoing evolution of consciousness and the need for transformation and positive change to create the circumstances for that evolution of consciousness to ... Views: 342
Many people have had the experience of a feeling that something is happening in the body, such as a feeling of a “cold coming on”. In some cases the feeling is very strong and the pressure is great. There may be some sneezing, some tickle in the throat, some coughing, some amount of congestion. ... Views: 192
We frequently hear people saying that this world is a world of opposites and one cannot have joy without sorrow, pleasure without pain. This is accepted basically as an axiom for living in the world. And it is true, that for virtually everyone there is a mixture of positive and negative vital ... Views: 464
In order to carry out the spiritual practices and work for the transformation of human nature, the vital being needs to agree to changes its habitual sources of satisfaction and fulfillment to an entirely different basis. The pursuit of pleasure, and the accompanying experience of pain, is ... Views: 317
In the ordinary life in the world, the action of vital desire, and the attempt to fulfill the desires is accepted to such a degree that it is not even consciously noted or treated as anything other than ‘human nature’. Society sets certain customary restraints or limits in order to build a civil ... Views: 589
As each phase of the evolution of consciousness manifests, it arises from the prior stage and continues to interact with that stage. At the point of meeting, the stages take on characteristics that resemble in many ways both together. Thus, the higher forms of Matter begin to exhibit ... Views: 617
Most people have had the experience. An individual has a dispute with a friend, a relative, a spouse. No resolution takes place. An attempt to convince or control the other person is met with resistance. There may be aggression or threats of violence. Or a period of silent avoidance may result. ... Views: 163
Lion tamers, horse whisperers, dog trainers, all learn certain things about how to bring the vital nature into a compliant and participatory mood, to carry out the wishes of the trainer. They quickly learn that they cannot simply allow these vital beings the absolute license to do whatever they ... Views: 482
The vital nature is closely tied to the operation of desire. Whether it is a desire for recognition, for money, for sex, for achievement of some sort, for acceptance or comfort, the vital nature activates its energy to reach out and grab some result it believes will satisfy that desire. At the ... Views: 188
The vital has a natural tendency to seek for the fulfillment of its being in some form of enjoyment. In the external surface being, this enjoyment takes the form of a seeking after pleasure. With this seeking after pleasure, however, comes also the experience of pain. Pleasure and pain alternate ... Views: 338
In Shakespeare’s play The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice the vital reaction of jealousy is explored in considerable depth. The title character Othello is married to a young woman with whom he is passionately in love, in the normal sense of the word. Iago, who wants to bring down Othello, ... Views: 629
When Life emerges in Matter, there must, obviously, be some mechanism for the two principles to interact with one another. Matter must develop ways to sense, respond to and react to the action of the Life-Force. Similarly, when the Life-Force evolves and manifests in Matter, it must also become ... Views: 328
THE VITALITY OF APPLICATION and RESEARCH-BASED LEARNING FOR THE 21ST-CENTURY YOUTH
Times are changing, and the change is leaking in truly quick! The expression of today is more innovation-based than it was ever previously. In actuality, innovative headways have given some quick development in ... Views: 579
What makes us move in one direction or another? How do we choose, decide, set forth in one direction as opposed to another? There is the inner readiness that creates a sense of incompleteness, dissatisfaction or a view of something better, more perfect, more beautiful, more essential than what ... Views: 244
The development of existentialism as a philosophical viewpoint on human existence in the world took place primarily during the 19th and 20th centuries. it focused on the apparent lack of meaning in the universe and thus, human significance had to be developed from an individual standpoint of ... Views: 124
It is a characteristic trait of the human ego-personality that we easily see faults and issues in others and in external circumstances, that we fail to see within ourselves. But how do we recognise something outside if we have no way to relate to it, if we do not produce the vibrational pattern ... Views: 89
When we begin to observe ourselves, the thoughts we entertain, the emotions we express, the feelings we have and accept, the physical reactions that occur within ourselves, it soon becomes clear that we are more ‘reactive’ than ‘active’. We respond to energies, vibrations, pressures from outside ... Views: 350
Do you feel that your destiny a string of random events? Several think to
that greater influences form our fate. Cleromancy is a diversified
psychic resource of pictures
resulting messages revealed. As an illustration, when Tarot cards are mixed the
during which the cards seem in a ... Views: 1225
While most people are quite insulated from direct confrontation with extremes which the body is asked to endure, our modern media makes it possible to see and relate to some of these extreme situations. Far beyond the pressure of training for and running in a marathon race, there are ... Views: 190
When the seeker first becomes aware of the practice of separating the witness consciousness from the active external nature, he may naturally take his stance in the mental awareness and begin to observe his actions and reactions from the mental standpoint. This generally yields some kind of ... Views: 295
The establishment of the witness-consciousness, separated from and observing the actions of the external nature, is an important process, not just for those taking up the practice of the integral yoga; rather, it can be a valuable tool for everyone to be more effective in directing their own ... Views: 314
Have any good things come from the virus situation? It is an awful situation and there have been many deaths, upset, worry and chaos caused by it, but perhaps there are one or two good bits that come from it - the silver lining in the clouds.
Perhaps we have learned about patience, ... Views: 1068
We tend to take for granted the feelings, emotions, ideas, thoughts, creative impulses, imaginations, insights, inspirations and intuitions we experience. We do not generally try to find out the source of these things, or how they come to be known to or experienced by us. We treat our bodies as ... Views: 696
All life, our entire existence, whether we are actively involved in a conscious spiritual discipline, or living a ‘normal’ life in the world following the demands of our needs, desires, relationships and ambitions, etc. is a field of growth, experience and develop. We respond to opportunities, ... Views: 102
For the majority of individuals who live on the surface of their being, the energy they experience, the thoughts, emotions, feelings, perceptions are simply the working of the machinery, with no understanding about the process or source of this energetic action in their lives. For those who have ... Views: 491
We generally live under an illusion of separateness from other beings and the rest of the world. We believe our individual personality, individual body, life, mind are independent from everyone and everything else. This fixed idea, however, is part of the confusion we experience that misleads us ... Views: 424
The integral yoga does not focus on the abandonment of human life in the world. The liberation from the hold of the ego-consciousness and its fixation on the terms of success for life that the ego concentrates on, is an important preliminary step. In the end however, nothing less is envisioned ... Views: 508
It is said that for the yogic practitioner, day and night are reversed when compared to the vast majority of human beings. This statement has many possible implications that can be explored. “Day” and “Night” are representative of opposite concepts, different ways of seeing and reacting to ... Views: 398
The focus on attacks by hostile forces, and difficulties faced, easily engages the ego-personality in a form of vanity. It strengthens the hold of the ego, rather than loosening attachment to open the way for the shift to the divine standpoint. When it takes a rajasic form, the ego glorifies in ... Views: 580
There is light at the end of the tunnel, but some days it seems like it is miles away. You have done
everything you can think of to do, physically or mentally and don't even get me started on the list of emotions
that have been involved in the whole process of creating the dream that you ... Views: 1550