How Inner Peace Leads to World Peace
Although the Dalai Lama was probably not the first person in history to say it, he is undoubtedly the most well known in recent times. Paraphrased, what His Holiness said was this: World peace can only be attained through inner peace. It’s a wonderful thought, isn’t it? Upon just hearing the idea as it flows from the written words on the page into the voice of our minds, the simple statement feels like some morsel of ancient wisdom being reborn from an unchronicled time before geopolitical conflict. It seems like an idea that conveys a forgotten teaching; a teaching that although once lost, rings true with a familiar resonance like we’ve heard it before. It’s almost like the very thought strikes the tuning fork in the core of our being. World peace can only be attained through inner peace. And so we hear the Dalai Lama speak the words, and without even hesitating… from more of a feeling space… we respond, “Yes! That’s right! That’s truth!” But is it? Is it truth? Does inner peace indeed lead to world peace? And if so, how? How exactlydoes something as complex and seemingly unattainable as world peace spring forth from something as simple as inner peace? Is a real and lasting world peace even attainable? Or is it just a pie-in-the-sky wish of some forgotten hippy generation that is now off collecting cash for their retirement accounts, while the rest of us are left with some falsely pious gesture of mentioning world peace at Christmas, or Ramadan, or Rosh Hashanah? As you know, in business school and even in regular life,...Scientific Proof “The Law of Attraction” Blocks Happiness
A recent study was published in the journal of Personality and Individual Differences, outlining a basic truth that spiritual masters have known for eons. The study, done at the Department of Psychology and Neruoscience at Baylor University, showed that materialism has a direct correlation to lower levels of life satisfaction. In addition, the study specifically targeted how materialists find it harder to be grateful, which they connected to unmet psychological needs. Of course this isn’t new information to any of the world’s spiritual masters. Back since the days of Buddha 2500 years ago the idea has been forwarded that the release of all attachments leads to liberation. Attachment of course means attachment to ideas, including the ideas that we need certain material objects in order to be happy in life. Now… it’s no secret that a certain core set of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs can certainly be helpful in allowing individuals to attain higher levels of life satisfaction and happiness. But as a teacher of emotional intelligence, and a proponent of a teaching I call the “Equation of Emotion” based on how the brain processes emotion, it is also extremely clear why materialists have a lower level of life satisfaction than other people when this “needs” train runs off the tracks. In its most basic operation, the Equation of Emotion works like this: Our Expectations and/or Preferences (EPs) that are associated with our attachments of mind get compared to our Perceptions (RPs) within our mind and our perceptions and appraisals of the world around us. The EPs get put on one side of the scale. The RPs get put...Science: Consciousness May Be Non-Local
Let me wax “crazy” for a second: It was 3 or so years ago when I published on the podcast that my enlightenment experience over 10 years ago had revealed to me that all consciousness was non-local, and that the intelligence that makes up all life and matter in the universe was created at the very fundamental quantum level, working upward from there, thus creating the complex systems of life as we know it. I wasn’t the first to realize this. Every enlightened being from before the Buddha and forward has known this simple fact, even if we lacked the scientific language to be able to explain it. Folks who have passed through the full-on enlightenment experience know that the intelligence of the universe… the energy that gives us humans (and all life forms) life and consciousness… that thing some people call God… THAT actually exists down below the smallest known particles and constantly CREATES (present tense) the Earth and universe as we know it, tying us all together through a field of intelligence that may some day be scientifically quantifiable. Yeah… it sounds crazy… EXCEPT FOR THE FACT THAT SCIENCE JUST GOT A HUGE STEP CLOSER TO PROVING JUST THAT. This is from ScienceDaily, a website dedicated to prominent science news: Jan. 16, 2014 — A review and update of a controversial 20-year-old theory of consciousness published in Physics of Life Reviews claims that consciousness derives from deeper level, finer scale activities inside brain neurons. The recent discovery of quantum vibrations in “microtubules” inside brain neurons corroborates this theory, according to review authors Stuart Hameroff and Sir Roger Penrose. They suggest...The Top 15 Ways to Achieve Spiritual Enlightenment
The Basics of Spiritual Enlightenment Spiritual Enlightenment transcends religion. It transcends thought. It transcends mind and its senses. And it conveys a level of wisdom and knowledge about life and the universe that is unparalleled. The concept of enlightenment implies complete understanding of life and the universe, which usually is accompanied by a detachment of all things impermanent and a complete awareness of everything that is, at the moment that it is. Pretty cool, huh? Yeah. It’s what gave the Buddha his mojo, what gave Muhammad his immense understanding, and what gave Jesus (and Thomas) the power to heal people and perform other “miracles” (don’t forget Peter walked on water too). If you want to understand more about spiritual enlightenment, please read the article I posted that explains more about spiritual enlightenment here. This article is going to talk about the disciplines used world-wide to attain spiritual enlightenment. I passed through the portal of the enlightenment experience about 12 years ago. I call it the “enlightenment experience”, because that’s what it was… an experience. It was an experience of my regular senses shutting down, to be replaced with amazing visions, sounds, realizations, epiphanies, and a melding with an intelligence and love so overwhelming it literally changed my life and granted me a wisdom of which I was not worthy beforehand. It was brought on by a deep focused meditation after a short prayer. If you would like to hear more about my enlightenment experience, watch the video (or read the transcript) I made about the first time I encountered it. So how does one become enlightened? Well there’s not...What is Spiritual Enlightenment?
So what exactly IS spiritual enlightenment anyway? Simply put, spiritual enlightenment is a concept mostly associated with Buddhism and Hinduism, but it also has unrecognized connections into most other religions as well. Enlightenment implies complete understanding of life and the universe, which usually is accompanied by a detachment of all things impermanent and a complete awareness of everything that is, at the moment that it is. The spiritual belief purports that non-enlightened life is full of suffering produced by desire and other emotions that attach the mind to worldly things; suffering is the inevitable result of attachment to these necessarily transitory things. A person thus becomes enlightened when they remain in the world yet becomes free of attachment to it. Enlightenment is considered the end of a being’s spiritual journey, be it within one life or across many. In Buddhism, enlightenment is called nirvana. Nirvana is believed to be a state of peace and unity with the cosmos. Different forms of Buddhism teach different techniques for achieving nirvana. Orthodox Buddhists, for example, try to directly follow Buddha’s teachings: in particular, the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path. Others, such as Zen Buddhists, may use challenging mental exercises, such as koans, which are solutionless riddles designed to jerk one’s mind out of conscious thought into enlightenment. Most forms of Buddhism also use regular meditation as a central element of the path to spiritual enlightenment. Hinduism also uses the concept of nirvana, called moksha, considering it a representation of freedom from desire and other worldly passions. Spiritual enlightenment is also part of the conclusion to the Hindu cycle of...Mind Hacking Happiness
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