30 minutes of Happiness

April 5th, 2012 | Posted by Lunar in Spirituality | Theories & Philosophy - (0 Comments)

Once, in a Superstore line-up, I looked around myself and couldn’t help but remember a passage from one of the Anastasia books. The summary of the passage was that even though our society aims to produce competent citizens, the end result is that nobody actually grows up happy. We are forced through the processing combiner, generally referred to as The System, to be molded into these cookie-cutter shapes, which are then easy to peg into one hole or another. There is no room for genius because everybody is given the same book at school and forced to learn to solve their kind of problems and only their way. And as I looked around, I knew it was all true. Standing around me were people who not only weren’t smiling but they had drained, exhausted expressions on their faces. The way they slumped their shoulders and stared out into space signified that they were yet again thinking of how to get through another day. Do you actually know someone who is happy for more than 30 minutes a day? Just 30 minutes out of 24 hours would make it 2.08% of the time but even that seems to be too steep for us! For an average person, there might be a spark of excitement they may experience in a day when their favorite soup is on the menu at the cafeteria or their child has handed them a picture he/she has painted of them. But no one actually tries to remain in that state of happiness for longer than a minute.

30 minutes could be a long time if you spent it wisely.

So what can you do during your 30 minutes of happiness?

  1. Meditate on your happiest moments, be it the first time you rode a bike, got your dog, or heard your firstborn laugh
  2. Write down all the big and small things your loved ones have done for you that you are grateful for. Make sure to relive the happy feelings you have felt at the time when it happened. (I once decided to record all the little things that Anton did for me during the first year of us dating and then right it all into a notebook and give it to him as a present. And when you read them all out in order, you got to relive all the butterfly-fluttering moments you have experienced at the time. I really enjoyed it, as did he.)
  3. Daydream of what you would like to come true in your life. No, don’t think about how much money you want to see in your bank account one day. Daydream about the kind of work would make you feel fulfilled, happy, and re-energized every day. Daydream about the places you would like to visit, what you would do there, and how you’re going to enjoy it. Daydream about the ideal home you would like to live in, be it something new or an improved version of what you already have. Daydream about everything and anything that would make you HAPPY and insert yourself into the dream as if you already have it. And now all you have to do is just bask in the sunshine :)
  4. Is there anything else that is happening in your life you are truly ecstatic about? Don’t just dismiss it. Celebrate it and give thanks for it as you remind yourself that all of this is happening thanks to your efforts, which means you can manifest anything else that you want in your life. If you just bought a new car, you can celebrate it in your mind for 2 weeks or a month if you can boost up your energy reliving the excitement every day. If you got the job you were dearly hoping to get, recognize how grateful you are for this opportunity every day that you go to work. Bask in the happiness for as long as you can when these events enter your life. Be present in the moment. And you will attract even more :)
  5. And most important of all, MAKE THIS A DAILY ROUTINE! Pick a time in your day when you can do this uninterrupted. For some people, it could be while they are getting ready for work; for others, it could even be while they are at work or before bedtime. Whatever works, just make sure it’s daily. 2% of your time isn’t that much to ask for now, is it?

On Birth and Incarnation

February 24th, 2012 | Posted by Lunar in Babies et al | Spirituality - (0 Comments)

I have read a particular amount of literature on the New Age / esoteric topics that touch upon incarnation / reincarnation topic and while I realize many dominant religions have an opinion on this, I choose to accept only what my intuition calls to be true to me at this time. I read Jane Roberts’ Oversoul Seven Trilogy which aimed to round up the teachings of the metaphysical being Seth, whom Jane had channeled for 25 years and had produced 23 or 24 books in that time. Seth material is very dense to read and comprehend, which is why the novel was so much more involving to read. And based on one of the experiences of one soul that the novel had described, I now accept this passage to be true to me:

Cited from: http://auromere.wordpress.com/2011/04/27/when-does-the-soul-enter-the-body/ (Yes, it’s a blog just like any other but it is the quality of information that I trust, with much less regard for the level of authority this person carries. Even the most unlikely person could be the source of the greatest wisdom as long as your intuition identifies it to be true.)

“An Indian spiritual Guru, who shall remain unnamed, was recently asked the question by someone in an American audience: “When does the soul choose a body?  After conception, is it ok to abort a foetus if we already have children and do not want an accidental pregnancy?“.  The question assumes significance because unlike Christianity, which declares that life begins at conception, Hinduism avers  that the souls reincarnate into new bodies at birth.  Since abortion is a politically charged issue, a hushed murmur rippled through the crowd before the Guru gently defused the tension by leaving the question unanswered. 

While Sri Aurobindo and the Mother Mirra Alfassa did not specifically comment on  abortion, they did offer a few pertinent remarks on time of conception and contraception, which we present here.

Mother Mirra Alfassa on the time of conception

(The Mother based on her occult insights presents a fluid timeline of the moment of conception.)

It depends on the state of development of the soul which wants to reincarnate ― we take the word “soul” here in the sense of the psychic being, what we call the psychic being ― it depends on its state of development, on the milieu in which it is going to incarnate, on the mission it has to fulfil ― that makes many different conditions….It depends very largely on the state of consciousness of the parents. For it goes without saying that there is a stupendous difference between conceiving a child deliberately, with a conscious aspiration, a call to the invisible world and a spiritual ardour, and conceiving a child by accident and without intending to have it, and sometimes even without wanting it at all. I don’t say that in the latter case there cannot also be an incarnation, but it usually takes place later, not at the conception.

For the formation of the child it makes a great difference.

If the incarnation takes place at the conception, the whole formation of the child to be born is directed and governed by the consciousness which is going to incarnate: the choice of the elements, the attraction of the substance ― a choice of the forces and even the substance of the matter which is assimilated. There is already a selection. And this naturally creates altogether special conditions for the formation of the body, which may already be fairly developed, evolved, harmonised before its birth. I must say that this is quite, quite exceptional; but still it does happen.

More frequently there are cases in which, just at the moment of its birth, that is to say, of its first gesture of independence, when the child begins to develop its lungs by crying as much as it can, at that moment, very often, this sort of call from life makes the descent easier and more effective.

Sometimes days and at times months pass, and the preparation is slow and the entry takes place very gradually, in quite a subtle and almost imperceptible way.

Sometimes it comes much later, when the child itself becomes a little conscious and feels a very subtle but very real relation with something from above, far above, which is like an influence pressing upon it; and then it can begin to feel the need of being in contact with this something which it does not know, does not understand, but which it can only feel; and this aspiration draws the psychic and makes it descend into the child.

I am giving you here a few fairly common instances; there are many others; this may happen in innumerable different ways. What I have described to you are the most frequent cases I have seen.

So, the soul which wants to incarnate stays at times in a domain of the higher mind, quite close to the earth, having chosen its future home; or else it can descend further, into the vital, and from there have a more direct action; or again it can enter the subtle physical and very closely govern the development of its future body.

(Collected Works of the Mother, vol. 8, p 335-338)”

On Divorce

February 21st, 2012 | Posted by Lunar in Familial Reflections | Relationships | Vedas - (0 Comments)

Today’s date is quite interesting 21-02, 2012 but that’s merely a derailing off topic.

My parents have been separated, then divorced for two years now. And although I did not have to go through my own stages of grief to deal with it (mostly because there was no grief; I felt like it was long overdue and the day that my dad had moved out I thought was a bright beginning towards family happiness), I am still trying to get my mom to see it the same way that I do.

I keep trying to excavate the core issue here so I could “learn from the mistakes of others” but too many things emerge out of the water for me to say that he was impossible to deal with but she could’ve used her woman’s power to change things around. But the question is: should she have?

My mother was always a very grounded and practical person. My dad liked to take calculated risks, albeit maybe not as calculated as my mom would have liked them to be. She chose to accept that everybody lived average family lives and that forever and ever happiness only existed in story books. She was great at handling the worst when she knew that it was the only way out. Even when she was worried, she had a look of determination on her face. That’s why I can’t figure out why she doesn’t see this as just another challenge on her path she needs to get through. Maybe this was how she was before because other people, her family, depended on her keeping her cool and now it’s only her for whom this challenge really matters. And she’s crumbling.

There is a huge list of reasons why I never got along with my dad. Maybe we are too alike to keep seeing our own minuses mirrored at us in each other. But regardless, his actions following through the divorce were not honourable and so, unfortunately I got a little biased along the way.

The thing that my dad had never realized is that in a relationship of a woman and a man, moreover – a marriage, the woman manifests. She creates forms, “castles in the air”, that the man then substantiates using his God given physical power. If she is convinced that his goals do not meet the best interest of the entire family, she will paint a different picture, which will bystep his original plans. He could huff and puff but they will both be at a standstill because the man is not putting in the effort into this newly created picture and the woman refuses to manifest the man’s picture because she doesn’t have faith in it. A woman’s faith is like steam powering a train. You could try pushing a train on your own but it will be the steam giving it full force of speed. And without a train, a steam is just useless vapor. And unfortunately my dad never seemed to realize that. He definitely knew that her lack of faith in his investment plans was the stopper too difficult for him to remove and for that, he got angry at her.

So in his mind – she wasn’t fulfilling one of her wifely duties: supporting the husband. But he also never realized that one of his husband duties was performed substandard: the duty to protect. It is a husband’s job to make his wife feel that she is fully protected from everything, safe in his little bubble. She has to feel safe from any possible outside threats (not just bullies on the street, although that’s part of the list too) including financial ones. How is she supposed to feel safe if her entire marriage she only heard, “We are on a budget” “We can’t afford that” or “We have other priorities”? I remember the days when my dad would bring home some expensive piece of technology, like the blu-ray player right when they first came out or a new laptop or else, and my mom would just be stupified in shock. He wanted to spoil himself once in a while but how is she to feel if not only was she not consulted on the purchase but every other 364 days of the year, she gets told that there’s a budget to abide to? She couldn’t even accept gifts because she felt that the money that was spent on her could have been spent somewhat more usefully to buy something for her children; she was that selfless and still is. But why? Because for 25 years the fear-based belief had rooted itself deep into her subconscious that money is tight and we need to survive. Same as it is the husband’s job to be the primary breadwinner according to the Vedas, same it is to provide comforts to his family, especially the woman who birthed two of his children and left entirely everything to move to a country she didn’t want to go to.

If he had known those two factors, maybe she would feel safer about him taking the risks that he did. Maybe he would have gotten the support he wanted because she would believe in him more…

Switch to our mobile site