DEALING WITH FEAR, ANXIETY AND WORRY:-

DEALING WITH FEAR, ANXIETY AND WORRY: –

In the course of lifetime many people will suffer from devastating degree of anxiety and worry severe enough to meet the criteria for the medical diagnosis of an anxiety disorder, that serve no useful purpose and do nothing but undermine their happiness, and interfere with their ability to accomplish their goals.

Mental Effect: –

The human brain is equipped with an elaborate system designed to register the emotions of fear, anxiety and worry. This system mobilizes us to respond to danger by setting in motion a complex sequence of biochemical and physi- ological events. The adoptive side of worry is that it allows us to anticipate danger and take preventive action. But excessive anxiety and worry can have devastating effects on the mind and body, becoming the source of much emo- tional suffering and even physical illness. On mental level, chronic anxiety can impair judgment, increase irritability, and hinder one’s overall effectiveness.

Physical effects: –

Excessive fear, Anxiety and worry can cause depressed immune function, heart disease, gastrointestinal disorders, fatigue, and muscle tension and pain. Sci- entists have recently discovered a gene that is linked to people who are prone to anxiety and negative thinking.

How to overcome Anxiety: –
1) 
In most severe cases of anxiety, medication can be useful part of the treatment regimen. 2) Working on improving our physical health through proper diet and exercise can also be helpful. 3) Cultivating compassion and deepening our connection with others can promote good mental hygiene and help combat anxiety states. 4) Cognitive intervention – This technique involves actively challenging the anxiety generating thoughts and replacing with well-reasoned positive thoughts and attitudes.

How to overcome Fear: –

There are many types of fear, 1) These kinds of fear are very genuine, based on valid reasons, fear of violence or fear of bloodshed fro example. 2) Fear about the long-term negative consequences of our negative actions, fear of suffering, fear of our negative emotions such as hatred. 3) There are fears of our own mental creations like childish fears to scare away the child. 4) There are fears based on mental projection. This kind of fear is related to hatred. In dealing with fear, one need to first use one’s faculty of reasoning and try to discover whether there is a valid basis of your fear or not.

How to overcome worry about a variety of Day-to-Day problems: –

To reduce that kind of worry is to cultivate a thought – If the situation or problem is such that it can be remedied then there is no need to worry about it. – If there is no way out, no solution, no possibility of resolution, then also there is no pointing being worried about it, because you can not do anything about it anyway. Some type of anxiety may have biological roots like some people tend to get sweaty palms, and for this medical treatment may be useful. In any case the sincere motivation acts as an antidote to re- duce fear and anxiety.

Motivation: –

If you develop a pure and sincere motivation, if you are motivated by a wish to help on the basis of kindness, compassion, and respect, then you can carry on any kind of work, in any field, and function more effectively with less fear or worry, not being afraid of what others think or whether you ultimately will be successful in reaching your goal. The closer one gets to being motivated by altruism, the more fearless one becomes on the face of even extremely anxi- ety-provoking circumstances.

Generally being honest with oneself and others about what you are or are not capable of doing can counteract that feeling of lack of self-confidence.

What is energy healing?

Our entire body is one big energy field. Hidden beneath the physical surface are levels of emotions, thought patterns and learned beliefs. Imbalances and energy blockages on these levels manifest as emotional discomforts and even physical illness. The most effective way to treat an illness is to uncover its root cause and begin the healing process from the deepest emotional level. Con- ventional medicine takes a different approach to healing and can encounter difficulties in determining the actual cause of a disease. Energy healing com- pliments traditional treatments offering a holistic healing solution encompass- ing body, mind and soul.

PAIN AND SUFFERING IN LIFE:-

PAIN AND SUFFERING IN LIFE: –

There is a difference between physical pains, which is a physiological process, and suffering, which is our mental and emotional response to the pain. So the question arises – can finding, an underlying purpose and meaning behind our pain modify our attitude about it? And can a change in attitude lessen the degree to which we suffer when we are physically injured?

To view pain not as universal enemy as seen in the west but as a remarkable, elegant, and sophisticated biological system that warns us of damage to our body and thus protects us.

There is no doubt that our attitude and mental outlook can strongly affect the degree to which we suffer when we are in physical pain. Let’s say, for instance, that two individuals, a construction worker and a concert pianist suffer the same finger injury, while the amount of physical pain might be the same for both individuals, the construction worker might suffer very little and in fact rejoice if the injury resulted in a month of paid vacation which he or she was in need of, whereas the same injury could result in intense suffering to the pianist who viewed playing as his or her primary source of joy in life.

The idea that our mental attitude influences our ability to perceive and endure pain is not limited to theoretical situations such as above; it has been demonstrated by many scientific studies and experiments. Researchers looking in to this issue began by tracing the pathways of how pain is perceived and experienced. Pain begins with a sensory signal – an alarm that goes off when nerve endings are stimulated by something that is sensed as dangerous. Millions of signals are sent through the spinal cord on the base of the brain. These signals are then sorted out and a message is sent to higher areas of the brain telling of pain. The brain then sorts through the prescreened message and decides on the response. It is at this stage that the mind can assign value and meaning to the pain and intensify or modify our perception of pain.

We convert pain in to suffering in the mind.

To loosen the suffering of pain, we need to make a crucial distinction between the pain of pain and the pain we create by our thoughts about the pain. Fear, anger, guilt, loneliness, and helplessness are all mental and emotional responses that can intensify pain. So, in developing an approach to dealing with pain, we can of course work at the lower levels of pain perception, using the tools of modern medicine such as medications and other procedures, but we can also work at the higher levels by modifying our outlook and attitude.

Other experiments with human beings, involving hypnosis and placebos, have also demonstrated that in many cases the higher brain functions can overrule the pain signals from the lower stages on the pain pathway. They not only warn us and protects us, but it unifies us. Without pain sensation in our hands or feet, those parts no longer seem to belong to our body. It is our suffering that is the most basic element that we share with others, the factor that unifies us with all living creatures.

Suffering according to Buddhism: –

According to Buddhism all suffering is due to desires and that liberation involves their suppression, by following the “Noble eight fold path”

  1. Right Action
  2. Right Belief
  3. Right Aspiration
  4. Right Speech
  5. Right Livelihood
  6. Right Endeavor
  7. Right Thought
  8. Right Meditation

THOUGHT POWER

THOUGHT POWER: –

All that we are is the result of what we have thought, it is founded on our thoughts and made up of our thoughts.

Thoughts are ink in the pen with which we are writing our destiny.

As you think so you become. By changing one’s thought pattern, one can change one’s life.

Thoughts are things, thoughts are forces, and thoughts are the building blocks of life.

Destiny is not matter of chance; it is a matter of choice.

A thought if it is constantly held in mind, will drive us to action, if it is a thought of service, it will lead us to an act of service, if it is a thought of impurity, it will lead us to an act of impurity.

Thoughts take more time and space in our lives than actions.

Thought creates an action: –

An action, which is repeated, creates a habit and a habit is a terrible thing. The sum total of our habits makes our character. It is character that determines our destiny. If we wish to change our destiny, we must begin to change our thoughts. We must change our pattern of thinking. Our minds need to be cleansed of thoughts of lust, hatred and greed, passion and pride, selfishness and miserliness, greed and arrogance, envy and jealousy, resentment and ill will. There are those who nurture thoughts of hatred, envy and jealousy in their hearts how can they ever be happy?

Hatred and happiness can never dwell together, even as darkness and light can never live together.

Thought Control: –

So many of our ills would be cured, if only we could change the pattern of our mind. Change the mind and you change the world. The modern world has gone astray, because it lays undue emphasis on the “work” side of life. Work has its place in life, but more important than “work” is “Thought”. Take care of your thoughts, because every thought is a force, which we generate for our good, or evil.

No it is not our fault if evil thoughts come to us and tear in to bits the fabric of good life, which we may have gradually built. But it is our fault if we welcome evil thoughts and let them germinate in the soil of our minds. Out of them will grow trees of bitter fruits, which we shall be compelled to swallow. If we have good thoughts – thoughts of love and compassion, beauty and joy, faith and freedom, of peace and wisdom – we invite to ourselves good forces, forces of light and in that measure, we create heaven around ourselves.

Positive and Negative Thinking: –

It is not that the man with a positive attitude refuses to recognize the negative side of life. Life has a negative side, a dark side also. The pathways of life are strewn with difficulties. But the man with the positive attitude refuses to dwell on the negative side of life. He looks for the best results from the worst conditions. Surrounded by the trials and tribulations, he looks for some place to stand on. Conditions may be adverse, yet he continues to expect good things. It is an inviolable law of life, that when you expect good, good will comes to you. There are people who always think negative. Speak to them of something and they will tell you “It can not be done! It is impossible! There are people who always think of diseases and death. Those are the ones who, through the magnet power of their own thoughts, draw disease to themselves. They are their own enemies.

Vibrations: –

Each one of us is vibrating to a particular frequency like a tuning fork. Tuning fork vibrates to 118, 186, 212 frequency and so on. Each one us vibrate to a particular frequency. The frequency at which one is vibrating is different from the other. When both people’s frequencies are in harmony with each other, they like each other. But if they are in disharmony, then for no apparent reason they do not like each other. The spirit is vibratory. In the measure in which I invite spirit in to my life, in that measure I will be more and more vibratory. Every vibration contains certain power. There are vibrations that are very pow- erful, while others are less powerful. Each one of us is the generator of vibra- tions. There are people of such powerful vibrations that they can move out and heal other people or help other people. A blessing is a vibration that moves out of the holy ones to us.

Will Power: –

Willpower should be understood to be the strength of mind, which makes it capable of meeting success or failure with equanimity. Strong will power must be developed and this comes through practice and through control over one’s thoughts. Our minds must be filled with the thought of GOD if we are to grow in will power; otherwise it is very easy to slip. Prayers can increase will power by resolving to give up something which one relishes, and you can strengthen your will power through studies of biographies and sayings of men, women of will power.

MIND AND BRAIN

MIND AND BRAIN: –

In recent years, philosophers, theologians, cosmologists, and even mainstream cognitive scientists have joined the fray, developing powerful critiques and alternative theories that attempt to expand the frame of our thinking about the mind and brain.

Since the human nervous system is the most complex piece of hardware on the planet, it’s no surprise that the most complex form of consciousness accompanies it. Though still eschewed by most mainstream philosophers and scientists, this view is gaining ground, particularly among the alternative in- telligentsia, in large part because it provides a potentially non-reductionist framework for understanding the relationship between the mind and the brain (even if some of its proponents, like Chalmers, use it as an argument for the possibility of conscious machines—if all matter is conscious, after all, why couldn’t a supercomplex computer be as conscious as you or me?

Is it possible that it will be science’s failure to solve the mind/body problem that will ultimately lead to materialism’s undoing? Could neuroscience’s bold attempt to penetrate the mysteries of the human psyche be that one step too far that brings the entire edifice crashing to the ground? It is of course far too early to say, but if such an eventuality were to unfold, given the mythic implications, it would no doubt give the gods and perhaps even Icarus a good chuckle.

GOD versis NEURONS:

Still, in the face of such multilayered complexity, one can’t help but feel compelled to reach for synthesis, whether it’s God or the Neurons that are doing the compelling.

I find the materialist notion that the mind is an irrelevant byproduct of brain function about as plausible as the dualistic idea that consciousness is some ghostly ethereal substance that exists entirely independent of the brain. The truth, it seems, must lie somewhere in between. But where exactly?

Just how the brain’s neural network could function as a “tuning system” for consciousness, however, is still something I’m struggling to visualize.

I’m also tempted to go with some version of the emergence idea, as it seems the closest to hard science to say that consciousness in some way comes out of the brain. But as one philosopher pointed out to me, “Until someone explains how emergence occurs, we might just as well say GOD did it.”

Perhaps the most promising and ultimately satisfying theories are the integral ones that acknowledge the essential reality of different levels and dimensions of existence, allowing interiors and exteriors, consciousness and matter, to be seen as different sides of the same event, neither reducible to the other. Where mind and brain are concerned, however, even the most integral theories have thus far been unable to explain how the two interconnect, leaving the mind/body problem a mystery for another day.

CONSCIOUSNESS:

One thought experiment is imagining that our brain really is generating our consciousness. Think about it—this whole three-dimensional experience of sound, color, thought, feeling, and movement all somehow arising out of the organic functions of this wrinkled slab of tofu like substance in your head. It seems hard to imagine, but if it were true, what would that say about the nature of matter itself? In fact, if I think about it in this way long enough, I start to wonder which would really be mind-boggling to find out that the brain doesn’t create the mind, or to find out that it does.page284image45333696

There are levels of who we are that simply cannot be understood by looking at our neurons alone. Although we may not lose our humanity to neuro science, however, it does seem likely that as research progresses, we will have to let go of a few ideas—possibly even some big ones about what our humanity is made of. The great specter of brain science is that it will demonstrate that we are merely conscious organic machines, that all of our experience and behavior originates in the brain. Based on the evidence from frontier science alone, it doesn’t seem likely at this point that it will quite be able to do that. But let’s say that it were able to show that most of our behavior and experience is rooted in the brain. What would that mean? Well, for starters, we’d have to come to terms with the fact that we’re a lot more organic machine than we’d like to think that, as much as we savor the nuances of our personal wishes, aspirations, and personalities, most of our responses are driven by genetic and social conditioning wired into our brains on a level we cannot see.

However, even if we take the materialist position that the brain is the sole mediator of experience and the final arbiter of truth, we are left with the fact that human brains across the ages have universally concluded that the spiritual reality glimpsed in mystical experience is in fact of a higher order than the ordinary reality we experience every day.

And this leads us to what may be the most interesting point of all. For as Newberg’s research demonstrates, there is little doubt that the brain is at least a big part of what is enabling us to perceive that higher order. This means that, in what may be the greatest miracle we know, life somehow managed to evolve an organ capable not only of reflecting on itself but of perceiving something higher than itself perceiving, even, that which many believe to be the very source and creative driver of the cosmos. Looked at in this way, the brain suddenly starts to seem a lot less like some frightening organic computer that we’d do well to distance ourselves from and a lot more like a rather mysterious and even spiritual event in its own right. After all, if it can do all that, who knows what kind of genius and untapped potential live within its folds? Given that human evolution is still in its early days, it in fact seems likely that the awesome powers of the human brain have only begun to reveal themselves. If we can use our gray matter to avoid destroying ourselves, we may find that the story of humanity’s higher potentials is just getting started.

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THE ART OF MEDITATION:-

THE ART OF MEDITATION: –

As meditation is demystified and mainstreamed, the methods have become more streamlined. There is less incense burning today, but there remains a nugget of Buddhist philosophy: the belief that by sitting in silence for 10 minutes to 40 minutes a day and actively concentrating on breath or a word or an image, you can train yourself to focus on the present over the past and the future, transcending reality by fully accepting it. In its most modern form, it has dropped the creepy mantras that have you memorize a secret phrase or syllable; instead you focus on a sound or on your breathing. The brain like the body also undergoes subtle changes during deep meditation. The first scientific studies in ‘60s and ‘70s basically proved that meditators are really, really focused.

How to Meditate: –

  1. Find a quiet place, turn off the lights. The fewer distractions you have, the easier it will be to concentrate.
  2. Close your eyes. The idea is to shut out the outside world, so your brain can stop actively processing information coming from the senses.
  3. Pick a word any word. Find a word or phrase that means something to you, whose sound or rhythm is soothing when repeated.
  4. Say it again and again. Try saying your word or phrase to yourself with every out breath. The monotony will help you focus.

Which Form of God should we meditate?

Fix your attention on that form which appeals to you most: but know for certain that all forms are the forms of ONE GOD alone. He is blessed indeed who has known all as one.

Scientific Discovery: –

What scientists are discovering through these studies is that with enough practice, the neurons in the brain will adapt themselves to direct activity in that frontal. Concentration- oriented area of the brain.

Frontal Lobe: This is the most highly evolved part of the brain, responsible for reasoning, planning, emotions and self-conscious awareness. During meditation, the frontal cortex tends to go offline.

Parietal Lobe: This part of the brain processes the sensory in formation about the surrounding world, orienting you in time and space. During meditation, activity in the parietal lobe slows down.

Thalamus: The gatekeeper for the senses, this organ focuses your attention by funneling some sensory data deeper in to the brain and stopping other signals in their tracks. Meditation reduces the flow of incoming information to a trickle.

Reticular Formation: As the brain’s sentry, this structure receives incoming stimuli and puts the brain on alert, ready to respond. Meditating dials back the arousal signal.

Meditation Flavors: –

The meditation practice itself comes in many flavors, from the purely spiritual to mostly physical.

Concentrative: Meditative technique that directs the mind to a single focus, such as on breath or mantra.

Mindfulness: Teaches an evenhanded, accepting awareness of whatever arises in the senses.

Movement: heightens the awareness of sensations of movement, such as in walking or Tai Chi.

Visualization: Generates a mental image, from simple crosses or a single square of color to complex symbols such as the elaborate mandalas of Tibetan Buddhism.

Loving-kindness: Cultivates a positive mood or beneficent outlook through the contemplation of such feeling as compassion for all people.

Transformation: Seeks Solace or the solution to specific problems by turning negative emotions in to positive energies.