Mastery: Why people like to get better at stuff May 28, 2010

Mastery seems to be a basic need. Each human being sooner or later likes to succeed in something: either it is one of the most useless and stupid record from the Guinness book or just a karaoke singing, obviously people just  like to get better at stuff! The point is that mostly they do not gain anything from it, and possibly nobody will even ever hear about their mastery or pay for that… And yet, people do it. Why?

The interesting answer I found in the video I posted earlier was: “getting better is satisfying”. Yes! As simple as that.

Speaking in term of yoga knowledge, I find the correlation between the Mastery and Satisfaction very interesting, because these two are inborn qualified from the two “neighbouring” chakras: Nabhi and Void (both in the stomach area of the body). Normally responsible for different qualities – Nabhi for satisfaction, Void -for Mastery, in this very case they came up as interconnected and there is  probably even a deeper meaning of this combination… something like that: if you feel unsatisfied in life, try to master something, and more contentment will come to you!

LOVE, axinia

Cool breeze proven by science May 26, 2010

At long last scientific verification of “cool breeze” has been published in a scientific journal!

Although studies on cool breeze have already been done in India by Prof UC Rai, they were not published in journals accessible to Western scientists.
 
The small study demonstrates a skin temperature reduction on the palms of the hands during the experience of mental silence, arising as a result of a single 10 minute session of Sahaja yoga meditation. However when people (non-meditators) were asked to do a simple relaxation exercise, under the same conditions, their skin temperature increased which is the opposite of what occurred for those using the mental silence approach to meditation.

 
The outcomes of this study therefore suggest that “thoughtless awareness” is both experientially and physiologically different to simple relaxation.
Interestingly, all other studies of (non-Sahaja Yoga) meditation  that have studied skin temperature show that skin temperature either increases (i.e. the hand get warmer) or does not change during the meditation session, leading scientists to assume that meditation is the same as relaxation, which also provokes skin temperature increases.

 So this study not only shows how Sahaja Yoga is different from other forms of meditation but also supports the idea that meditation is more correctly defined by the experience of mental silence rather than relaxation. This definition of meditation may well be the best way to differentiate meditation from relaxation, hypnosis, sleep, reiki, chi-gong, TM and other practices.

Manocha R, Black D, Ryan J, Stough C, Spiro D, Changing Definitions of Meditation: Physiological Corollorary, Journal of the International Society of Life Sciences, Vol 28 (1), Mar 2010

Read the whole article here.

A real friend is the one… May 25, 2010

who knows the song of your heart. And who will remind you of it even when you yourself have forgotten…

Whoever told that must be a genius! I just love the saying.

And I have to admit… one of my biggest desires is to be a real friend to everyone.

I really want to know the songs of my friend’s hearts and to be able to remind them of it.

This blog – is my humble contribution to this mission.

LOVE, axinia

Test yourself: how will you meet a difficult ethical choice? May 21, 2010

A stormy night

You are driving along in your car on a wild, stormy night. You
pass by a bus stop, and you see three people waiting for the bus:

1. An old lady who looks as if she is about to die.

2. An old friend who once saved your life.

3. The perfect man (or) woman you have been dreaming about.

Which one would you choose to offer a ride to, knowing that there
could only be one passenger in your car.

Think before you continue reading. This is a moral/ethical
dilemma that was once actually used as part of a job application.

• You could pick up the old lady, because she is going to die, and
  thus you should save her first;

 

•  or you could take the old friend
  because he once saved your life, and this would be the perfect
  chance to pay him back.

 

• However, you may never be able to find
  your perfect dream lover again.

———————————————————————————–

The candidate who was hired (out of 200 applicants) had no trouble coming up with his answer.

Get the Spring feeling! May 20, 2010

LOVE, axinia

The evolution of business: The PROFIT mode dies out, the PURPOSE mode comes in! May 18, 2010

.

I think the most brilliant about this observation is that this is the NEW trend. I am sure that a couple of centuries or even decades away people have been indeed very well motivated by profit only. Now, as a clear advancement of mankind we can see the new motivation, the advanced motivation.

Let me back it up with one fo the most brilliant TED videos – “How great leaders inspire for action”, I guess it is nearly same idea, but from another view-point…

We live in a very interesting time when we can observe the transformation of the whole humanity at the highest speed!

LOVE, axinia

Albert Einstein “The Merging of Spirit and Science” May 15, 2010

The most beautiful and most profound experience is the sensation of the mystical.

It is the sower of all true science.

He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead.

To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists,

manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our

dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms

– this knowledge, this feeling is at the centre of true religiousness.

Albert Einstein “The Merging of Spirit and Science”

If you read this post I bet you have only high class problems May 12, 2010

When you can meet your basic needs, are healthy, and have a few people in the world who love you, pretty much all of your problems are going to be those of the high-class variety.

What I mean to say is this — living in any developed country, we have not genuine “problems,” but most typically “inconveniences.” Sometimes they are even “major (life) inconveniences.”  In short, whatever is going on with us, …we are (relatively speaking) blessed beyond measure!

The point is that the other 95% of the people on the planet have the real problems. Problems like starvation, lack of clean water, and infectious disease. Problems like feeding their children and basic medical care and illiteracy. Problems like addiction, disease, and homelessness.  These are problems my friends. What we deal with are, on balance, “high class problems.” Consider yourself LUCKY TO HAVE THE PROBLEMS YOU HAVE!

And if you are a regular quest on my blog, then one more prove of your “high-class” being is this one:

A Mathematician’s Lament – or why I hated math at school May 10, 2010

Mathimatics has been always a horrow subject to me. My brain blocks when I only see numbers and formulas… It’s a wonder how I could have survived so far with such an attitute towards maths!

Renecetly I came across an amazing article on mathematics, which literary has blown my mind. A Mathematician’s Lament, is written by Paul Lockhart in 2002. Paul is a mathematics teacher at Saint Ann’s School in Brooklyn, New York. His article has been circulating through parts of the mathematics and math ed communities ever since. His point is that much mathematics education is hijacked by people who know nothing about it.

Here are some quotes:
“The first thing to understand is that mathematics is an art.  The difference between math and
the other arts, such as music and painting, is that our culture does not recognize it as such. 
Everyone understands that poets, painters, and musicians create works of art, and are expressing themselves in word, image, and sound. 

In fact, our society is rather generous when it comes to  creative expression; architects, chefs, and even television directors are considered to be working artists.  So why not mathematicians?
 
Part of the problem is that nobody has the faintest idea what it is that mathematicians do. 
The common perception seems to be that mathematicians are somehow connected with
science– perhaps they help the scientists with their formulas, or feed big numbers into
computers for some reason or other.  There is no question that if the world had to be divided into the “poetic dreamers” and the “rational thinkers” most people would place mathematicians in the latter category.
  
Nevertheless, the fact is that there is nothing as dreamy and poetic, nothing as radical,
subversive, and psychedelic, as mathematics.  It is every bit as mind blowing as cosmology or
physics (mathematicians conceived of black holes long before astronomers actually found any), and allows more freedom of expression than poetry, art, or music (which depend heavily on properties of the physical universe).  Mathematics is the purest of the arts, as well as the most misunderstood.
 
So let me try to explain what mathematics is, and what mathematicians do.  I can hardly do
better than to begin with G.H. Hardy’s excellent description: 

A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker
of patterns.  If his patterns are more permanent than
theirs, it is because they are made with ideas. 

So mathematicians sit around making patterns of ideas.  What sort of patterns?  What sort of
ideas?  Ideas about the rhinoceros?  No, those we leave to the biologists.  Ideas about language and culture?  No, not usually. 

The ultimate happening May 8, 2010

It is interesting to note that each religion gives a different name to this event. The Koran calls it Resurrection and the reward takes the form of “gardens watered by running streams“. The goal of Hinduism is “self-realisation” and that of Buddhism “nirvana”, where the being feels a rain of bliss upon him. Christians call it “baptism” or “entry into the kingdom of God”. There too, the symbolic gesture of John the Baptist uses the element of water on Christ’s fontanel. In the same way the Pentecostal wind which descended upon the heads of the disciples marked their entry into a new dimension, the enlightenment of their awareness through the perception of vibrations, an experience which is in every way similar to the awakening of the Kundalini today.

Are not streams, rain and wind the metaphors used by the different traditions to refer to the event of self-realization? Hindus, Jews, Christians and Muslims experience their union in the light of the same source, that of Allah.

The Hindu has no choice but to acknowledge the cool showers of bliss descending on his brain devoid of thoughts, drenched in the absolute silence of the Eternal. The Jew enjoyed the same well-being  and feels the burning bush which was revealed to Moses vibrating within him: