Why women are more sensitive to Spirituality June 26, 2012

A mere glance at various spiritual practitioners grasps the female dominance. Disregarding country and cultural background. Now more than at any other historical period. People wonder why women are seeking more then men, why are they outnumbering in that sphere of life?

The answer is as simple as genius: Men just have a bigger ego which does not allow them to surrender easily, for surrender is one of the core spitirual features. ” Real men” are so-called doers and while acting they are not inclined to think of themselves as of “God’s instruments”. Due to their nature, men are more on the right side, using their right sympathetic nervous system, being proactive, dominant, thinking, directing… All that blocks their emotional side, the side which brings one faster to God because of the connection through the heart.

At the same time the greatest saints, yogis are prophets of all times are mostly male. How to explain all that? The men who truly become the men of God, they managed to overcome their ego and along with their male nature, could develop their female side as well. They became compassionate, loving and forgiving. Thus, balancing and enriching both sides they in fact managed to become the perfect humans. For some ironical reason, if a woman starts using her male side (“right side”) as much as the female one, she is more likely to become an unpleasant rather that a holy personality…

To force or not to force? January 28, 2011

 

 

 

image by axinia

 

A recent article on “Chinese upbringing methods” made a splash in the web, even on the Russian Internet. If you haven’t come across it, please check the article here, I allow myself to repost it. Please read to the end! And see my comments below.

Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior

Can a regimen of no playdates, no TV and hours of music practice create happy kids? An excerpt from Amy Chua’s “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.”

 A lot of people wonder how Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids. They wonder what these parents do to produce so many math whizzes and music prodigies, what it’s like inside the family, and whether they could do it too. Well, I can tell them, because I’ve done it. Here are some things my daughters, Sophia and Louisa, were never allowed to do:

• attend a sleepover

• have a playdate

• be in a school play

• complain about not being in a school play

• watch TV or play computer games

• choose their own extracurricular activities

• get any grade less than an A

• not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama

• play any instrument other than the piano or violin

• not play the piano or violin.

I’m using the term “Chinese mother” loosely. I know some Korean, Indian, Jamaican, Irish and Ghanaian parents who qualify too. Conversely, I know some mothers of Chinese heritage, almost always born in the West, who are not Chinese mothers, by choice or otherwise. I’m also using the term “Western parents” loosely. Western parents come in all varieties.

All the same, even when Western parents think they’re being strict, they usually don’t come close to being Chinese mothers. For example, my Western friends who consider themselves strict make their children practice their instruments 30 minutes every day. An hour at most. For a Chinese mother, the first hour is the easy part. It’s hours two and three that get tough.

A new approach in self-teaching – the future of schools? December 16, 2010

Some of you may know that pedagogics is one of my favorite spheres of interest, although I don’t blog about it much. I have a dream of opening a private school that would be based on the principles, more relevant to the evolutionary level of the upcoming generations than whatever we have now.

Today I would like to share with you an interesting TED video about a new experimental approach in teaching – helping school children in self-teaching.

I find it very insightful, especially the point of collective learning – something which is missing quite a lot in the modern concepts of education.



LOVE; axinia

All we need is… a grandmother revolution! September 21, 2010

For those who have seen the film “Patch Adams”, starring Robin Williams, the interview below would be an added value to this amazing film. And the value of the film itself is high indeed, especially because it’s based on a real-life story.

Today I came across one interview with the film protagonist. The real person turned out to be even more fascinating than the film character (often it’s just vice versa).

Hunter Doherty “Patch” Adams, M.D. (born May 28, 1945 in Washington, D.C.) is an American physician, social activist, citizen diplomat and author. He founded the Gesundheit! Institute in 1971. Each year he organizes a group of volunteers from around the world to travel to various countries where they dress as clowns in an effort to bring humor to orphans, patients, and other people. Adams is currently based in Arlington, Virginia. In collaboration with the institute, he promotes a different health care model (i.e. one not funded by insurance policies).

In his interview to one Italian financial newspaper Patch Adams gives a genius in its simplicity answer of how to change the world to a place, full of love and compassion:

and enjoy the second part, that’s brilliant!

Only a few people really want money September 18, 2010

My boss is a talented private banker and an excellent psychologist. I learned a lot by observing his talks with job candidates in the beginning of my Human Resources Carriere. And since the idea of his business is to make money, my major task has been to find people who REALLY want to earn money. Interestingly, it turned to be a hard task!

The best two questions to ask a candidate is “Do you love money?” and ” What do you need money for?”. The first reaction always is: “yes, sure, who doesn’t?!?” and when I start asking how this love for money actually manifests in his/her life….a person suddenly realises that actually “no…not really”.

It is a paradox? I think no. In fact, most of the people just want a sufficient life standard and nothing more. A dream of becoming rich is obviously a brain-washed one: how many of us are really ready to DO something to become rich? Not many. Because it mostly means too much work, too much stress, to many other conditions which we believe we do not have… The truth is, it is not needed.

A basic income guarantee – a dream or a future reality? August 18, 2010

The idea of a basic income guarantee is getting popular. In case you have not heard about it yet, a basic income guarantee (or basic income) is a proposed system of social security, that periodically provides each citizen with a sum of money that allows the receiver to participate in society with human dignity. In contrast to income redistribution between nations themselves, the phrase basic income defines payments to individuals rather than households, groups, or nations, in order to provide for individual basic human needs. Except for citizenship, a basic income is entirely unconditional.

In Germany they speak about 500 or even 1000 € monthly unconditional income for everyone.

 What are the arguments?

One of the arguments for a basic income was articulated by the French Economist and Philosopher André Gorz:

The connection between more and better has been broken; our needs for many products and services are already more than adequately met, and many of our as-yet-unsatisfied needs will be met not by producing more, but by producing differently, producing other things, or even producing less. This is especially true as regards our needs for air, water, space, silence, beauty, time and human contact…

From the point where it takes only 1,000 hours per year or 20,000 to 30,000 hours per lifetime to create an amount of wealth equal to or greater than the amount we create at the present time in 1,600 hours per year or 40,000 to 50,000 hours in a working life, we must all be able to obtain a real income equal to or higher than our current salaries in exchange for a greatly reduced quantity of work…

Neither is it true any longer that the more each individual works, the better off everyone will be. The present crisis has stimulated technological change of an unprecedented scale and speed: ‘the micro-chip revolution’. The object and indeed the effect of this revolution has been to make rapidly increasing savings in labour, in the industrial, administrative and service sectors. Increasing production is secured in these sectors by decreasing amounts of labour. As a result, the social process of production no longer needs everyone to work in it on a full-time basis.

Children stop being communists at the age of 11, study says June 1, 2010

Many people from different countries and background told me that when they were children it was difficult for them to understand the idea of money and goods distribution. I always thought it is a good proof for my idea that capitalism as  such is a very unnatural institution.

The new study from Norway shows some interesting evidence in support of my supposition. As children progress to adolescence, their sense of fairness changes from pure equality to proportionality based on merit, study says.

The study was conducted at the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration (NHH) by the research team consisting of Associate Professor Ingvild Almås, Professor Alexander W. Cappelen, Associate Professor Erik Ø. Sørensen, and Professor Bertil Tungodden.

One of the most fundamental questions in the social sciences is how morality and fairness considerations affect human behavior. Previous research has shown that adults differ greatly both in the extent to which they care about fairness considerations and in what they perceive as fair.

“This is, however, the first economic study to show how some of these differences are shaped in adolescence. In doing so, the study also sheds light on how our perceptions of fairness are affected both by the social environment and biological factors,” explains Professor Bertil Tungodden from NHH in Norway.

What is a fair inequality?
Most adults find some inequalities fair. Hence, in contrast, to young children, they do not always think of strict equality as the fair solution to a distributive problem. What explains this and how does this acceptance of inequality develop? These were motivating questions for the present study of the distributive behavior of 500 Norwegian school children 11-19 years old.

“By comparing the behavior for different age groups, we were able to established clear developmental patterns. In particular, the study shows that as children grow older, they increasingly find inequalities reflecting differences in individual achievements fair,” continues Professor Tungodden.

Just luck?
In the experiment, the children worked on a task for 45 minutes. At the end of the work session, some were lucky and received a high price on their production; others were unlucky and received a low price. Thus, there were inequalities in earnings that reflected differences in both individual production and luck.

Each participant then had to decide how to distribute the total earnings between themselves and one other participant. Hence, they had to decide which inequalities they found fair.
“Here we observed a very interesting pattern,” adds Professor Tungodden.

“While almost none of the younger children made a distinction between luck and individual production, a substantial share of the older children did so. They accepted inequalities reflecting differences in individual production, but not inequalities reflecting just luck.”

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

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

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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

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: