• stillness-paradox1
    Be inspired, December 2020, VOLUME 5 / 30 Nov 2020

    The stillness paradox

    The Evolution of Consciousness Series In 2017, in his series on the evolution of consciousness, Daaji shared this article on the paradox of stillness that manifests with an expanding and evolving consciousness. He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed. —Albert Einstein The above quote of Einstein resonates with some ideas I have been thinking about lately on consciousness. Imagine a beautiful flower blooming in the garden. If you run past it you will not be able to appreciate its beauty, whereas if you are walking by you can enjoy it more, and if you stand still in front of it you will appreciate its beauty even more. If you are flying, then you will not even see the flower below you on the earth. So when we are moving rapidly, we miss out on many things. The mind is even faster than any physical movement. When the mind is moving rapidly from one object to another, one subject to another, one venture to another, what you miss is the blooming of the flower that is inside you. You are not merely missing out on the details, you miss out completely on the existence of the flower itself. Now what is that flower? It is your soul. Let’s explore this idea further and ask a question: is it possible to move at speed and still be present in each moment? Can we reach a critical speed where we stand still in movement? To understand this better, let’s revisit the diagram we have of the various bodies of a human being. The soul is the center of our being, around which we have the four main subtle bodies that we know as the mind. The first is consciousness,…

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  • Letter-to-my-younger-self1
    December 2020, Focus, VOLUME 5 / 30 Nov 2020

    Letter to my younger self

    In 2015, ERICK JOSEPH filmed CHARLES EISENSTEIN in a short interview for a younger audience. Charles wrote a short essay to accompany the film, which we have reproduced here. Dear Self, Your secret, lonely knowledge is true. Despite all you have been told, the world that has been offered to you as normal is anything but normal. It is a pale semblance of the intimacy, connection, authenticity, community, joy and grief that lie just beneath the surface of society’s habits and routines. Do not believe the cynical voice, masquerading as the realistic voice that says that nothing much can change. That voice will call your dreams by many names: naïve, unrealistic, immature, and irresponsible. Trust your knowledge that the world can be different, can be better. You needn’t sell out and live a life complicit in maintaining the status quo. You have a magnificent contribution to make to the more beautiful world your heart knows is possible. It may not make you famous, but you have an important gift, an indispensable gift, and it demands you to apply it to something you care about. Unless you do, you will feel like you aren’t really living your life. You will live the life someone pays you to live, caring about things you are paid to care about. You can make a different choice. When you follow your passion and come fully alive, your choices will feel threatening to anyone who abides in the dominant story of normal. You will be reminding them of the path they didn’t follow, and awaken in them the suppressed yearning to devote their gifts to something beautiful. Rather than face that grief, they may suppress it – and suppress you as well. You carry a deep yearning to contribute to the healing of the world and…

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  • December 2020, It changes everything, VOLUME 5 / 30 Nov 2020

    Reconnecting with the soul of the world

    REJOINING THE GREAT CONVERSATION LLEWELLYN VAUGHAN-LEE delivers a heartfelt plea to all of us to open our hearts and care for our Mother Earth, value her sacredness, and reconnect with her soul. We are present at a moment in our shared destiny when the Earth is crying out to us to help her in this time of crisis that is destroying her ecosystem, the fragile web of life that supports her multihued unity. All around us are what Thich Nhat Hanh calls the “bells of mindfulness” – we can hear them ringing in the unprecedented species depletion (such as the recent awareness of what is called the ‘insect Armageddon’, with a 45-75% loss of insect biomass), the oceans filling with plastic at a rate unfathomable a few decades ago, and accelerating climate change; all with unforeseen consequences. And, on a different level, though just as painful, is the loss of wildness and wonder, a diminishing sense of the sacred that nourishes our souls. Many of us are responding with action and ideas, even as our governments and corporations – with their focus on economic growth and materialism – are unable or unwilling to make this a real priority. This was forcefully articulated at the recent UN Climate Change COP24 Conference by the 15-year-old activist Greta Thunberg, who spoke truth to power when she said: “We have not come here to beg world leaders to care. You have ignored us in the past and you will ignore us again. “You only speak of green eternal economic growth because you are too scared of being unpopular. You only talk about moving forward with the same bad ideas that got us into this mess, even when the only sensible thing to do is pull the emergency brake. You are not mature enough to…

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  • raising-consciousness
    December 2020, Thought in action, VOLUME 5 / 30 Nov 2020

    Raising consciousness

    In April 2020, DR. BRUCE LIPTON spoke with UDAY KUMAR about the transition our planet is going through right now, and what we need to do to raise our consciousness to the next level. In this excerpt from the interview, he goes into more detail about epigenetics, consciousness, and how we remain pre-programmed until we evolve our consciousness through meditation. It is our programs more than anything external that hack our attention. We’re made up of 50 trillion cells, and our genetic activity is not controlled by genes turning on and off, it’s controlled by the chemistry of the blood, which is the culture medium for our cells. Now, we take the big blow-away steps that changed my life. The chemistry of the blood controls the genetics of the cell. So, who’s the chemist? Who controls the chemistry of the blood? The answer is: The brain is the chemist! Next question: What chemicals should the brain put into the blood? The answer: Whatever image is in your mind will be translated by the brain into complementary chemistry. There’s a chemistry of love; if you’re experiencing love in your life, you release dopamine for pleasure, vasopressin makes you more attractive so your partner stays with you, oxytocin bonds you to your lover, and growth hormone is released when you’re in love. So, the blood has all these things that happened just from my picture of love, and the chemistry is going through. Growth hormone promotes vitality and growth, so when people fall in love they’re so healthy – it’s chemistry, the chemistry of love. And if you go to the opposite side, the chemistry of fear does not release any of that. In fear, stress hormones are released, and hormones called cytokines which control the immune system are released. So now, the…

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  • human-evolution-artessay1
    December 2020, Taste of life, VOLUME 5 / 30 Nov 2020

    Human evolution

    AN ART ESSAY BRIGITTE SMITH was a refugee as a child, so the questions of why and whereto came with a certain urgency. She was educated at art school in Germany and has taught there as a freelance artist all her life. Here she explores various aspects of consciousness and evolution. The beings seen in my pictures are symbols of Higher Spirits helping human beings to evolve and to become more conscious. They first appeared in my meditations. The caps on their heads are open on top in order for them to receive guidance. So far, I am unable to simply “do” a picture; I have to wait until it comes. This is a totally different process to my usual professional way of working. After some anxiety, I had to accept that I am simply a servant and can only apply my will within the service. That state developed into a very grateful happiness. Prayer for the balance of the planet Since the spiral is a symbol of human evolution, these Spirit helpers are trying to balance the situation on the planet using prayer. In search of human consciousness In 1900, Greek sponge divers found an antique shipwreck. Within it was something known as the Antikythera Mechanism, the first known analogue computer. Scientists could only X-ray it one hundred years later to discover the inner mechanism, and it is thought to possibly come from the school of Archimedes in Corinth or the famous ancient library of Pergamum. This inspired me to show this eternal urge in human beings to search and to strive. The released cranes are the freed thoughts. Initiation Here the Spirit helper is giving an olive branch to a soul being initiated into learning. The Spirit helpers are mostly clad in forms of nature. Emergence Here a…

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  • between-stimulus-response1
    December 2020, Interview, VOLUME 5 / 30 Nov 2020

    Between stimulus and response

    In this excerpt from an interview done in August 2016, DR. JAMES DOTY speaks to JOHN MALKIN about the science of meditation, the evolutionary advantage of compassion, aspects of human behavior that relate to compassion and collective social issues, and his cherished memories of the remarkable woman who gave him a helping hand up when he was a boy. “It’s only when we focus on healing the wounds of the heart that there’s ever going to be peace in the world. All the science and technology are not going to do that.” Dr. James Doty Q: Tell us about the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE) that you founded at Stanford University. Sometimes people think compassion is internal, vague and hard to describe, and that exploring compassion is a soft science. How are you studying compassion and altruism and what are you finding? JD: There’s been a lot of interest in how the brain responds or reacts to meditation and this research has been going on for the last three decades, initially led by Rick Hanson. But what is interesting to me, and remains interesting, is that what is at the core of many of these meditative practices is compassion: compassion for yourself certainly, and compassion for others. As I looked at this area, I realized that our survival is related to nurturing and caring for our offspring. And in the human species this involves caring not only for our offspring but for others as well. As a result of this requirement – that our offspring are nurtured for a decade and a half or more after birth, unlike other mammals that just run off into the forest after birth – our offspring require us to essentially teach them, while they mirror our behaviors, so that they will survive. Yet…

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Roots of empathy

in December 2020, Interview, VOLUME 5

MARY GORDON was interviewed by JUDITH NELSON at the Spirit of Humanity Forum in Iceland in 2019. In this excerpt, she shares her worldview on the importance of empathy in...

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Collectors' edition 2019

Yogic Psychology

In this wonderful collection, Daaji explores Yogic Psychology in the light of modern-day science and psychology, and shares some simple yogic practices and approaches that support mental health and joyful living. Daaji is a changemaker for the unification of all spiritual paths and seeking hearts.
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