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Awareness as a Traveler
One of the analogies that my guru often used to describe awareness and the mind is viewing awareness as a traveler and the mind as the world. When you go to San Francisco to visit you have experiences that San Francisco offers. You experience San Francisco but you are not San Francisco. You are in a place called San Francisco having San Francisco experiences. Then you leave San Francisco and go to New Delhi. When you are in New Delhi you no longer experience San Francisco anymore because you are no longer there. Now you are in New Delhi having New Delhi experiences. Are you New Delhi? No, you are in a place called New Delhi but you are certainly not New Delhi.
The same way a traveler can travel to different cities around the world and have a variety of experiences, your awareness can travel within the mind and have a myriad of experiences as well. But wherever in the mind your awareness goes you have to realize it is not that area of the mind. You are pure awareness at any given point in time.
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Cultivating Willpower
Reflection for this weekend: “Change does not take a lot of time. It just takes a lot of will. That will has to be cultivated, just as we would cultivate a garden.” ~ Gurudeva Subramuniyaswami Photo: Lily Flower, Hawaii
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Too busy or misguided priorities?
At an event in Portland, Oregon, I was asked, “What if we don’t have time to spend in reflection in the morning?” At the end of the day, it comes down to priorities. What’s important in your life? Everybody has time. I’m sure they have time to update their status or to talk with...
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How well do you listen?
These days listening is a rare trait. It is rare because most people have great difficulty in concentrating. Another area in life where concentration plays a big part to me is in building relationships with people. One of the ways to build relationships with people is the ability to listen. But y...
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Living in the Moment
To understand how to live in the moment, we need to have an understanding of time. Let’s look at time in a very simple but practical way: If you could divide time into three parts, you could say there was the past, the present and the future. At any given point, awareness can be functioning…
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Awareness, the Dog
Treat your awareness like a dog. I remember a few years ago I went on holidays to the Caribbean, and while I was there, I stayed with a friend of mine. He works for the FBI and is in the Canine Unit, so he has a German Shepherd. A big, beautiful dog. This dog is…
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Taking Responsibility for One’s Actions
Reflection for this weekend: “Taking responsibility for one’s own actions is the first step in understanding the law of karma.” ~ Dandapani Photo: Mount Merapi at sunrise, Central Java, Indonesia.
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