It’s easier to observe how much inborn willpower there is in a person when they are a child versus an adult. Think about the children that you know, you can tell right away that each child has a different amount of natural willpower. If you are a parent, you may have experienced the following scenario.…
Read moreUltimately, it all comes down to how badly you desire to live a concentrated life. Most people don’t desire it badly enough and hence never reach a state of concentration where they can manifest the life that they want. They can concentrate for brief periods of time but the levels of concentration needed to create…
Read moreIt is so important that we strive to understand each other, because out of understanding is born empathy and out of empathy is born compassion, out of compassion is born love and finally out of love comes peace. To summarize the sequence: concentration, listening, reflection, understanding, empathy, compassion, love then peace. The benefits of concentration…
Read moreLook at your life and look for opportunities to develop your willpower. Make this one of your life’s goals with a clear reason why you are developing willpower. To simply develop willpower is not enough. We need to understand why we are doing so and ultimately what will we use that willpower for. If you…
Read moreAs events occur in life, most people react to them in an uncontrolled way. When this happens awareness gets drawn out and externalized. Their energies get externalized too, entangling itself with people and things around them. Before long they find themselves bound to the external world, and inner life seems non-existent. They live in a…
Read moreWhatever I invest my energy in will start to grow. If I invest my energy in something positive it will grow and become more positive. If I invest my energy into something negative it will grow and become more negative. Energy has no ability to discriminate between what is positive and what is negative. Whatever…
Read moreWhen I lived as a monk, my guru (Sivaya Subramuniyaswami) taught me a phrase he coined: ‘Where awareness goes, energy flows.’ It’s probably one of the most important things I’ve learned. First, we have to learn that awareness and the mind are two separate things. Second, our mind does not wander; our awareness moves within…
Read moreYour preparation for meditation is as important as your meditation practice, if not more so. The better you prepare, the better your meditation will be. Look at it this way, if someone very important was coming to your home for dinner you would prepare for this, would you not? You would clean your home, perhaps…
Read moreOne of my online course meditation students asked about the difference between awareness and consciousness. I’m glad the student posed this question. My guru answers this question in the best way possible. He says “Consciousness and awareness are the same when awareness is totally identified with and attached to that which it is aware of.”…
Read moreI’ve taken a long hiatus from blogging. My apologies. The last few months have been filled with speaking engagements around the world and working on a few important projects including the development of Siva Ashram, our retreat center in Costa Rica. I hope to update you on some of these things in the coming weeks.…
Read moreA couple of weeks ago when I was in Berlin where I gave a keynote titled “Mastering your Mind” to a group of people involved in Private Equity and Investing, an individual said to me after my talk “I really need to slow down my life. My whole family needs to slow down. It’s just…
Read moreI don’t want to sound pessimistic but the honest truth is that most people don’t want to change badly enough, and that is why they can’t sustain changes in their lives. You have to want change so badly that you are willing to do what it takes to make it happen in your life. You…
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