Enjoy this video about curiosity—it speaks to how we develop curiosity, how curiosity is denied and the importance of curiosity in our lives.
Jan 232008
Jan 222008
Change Everything in Your Life for the Better!
Have you ever noticed that some people are so happy and at ease that it naturally spreads to you? Maybe that’s how we choose our friends—according to how we feel and think when we’re around them. This is usually how I choose friends.
To create a world of peace, make peace in you; and let it spread.
Regardless of how we choose our friends, it can’t hurt to actively create peace in ourselves. The peace we have with ourselves naturally spreads to the world, creating:
- Friends of Peace
- Families of Peace
- Worlds of Peace
But what is peace, really?
Some synonyms for peace are: tranquility, harmony and reconciliation. A definition of peace is: the absence of hostility.
How to Create Peace:
How do we create peace, a deep and powerful harmony within ourselves and in the world?
My experience is that it takes practice to create consistent peace: It requires practicing how we feel, how we think and how we react to life situations.
If this sounds like a lot of work, it can be… at first. But creating a life of peacful actions and peaceful outcomes is really just a matter of changing habits. It’s not really a big deal and is not so difficult once you get going. It just takes time and practice until new thoughts, new feelings and peaceful “reactions” become habit.
Make the Change to Peace
To make the change to peace, first make only one small change… don’t try to be perfect, don’t expect to get it all right on one attempt. To have tranquil happiness for life, and consistently good outcomes, you have to practice tranquil happiness and good outcomes throughout your life. It is sort of like learning a new sport: At first it is difficult, and may even seem impossible. As you keep practicing, however, it gets easier; and eventually your acquire a talent and ability at the sport that seems automatic.
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We have a brain designed for harmony and peace; but our brain is also designed for anger and fear—to attack and defend; to hunt and kill.
Both tranquil and aggressive, these natural human behaviors are “hard wired” into us. These instinctive reactions helped when we were hunter-gatherer groups of 28 to 30 people living an average age of 30 to 35.
We were also designed to be predators as a method of getting food and acquiring “territory” where we could hunt and gather. This helped us survive, but does not work so well in the modern world.
In the modern world, we are forced to “find ourselves,” to find our natural capacity for peace and act on it, hold it foremost… if we are to survive and not destroy ourselves en mass or piece by piece.
We are now all involved in a grand experiment of socialization with a requirement to be at peace if we are to survive; but peace, harmony and reconciliation do not naturally happen in the course of human events. We are designed for the fight as well as the tranquil hearth.
Our human brain is designed to act like a predator–like a lion, tiger or bear; we have essentially the same brain as these animals. But there is difference: We have a more evolved and larger outer brain, a “cap-like” cerebral cortex that sits on top of the predator brain, cradles it and tries to make us sociable, stable and peace abiding by providing “higher thinking” and greater control over emotions.
The front of cerebral cortex, being larger in humans, allows us to control the natural urges to fight and retaliate in exchange for social cooperation. As times it is easy to control misplaced aggression—sometimes it’s a challenge.
The catch is we have to CHOOSE to control aggression, if we are to control it. And the more aggression you experience in your life, the harder it is to control it.
Jan 212008
The front of our brain’s cerebral cortex is designed to mediate and control the predator brain beneath it—this works most of the time, but not always.
The classic fight between good and evil, in terms of brain science, is simply the challenge to properly manage the predator brain which wants to hunt, kill, attack and defend.
In nature this occurs with cruel simplicity, animal to animal; when you add human intellect to the mix, some scary scenarios emerge: They are often called “war,” or “ethnic cleansing.” And this can happen with amazing ingenuity, design and skill. It’s only human.
When human survival instincts override humane social interests… when the “predator” brain combines with higher thinking processes in service of the predator—weapons of mass destruction ignite and populations grow smaller.
When someone acts like an “animal,” they are acting from the “animal-predator” brain—sometimes called the “mammal” or “reptile” brain.
We all have this animal brain, and most of us do a good job of controlling and directing it safely… most of the time.
If a person is around a group of people acting from their “animal brain” it’s sometimes difficult not to follow in this “animal” behavior.
We humans have a natural tendency to synchronize with the company we keep. This can produce both beneficial and regretful consequences according to the motive we are synchronizing with.
So ease up with judgments about who is a “good” person or a “bad” person. Especially give a break to yourself when you act in a way you don’t like, that just isn’t you. When we are tired, irritable, angry or threatened… it is difficult to mediate or control the “animal brain.”
Some people have not learned to use their cerebral cortex very well; they just haven’t seen other people do it much. Some people simply can’t control their animal brain at times. Some of us are better than others at this trick. It is often simply a matter of luck: genetics, family of origin, how we have been treated in formative years etc.
Our primary opportunity and responsibility is with our own brain-it’s the only brain on earth we really control, though some days it does not seem like it!
This exercise will activate and energize your natural ability to feel love.
Introduction
This exercise has three parts: Part I and II are a Classic Medical Qi Gong Exercise, currently practiced in China, that helps you settle down and begin to activate healthy body chemistry. This exercise, in a sense, creates the space and place for love. It prepares you for awakening the love of who you are.
Part III is a Mind/Body exercise I designed, a type of Health Psychology or Behavioral Medicine prescription to activate your neurological circuitry of love.
You can do Part I & II alone, or part III alone. For best effect, do them all in one sitting.
If you forget this exercise during the day, you can sit quietly and think “love”; and feel “love.” It matters little if it does not happen for you at first… just imagine that you feel love, and imagine that you think love for three minutes, three times day. Using the imagination will activate the circuitry.
Using your imagination this way, you will turn on the neurological circuits and chemistry of love. Love is literally designed into you. Love is designed to happen for you on a natural and regular basis, every day and all the time.
Love is the natural state of being human, being alive. You’ve simply got to warm up the process by working the imagination–your neurological circuits of love. It sounds too simple to be true until you try it and actually DO IT with regularity, every day. Then it happens. And you may wonder, “My goodness, why haven’t I been doing this before”? Well surprise, you’ve learned a new skill and something new about yourself and life.
God created the Universe by imagining it to BE; as the Universe was imagined or thought by the Lord, it became and we arose of it with free will and the ability to imagine for better or worse. So what is it going to happen for you as you imagine for better or worse? It’s up to you.
Every cell in our body responds to and participates in love; love is free and is a natural physical state. If our bodies were created in God’s image, no doubt we are designed to feel love all the time… everywhere inside ourselves, and everywhere in the world as we go about our day.
Everything in life can be seen within a loving context, by practicing love. See your body as love, as love alive in every cell and organ. Feel the love in yourself that is already there; you don’t really create it. It is simply there and waiting for you to recognize it, give it attention and bring it into play. You can do this by giving attention to your body knowing love is there. If you don’t feel the love, see the love at first… imagine you do. The imagination creates everything about our lives. Your imagination will activate the natural quality of love in your body and your life.
Practice love in everything you do: move your body with movements of love, think your thoughts of work and play with love, judge all of life as a life of love… and make wise decisions.
Please notice, that in this exercise you do not focus above your chest except when starting at the “tip” of your nose. If your thoughts go to your head, inside your head… gently bring your attention to your feet, then continue where you were in the exercise.
The Exercise: 15 Steps to Love
Part I: Gentle Focus & Grounding (“The Qi Gong State”)
- Find a quiet and calm place
- Sit in a chair, firm with a straight back.
- Sit straight, but not so straight you’re uncomfortable.
- Begin to notice your breating, just notice it… with easy attention
- Your breathing will straighten out, not to deep and not to shallow.
- Breathe in and breath out, simply noticing how you are breathing. The human body has a natural and amazing ability to correct itself with just a little attention from you.
- Close your eyes.
- With your eyelids shut, pretend you can see out them and imagine you see a ruby red light arching out from the tip of your nose a few inches, and curving back in toward your heart.
- Hold that image while breathing in and out; and simply observe.
- After holding you focus at this place: eyes to nose in a ruby red arc, let your attention go to your feet.
- Focus you attention: Eyes to nose in a ruby red arc. Hold that image breathing in and out several times.
- Let you attention go to your feet.
Part II. Self Care & Closing for the Qi Gong State
- Rub your hands together, wash your face.
- Comb your fingers through your hair. 3 X
- Gently massage your ears. 3 X
- Pat the top of your head. 3 X
- pat down the front of your body. 3 X
- Pat down the outside of your arms from shoulder to hand. 3 X
- Pat down the side of your body from arm pit to hands. 3 X
- Make gentle fists and wrap lightly the back at the lower rib where the kidneys are located. 12X
- Make a circular motion with your chin as though you were going over an outline of an ostrich egg being held between your chin, neck and chest, like a Crane dipping its beak in water. 12X
- Now place your hands in front of you, and pretend you are holding a ball of energy. Feel it, see it, imagine it is you don’t.
Part III. Activate Love (3 minutes Total)
- Open your eyes and relax.
- See love in your hands, every finger
- See love in your arms.
- Feel love in your feet, and your legs.
- Feel love in you back.
- See love on your shoulders.
- Make love your vision.
- Feel love in your body.
- Feel love in your gut.
- Notice love in your knees & thighs.
- Imagine you are love, complete and full.
- Know you are love head to toe.
- See love in your life.
- See love in your home.
- Feel love all around you.
Take care and love!
Jan 042008
Calling upon love dissolves obstacles to the soul and allows the pleasure of living to evolve.
What is calling upon love? It is a simple request by you that the love within you, that the infinite font of your benevolent nature rise to the surface and EXPRESS—that this love infuse your body, mind and soul, that this love ignite and flow completely through your life as the perfect vision of YOU!
Feel these words, the words above, and see them, say them aloud again and again until you feel the love of who you are, your deepest nature of happiness begin to rise from within you and connect to all of life around you. You are then born as the perfect you upon the earth, again and again… as much or as often as you practice calling upon love!
As you call upon love, all of life is yours, all tthe best of living: the beauty, the wonderment, the bliss and reward—but YOU have to ask for this, and keep asking until you have engaged the full ability to love within you!
This is how you turn youself on, as in off and on. Many of us are barely living with the power of who we are turned down low, so very low; when we are the ONLY ONES who can turn the power of who we are on, or up higher and higher… to a level of happiness and delight. You do this by calling upon love.
As you love and feel the pleasure of yourself and all of life, you ignite into a steady state of pleasant, peaceful and compassionate being: This is the outcome of calling upon love, practicing love, asking for it, basking in love on a regualr basis.
As you practice calling upon love, as you actually do it: All of life begins to respond to you in a way life has never responded before, because you are now playing the tune of life: You are feeling and living the essence of Creaton, and the Blessings of life can now respond to you in a full and benevolent way.
The perfection, beauty of wonderment of life cannot empower you, cannot power you up… if you don’t see it—perfection, beauty and wonderment—if you don’t know it is there in life and in you.
As you recognize the purity of love in all of life and in you: It comes to you from everywhere!
(Next up: The Exercise for Calling upon Love—more detailed instruction for the practice of making your life work, getting you want; and powering up your body for life!)
Lessons in Love John Harrigan
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