10 Secrets for Success and Inner Peace: Fifth Secret
February 26, 2010 by dr. lam · 5 Comments
Fifth Secret: “Give Up Your Personal History”
Dyer uses the metaphor of a boat to explain how we unfortunately see our lives and how we should see our lives. Every boat has a wake behind it. However, the wake does not control the boat. It is just a trail of foam that has no bearing on the direction the boat is taking. However, our “wake”, i.e., our past, is oftentimes something that we use to define who we are today. “Well, I had a troubled childhood.” “My parents divorced so of course I am having difficulty today.” “My husband left me for another woman. That explains where I am now.” “I never finished college so, of course, I cannot succeed today.” Our wake should not control our boat. It can’t.
We too often look at the labels that we impose upon ourselves to define who and what we can be. Whatever limitations our past imposes on us we allow them to flourish so that we are stifled and cannot be a product of our limitless, current selves. We are not our wake. We are the boat. All we have is the present time, as Eckhart Tolle admonishes in The Power of Now. We are only where we are now.
The opposite can also be true of our past. “Well, it was certainly a happier time for me then. I long for the good ol’ days.” “I was happy then. Today not so much.” We cannot and should not be our past. When we live in our past, we are a product of a deathly present. We must see the glory of right now, this moment, the very breath that we take, the shining time of now of where we are today, that’s it. Dyer says when we are eating our appetizer, we should not be thinking of dessert. When we are eating dessert, we should not be thinking of what we just ate. We are too often all over the place because our minds are not still but hurried and preoccupied. Be here now and relinquish your past, all of it.
10 Secrets for Success and Inner Peace: Fourth Secret
February 25, 2010 by dr. lam · 3 Comments
Fourth Secret: “Embrace Silence”
Our modern culture is brimming with noise: cell phones, email, loud rock concerts, 5.1 surround movies, screaming children, bickering spouses, and other ringing types of cacophony. When we still our hearts and our mind for a moment, we can tap into our creative soul, refresh our spirits, and find God. The book of Psalms in the Old Testament says, “Be still, and know that I am God”. Mother Theresa said that God dwells in the world of silence as evident by just looking at the stars and the moon and the quiet growth of green grass. We can find divinity in quiet, meditative moments.
If we do not have programmed times for meditation, we can always steal a moment of silence when possible. Dyer talks about quieting his energy and embracing the silence at a stopped traffic light. Those 2 to 3 minutes can offer a respite and a revitalization rather than what it typically does, which is annoyance through our impatience. We can sit silently at these unappointed moments to work ourselves into a more peace and enlightened state.
Dyer says there is no such thing as a bad meditation. Any meditation can be a time for us to achieve quiet healing in our body, our heart, and our mind. Just writing these blogs silently on my flight to San Diego for my Fall meeting is already a type of quiet meditation. We all can find that peace through a tranquil retreat into silence, no matter how brief or trivial that moment may appear to be at the time.
10 Secrets for Success and Inner Peace: Third Secret
February 24, 2010 by dr. lam · 2 Comments
Third Secret: “You Can’t Give Away What You Don’t Have”
When we think of giving something away, we think of a finite repository of items where what we give will deplete us. For example, if we have 10 oranges and we give 10 away, we will in turn have none. However, that is not the case with love, passion, and compassion. When we give those away, we get a lot more in return.
However, those of us who are empty cannot give anything away. If our lives are filled with hatred and misery, that is the best that we can do for others. When we realize that when we fill our own cups, that cup will spill over to others then we can do so much more than we could have imagined in our lifetime.
Dyer walks the reader through Carl Jung’s four archetypes. The first archetype is the athlete who is entranced with his own physical body and how it looks and functions. The second archetype is the warrior who is in charge of conquering the world through mental acuity and domineering prowess. The third archetype is the statesman who is interested in turning his life towards the service of others. The fourth archetype is one of pure spirit, who lives a spiritual life free of the fetters of this world.
Dyer talks about how a life of spirit and a life of service can provide meaning for our lives and a purpose that is more grandiose than one of ambition, accumulation, prestige, respect, and all the trappings that we associate with our material existence. He talks about how we can achieve a greater good that can drive our happiness when we fill our cups so that we can in turn fill the cups of others.
10 Secrets for Success and Inner Peace: Second Secret
February 23, 2010 by dr. lam · 4 Comments
Second Secret : “Don’t Die with the Music Still In You”
I have listened, read, and watched a lot of Wayne Dyer. He has often recited a story of when he was about to go on a long journey overseas and his uncle handed him a copy of Leo Tolstoy’s short stories with one of the tales being The Death of Ivan Ilyich in which the protagonist announces at the end of his life, “What if my whole life has been wrong?”, a profound sentiment indeed. If we live our lives to the beat of someone else’s drums, we will end that life without much satisfaction and a lot of questions about how our meager existence transpired (and expired) on this earth. Should we wait until we are near death to question why we are alive? That is probably a bit too late.
It is funny because I have for many years pictured myself on my deathbed, and I have always wanted to die in peace. I wanted to know that my life had substance, passion, and that the music I created was a melodious tune. I am innately a right-brained individual who follows his own emotions and intuition more than anything strongly analytical or left brained. Dyer asks all of us to follow our right brains, i.e., our intuitions, and our hearts.
When our life is extinguished, I hope all of us can say that we did not let the music die within us.
(By the way, I just learned on Friday that Dyer was diagnosed with leukemia. Please keep him in your prayers. He is at the Chopra Center receiving spiritual healing for his illness.)
Mindfulness Mondays 39: Defying Categorization
February 22, 2010 by dr. lam · 2 Comments
A few months ago I was reading the New York Times, and I came across a very interesting article about a wonderful painter David Hockney who is perhaps best known for his California swimming pool series. He is now into his 70s, and he is still rambunctious as he ever was. One of the points that the article conveyed is that Hockney never fit neatly into any artistic genre. He painted whatever he wanted, and his returning to his native England recently after a 25-year stint in California is no exception. A short video clip showed this spry, irrepressible, and perhaps liminal spirit talk about how photography simply could not capture the beauty of the pastoral English landscape that he was so expertly capturing with oil on canvas. He did not care so much about his reputation but his work, and his work did not necessarily have to fit into any construct except his own imagination.
I love the eccentricity (for those who are mainstream) about what I read. I think we are so very focused on how people will see us that we are constrained in our movements, in our thoughts, and in our behavior. I like what Wayne Dyer says, “When you walk into a room with 30 people, you leave with 30 reputations.” Quite true. The only reputation that has merit is your own. This week think about ways to express the real you that is bottled under layers of societal dictums, decorum, and restraint. (Obviously, I hold no responsibility if you do something too crazy. Just wanting you to feel like a free spirit for a change. Good luck.)