Chopra recounts how the Bushmen in Africa have a scarcity of water and have much difficulty finding water.  However, somehow the baboons have no problem in finding water.  As a trick to have the baboon find water for them, the Bushmen put some nuts into a small hole of a hollow tree to entice the baboon to take the nuts.  The hole is large enough for the baboon to put his hand into it to reach the nuts but once inside with a clenched fist, too small to retract the hand out with the prize.  Most baboons do not want to lose their prize so they sit for hours struggling to get their clenched fist out of the hole.  They usually give up when they get thirsty, and the Bushmen follow the baboon to the watering hole.

The moral of the story is about our soul.  We tend to hold on to things so much that we remain trapped.  Until we let go, we cannot gain our freedom.  The soul is not something we can cling to.  Like the story of the Bushmen, we can only achieve freedom if we learn to let things go.

What does letting go mean?  Well, in short the soul is the opposite of the ego.  Here is a short list to show you the differences:

SOUL/EGO
accepting/rejecting
approving/critical
cooperating/opposing
detached/clinging
calm/agitated
forgiving/resentful
selfless/selfish
peaceful/conflicted
nonjudgmental/judgmental

The problem is that we many times live under the influence of the ego that struggles to have our way, to be right, to make others wrong, to be better, etc.  To see the soul, we need to start seeing the first column more clearly and that involves letting things go.

I hope you have enjoyed this blog series, as much I did writing and researching it!

Namaste.

He talks about how all of us can reach an epiphany in our life where all of a sudden our worries start to melt away; our own judgment of ourselves begins to fall from us; and we no longer condemn ourselves for one behavior for another.  That epiphany can come any time in our life, whether it is propelled or compelled by a cataclysmic event or not.

He talks about this as one of the breakthroughs of getting closer to our soul. He likens it to our breathing.  For most of our life, we are not even aware of our breath, but our breath is constantly present or we would not be alive.  However, during times of deep meditation and concentration, we become acutely aware of our breath.  That connection is like the connection that we have with our soul.

When we shed our limitations, our negative thinking, our urges, our condemnation of ourselves, we begin to be more in contact with the unlimited potential of who we can be.  We release ourselves from the terrible power of no, and we open ourselves to the power of yes.

In another way, Chopra talks about the soul as the part of ourselves that carries our potential, whereas our mind carries our intention, and our brain produces the result.  It all begins with our soul as the motivating and originating source of our actions.  Our soul motivates us to reach higher.  As he says, our soul creates the vision/desire/will, which our mind then carries into the realm of thinking and wanting, and then in turn our brain translates into action from those forces.

So our soul is our inner guide that leads us forward.  Many Buddhists practice compassion as a training of their mind, but this must ultimately originate in their soul to desire it and to be it.  Otherwise, our mind eventually succumbs or breaks down.  We must go back to our originating selves, a higher power, a deeper abiding voice.  However, our mind bridges the soul to our body and when our minds are closed, we have limited to no access to our soul, our inner guide.  We must open ourselves to the constant nature of our inner soul.

Many times our irregular schedules can wreak havoc on our lives and our related psyche.  A psychologist featured in this book admonishes his patients who are suffering from anxiety and depression to go home and clean out their clutter, not skip breakfast at all this week, go to work at the same time and do so 15 minutes early, then come back to see him to see if their symptoms still exist.

The point is that our bodies have a cyclical regularity that can be disrupted with uncertainty.  In a mouse experiment that Chopra talks about, a mouse is given a harmless, but uncomfortable shock at regular intervals.  Over time, the mouse forgets about the shock and learns to live with it.  Another mouse is given the same harmless shock but at undisclosed, unpredictable, and variable intervals, which ultimately leads to the mouse’s death within days.  The mouse cannot handle uncertainty.  Can we?

In order to diminish the sense of time and the uncertainty of our future, we should look at making whatever we can in our lives more regular, including waking up, going to work, eating, and sleep.  The more regular our schedule is, the less disruptive  and intrusive will we sense time to be.  When we start no longer to see time as an enemy but as an externality that has no bearing on us, then we can actually live in the moment without fear but with fulfillment.

He talks constantly throughout the book of “stuck energy”, where we have mind blocks on our behaviors and perceptions.  Our body composition can be a source of frustration and fear for many of us.  Honestly, until I started doing yoga about 10 months ago, I was extremely uncomfortable with my body.  I now have a new relationship with my body both in terms of how I carry myself and how I work with my body.  I am much more comfortable today because yoga not only has transformed my body physically but changed my relationship with my body at the same time.

Chopra encourages us to get in tune with our body and play through scenarios that compel us into a stuck position.  For example, if you are uncomfortable changing at the gym, perhaps imagine how other people do not look at you and do not care about how you look.  Start becoming more comfortable in your own skin, and start to see yourself differently, embracing your body however it looks.   And if you are not happy with what you see, first accept yourself the way you are and then change your body to fit your new mental image of it.

Blind individuals are known to have a much greater sense of touch than sighted people.  A study in which electrical impulses were sent to the tongues of blind people to recreate a visual image showed up on an imaging scan in the visual cortex of these individuals.  These neural pathways for sight were being rerouted in these blind people.

A new field of study today focuses on so-called epigenes, the complex proteins that circumscribe our DNA.  This protein cloud is our trigger to turn a gene on or off.  How do you explain cancers that without any treatment just disappear?  Yes, miracles happen.  However, also our mind to body connection is very powerful.  We can influence our genes by our thoughts and emotions.  We can continue to mature our neural networks differently depending on how we think and behave.

Our body is not separate from our minds.  When we are living in a state of struggle with our bodies, we tend to live exasperated lives.  For example, when we climb out of our beds to the kitchen to sneak a bite of chocolate ice cream, what are we doing really?  We are living a cycle of “Should I or Shouldn’t I” that is unrelenting and unenlightened.  We have very little self awareness for our actions, as we are forced into a never-ending cycle of struggle.  Through reflection and meditation on what we are doing, we can elevate ourselves beyond the struggle and to see that we can rise above these limitations that drive us unconsciously.  For most of my life, I have looked at food with craving until I went to France, which literally changed my paradigm.  I am now seeing food for its social and healthful purposes rather than for it being part of an escapism that I no longer need.

We must begin to be aware so that we can change our energy so that we can change our body.  Through reflection of why we are struggling and to expose that struggle for what it is, we can begin to let go of it.  We can then change our energy, which ultimately changes our body.  As Chopra has frequently said, “The issue is in the tissue.”  We can end craving by allowing our mind to meditate beyond it and enter a state of peace.

Chopra recommends three types of meditation:  focus on breathing, focus on the heart (just focusing and centering yourself on tranquility of your heart), and focus on the light (see yourself moving toward light and enlightenment).  End your struggle with craving by seeing the foolish association of how ice cream has anything to do with your stress levels.  Or how your hatred for your father should drive your current energy.  Or whatever your situation might  be.  Free yourself from your own prison.

(Merry Xmas Everyone!)

Chopra talks about how the people who live into their 90s may have the benefit of genetics, lifestyle, and well luck.  But it goes much deeper than that.  It goes into how they adapted their living much earlier and how they respond to life crises.  In a word, it relates to their flexibility.  When they encounter problems, do they freak out?  Or, do they calmly respond to crises because they can go with the flow?

People that have heart attacks in their 40s oftentimes have issues that remain unresolved emotionally in their twenties.  Their hardened emotions may be now manifesting as hardened arteries.  (Not always.  I am a physician, but I am much more than that.  I see the mind-body-spiritual connection.)  It is a known fact that widowers soon die after losing their spouse or at least are more susceptible to dying.  A huge reason is how they enter depression or how they view life after their spouse’s death.

Chopra encourages all of us not just to pop a pill but to investigate how flexible are we in our life to life circumstances and further to find better ways to change our energy flow so that we can truly avert disaster by living in a state of freedom.

He starts the book with the idea that our body is a fiction, i.e., our conventional knowledge that our body is a fixed physical entity is a falsehood.  Instead, our body is a product of our energy.  When we hate others, we become a product of that hate, as disease enters our spirit and ultimately affects our body.  When we are in a destructive relationship, that not only eats into our soul but it then robs us of our bodily health and vitality.

Looking at our body as a pure source of energy then, we can see that we are mutable creatures that can be influenced by our thoughts and our emotions.  If we perceive the static nature of our body, so there shall we reside.  However, if we work to focus on the flowing energy (rather than the stuck, negative energy), we can begin to free ourselves into wondrous creatures that we potentially can be, as this blog series will explore in depth.