Reinventing the Body, Resurrecting the Soul Part 9 of 9: Don’t Be a Baboon
January 7, 2010 by dr. lam · 4 Comments
We have categorized the soul into a small entity that somehow resides within us. Instead, the soul is a manifestation of the unlimitless possibility of who we are and who we can become. By saying things like, “I have a soul” or “He lost his soul”, we tend to box in the idea of a soul into a finite construct. Instead, view it as pure white light, as a part of you that has not boundaries, limitations, fears, anxieties, or frailties. It is everything.
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.
Reinventing the Body, Resurrecting the Soul Part 8 of 9: Saying No to No
January 6, 2010 by dr. lam · 4 Comments
Chopra talks about how we condition ourselves into absolutes and how we condition ourselves into negative thinking. We are rigid in that we do not allow ourselves for change; we permit the thinking of habits impede us from change; and we condemn ourselves for our urges.
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.
Reinventing the Body, Resurrecting the Soul Part 7 of 9: Reaching Higher
January 5, 2010 by dr. lam · 3 Comments
Starting Part II of the book, Reinventing the Body, Resurrecting the Soul, Chopra begins his spiritual journey by asking what the soul really is. Obviously, for religiously inclined individuals, the soul is our spiritual self and what will journey forward after our mortal coil expires. Chopra looks at the soul as that connection between God (or if that word is not a good one, a higher source) and our body. For example, God is infinite love, creativity, and will; soul is a stepped down version of love, creativity, and will; and mind/body is a human level of love, creativity, and will.
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.
Reinventing the Body, Resurrecting the Soul Part 6 of 9: Time Is Not Your Enemy
January 1, 2010 by dr. lam · 9 Comments
The word deadline has a ring of mortality. When we cross that line or we don’t, we are dead. We tend to live our lives in a constant battle with time: aging (something I know well), schedules, etc (rather appropriate topic on this New Year’s Day!). We are focused on the limitations that time imposes on us. Our bodies curiously live only in the moment, whereas our minds live by these segmented elements of time: future/present/past and days/months/years.
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.
Reinventing the Body, Resurrecting the Soul Part 5 of 9: Being Comfortable with Your Body
December 30, 2009 by dr. lam · 7 Comments
Coming toward the end of his section on “Reinventing the Body”, Chopra challenges the reader to ask how comfortable the reader is with certain activities: looking at himself/herself naked, changing clothes at the gym, wearing a form fitting bathing suit, dancing in front of others, hugging, etc. What he is driving at is two things: how is your mind’s perception of your body and how comfortable are you with your own body.
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.