The Greatest Discovery of the 19th Century

The greatest discovery of the 19th century was not in the realm of the physical sciences, but the power of the subconscious mind touched by faith. Any individual can tap into an eternal reservoir of power that will enable them to overcome any problem that may arise. All weaknesses can be overcome, bodily healing, financial independence, spiritual awakening, prosperity beyond your wildest dreams. This is the superstructure of happiness.

~ William James, Harvard Psychologist
the Father of American Psychology

Mind Power, Will Power, Self Belief

Namaskar bothers and sisters, Dada once mentioned that our minds are like wild monkeys out of control. When your mind wonders, your will sways. When your will sways, your self belief lacks its strength and commitment. Strength and commitment is needed in the creation process for great things in life.

Looking back at the chain it starts with having a strong mind and a strong will. If you look even closer, you will realize that you cannot have a weak mind and a strong will, and vice versa. Now the tricky part comes in. Where do we start?

I had a tough ride experiencing both highs and lows in both will and mind power in the recent months. And I finally get it. Desire, Passion and Enthusiasm are elements that contributes to will power. Some cultivate it through time, some still searching high and low for it and others don’t get it. And that’s the easy part.

Here comes the hard part, mind power. How do one empower their minds? It is a mystery for many and a well grasped knowledge for a few.

It is mind control.

Tame your wild wild mind and you get limitless potential. Mind control or mind management is a discipline. A discipline through meditation, going beyond the five senses to strength your mind. With your mind strengthen you will have control and power. Wield the mind with limitless power and the will to make things happen. With that naturally you will have self belief, strength and commitment.

Life is how you want it to be.

-- Rendy Tan

7 Essential Tools for Authentic Personal Growth

Utilising different personality methodologies for self development, we need more than interesting information for clear understanding and reality checks. These life transformation tools can only be useful for us when we combine it with key personal growth techniques. Here, we offer seven tools that we have found indispensable for authentic personal development, growth, change, life transformation of what ever you want to call it.

1. Seeking Truth

If we are interested in personal growth, no element is more important than developing a love of truth. Seeking the truth means being curious about what is going on in ourselves and around us, not settling for the automatic answers our personality feeds us. If we observe ourselves, we will see that many of the stock explanations that we give ourselves for our behaviour or for the actions of others are a form of resistance. They are many ways of avoiding to see the truth in our current state. For example, one answer might be, "I am really angry at my father," but a deeper truth might be that I really love him and desperately want his love. Both levels of truth might be difficult for our personality to accept. It could take a long time to admit that we are angry with our father, and even longer to acknowledge the love beneath the anger.

As we learn to accept what is real in the present moment, we are more able to accept whatever arises in us, because we know that it is not the 'whole' of us. The truth encompasses both our fearful reactions and the greater resources of our soul. While our automatic reactions can derail our search for the truth, acknowledging their presence brings us closer to the truth. When we are willing to be with the whole truth - whatever it is - we have more inner resources available to deal with whatever we are facing.

 

2. Contemplation

The process of authentic personal & spiritual growth sometimes seems paradoxical because we speak of struggle and effort as well as of allowing, accepting, and letting go. The resolution of these apparent opposites lies in the concept of "Contemplation." Once we understand "Contemplation" we see that the real struggle is to relax into greater awareness so that we can see the manifestations of our personality. By neither acting on our automatic impulses nor by suppressing them, we begin to understand what is causing them to arise. Not acting on our impulses creates openings through which we can catch glimpses of what we are really up to. Those glimpses often become some of our most important personal growth lessons.

 

3. Willing to be Open

One of the primary functions of the personality is to separate us from various aspects of our own true nature. It causes us to limit our experience of ourselves by blocking from awareness any parts of ourselves that do not fit our self-image. By relaxing our bodies, quieting the chatter in our minds, and allowing our hearts to be more sensitive to our situation, we open up to the very inner qualities and resources, which can help us grow.

Every moment has the possibility of delighting us, nurturing us, supporting us - if we are here to see it. Life is a tremendous gift, but most of us are missing it because we are watching a "mental movie" of our lives instead. As we learn to trust in the moment and to value awareness, we learn how to turn off the internal movie projector and start living a much more interesting life - the one we are actually starring in.

 

4. Getting Proper Support

The more support we have for our personal development, the easier our process will be. If we are living or working in dysfunctional environments, personal growth is not impossible, but it is more difficult. Most of us cannot leave our jobs or our families so easily, even if we are having difficulties with them, although we can seek out others who give us encouragement and act as witnesses to our growth. Beyond this, we can find groups, attend workshops, and put ourselves in situations and company that foster our real development. Getting support also entails structuring our days in ways that leave room for the things that nurture our minds and souls.

5. Learning from Everything

Once we have involved ourselves in the process of personal growth, we understand that whatever is occurring in the present moment is what we need to deal with right now. And whatever is arising in our hearts or minds is the raw material that we can use for our growth. It is an extremely common tendency to flee from what we are actually facing into our imagination, romanticizing or dramatizing our situation, justifying ourselves, or even escaping into "spirituality." Staying with our real experience of ourselves and our situation will teach us exactly what we need to know for growth.

 

6. Cultivating a Real Love of Self

It has been said many times that we cannot love others if we do not love ourselves. But what does this mean? We usually think that it has something to do with having self-esteem or with giving ourselves emotional "goodies" to compensate for our feelings of deficiency. Perhaps, but one central aspect of a mature love of ourselves is caring about our growth sufficiently not to flee from the discomfort or pain of our actual condition. We must love ourselves enough not to abandon ourselves - and we abandon ourselves to the degree that we are not fully present to our own lives. When we are caught up in worry, fantasy, tension and anxiety, we become dissociated from our bodies and our feelings - and ultimately, from our true nature.

True love of self also entails a profound acceptance of ourselves - returning to Presence and settling into ourselves as we actually are without attempting to change our experience. It is also aided by seeking the company of people who possess some degree of this quality themselves.

7. Having a Practice

Most spiritual teachings stress the importance of some kind of practice, be it meditation, prayer, yoga, relaxation, or movement. The important thing is to set aside some time each day to re-establish a deeper connection with our true nature. Regular practice (combined with participation in some kind of teaching or group) serves to remind us over and over again that we are hypnotized by our personality. Spiritual practice interferes with our deeply ingrained habits and gives us opportunities to wake up from our trance more often and for longer periods of time. Eventually, we understand that every time we engage in our practice we learn something new, and every time we neglect our practice we miss an opportunity to allow our lives to be transformed.

A major obstacle to regular practice is the expectation of the personality that we attain specific personal growth results, and, ironically, this is especially true if we have made significant breakthroughs in our spiritual growth. The personality seizes on breakthroughs and wants to recreate them on demand. This is not possible because breakthroughs occur when we are completely open to the present moment, while anticipating a certain payoff distracts us from experiencing how we actually are. In this moment, a new gift or insight is available - although most likely not the one that was available last week. Furthermore, the personality uses our breakthroughs as justifications to stop practicing saying, "Great! You've had a breakthrough! Now you're 'fixed' and you don't need to do this anymore."

Along with our regular daily practice, life presents us with many opportunities to see our personality in action and to allow our essential nature to come forth and transform our personality. But it is not enough merely to think about personal development or to talk about it or to read books about it. Procrastination is a great defence of the ego. The only time to use the tools of personal growth is now.

 
“Freed up to design our intentional destiny, we become open to our true purpose: Creating Self”
-- QuantumGurus