How to Eradicate Fixed Karma?

The Pali term Karma literally means action or doing. Any kind of intentional action whether mental, verbal, or physical, is regarded as Karma. It covers all that is included in the phrase "thought, word and deed". Generally speaking, all good and bad action constitutes Karma. In its ultimate sense Karma means all moral and immoral volition. Involuntary, unintentional or unconscious actions, though technically deeds, do not constitute Karma, because volition, the most important factor in determining Karma, is absent.

The Buddha says:

"I declare, O Bhikkhus, that volition is Karma. Having willed one acts by body, speech, and thought." (Anguttara Nikaya)

Every volitional action of individuals, save those of Buddhas and Arahants, is called Karma. The exception made in their case is because they are delivered from both good and evil; they have eradicated ignorance and craving, the roots of Karma.

"Destroyed are their germinal seeds (Khina bija); selfish desires no longer grow," states the Ratana Sutta of Sutta nipata.

This does not mean that the Buddha and Arahantas are passive. They are tirelessly active in working for the real well being and happiness of all. Their deeds ordinarily accepted as good or moral, lack creative power as regards themselves. Understanding things as they truly are, they have finally shattered their cosmic fetters – the chain of cause and effect.

Karma does not necessarily mean past actions. It embraces both past and present deeds. Hence in one sense, we are the result of what we were; we will be the result of what we are. In another sense, it should be added, we are not totally the result of what we were; we will not absolutely be the result of what we are. The present is no doubt the offspring of the past and is the present of the future, but the present is not always a true index of either the past or the future; so complex is the working of Karma.

It is this doctrine of Karma that the mother teaches her child when she says "Be good and you will be happy and we will love you; but if you are bad, you will be unhappy and we will not love you." In short, Karma is the law of cause and effect in the ethical realm.

Read more at:
http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/karma.htm

Om Pra Ma Ni Da Ni So Ha - Ksitigabha Bodhisattva Tibetan Mantra for Eradicating Fixed Karma. Click here to listen to the mantra of Ksitigabha Bodhisattva

An inspirational story about W. Mitchell

There is a Serenity prayer from Alcoholics Anonymous that goes like this: “God grant me the Serenity to accept things I cannot change, the Courage to change things I can, and the Wisdom to know the difference.”

It seems like knowing exactly what you can change and what you cannot change will give you peace of mind. Recognising things that are changeable allows us to change them immediately. And recognising what is unchangeable will give us another gift, the gift of acceptance.

Some things we just cannot change.

More times than not, it‘s very difficult to change other people it’s easier to change ourselves. More times than not, we cannot change the reality that we see around us but we can change our perception of that reality. And when we change those
perceptions, things around us start to change themselves.

Sometimes people who are dealing with terminal illnesses know that it’s not as easy as recognising that “If I change my internal state I will get well.” Sometimes that happens but it involves change at deeper levels than we currently understand.

To illustrate this there is an inspirational story about W. Mitchell who in his book “It’s Not What Happens To You, It Is What You Do About It That Makes The Difference,” talks about being accountable for everyone of his actions. He talked about where he was in several accidents and in all of these accidents he had to under go many operations and approximately 2 years of medical recovery, after which he went on with his life. Even though now he was called “ugly” and disfigured, he told people that he had forgotten how unacceptable he was and he forgot that there was anything wrong with himself. Because he had
forgotten that he was ugly, other people did too.

“You see what I learnt,” he says “during those two years that it took to me to fully recover, to learn to dress myself again, to drive again and yes to even fly an airplane again, what I focussed on in life is what I get. And if I concentrate on how bad I am or how wrong or how inadequate I am, if I concentrate on what I can’t do and of how much time there is to do it, isn’t that what I get every time?

And when I think about how powerful I am and when I think about what I have left to contribute and when I think about the difference I can make on this planet then that is what I get. You see I recognise that it is not what happens to you, it’s
what you do about it.”

Now W. Mitchell is a giant of a man and a very important teacher. But his story does not end there at all. He talks about when he was in his second major accident and lost the use of his legs permanently, that when he was tying to learn to use his new wheelchair, he met a young man that wasn’t doing too well emotionally and physically. This former athlete’s world ended when he lost the use of his legs. Confined to a wheelchair, he could no longer ski or climb mountains.

Mitchell decided to talk with this fellow patient of his and this is what he said: “One day, while trying the best I could to think of something to say that could help him, that might make a difference, I went over to him. I told him that before I was paralysed, there were ten thousand things that I could do. Now there were nine thousand. Sure I could dwell on those one thousand things and spend the rest of my life doing that or I could focus on the nine thousand that I have left. If, in my lifetime, I am able to do a few hundred of those things, I’ll be one of the most remarkable people on this planet. You see, it’s not what happens to you, it’s what you do about it that makes the difference.”

And like most winners, Mitchell spent most of his life looking for the learning in everything. His philosophy is very simple:
“The only losers are the people that don’t get into the race. The only losers are the people who don’t stand up to be countered. The only losers are the people who don’t try to make a difference.” Mitchell Official Website: http://www.wmitchell.com

So getting your life to hum starts from within you. Shape or be shaped by the environment, the choice is yours and now is the perfect time. Where you are is the perfect place. All that you have, is all you need…….for now.

Self-worth, Self-esteem and Happiness

There is an illusionary triangle that happens between the idea of self-worth, self-esteem and happiness. We seem to spiral downwards into depression whenever we are missing one of these and whenever we’re not happy it is because our self-esteem is a little low.

If our self-esteem is low, we are not happy. We feel our self-worth dropping down as well so we don’t hold ourselves in very high esteem. Sometimes this may happen because of moods and a bad mood is often the resason for blaming others. Very often, however, blaming others causes bad feeling to us as well and the more we blame others, the worse we feel.

So one of our most common and widespread prejudices is that every person has a fixed and special characteristic that they are
kind people or evil people, clever people or stupid people or cold people or hot people. But people are not like this. We can say of a person, only that he is more often kind than evil, more often cold than hot, more often clever than stupid.

We always divide people like this but this is no less wrong. If there is animosity between 2 people, both are to blame. Any number that is multiplied by zero, however big will equal zero. So if there is animosity then, it is the animosity of 2 people towards each other and it exists in both of them. So if you are in a self-deprecating system, in other words you are fighting with yourself what happens is that you are trying to tell yourself that you are no good. You are trying to tell yourself that you are not worthy of all the good things that you want to receive from life including love, not just material things but things that may involve emotion from other people as well.

This includes respect. So we deny ourselves even the gifts that are within ourselves, the treasure that is within ourselves. We are like many-faceted gemstones. Each side represents a different aspect of ourselves. We have our emotional sides with different feelings and responses, we have our competencies and strengths, our hopes and desires, our destructiveness and negativity, our selfdoubts and resentment. We also possess a drive for power and knowledge, a desire to serve and a wish to connect with others.

So our spiritual side requires that we know our many sides. We need a working relationship with our thoughts and feelings so that they can be appreciated, respected and understood. So when we tell our stories to each other, as friends, we let them know and we get to know ourselves even better and that is where a community of likemindedness serves to empower us as well and that’s where friends and family become very important. So choose very wisely who your friends are and who are the people you want to discover yourselves through. Whether you are with them in meditation or playfulness or physical activity or people you simply have conversations with.

In that way you become more amd more honest and more yourself. It is human to make mistakes and feel incomplete. Perhaps if we were all smooth like glass we can perfection of ourselves. But each person is actually a process. We are not things but events and happenings and the events are still unfolding and these are creative and spiritual adventures in life. We have somehow learnt that openness to criticism is dangerous and perhaps we thought someone would not like us if we were wrong or that we would get hurt or belittled. So when we live with our higher power, we can stand up for ourselves and a person has a right to make some mistakes obviously. We grow more if we allow ourselves to leeway(?) or simply being in process. Tell yourselves that you will not ask to have the power of perfection, you will only ask that you will not be alone in the process of living your life.

Places And People That Heal

Sometimes we come across people who are kind and gentle. They are in effect, living angels, coming at the right time, when you needed them the most. If you meet these people along the road of your life, the way to recognise them is this. They’re not looking to prove their point, they’re not looking to change your point of view, they’re looking to enhance you. They’re looking to make you feel better about yourself.

These people ask more questions about you than they are answering questions about themselves.

It’s almost as if they’re angels in disguise. There are places like that as well, places that are flooded with these people who are everywhere. Some people find them in places like Arizona, India and Northern Nepal or at the foothills of a mountain, they could be anywhere. Some people have even gone to Indonesian islands like Bali to find places that heal.

Wherever you find a healing place, you will also find that suddenly, without any apparent reason, that part of you that had been tense on the inside starts to melt and you start to feel a little sleepy. That’s the body’s first reaction in calming you down and beginning the process of healing, it makes you feel a little sleepy and allows you to finally do a little bit of
resting.

Sleep is body’s best natural antidote to the toxins generated by stressed muscles. In the presence of healing individuals, the sleepiness is also felt and then translated into a warm subconscious comfortableness with that individual. These people are rare, unique and they are hard to find. They do not often reveal themselves. When you find such a person, try not to hurt them and try not to let them go.

Around them, people make dramatic progress in life and in spirit. They leave you with little or no choice but to grow. Dead giveaways are ‘something’ in the resonance of their voice that is ‘attractive and calming’, children love them, their eyes seem to penetrate into your soul and they love to play and have fun.

Do Souls Cry?

Listening is such an important part of human activity. In fact, it improves communication between husbands and wives, friends, parents and children. We need to listen to several other things too. We need to listen, not so much to what other people say, but to the emotions behind the words. So I caution you now, don’t listen to the words people use, listen to the emotion behind the words. Don’t take the words to heart.

How many times have you said something in the heat of anger that you didn’t really mean? And how difficult it was later to
take those words back! In fact, you couldn’t. That’s the same with other people as well. They’re talking through a cloud of emotions and not everybody can speak clearly.

So you’ve got to listen to:

1. Your pain. What you are feeling in terms of pain inside. Sometimes your body speaks to you with a stomach cramp, it could speak to you by feeling empty inside, maybe you’ve been hurt by someone. Instead of blocking that pain, you need to look forward and understand what you need, to fill yourself and make yourself happy.

2. You need to listen to the pain of others. When people are in pain, they sometimes express it in the form of anger. When people are angry at you it is nothing more than a cry for love, a cry for acceptance, a cry to reach out. So don’t misinterpret the anger. Sometimes it’s the only way that people know when trying to express their need for a hug or caring or love.

3. You need to listen to God’s pain. That sounds strange doesn’t it? God’s pain? That brings up a number of questions. Do souls cry? Let’s think about that for a minute. We think about Life from a single lifetime’s perspective. In this very short and narrow lifetime, we start to make judgements on what should and shouldn’t be. We make value statements about the unjust death of a child, starvation in Africa, war in the Middle East, etc. and think to ourselves that God must have a purpose. Well think about how God sees everything for a second.

Imagine that you were a soul that lived many lifetimes and you had not a one lifetime perspective, but a twenty or even a one hundred lifetime perspective.

You would see everything from a soul who had been living twenty or a hundred lifetimes. You would see the intricate linkage of how one life affects another, how one thought affects another and how, within all this complexity of lifetimes in a linear fashion, there’s also the cross effect, where your being alive actually affects the lives and lessons of someone else.

Maybe, by you not being alive in this lifetime, you may affect negatively the circumstances affecting your family for instance. This nowhere made more apparent than in the movie “A Wonderful Life”. A man was given the opportunity to take a look at what life would have been like if he were not present in that life.

Yes, all of life is not meant to be easy, but at the same time, it’s meant to be a learning experience and never a struggle. The struggles are generated by our own notions of self-worth, fairness, guilt and fear. Learning can be fun depending on your perspective of it as well. By recognising that everything is temporary to begin with and nothing lasts forever, it makes you appreciate the ‘learning’ a little bit more. At least you will begin to understand that we cannot take things for granted anymore. That the best way to approach people and circumstances in our lives would be with an air of Gratitude.

Words of Encouragement

We need to use lots of words of encouragement, not only for other people but for ourselves as well. With all of our negative self-talk and being surrounded by mostly negative people, someone needs to get the ball rolling in reversing the negative flow, if not stemming it altogether.

These words of encouragement may encompass several lists of word that we’ve used on ourselves, they could even be our affirmations, sometimes we see them in our journals as well - words and phrases that we wished our parents had said to us when we were younger.

These could be words that you are putting together for your niece, nephew, son or daughter. These are words that you need to say to other people a lot. The amazing thing about a lot of other people is that they’re just like you, they need to feel accepted, they need to feel appreciated and they need to feel recognised for who they are. Maybe you could help them become more manageable by making them feel good about themselves.

I’ve changed the words of Confucius just a little bit but the implications are profound if you put this into your daily practice, "Say unto others what you would have others say unto you."

Motivation, Enthusiasm and Passion

Have you noticed how some people that are not very enthusiastic are also fairly unmotivated at the same time? They also don’t seem to comprehend this wonderful word called passion. If you find someone who’s passionate about their job, their loved ones or a particular activity that they’re involved in, a hobby or gift of creativity, you’ll notice that they also have a very high level of Motivation as well as enthusiasm.

A good example of this is when you watch people who are in love and have nothing but praise for their loved ones and nothing but joy and happiness to share with other, “Oh I love this woman, she is this and she is that and she is everything.” These wonderful three words, Motivation, Enthusiasm and Passion are divinely linked. They’re pretty much the ‘holy cow’ trinity of
power that a person has within themselves. If you can encourage growth in anyone of these areas, being passionate about something, whether it be something like fishing or painting or writing, it could be anything, you’ll find that you’ll be a
little more enthusiastic about that thing you were more passionate about.

As well, it would be the thing that would wake you up in the morning with a spring to your step and a bounce to your gait, instead of the normal dragging yourself out of bed. A good example is watching how children behave on school days. It’s such a chore to wake them up from Mondays to Fridays if not very difficult. You have to scream at the top of your lungs and threaten them and a half hour would have passed by the time they finally drag themselves out of bed saying “Oh, do I have to go to school?” But, when the weekend comes, you don’t even have time to get your bedroom slippers on before they’re bouncing on your bed, “What shall we do today Mum…Dad?” and they’re so enthusiastic because now, they’re out to have fun.

So there’s a fun element that’s involved in enthusiasm and passion, you feel very motivated and you jump out of bed. So imagine, if you love the job you’re doing, my gosh, how would you wake up in the morning? With a big bounce or would you be dragging yourself out of bed trying to pick up the broken pieces of the alarm clock that you threw against the wall?

Are you having fun in your vocation? In your relationships? In your home? How would you want to wake up in the morning everyday?

Beyond body, mind and emotions.

There is one thing that I have noticed in my 49 years of living and that is everywhere we look, it seems that life has one
stark purpose. Besides having fun, we are also asked to learn as much as we can.

From the time we are enrolled into kindergarten, we learn how to draw, we learn the alphabet and numbers, colours, about our friends and especially how to write our own names. In elementary school, we are taken steps further into learning the intricacies of language and mathematics and science and how the earth works around us. In high school, we learn about people we do not know too much about personally but we know them by reputation and their accomplishment.

People like Shakespeare, Sartre, Winston Churchill and other figures in history who have changed the planet in some way. It seems that the more we learn, the more all the mysteries of life seem to be peeled away a little bit at a time, like an onion, layer after layer after layer. The older we get the more we presumably have learnt in our years.

Not for everybody though is it true that the more years we have, the more learning we have as well. Some people have thirty years of experience and yet others have only one year of experience thirty times. It seems that some have the ability to learn and add on knowledge and in doing so, gained the ability to unlearn things that they have learnt earlier that may not be totally true. (Yes I know, truth is a relative term.) It seems that learning comes from everything that we do and
from everyone whom we meet and every situation that we get entangled in. (And every article like this one that we happen to read as well.) (And yes Miranda, every programme that you watch on television or every movie that you watch also influences your life decisions and shapes who you will be in the long run.)

I have heard some people lament that life had not given them a complete deck of cards. (No, they are not from Las Vegas!) Yet for others, that they had been given a ‘bad hand’ in life or they may declare that they have not enough money, or education, or opportunities or looks. Something genetic may not have been given to them so that they could go the distance and manifest those dreams that they thought were their reality (whatever they thought ‘reality’ was). They have cocooned themselves in this train of thought that if they had somebody else’s looks or opportunities or genes that they might have been able to achieve all those goals that they felt were theirs to begin with. Yet when you hear that old adage from great sages of renown, “Ask and you shall receive”, you ask why have I not received? It is very simple. The old understanding of the word ‘ask’ was not like we would ask a question, but really the word meant, ‘Claim’ and it shall be yours.

So what we needed to have done was literally as we learned more in life, from every mentor possible, (The mentors are everywhere and in every event and everything that happens to you, good and bad) we were to claim our share of this planet’s abundance and prosperity. (Again, ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are relative terms. It does not matter what happens to you, it is what you gain from it and what it teaches you about who you really are.)

Life is a rich banquet of opportunities all around us, but a lot of people seem to be starving for some strange reason. In the pages of this book, we will explore some of the reasons why people are starving and maybe we will begin to understand a little bit more about why we have not achieved all the things that we needed to achieve and have not gotten the things we needed to have. Along the way, we will find out why love, as we have called it, hurts; why some situations are painful; why some people ‘suffer’; and then at the end of it, after understanding it all we will come to a point when we can finally ‘ask’ or ‘Claim’ that which was ours from the beginning; abundance, joy, happiness and peace of mind.

Practical Ways To Change Your Luck

Luck is largely the result of taking appropriate action. When we’re passive, we don’t take sufficient charge of our affairs and we become victims of all kinds of ‘bad luck’.

Take for example the woman who claimed that the dry cleaner ruined her slacks. She would probably end up saying things like, “Well, he ruined my suit too.” What she is unconsciously doing is revealing that she knew she was taking chances with the new cleaners in her life. When she starts on a level of activity with different cleaners, she’s going to create the same problems again. Another person talking about how she may have wasted the day, may reveal her thinking pattern in saying “Well, it always happens.” She allowed it to happen.

When we permit ourselves to accept such ‘bad luck’, there are usually reasons. We may fear that we can’t or shouldn’t take any action and some of us have unconscious fears. Others tend to blame society for what goes wrong in their lives. As it seems society has helped create the drug addicts, the alcoholics, the derelicts, but if we place the blame on others, it leads us away from looking within and facing up to our own responsibility in what is going on. It also promotes passivity. If we continue to carry our childhood grievances with us to feel overwhelmed by bad luck, because everything is our parents’ fault. For example, we won’t make any attempt to improve our world, regardless of who is to blame.

It’s all up to us to take charge of our lives as best as we can and to take it from here. I believe that once you recognise your own role in creating less than perfect situations, you are able to make changes, and that’s when things get better.

Where fate, destiny and luck are concerned, all of us have been given certain resources and abilities and disabilities. What you do with what you’ve got helps determine your luck. “The fault” as the Shakespearean quote goes, “is not in our stars, but in ourselves”. The more we act to change our luck, the more we take charge and the more secure we feel. The minute a person does something positive, he feels good, he feels less angry because mastering an activity are conditions of a healthy life.

All kinds of signals will help you recognise when to let go of a bad situation or cycle of activity. Repetition is a red flag - a sign that you should make a change. Some people may say “Well, I’m so unlucky in love.” Yet, each time they end up picking up a person with an alcoholic problem or an inability to be faithful, then they start repeating frustrating failures and errors in specific areas of their life again and again. The accumulation of bad results often make us conclude that we
have ‘bad luck’ in choosing husbands or wives or any of a thousand other things.

If you begin to see a pattern of things going wrong, you need to ask yourself “What is my role in this? Why do I feel bound and trapped in the situation? What makes me complain about it rather than do something about it?”

In effect, you need to be self-critical. One of the aspects of self-criticism is to have the ability to evaluate and criticise your personal relationships. Perhaps you have problem-ridden friends who are emotionally dependent who lean on you so heavily, it’s an emotional drain. So you ought to examine your excuses for wasting time with emotional dependants. “What really lures us into this?”

People get sucked into their friends’ problems because they really want to be sucked in. It prevents them from doing more difficult things. It’s possible to be caring to friends without letting them absorb all one’s time. So if you feel pressured and overburdened, examine your own role to see if you’re not being too agreeable.

Sometimes, when we’re anxious about things, or bothered by them, we tend to put them out of our awareness. Many of us avoid paying attention by daydreaming about being on an island in the Caribbean or turning to alcohol or maybe even eating or going out and spending money on something we don’t need. These are actions that deflect good luck and they often occur on a day of misfortunes.

Instead of escaping from frustrating experiences in this way, why not ask yourself “What can I do that will make me feel more competent.” Forgo the drink or the telephone chatter or the refrigerator raids, instead do a task, even some household chore you dislike, like cleaning out a messy closet.

That single small accomplishment will promote new feelings of pleasure and security because you’re pleased with yourself for taking charge. Making little changes makes you like yourself better and when you begin to like yourself better, you begin to do more useful things to improve your life in small ways which can lead to positive changes in bigger ways. That, of course, is luck.

Finding Your Direction And Purpose In Life

Most people become very clear about what they want to achieve in life and what they want to do, when they find a purpose for living on this planet.

They feel fulfilled as they discover their ‘Reason for Being’. They find that their purpose in life is not the same as a goal in life. It’s not searching for a goal or pointing yourself at one thing and saying that’s the one thing I want to achieve.

A purpose in life is like a direction.

It’s like saying “East”. Now if you are headed East then there are going to be several cities along the way as you head in that direction and these cities can represent the goals you set in your life. Now when someone asks you what the purpose of your life is, the answer would not be “I want A” or “I want B” or “I need this or that”. You answer by saying “I am…”. Then look for a trait or attribute that best describes you, “I am generous”, “I am a teacher”, “I am an organiser” and find some characteristic that describes you.

In fact, right now, take 5 minutes to write down 5 traits that best describe you.

Sometimes these are blind spots in your life so what we need to do is ask close friends or family members, what exactly they think of when they think of us. Write down these traits and eliminate them one by one, be honest with yourself, until you find the one trait that best describes you as a person and that will be your purpose in life.

To give you an example, the purpose to my life is that I am an Educator. I am a great educator. I love teaching people in various ways, methodologies and forms. I love teaching children with stories. I love teaching by writing this article and the others that are fast on its heels and I love teaching by creating innovative TV and Radio programs. These books, Radio and TV programs, video tapes and audio tapes are goals along my direction in life.

I wish you good luck in finding your direction and Purpose in life too.

Remember, when you find it, you will find clarity in everything you do and your decision making skills will become that much more effective and your decisions will come to you easier and faster as well.

Is there a difference between growing old and growing up?

We are well aware as we look in the mirror everyday that parts of our body are responding quite well to gravity. Some of these parts are on our face and some of us call it growing old. Yet it’s not an automatic correlation that by growing old, we also grow up.

Is there a difference between growing old and growing up?

A lot people say “Well, as you get older, you get wiser and more mature. You become more adult-like.” What does that mean? When I take a look at my parents and how they’ve lived their lives, I begin thinking that they are still trying to discover what adulthood is. Yes, they have more responsibility, yes, they are tied into mortgages and payments of car loans and this and that. Yes, they have had children and had to raise them effectively and yes, they’re in a marriage but where did they learn about all this wisdom stuff and about adulthood from? From their parents!

Now I hesitate to ask that question about their parents as well. So we go back in time and find out that really, most of us have been pretending to be ‘grown up’ or playing the role of a grown up. Yet there is, inside of us, that child within, that inner child that we’re all aching to go back to. That false self we have in front of us is masking that real, fun child that wants to be set free, that wants to learn again, wants to have fun again.

Maybe this thing about ‘growing old with someone’ may mean sharing the getting of having more wisdom with this person and simply spending more time with them. For some people though, growing older leads to a common ailment, which is depression. What is depression? Well nobody knows for sure what causes depression but it’s associated with major life transitions like the loss of a loved one, a marriage, a job, moving or even such positive changes like winning the lottery.

Sometimes, however, there is no evident cause. Women are twice as likely to become depressed than men. People over 65 have 4 times the incidence rate of depression amongst younger people. Depression is the most common complaint that physicians hear.
Depression had previously been attributed to weakness of character and self-indulgence, something a person should just snap out of. Recent research however, has shown it to be something quite concrete and real. Brain scanning, with Positron Emission Tomography, has identified two parts of the brain that function abnormally during major depression. The left frontal cortex has an abnormally high blood flow and this may be associated with the constant flow of negative thoughts that typically accompany this state.

The Amygdala, a small inner brain structure, thought to regulate emotional reactions also had a high blood flow both during and between bouts of depression. So from a neuro-chemical perspective, depression is connected with reduced levels of the neurotransmitters, Serotonin, Norepinephrine and Dopamine. As a result of reduced levels of these neurotransmitters, especially Serotonin, people experience two symptoms, a feeling of depression and Anhedonia, the diminished ability to enjoy things that normally bring pleasure, such as food, sex or favourite hobbies.

Indicators of depression include:

1. Fatigue and weakness.
2. Inability to concentrate and make decisions.
3. Slow body motion.
4. Sad and empty moods.
5. Changes in eating patterns.
6. Feelings of failure and uselessness.
7. Changes in sleeping patterns.
8. Moodiness and irritability.
9. Weight loss or weight gain.
10. Preoccupation with thoughts of death and suicide.

Aside form the immediate discomfort that these symptoms produce, they also produce neuro-transmitters and neuro-peptides which inhibit the immune system so we become more prone to getting sick as well. Depression left unchecked and untreated can lead to what we call Depressive Psychosis. Simply put, it is a state of mind where the emotional content of any thought is magnified and treated as very real regardless of any evidence to the contrary. If you or someone you love has been depressed for a while check with your Physician or a Psychiatrist for immediate treatment.

Do Not Believe Everything You Read, See or Hear

More times than not we are bombarded with a lot of expressions in music and songs around us that bear witness to the mind and the thinking of the song writers. I cannot help but remember one of the songs sung by Mariah Carey.

It says, “I can’t live if living is without you.” Now set to music, it becomes a very powerful witness if you will to how we can become quite codependent in this society, how easily these songs can tell us that being codependent or feeling very dependent on someone else for our existence, or turning to someone to validate our existence, is quite normal because we hear it all the time on radio. Millions of people are listening to it, so it must be okay. But it is not okay.

These geniuses who write the songs may have a lot of psychological problems but we don’t see that. What they are expressing in their songs may be the way for them to vent their feelings. So they are talking about their thoughts and their thoughts are not all that clear. Sometimes they are searching for love in all the wrong places.

Have you heard that before? So where would the ‘right’ place be to search for love? If I fall in love the next time, it will be forever. What were you trying to fall in love with before? How were you intending to do that? Only part of the way? Intention is everything as well. Now in Hollywood, stories are written and sold for large sums of money. But what would sell? Fantasy.
During the Great Depression in the US, one industry that was booming other than the food industry was the film industry. People were so caught up with their pain and the realities of the Depression that they needed a good fantasy to lose themselves in for a couple of hours. That’s exactly what we are doing now as well. If we spend a lot of time watching television, you are subjecting yourself to the creative talents of all the writers there. Take a look at James Cameron’s wonderful story, “The Titanic”.

Compare that plot to his life and who he was trying to build a long lasting relationship with. It is very difficult if you take a look at the actors and the writers, you will find that they are still searching for self. They are searching for permanence in relationships which they find very difficult to live out in real life. So what do they do? They write it out. They out it in their stories.

We buy these stories, hook, line and sinker, believing that that is what love is like. The hero sweeping the damsel in distress off her feet and taking her off into the sunset. They will make passionate love together even while the ship is sinking. So who are you going to cling to as your ship sinks. So walking in the sunset, most people don’t realise, implies that it is going to be dark pretty soon and the harsh realities of that unknown darkness are yet to come to the fore. Or you may be thinking right now, “Frankly Scarlett, I don’t give a damn!”

Forgiving Or Forgetting

Some people carry their pain around with them as if they were badges to be proud of. “I’ve been hurt by so many people before and everybody I meet will start to hurt me again. Oh everybody is out to get me. It’s a dog-eat-dog world.” You’ve heard these expressions before and some people use specific pains as tools for protection and perhaps even to give them more power in some situations.

Again, what I urge people to do in learning how to forgive or forget, especially parents who have been unwittingly causing pain to their children or teachers who have said the wrong thing sometimes or even relatives or care-takers who have been looking after children especially the child in you from the past, we need to turn to them and forgive them. So apply the same principle, not good and bad but what was useful and what was not useful, what was the learning in that situation? What did you gain and what did you lose?

When you take a look at the gains and the losses, be very clear about what exactly it is you lost. Then you will start to realise that really, you lost nothing at all. If you had some other way to learn the lessons that you learnt, you would be a totally different person from what you are now. Specifically, going back and giving to the child that you remember was you would be an amazing thing in itself. It is possible to do this right now. In fact, if you take a few moments to sit down quietly and think about how much you wish there was someone who could help you, the child of many years ago will come in and protect you and look after you.

YOU are the person that can do that. Take a moment, relax, take a deep breath, think of the time when you as a 4 or 8 year old could use someone loving, someone like yourself, having only your best interests at heart, go back to that time and take a look at the child that is you. Bend down and give that child the biggest hug that you can ever imagine and let that child melt into you or you into that child and let that child know that you’re going to help the child with all the resources that you’ve got, with all of the knowledge that you’ve got. Your sub-conscious mind is an amazing thing. It does not distinguish between what is real and what is not, what is past and what is present or what is future. Everything is in a single continuum for it.

So when you do this exercise with you as a 4, 8, 16 or 20 year old, it makes no difference. Go back and say to that person, that is you, “I give you my love, I give you my joy, I give you my happiness, I give you my knowledge and wisdom” Asyou fuse yourself into this imaginary person which is you, you start to find an abilty to forgive and perhaps not to forget altogether. What is important is that you forgive the people who have hurt you in the past.

Forgiving , if you split it into 2 words is really ‘for giving’. Who are you giving to but yourself? By letting go of all the hurt, pain and perceived cruelty that other people have placed upon you, then you start to realise that you have been dragging around a lot of corpses and your emotional baggage has been dragged into relationships and it is time perhaps to start travelling light again on this road to happiness, on this road home.

But forgetting when split into 2 words, you get “for getting” What are you ‘getting’ in response to forgiving other people? Well, you are getting freedom. You are doing all this, you are forgiving for you to get more knowledge, more wisdom, more learning and you open yourself up to more experiences and to the joy and the richness and the abundance that has been yours to begin with. You see, you were born rich but somewhere along the way, you convinced yourself that you didn’t deserve all of this. You convinced yourself that you were not worthy.