Ten benefits of forgiveness

Ten biggest benefits of forgiveness and letting go:

1 Forgiveness terminates our harmful behaviour.

"Forgiveness is a side effect of willingness to accept ourselves and others" ~ Kimberly Virdure-King

2  Forgiveness releases us from the past

*not to forgive meanst to be loced in the past and to grieve.that stops us from living new, full life. - Robin Casarijian
3 Forgiveness frees us and allows you to move forward.

* To Forgive means to release a prisoner to freedom and understand that you were the prisoner. L.B. Smedes

* When you continue a resentment to another person, you are bound by emotional ties, which are stronger than steel.Forgiveness is the only way to stop them and break free. C. Ponder

4 Forgiveness makes us better.

5  Forgiveness strengthens our character.

* "The soul of man is strongest when it refuses to revenge and dares to forgive the wrongs." EA Chapin

6 Forgiveness teaches us to love

* We can not love fully  until we learn to forgive. as the stronger is our love,the greater is our ability to forgive . "

7 Forgiveness enhances our mental and physical health.

* People who have anger, hostility and hatred replaces that with forgivness will enjoy better cardiovascular condition and have fewer long-term health problems. C. Thoresen

8 Forgiveness guarantees you a peace of mind.

* "Forgiveness - is an internal attitude, revitalizing heart. First, it provides peace of mind for ourselves. And being spiritually calm, we can share that and to others.It is the most valuable gift you can give. "G. Jampolskis

9 Forgiveness increases our wisdom.

* A wise man will hurry to forgive, because he understands the true value of time, and will not allow himself to bother with misery. " S. Johnson

10 Forgiveness honours God.

With Metta, Yours Namaste

How Meditation Techniques Compare

There are so many differend meditations.Are you looking for the right meditation for you? Many are seeking tools to turn within and thats already a first step.

Some people tries to fix their problems with everything from psychotherapy and Prozac to positive thinking and politics. And some people are ready to close their eyes and take a dive - not to escape, but to more fully BE.

I find that most of the people no longer need to be convinced of meditation's practical benefits. But people do often ask, "Aren't all meditation techniques basically the same?"

Experts in the venerated traditions of meditation have always marveled at the mind's subtlety, appreciating its keen responsiveness and sensitivity to different mental procedures. Great master teachers of meditation have recognized that the various techniques engage the mind in different ways and naturally produce different results. With advancements in neurophysiology, scientists are now identifying distinctions among varieties of meditation practices.

The Myth of the Relaxation Response

The old "scientific" myth that meditation practices all induce the same, general state of physiological rest - so called the "relaxation response" - has been overturned. Though many practices provide relaxation, decades of research show that not all techniques produce the same physiological, psychological or behavioral effects.

Three major categories of meditation

Nowaday we have meditation labs have sprung up in United States at universities across the country - places such as Yale, UCLA, University of Oregon, UW Madison and Maharishi University of Management. Their contributions have helped researchers identify three major categories of techniques, classified according to EEG measurements and the type of cognitive processing or mental activity involved:

    * Controlled focus: Classic examples of concentration or controlled focus are found in the revered traditions of Zen, Tibetan Buddhism, Qiqong, Yoga and Vedanta, though many methods involve attempts to control or direct the mind. Attention is focused on an object of meditation - such as one's breath, an idea or image, deity, an emotion or sound vibration, like mantra repetition. Brain waves recorded during these practices are typically in the gamma frequency (20-50 Hz), seen whenever you concentrate or during "active" cognitive processing.

    * Open monitoring: These mindfulness type practices, common in Vipassana and Zazen, involve watching or actively paying attention to experiences - without judging, reacting or holding on. Open monitoring gives rise to frontal theta (4-8 Hz), an EEG pattern commonly seen during memory tasks or reflection on mental concepts.(EEG Patern - Electroencephalogram is 7.81 to 7.83 Hz frequency of an individual. This is the same frequency range as in the earth's magnetic field , known as "Schumann Resonance").

    * Automatic self-transcending: This category describes practices designed to go beyond their own mental activity - enabling the mind to spontaneously transcend the process of meditation itself. Whereas concentration and open monitoring require degrees of effort or directed focus to sustain the activity of meditation, this approach is effortless because there is no attempt to direct attention - no controlled cognitive processing. An example is the Transcendental Meditation technique. The EEG pattern of this category is frontal alpha coherence, associated with a distinct state of relaxed inner wakefulness.

Some other techniques may fall under more than one category.For example, guided meditation is controlled focus if the instruction is to "Hold attention on your breath." But if the instructor says, "Now just watch your thoughts, letting them come and go," then you're probably doing open monitoring.

As you doing different practices, you get different results.

Without the scientific research, meditative states and their effects remain subjective. Brain research, along with findings on psychological and behavioral effects, gives a more objective framework for health professionals or anyone to determine which meditation technique might be most beneficial for a given purpose.

For example, research suggests that concentration techniques may improve focusing ability. A study on advanced Buddhist monks - some of whom have done more than 10,000 hours of meditation -- found that concentrating on "loving kindness and compassion" increased those feelings and produced synchronous gamma activity in the left pre-frontal cortex - indicating more powerful focus.The effect of open monitoring or non-judgemental observation is said to increase even-mindedness in daily life.Studies on mindfulness-type practices indicate better pain management and reduction of negative though patterns.

I find that most meditators are no longer concerned that a technique might come from the East or have roots in a spiritual tradition - their main concern is that the practice works, and now the science can help to remove the guesswork. Alot of people are choosing meditation to counterbalance a fast pace, outer directed and over stimulated life, and yet turning to something as simple as our own inner silence.

based on Jeanne Ball article 'How Meditation Techniques Compare' 

Ten Spiritually Transmitted Diseases

It is a jungle out there, and it is no less true about spiritual life than any other aspect of life. Do we really think that just because someone has been meditating for five years, or doing 10 years of yoga practice, that they will be any less neurotic than the next person? At best, perhaps they will be a little bit more aware of it. A little bit. It is for this reason that I spent the last 15 years of my life researching and writing books on cultivating discernment on the spiritual path in all the gritty areas—power, sex, enlightenment, gurus, scandals, psychology, neurosis—as well as earnest, but just plain confused and unconscious, motivations on the path. Along with my partner, author and teacher Marc Gafni, we are developing a new series of books, courses and practices to bring further clarification to these issues.

Several years ago, I spent a summer living and working in South Africa. Upon my arrival I was instantly confronted by the visceral reality that I was in the country with the highest murder rate in the world, where rape was common and more than half the population was HIV-positive—men and women, gays and straights alike. As I have come to know hundreds of spiritual teachers and thousands of spiritual practitioners through my work and travels, I have been struck by the way in which our spiritual views, perspectives, and experiences become similarly “infected” by “conceptual contaminants”—comprising a confused and immature relationship to complex spiritual principles—that are as invisible, yet as insidious, as sexually transmitted disease.

The following 10 categorizations are not intended to be definitive but are offered as a tool for becoming aware of some of the most common spiritually transmitted diseases.

1. Fast-Food Spirituality: Mix spirituality with a culture that celebrates speed, multitasking, and instant gratification and the result is likely to be fast-food spirituality. Fast-food spirituality is a product of the common and understandable fantasy that relief from the suffering of our human condition can be quick and easy. One thing is clear, however: spiritual transformation cannot be a quick fix.

2. Faux Spirituality: Faux spirituality is the tendency to talk, dress, and act as we imagine a spiritual person would. It is a kind of imitation spirituality that mimics spiritual realization in the way that leopard-skin fabric imitates the genuine skin of a leopard.

3. Confused Motivations: Although our desire to grow is genuine and pure, it often gets mixed with lesser motivations, including the wish to be loved, the desire to belong, the need to fill our internal emptiness, the belief that the spiritual path will remove our suffering, and spiritual ambition—the wish to be special, to be better than, to be “the one.”

4. Identifying with Spiritual Experiences: In this disease, the ego identifies with our spiritual experience and takes it as its own, and we begin to believe that we are embodying insights that have arisen within us at certain times. In most cases, it does not last indefinitely, although it tends to endure for longer periods of time in those who believe themselves to be enlightened and/or who function as spiritual teachers.

5. The Spiritualized Ego: This disease occurs when the very structure of the egoic personality becomes deeply embedded with spiritual concepts and ideas. The result is an egoic structure that is “bullet-proof.” When the ego becomes spiritualized, we are invulnerable to help, new input, or constructive feedback. We become impenetrable human beings and are stunted in our spiritual growth, all in the name of spirituality.

6. Mass Production of Spiritual Teachers: There are a number of current trendy spiritual traditions that produce people who believe themselves to be at a level of spiritual enlightenment, or mastery, that is far beyond their actual level. This disease functions like a spiritual conveyor belt: put on this glow, get that insight, and–bam! –you’re enlightened and ready to enlighten others in similar fashion. The problem is not that such teachers instruct but that they represent themselves as having achieved spiritual mastery.

7. Spiritual Pride: Spiritual pride arises when the practitioner, through years of labored effort, has actually attained a certain level of wisdom and uses that attainment to justify shutting down to further experience. A feeling of “spiritual superiority” is another symptom of this spiritually transmitted disease. It manifests as a subtle feeling that “I am better, more wise, and above others because I am spiritual.”

8. Group Mind: Also described as group-think, cultic-mentality, or ashram disease, group mind is an insidious virus that contains many elements of traditional codependence. A spiritual group makes subtle and unconscious agreements regarding the correct ways to think, talk, dress, and act. Individuals and groups infected with “group mind” reject individuals, attitudes, and circumstances that do not conform to the often unwritten rules of the group.

9. The Chosen-People Complex: Unfortunately, the chosen people complex is not limited to Jews. It is the belief that “Our group is more spiritually evolved, powerful, enlightened and, simply put, better than any other group.” There is an important distinction between the recognition that one has found the right path, teacher, or community for themselves, and having found The One.

10. The Deadly Virus: “I Have Arrived” This disease is so potent that it has the capacity to be terminal and deadly to our spiritual evolution. This is the belief that “I have arrived” at the final goal of the spiritual path. Our spiritual progress ends at the point where this belief becomes crystallized in our psyche, for the moment we begin to believe that we have reached the end of the path, further growth ceases.

“The essence of love is perception,” according to the teachings of Marc Gafni, “therefore the essence of self love is self perception. You can only fall in love with someone you can see clearly—including yourself. To love is to have eyes to see. It is only when you see yourself clearly that you can begin to love yourself.”

It is in the spirit of Marc’s teaching that I believe that a critical part of learning discernment on the spiritual path is discovering the pervasive illnesses of ego and self-deception that are in all of us. That is when we need a sense of humor and the support of real spiritual friends. As we face our obstacles to spiritual growth, there are times when it is easy to fall into a sense of despair and self-diminishment and lose our confidence on the path. We must keep the faith, in ourselves and in others, in order to really make a difference in this world.

From Eyes Wide Open: Cultivating Discernment on the Spiritual Path©, Sounds True, 2009 by Mariana Caplan

Chinmaya Dunster

Music that I like to practise Yoga or meditation with: Chinmaya Dunster - Buddha Moon

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Short Version of Yoga-Nidra

Short version of Yoga-Nidra is available to download now!Only 15minutes of practise which you can incorporate into your daily life as a routine practise of meditation.It helps to release the stress and anxiety after busy day at work or doing other stressful things.and help to get back to yourself and increase calm and peaceful  state of mind.

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'Zen' Boyfriends - Spiritual Relationships

The Problems with 'Zen' Boyfriends...

Some things just don't want to die. Much to my surprise, a little piece I published over 10 years ago, about a certain type of spiritual guy I found myself dating in my early twenties, set alight a dormant flame throughout the world. Originally published in the anthology "Radical Spirit," "Zen Boyfriends" was rapidly translated into multiple languages, and I soon learned that Zen boyfriends were found in Italy, Spain, France and even communities in Thailand and other parts of Asia.

More years on the path brought more Zen boyfriends and infinite variations on the theme, not only for myself but from my clients and from readers and seekers everywhere. "Zen Boyfriends" eventually resurrected itself as a musical produced by Oregon musician Mark Steighner, and it was finally updated and reproduced in the San Francisco Bay area by me, with musician Anastasi Mavrides and actress Suraya Keating, to sold out audiences. I hope you enjoy the snippets from the original writing and revised theater production, and please share your stories!

***

At a certain stage in my own spiritual development, I began to attract a new breed of men that over time I came to call "Zen boyfriends." I use the term "Zen" loosely here, because a man doesn't have to be a Zen Buddhist to fall into this category. He could be a Tibetan Buddhist, a Sufi, or even a practitioner of some obscure brand of yoga. The more rigid the tradition, the better for this type. What defines a Zen boyfriend is the manner in which he skillfully uses spiritual ideals and practices as an excuse for his terror of, and refusal to be in, any type of real relationship with a woman. He is both too identified with his balls to become a celibate monk, and at the same time too little identified with the wider implications of them to take responsibility for them. The result: a righteous, distant and very intelligent substitute for a real man.

Andrew was a great example of a Zen boyfriend. This is how a typical morning went in our love nest:

At 4:30 a.m. his alarm sounds. "Andrew, your alarm is going off."
"Press the snooze."
I oblige. Then at 4:38 it goes off again. "Andrew, get up!"
"I'm too tired."

By the fourth snooze I was wide awake, while he dozed away like a baby in arms. When he'd finally open his eyes sometime around 5:30, I was undeniably and un-spiritually pissed off. Without even a word or a glance in my direction, he would roll out of bed and head for the bathroom. I would listen with mounting rage as he gargled his Chinese herbs, did an hour of tai chi on the creaky hardwood floor, and then adjusted himself on his zafu to meditate. Often I would get up and meditate as well, but since I didn't practice the same form of meditation as he did, he said we couldn't practice together. The argument was always the same:

"Why do you set your alarm if you're not going to get up?"
"It's important to hold the intention to get up early. The energy for meditation is strongest between three and five in the morning."
"If it's so strong then why don't you just do it?"
And then: "Andrew, it would make a big difference to me if you would at least say 'good morning' when you get up."
"I want my meditation to be consistent with the delta waves that are activated during sleep, and speech interferes with this."
"Even two words, 'good' and 'morning'?!"
"Yes, even two words."
"How about a hug then?"
"Same thing."
"Then why doesn't cold water on your face or flushing the toilet screw up the delta
waves?"
"This conversation is closed. I need space."

Men need space. All women know this. But some men need two parts space for one part intimacy, or even 10 parts space for one part intimacy. But with Andrew, and other Zen boyfriends, it was more like 98 parts space to two parts intimacy.

It was lose-lose proposition with Andrew. Exactly why I wanted our relationship to work so badly in the first place is a worthy question, but I am a woman, and the more a man withdraws into himself, the more a woman chases him there to draw him out. Andrew told me that our relationship wasn't working because I wasn't spiritual enough. What a blow!

He complained that I wasn't an experienced meditator and that my three short years of meditation practice didn't enable me to understand my mind the way he understood his mind, thus rendering me incapable of a "spiritual relationship." When he lamented that I only meditated a half-hour a day whereas he meditated for an hour, I painstakingly began to meditate for an hour. When he complained that since I studied Vipassana Buddhism instead of Zen Buddhism, I couldn't really understand his true aim, I started reading Zen and altered my meditation. Finally, he said that even though I was starting to walk the path of Zen, that his teacher taught in a very particular way that was distinct from other schools of Zen. But when I told him I wanted to meet his teacher, he said that I had already taken over too much of his life, and that he was entitled to keep the very thing he treasured most -- his teacher -- for himself, even though she taught to widespread audiences publicly throughout the world.

Our relationship ended over a winter weekend retreat at a rented condo on Lake Tahoe with his mother, when he told me that my Yin energy wasn't a powerful enough match for his Yang energy. I should have had the foresight to realize that, for some men, especially Zen boyfriends, having their girlfriend and mother in the same house is the very thing that takes them over the edge.

Stephan was another one of these scared guys who hid behind his spirituality. We met at a narcissistic, eco-retentive, save-the-earth weekend workshop. Two days after the workshop, as I sped off the Golden Gate bridge and headed up 101 north toward my country home after a full day of seeing therapy clients, I noticed a tall man pounding on a drum while standing on top of a beaten-up VW van alongside the highway. He looked familiar, but I couldn't be sure. I got off at the next exit, drove back down the highway, turned around again, and pulled up behind his van. Sure enough, it was Stephan. He told me that the workshop had inspired him to do a new form of political ecoprotest.

Once a week, he said, he planned to stand on his van alongside the highway and call out the list of endangered species while pounding on his drum. When I asked him what he hoped to accomplish by this, he said that he didn't know, but that he was intuitively guided to do it. Strange as it sounds, I was impressed.

He asked me out on a date. The first night we ate vegetarian lasagna, Caesar salad and Haagen Daz by candlelight in his living room, and then rolled around his balcony for hours while Mickey Hart played on the stereo and Sausalito danced at our feet. The next morning, he told me he needed space. And in this way, our Zen relationship developed, in the small gaps between the large spaces.

Stephan eventually left for India (a spiritually disguised, intimacy escape plan I myself was to later model after), and returned a year and a half later under the spiritual name "Jivan," looking very monk-like in his white cotton Indian garb and ivory shawl. His long hair had been cut to shoulder length and had grayed, his skin appeared to have permanently tanned, and small wrinkles marked the corners of his eyes. He said he had thought about me a lot and asked whether I would like to go out for dinner. As I was between boyfriends (again), and as he was quite handsome in his new gurulook, I agreed.

Jivan thought he had become enlightened, though he wouldn't have dared to say as much. He had become a student of one of those Indian teachers who skillfully create mystical experiences in their groupies by momentarily cutting through their psychological blocks, and then declare them enlightened from the experience. In such a situation, the master gets a swollen head and an immense reputation for being able to enlighten people, and thousands of Western hippies who are afraid of really living life get to think that they have risen above it. They then proceed unsolicited to try to bestow the same boon upon others.

Jivan was a living example of such a situation. The first night was all right, as far as Zen boyfriends go. I enjoyed hearing of his adventures over a cappuccino, only occasionally irritated by his references to having "seen through the nature of reality" or having "become one with everything." Of course, by early evening he needed space, but that was to be expected.

The next day, however, as we walked in Muir woods, he tried to do his spiritual number on me. To explain his spiritual approach in two sentences, nonduality is based on the tacit recognition of the oneness, or "non-separation," of all things. It means that "I" don't exist separately from you or any other animate or inanimate being or thing: all is one. However, there is a big difference between being able to spew these words (as I just did), and living as one who abides eternally in the truth of this reality.

"Jivan, if we are going to hang out together, I need to feel like you're really here with me and not always so detached," I opened the floor.
"But who is the 'you' who wants to hang out with the 'me'?"
"I am the me and you are the you!"
"There is no difference, so we can never really be apart or together; it's all the same."
"You're full of shit."
"But who do you think is the 'me' that is full of shit?"
"I think it is you!"
"Who's getting angry?"
"I'm getting angry."
"Look into my eyes, what do you see?"
"You."
"Look more deeply. Now what do you see?"
"I see a lonely man who thinks he's enlightened."

Extremely frustrated and teary-eyed, I walked away and sat on a log by the stream trying to figure out why it was so important to me to try to get through to him.
"Why did you come all the way over here to cry?" he sat down beside me, fully believing in his own innocence.
I looked at him with that end-of-the-relationship look in my eye. "Because there is no one there to hold me if I cry, and I'd just as soon cry alone than cry with nobody."

Several years later, I was getting changed after a strong yoga practice when I was approached by the handsome, purer-like man who had shown up at the studio and had been practicing next to me. You would have thought that by now I would have known how to spot these men from a mile away, but as the saying goes, "Neurosis is defined by doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

"You have a great practice. Isn't Ashtanga cool? You get to work all the limbs of yoga and go really deep. Have you ever been to India to study yoga in Mysore? I lived there for six months," he approached me, beads of sweat dripping from his curly, Mediterranean locks. "I'm Jake."
"I've been to India for years but not to Mysore. This year I'm going again to teach a study abroad class."
"Oh, I've been meaning to go back there for years. Maybe I can come with you? Hey, would you like to come by my house tonight for a glass of wine?"

A yoga practitioner, I thought, that's cool. I've never dated someone I can practice yoga with, and he drinks wine and drives a motorcycle besides. He can't be too New Agey, I thought. He then told me that he was getting his Ph.D. in Sanskrit. A smart one -- maybe I've struck gold. So I go over to his house and we sip organic red wine and eat Spanish olives, and we are having a wonderfully sexy time dancing by candlelight when he asks:

"Are you monogamous?"
I looked at him confused. "Did you ask if I was monogamous?"
"Yes. Are you monogamous?"
"Forgive me if I sound a little stupid or silly, but monogamous as opposed to what?"
"Polyamorous."
"Poly-what?"

"Polyaaaaamorous. It means that your love is not limited to one person. You love freely and unconditionally because that is your nature, but you are not limited to one person or one commitment for the rest of your life. I am polyamorous, and I am interested in having a relationship with you. For now you would be my 'primary partner,' but I would like the autonomy to love, or at least engage sexually with others freely and have 'secondary' relationships with them."

"So let me get this straight. You're saying that if I'm your girlfriend I have to be okay with you sleeping with other women whenever you want to? It kind of sounds like this polyamory is some fancy psycho-spiritual justification for sleeping around."
"You don't get it, clearly. Polyamory is for real. Maybe if you try it, you will like it. And for better or worse, if you want to have an intimate relationship with me, it's part of the deal. Haven't you ever heard of the bonobo monkeys?"
"No."
"The bonobos are a group of polyamorous monkeys who solve all their problems by having sex with each other. It's a matriarchal society. You're a woman. You should like that."

He can't be for real, I thought. He probably just hasn't found the right woman. If he loves me enough, he'll snap out of it. I dismissed it from my mind, we spent a couple of months falling madly in love, and we were on our way home from our first romantic weekend getaway when he said to me:

"My lover from Spain is moving here to be with me for six months. She is going to be my primary partner now, but I am open to you being my secondary relationship."
"What?!? Are you for real?! I thought we were just starting to fall in love?"
"We were. I mean, we are. But I love her, too. I love everybody. I warned you that this was going to happen. My love is limitless and unconditional and therefore isn't limited to you. I must listen to my heart."
"Are you sure it is your heart talking and not your balls?"
"Are you forgetting what all the spiritual traditions tell us?"
"Do unto others as you would like them to do unto you?"
"No, not that, and besides, I would love to rejoice in your sexual union with another man."
"That makes one of us. I need commitment to feel safe."
"The traditions tell us that our love must be unconditional and inclusive. Buddhism teaches about sympathetic joy -- learning to rejoice in the good fortune of others. In polyamory, you learn to feel ecstasy through your partner's happiness when he or she is with another person."
"And are you going to express sympathetic joy with my broken heart?"
And so I let him fly away to the land of the One in the form of the Many.

In this way came and went a couple more Zen boyfriends. We live in confusing times where spirituality and neurosis are often seamlessly interwoven into a complex constellation of radiant wisdom and psychological woundedness. Yet in the end, I blame not them but myself. For as distant, arrogant, righteous and terrified as they were, it was I who sought them out, I who tried to open them in the ways that I wanted them to be open, and ultimately I who recreated my childhood pattern of not feeling loved by eliciting the same response in my relationships.

At the end of the day, I ended up with a nice Jewish boy.

Wrote :Mariana Caplan, Ph.D. 
Author of : The Guru Question: The Perils and Rewards of Choosing a Spiritual Teacher

Q&A and Yoga-Nidra Guided Meditation in Forest

Yoga-Nidra Guided Meditation in Forest Cafe plus Questions and Answers afterwards.Your comments below would be appreciated!

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