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The Sacred Art of Self-Love

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November 18, 2014

Religious. Agnostic. Skinny. Healthy. Holy. Good. Ugly. Right. Wrong. We are all of these assumptions and much more in the mirror of the world. Trying to adapt to the reflection of our perfection, suppressing our true identities, we wear a mask best suited for the occasion, a mask of ego that would help us fit in with the rest in the world of shallowness.

What we really miss out on while we are busy adjusting, is the emotion we were taught as a child – LOVE. Trying to find love outside and pacifying the ardent desire ‘to be loved’, we overlook the place where it truly resides – within us.

Greek mythology, Buddhism, Hinduism and many other religions and cults, emphasis on the profuse power of self-love and self-compassion. This fundamental form of love often goes missed and, if tapped, is declared to be wrapped in the mask of narcissism.

But the urgent need to focus on self-love, a symbol of self trust, is ignored. People are scared to believe in themselves & are rather happier to live a life of self-contempt because self-trust is too expensive to afford.

And who is to be blamed in the mad frenzy of the best? The society or ourselves? This perplexing question can have subjective answers. Greeks mythology, as we know, holds gods and goddess on a dewy rope of faith for every emotion.

From Eros, the Greek god of love and sexual desire, to Aphrodite, the goddess of love, passion & desire. There is a term for self-love in Greek mythology too, Philautia.

The idea of Philautia is not to love ourselves under the purview of narcissism, but to identify the healthier and spiritual side of self-love.

The concept is based on the idea that if we are secure inside and the power of self-love is cultivated & nurtured, the desire of approval from the outside cease to exist. Also, one who has experienced love internally will love others as well.

This form of self-love is prescribed in Buddhism as self-compassion and also laid down by Hinduism, that speaks about love for others being just an illusion & not reality. The real love lies ‘inside’ and the pure love is, love for the Divine.

Ways to self-love

What is the cost of practising the sacred art of self-love? You will have to wager your negative thoughts, the perception of others you see yourself with and the self-critical, over-analytical mind that puts you down.

1) Self-realization or self-worth is an important step

When we realize that we have a role to play in the giant scheme of the universe and without which, things might not function, a positive approach to self starts to harbor.

2) Putting yourself first

Often in our daily routine, we neglect ourselves by putting our loved ones before us. When we do so, we are suppressing our own needs.

According to the Patanjali Yoga Sutras, when we suppress our desires, it crops up in the form of a disease either physically or mentally. Consider yourself as an integral part of the universe and next time think before you choose someone else above yourself.

3) Stop the comparison game

Acknowledging that we all are born to be essentially different, stop comparing yourself with your family, friends or even foes. This comparison is the worst thing one can do. When we compare, not only do we criticize ourselves, we also question our self-worth.

4) Working on the spiritual aspect

The mindful practice of yoga and meditation, if done regularly, can reap extended benefits. When we work on our subconscious mind by way of meditation, we harness the power of oneness with the supreme energy. Gaining strength internally will ground you and balance out the insecurities hiding in our mind.

Guided Meditation

A short guided meditation that can be practised at home for 5 minutes or more is as follows:

Lie down in Savasana (corpse pose) or sit in Sukhasana. Bring your awareness to your breath.

First, focus your attention on how the breath is flowing. Start from the nostrils, move down to the windpipe, further down to the lungs, to diaphragm and finally to abdomen. Slowly become aware of the breath flowing all the way out, do this 8-10 times. You can also place your hands in abdominal breathing position.

Gently bring your awareness now to the third eye and breathe in through the third eye area all the way back to the head and out. Now, keep breathing in and out in the eyebrow centre as you slowly drift away into a deeper level of consciousness.

Moving ahead, we shall make some resolves or some affirmations to ourselves. Remember that your subconscious mind is 6,000 times stronger than your conscious mind. Say the following to yourself loud and clear:

I love myself unconditionally & believe in myself.
I am not comparing myself to anybody.
I am an integral part of the universe.
I forgive myself for all wrong done by me and I accept myself for who I am.
I respect myself and I am proud of who I am.
I am a worthy of receiving happiness, joy, love and peace.

Repeat any 2 or 3 affirmations as your mind tells you to. Stay here for as long as you want, repeating and chanting these resolves. Remember, that a resolve or affirmation must be chanted in an accomplished form.

For example: If you want to think positively. Say it like this: I am thinking with a positive mind, and not like this: I will think with a positive mind.

In the words of William Shakespeare: “Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin, as self-neglecting.”

Tap into the power and joy of self-love and notice your inner and outer world transforming.

7 Ways to Start Being Healthier Right Now

Life

Gary Z McGee

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November 16, 2014

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7 Ways to Start Being Healthier Right Now

“True wealth is the ability to fully experience life.” ~ Henry David Thoreau

In an otherwise unhealthy world it behooves us to become healthier people. Why? Because it compels the unhealthy world to balance itself and become healthier despite itself. But also because we humans are the reason the world is unhealthy to begin with.

Healthy-Life-dana-schmooke-chiropractic-iowa-city

We’re the problem. But we can just as easily choose to be the solution by becoming healthier people.

Here are seven ways we can start being part of the solution instead of part of the problem.

1.) Be more proactive about your problems

“The only way that we can live, is if we grow. The only way that we can grow is if we change. The only way that we can change is if we learn. The only way we can learn is if we are exposed. And the only way that we can become exposed is if we throw ourselves out into the open. Do it. Throw yourself.” ~ C. JoyBell C.

We all have problems. Some are worse than others. And some problems can’t be controlled. But usually the problems in our life stems from the simple fact that we are living an unhealthy lifestyle.

If this is the case, start facing your problems head on. Take full accountability of your life, and the course it is taking. Focus more on what you can control, like having a healthy disposition toward life, and let go of the things you cannot.

Whether your problems are physical and you need more exercise, or your problems are spiritual and you need to get out into nature more, make it a point to discover the basic underlying factors of why problems occur in your life, and then be proactive about transforming or reconditioning those factors into a solid foundation so that you can begin to cultivate a healthier lifestyle.

2.) Be brutally honest with yourself

“There are so many things I would rather be than good. I would rather be engaged. I would rather be humble. I would rather be genuinely provocative. I would rather be present. I would rather be interdependent. I would rather be challenged. I would rather be wise. I would rather be real. It will never be enough. It will always be worth the discomfort.” ~ Courtney E. Martin

Be engaged with who you are right now. Be fully present with what it means to be you in this moment. Feel what you like about yourself. Feel what you dislike about yourself. Feel in what ways your mind, body and soul are healthy. Feel in what ways your mind, body and soul are not healthy.

Be brutally honest with the things you feel you need to change, and then use that honesty as a starting line to dash into a new and improved life. Don’t wait for other runners to show up, they may not.

Don’t wait for a referee to sound the gun to start the race, sound your own gun. Authentically provoke yourself. Be fully involved with what makes you tick in both negative and positive ways, and then make the best of that information in order to be a healthier person right now.

3.) Be more kind to yourself

“It is beautiful to feel in a body built for feeling, and exist intensely on a planet exuding intensity.” ~ Victoria Erickson

We have a mind, body and soul built for feeling. So do we busy it with feelings of anger, hate, sadness, jealousy, and negativity? Or do we busy it with feelings of love, kindness, happiness, compersion, and positivity?

We have a choice. We can either be a victim of the world, or we can be the world. What we feel is more important than why or how we feel it. It’s a matter of disposition.

If the world is giving us a reason to be angry, hateful, sad, and negative then we should recognize that’s the case, embrace those emotions, and then promptly and responsibly, transform them into more positive emotions. Not because we wish to deceive ourselves, but because we wish to become healthier people.

Being kind to oneself is more than just positive affirmations. It’s about being a mindful, proactive agent of change for the better, a catalyst for healthy change. Even if you have no “reason” to be kind to yourself, you should still be kind to yourself; otherwise you’ll forever be stuck as a victim of the world.

4.) Make your own happiness a priority

“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, and to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The above quote seems to contradict the premise, but I argue that it actually reinforces it. Emerson is correct– the purpose of life is not to be happy. It’s everything else he said. But it just so happens that everything else he said IS what makes us happy.

That’s the beauty of it. A direct side-effect of becoming useful is that we become happy. The more honorable our intentions are, the happier we will be with the result. The more compassionate we are, the happier we will become in regard to others.

Really making a difference in the world brings about deep happiness. Living well, that is living healthy, is a profound source of happiness. So no, the purpose of life is not to be happy. The purpose of life is to do things in a healthy way so that we give ourselves a chance to be happy.

Put the proverbial oxygen mask on yourself first. The oxygen mask is a metaphor for health. Making your own happiness a priority is first making your own health a priority. It’s circular. One feeds the other. And it will be a sacred cycle that will continue to feed your soul.

5.) Learn from your mistakes

Look for the silver lining in tough situations. Mistakes, if we can learn from them, can be stepping stones that lead up to a healthier version of ourselves. Remember to accept things when they are less than perfect; because, really, they will always be less than perfect. And that’s okay.

It has to be okay if we are ever going to achieve something truly worthwhile. If you’re not making mistakes from time to time, then you’re not trying hard enough and you’re not taking enough risks. Push yourself. Fail and fail often. Take calculative risks. Gamble conscientiously. Don’t be afraid of losing a battle; just be afraid of losing the war.

The only way you can lose the war is to refuse to learn from your battles, especially your failed battles. So get back up on that horse, little soldier. Appreciate that you are growing and improving more in your defeats than in your victories. Learning from your mistakes will help you to consistently become a healthier version of yourself.

6.) Appreciate what you have

“Love is not about possession. Love is about appreciation.” ~ Osho

It’s easy for us to lose sight of what we already have. After all, we’ve already achieved it and we’re now focused on the next goal. We’re ready for the next step, the next rank, the next pay jump, the next bigger and better house or car. We want want want to achieve something more more more than what we already have.

It’s all a part of being a hamster on the hamster wheel that is the modern day rat race. The stress can be a crippling thing: mind, body and soul. Before you know it, you’ve worked your entire life toward something “more” without ever taking the time to appreciate what you have. But life is not about possessions.

Life is about being possessed by the love of life itself. It’s about appreciating what we have, who we are, where we’re at, how we got here, why we’re here, and what we’re going to do about it in this moment, right now, so that we can become healthier people.

Not healthier because we accumulate possessions or titles or pay raises, but healthier because we accumulate more and more loving appreciation for the process of being a human being going through changes in an ever-changing world.

So appreciate what you have, especially your health. Take a deep breath and learn to enjoy what you’ve already achieved so that you can be in a healthier place to achieve even more.

7.) Forgive yourself

“The first step toward success is taken when you refuse to be a captive of the environment in which you first find yourself.” ~ Mark Caine

We were all of us born into a conditioned state. Our modern civilizations have raised us to believe and to behave in ways that are not conducive to healthy living. As such, we have been conditioned to behave in unhealthy ways towards each other.

But there comes a point in our growth when we become mature enough to realize that we were innocent victims of an unhealthy culture. Forgiveness is the remedy. It’s the medicine we can use to wash away the soul-crippling guilt attached to our past behaviors.

This doesn’t mean we forget or choose not to learn from our mistakes, not at all. It means we are releasing ourselves from the bondage of guilt so that we can free ourselves to be worthy of health. Forgiveness is a way of letting go of the world needing us to be a certain way (unhealthy), so that we can move toward being in the world in a more authentic way (healthy).

Indeed, it provides a platform for the reinvention of love. When we forgive ourselves, we forgive the world. And such forgiveness has the potential to change the world for the better.

Image source:

Keep calm and place your oxygen mask on first

Buy Experiences, Not Things – Why Materialism Causes Unhappiness

Garima Roy

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November 14, 2014

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Buy Experiences, Not Things – Why Materialism Causes Unhappiness

“Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for – in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it.” ~ Ellen Goodman

Do experiences make people happier as compared to material possessions? We live in a world of unprecedented abundance where people spend more time and money to acquire material objects than life experiences. Most believe that material goods will get them happiness, though always fleeting.

It stems from the need to either fit in the so-called society, due to peer pressure or to maintain a certain lifestyle, but scientists and researchers conclude that money can’t buy happiness.

A ccording to this study individuals live happier lives if they invest in experiences more than material possessions, and at the same time, communities will have happier citizens if they make available an abundance of experiences to be acquired.

Aristotle said centuries ago that “wealth as a whole consists in using things rather than in owning them.”

But the pervasive consumerism in this day and age often leads us to believe otherwise, we overvalue our possessions and undervalue our experiences.

Another research by Van Boven and Gilovich concluded that people must favor experiential purchases over material ones because experiences become a part of our individual identity, and feels more fulfilling than a good purchase.

If you think of the time you went on a holiday with your spouse or family, you would easily remember the moments like the scenic landscape or the most beautiful sunset. Whereas, material possessions are harder to think about in an abstract sense.

If the material things go out of style, we look at newer models and that initial joy of acquiring an object fades over time. But experiences continue to provide happiness through memories long after the event occurred.

Like Tyler Durden from the movie Fight Club said, “The things you own end up owning you.”

If you look at the definition of ‘Material’ as an adjective, it means “denoting or consisting of physical objects rather than the mind or spirit.” While the definition of ‘Experience’ as a noun is “an event or occurrence which leaves an impression on someone,” and as a verb it means to “encounter or undergo.”

According to another research, a lot of us consider buying an item for example car, gadget etc., rather than spending it on a vacation because we feel that it gives us a better economic value for our money.

Also, according to Social Comparison theory given by Festinger(1948) suggests that humans have a tendency to compare themselves to others and feel happy if we find ourselves in a better material condition than our peers (friends, family etc).

Society has been trapped in this stream of thinking since a long time. In ancient ages, kings used to find happiness in owning tiger’s skin. Undoubtedly, affluence and power has been inscribed in human psychology for a long time, but it is time for a change considering the current state of the world we live in.

“The only time you look in your neighbor’s bowl is to make sure that they have enough. You don’t look in your neighbor’s bowl to see if you have as much as them.” ~ Louis C.K

The desire for material things is endless

The beauty of an experience is it alters you in ways material goods can’t. If you are unhappy, depressed or anxious, then buying a pair of shoes won’t solve the problem as much as traveling to a place that you really like will do. 121123 George Carlin Many studies support the fact that experiences will make you happier than possessions in the longer run.

Experiences, most likely, involves other people as well so it helps make connections with others and leads to better social relationships.

You should always look for ways to enhance your experiences in life. Experiences don’t have to be bought every time, it is more about seeking it. It demands you to step out of your comfort zone, and leave yourself out in the open. Going on a trek or planting a tree doesn’t require lots of money, but the memories of that experience stays with you for a lifetime!

Experiences help you expand your perceptions about your own life and the world around. You appreciate the value of different feelings as each experience is going to be different.

“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” ~ T.S Eliot

Choose wisely, experience over material happiness is also good for our planet.

Image Source

Collect Moments
Money _ George Carlin

The Emotional Evolution Checklist

Nikki Sapp

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November 13, 2014

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“There is no such thing as maturity. There is instead an ever-evolving process of maturity, because when there is a maturity there is a conclusion and cessation. That’s the end. That’s when the coffin is closed. You might be deteriorating physically in the long process of aging, but your personal process of daily discovery is ongoing. You continue to learn more and more about yourself everyday.” ~ Bruce Lee

The process of emotional evolution and self-discovery is one that should last our entire lives. If we are the same person that we were 10 years ago, emotionally, it would be safe to say that we have become stagnant emotionally, consciously, and spiritually. When we really sit and think about it, the task of progressing as a person is really our only task while we are here on this earth.

The details of our life don’t matter too much if we are not ultimately on an upward progressive slope to becoming a better version of ourselves. While many of us have experienced huge shifts in our understanding of ourselves and the world in the form of “aha moments” or sudden revelations, the majority of our progression happens slowly over a period of time.

This slower progression may make it a little more difficult to tell if we are becoming a better version of ourselves or if we are regressing. And while many people may measure their “maturity” against external factors, this is not the only indicator of how far we have come. So how can we tell if we are evolving?

Here is an emotional evolution checklist to help us measure our current selves against our former selves:

1) I can more easily stay in the ‘what is’

Progressing emotionally doesn’t necessarily mean we stop having “bad” or “negative” emotions, it just means we observe them without judgment when we do have them. If you haven’t experienced sadness, or envy, or anger you are not human. The true test is if we can be honest enough with ourselves to admit when we are experiencing these emotions.

When we know that we are not our thoughts, nor are we our emotions, we can sit in the energy of the emotions more easily and actually use our emotions as a tool in our personal development process.

2) I can laugh at myself

The more a person evolves emotionally the less seriously they take life and themselves. Since they are less attached to who they think they are and more anchored in their awareness of who they think they are, they are more able to see when they may be over-reacting, or over-stressing about a situation, and actually be able to find the silliness of it all.

When one realizes not only are they not their thoughts, or their physical body, but neither are other people, situations or “conflicts” with others become less dramatic and can actually be a source of entertainment because we realize that while there is a part of us that wants to be so attached to emotions like anger, there really is no point.

These emotions are always stemming from the illusory self.

3) I can see things from both sides

When we see that none of us are “perfect”, but that we are all actually imperfectly perfect, we stop being so dead set on that our perspective is the “right” one and just realize that everyone we meet has their own perspective on things.

We realize that just like we have our own values, beliefs and morals, that other people have their own too. At this point we can see that most people are not intentionally trying to hurt people, or cause problems but they are just operating from their own level of understanding of things which means they cannot be “blamed.”

Seeing things from both sides and from the bigger picture is always a sign of a person who is operating from a state of consciousness that is based more in unity and oneness.

4) I don’t see myself as a ‘victim’ of others behavior

As we grow in our development we start to see that others are not doing anything TO us, but rather we are the ones generating our own perception of reality.

So, anytime we are angered or upset by another person we turn it back around on ourselves and ask “What belief about myself am I holding on to that is causing me to be angered by their behavior?”

When we see ourselves as the creator of our reality instead of the victim of it, we become completely empowered to accept the things we cannot change, and change the things we can.

We can’t always force other people to act in a certain way, but we always have the power to walk away from situations that aren’t conducive to our well-being and to decipher when we are taking something personally that may not have been intended as a personal attack. Wisdom lies in knowing the difference between the two.

5) I stay focused on myself and my own personal progress

The only person we truly have any control over is ourselves. And while we may be willing to offer advice to family and friends when they ask us for it, ultimately we must know that forcing someone to do something we think they should do is just not possible.

Everyone we meet is weathering their own storm and navigating through their own journey of self-awareness. It is not up to us decide who is moving fast enough or not fast enough, but only to be there for them when they need us to without judgment.

If we only compare ourselves to our former selves we save our energy and time focusing on the one person that we do have control over. The evolution of our emotional “maturity” and consciousness is the one necessity if we truly wish to always be growing as a person. Though, it won’t always be easy…. it will always be worth it.

The Beginning is Near: The Marriage of Science and Spirituality

Life

Gary Z McGee

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November 12, 2014

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The Beginning is Near: The Marriage of Science and Spirituality

“The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence.” ~ Nikola Tesla

Amidst all the doom and gloom of Armageddon, post-apocalyptic scenarios, and talk of the “end times,” there is emerging a glass-is-half-full, positive and encouraging way of looking at the future. “The beginning is near” is the antithesis to “the end is near.”

The beginning is near is both humbling and hopeful. It’s humbling in the sense that it admits that we don’t have things figured out yet and that the greatest human wisdom is still to be achieved. And it’s hopeful in the sense that we are close to achieving that wisdom.

We are approaching a singularity of sorts, a human threshold, one that will launch us into a whole other level of evolution, where we may finally figure out how to live in accord with each other and align ourselves with the earth and its laws.

Like Janine Benyus said, “We’re basically this very young species, only 200,000 years old. We’re one of the newcomers, and we’re going through the same process that other species go through, which is, how do I keep myself alive while taking care of the place that’s going to keep me and my offspring alive?” How indeed?

There’s a psychosocial game that we’re playing as members of an unhealthy world-destroying culture that most of us are not aware we’re playing. This game is affecting everything from the air we breathe and the water we drink, to the relationships we make and the wars we wage.

It’s a game that we were all born into, a game that we’ve been forced into playing, because opting out is not acceptable by the greater culture. Some of us are aware of how destructive this game is, but most of us are not aware.

Those few of us who are aware are still forced to play the game, but we are playing strategically, either to maintain the game that keeps us in power, or to undermine the game that keeps us powerless.

We’re either playing to make the game healthier, by changing or even breaking the rules of the game. Or we’re playing to keep the game unhealthy so that we can continue to make money off of people and natural systems to leverage our power.

But the vast majority of people are not aware that they are a part of this game of exploitation or even that there is a game being played. Most people are so caught-up in going through the motions of being a cog in the machine, that they couldn’t care less if the machine is destructive or not.

Like Noam Chomsky said, “The general population doesn’t even know what’s happening, and it doesn’t even know that it doesn’t know.”

Their attitude is as long as they can get through the day, with as little heartache and grief as possible from their fellow humans, then it’s all good. But it’s not all good. The excuse of “just getting through the day” doesn’t change the fact that the psychosocial game we are playing is systematically destroying the planet and everything that lives on it, including us.

“The bullshit machine says the small is the great, the absence is the presence, the vicious is the noble, and the lie is the truth” writes Umair Haque. “We believe it, and greedily, it feeds on our belief. The more we feed it, the more insatiable it becomes. Until, at last, we are exhausted. By pretending to want the lives we think we should, instead of daring to live the lives we know we could.”

And there’s the rub. That’s the crux. The “bullshit machine” has us caught up in living unhealthy lifestyles that we’ve been conditioned into wanting, while neglecting the healthy lifestyles we could be living. We have been burdened with ugly, stupid lifestyles on a planet pushed to the very edge of destruction by status-quo junkies feeding us new promises of consumable happiness that gets sh*t out all over the planet in mass-destructive ways.

Perhaps nobody else puts it into clearer a perspective than Ernest Becker in The Denial of Death: “Modern man is drinking and drugging himself out of awareness, or he spends his time shopping, which is the same thing.

As awareness calls for types of heroic dedication that his culture no longer provides for him, society contrives to help him forget. In the mysterious way in which life is given to us in evolution on this planet, it pushes in the direction of its own expansion.

We don’t understand it simply because we don’t know the purpose of creation; we only feel life straining in ourselves and see it thrashing others about as they devour each other. Life seeks to expand in an unknown direction for unknown reasons.”

The question is: how do we figure out these unknown reasons. How do we get in balance with this “unknown direction?” How do we change the game? How do we slow down the bullshit machine? Is teaching ourselves how to recondition the precondition enough? Is teaching people how to live healthier lifestyles enough?

Marriage between science and spirituality

Perhaps our saving grace can be found in the marriage between science and spirituality. It’s a double-edged sword, for sure. One side of the sword is science, the attempt to figure out the secrets of the universe.

The other side of the sword is spirituality, the attempt to bring meaning to the universe. If the lighting of the first fire was science and the lighting of the second fire was spirituality, then the lighting of the third fire is the marriage of both science and spirituality, a sacred union. Sacred activism is a branch of this concept.

If we are to have any hope of righting the ship, of changing the game, indeed, of being game changers ourselves instead of merely players of an unhealthy game, then we must learn, or relearn, how to use this sword. Like Werner Heisenberg said, “The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.”

Indeed, let’s sharpen the double-edged sword. Let’s allow science to teach us healthy from unhealthy so that spirituality can teach us moral from immoral. And then let’s discover that God has always been hiding inside us. We just had to empty our “cup.”

On the one hand we have the universal mythological intuition that the order we perceive in the universe exists by divine fiat (spirituality). And on the other hand we have the contemporary cosmological speculation that reality is arbitrary and a manifestation of an infinitely greater potentiality (science).

Why can these two perceptions not be one and the same thing, or even two sides to the same coin?

Science has come a long way in explaining the fascinating reality in which we live, but, as Adam Zeman wrote, there’s still only “night at the end of the tunnel.” It’s the job of spirituality to make sense out of this “night.” It’s the job of spirituality to discover a moral question for our culture to thrive off of and continuously attempt to answer, even while we go through the scientific motions of figuring it out.

It’s the job of spirituality to bring about sacred spaces for science to take place in, just as it’s the job of science to attempt to explain the nature of space. Like Wendell Berry said, “There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places.” Spirituality can help us to embrace the sacred, while science can help us to heal desecrated places.

So don’t lose heart. The beginning is near. And even if it’s not, at least we have the marriage of science and spirituality to guide us a little closer. So strap on your post-apocalyptic sunglasses. Let the bullshit machine clog itself with its own bullshit and slowly die out.

The bright side is we can use it as manure to plant seeds of healthy change. The sky is the limit. Climb up that precarious ladder, out of the destruction and decay of the outdated system. Peak over the walls built by unsustainable men, and discover that the universe has always been at your fingertips. The beginning is near. Let’s begin.

Science and spirituality: Jeff Lieberman makes a scientific argument for mystical experience

Science and spirituality: Jeff Lieberman at TEDxCambridge 2011