Widely held to be one of the 20th century’s premier logicians, Bertrand Russell was a British philosopher, mathematician, historian, and political activist par excellence. More importantly, he was a profound and original teacher.
His philosophy of religion in particular was a heavy influence on such modern champions of philosophy as Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, and Richard Dawkins. As a teacher, it was his wish to promulgate the following Liberal Decalogue as a vision for the responsibilities of a good teacher.
Here are Bertrand Russell’s Ten Commandments, let’s break them down, shall we.
1.) Do not feel absolutely certain of anything
“Uncertainty is so terrible that we often seek to be rid of it, at the hazard of a certain mischief.” ~ Edmund Burke
Russell would probably be the first to declare that there is wisdom in uncertainty. Absolute certainty gets you nowhere but stuck. Sure, certainty is comfortable, but it is also stagnant, boring, and leads to intellectual inertia.
Even worse, it tends to propagate close-mindedness. Uncertainty is far superior, because then at least truth is allowed to grow and change with the passage of time. Instead of believing in things, take things into consideration.
It is quite simple to alter considerations. But it’s almost impossible to alter beliefs. caveat credentis, believer beware.
Like Gerry Spence said, “I’d rather have a mind open by wonder than one closed by belief.”
Knowledge of truth should never be seen as a given, but as a gift; a gift gleaned not as a certainty but as a proper humility in the face of what we think we know. Knowledge is as much subject to vicissitude as anything else. Seek not certainty, but absolute uncertainty.
2.) Do not think it worthwhile to proceed by concealing evidence
“In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.” ~ Mark Twain
The evidence is sure to come to light anyway, so you might as well help to reveal it rather than seek to conceal it. Concealing evidence now just makes you look like a fool later. If you’re not the one to reveal the truth, then it will be someone else eventually anyway, so it might as well be you now, even if it goes against your current agenda.
Guard against the conviction that seeks to suppress facts. Turn the tables by consistently and ruthlessly questioning such convictions. Above all, cultivate a good sense of humor in the face of a bad sense of honor.
3.) Never try to discourage thinking for you are sure to succeed
“The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret in tyranny is in keeping them ignorant.” ~ Maximilien Robespierre
Would you be a liberator or a tyrant? If you would be a liberator then by all means educate people and encourage thinking. If you would be a tyrant then by all means keep people ignorant and discourage thinking. Tyranny only helps the powerful maintain their power. Liberty helps to balance and expiate power, while creating new forms of power.
A good teacher always wants their students to think for themselves, even if that means such thinking might extinguish some of the teacher’s power. This is because true teachers do not seek to create followers, they seek to create leaders. And oh the absolute joy that is discovered when a student becomes a teacher.
4.) When you meet with opposition, endeavor to overcome it by argument and not by authority
“An optimist mindset finds dozens of possible solutions for every problem that the pessimist regards as incurable.” ~ Robert Anton Wilson
A victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory. A victory interdependent upon a good argument is authentic and sincere. And a dialectical exchange that arrives at the “truth” through logical discourse is even better.
There is always something more to learn when opposition is met with open argumentation rather than closed off authority. Authoritarianism doesn’t teach anything. It is inconsiderate, and has no respect for the opposition.
Argumentation, on the other hand, teaches respect and compassion toward the opposition. Strive toward compassionate argumentation rather than unfeeling authority when it comes to disagreement and conflict.
5.) Have no respect for the authority of others
“Unhealthy social conformity is nothing other than self-sabotage.” ~ Mike Bundrant
There are always contrary authorities to be found. Everybody wants to be an authority. But not everybody’s authority is based upon actual reality. Guard against irrational authority by questioning all authority. Instead of having respect for the authority of others, try making fun of it instead. Poke holes in it. Laugh at it. Mock its supposed power.
Take it down a notch by putting it under the spotlight of skepticism. Respect for authority will get you nowhere but trapped by their power. Denying authority will get you everywhere closer to liberation. Freedom of thought depends upon a healthy disregard for authority.
6.) Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious
“When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.” ~ John Muir
If you use power to suppress what you perceive to be harmful or destructive opinions, then those opinions will eventually suppress you. This ties-in with not discouraging thinking (#3). When you suppress the opinions of others, be they malign or benign, you indirectly suppress yourself. This is because everything is connected.
Opinions that challenge our power should be subsumed rather than suppressed, for what they can teach us is far greater than what they can destroy. If the challenging opinion is not subsumed early enough then it will eventually undermine our power.
Pernicious opinions will always be a thorn in our side unless we can learn what they have to teach us. They should never be suppressed lest they return as a suppressor.
7.) Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion
“I awoke only to find that the rest of the world was still asleep.” ~ Leonardo Da Vinci
Every opinion now accepted was once eccentric. Surely people thought Da Vinci’s opinions were eccentric when they were first conceived, or Copernicus’, or Einstein’s. But so what? Original opinions will always seem strange at first. Have them anyway.
Don’t be afraid to rock the boat with your ideas. Your opinion might be the one that tips us into the next phase of human evolution. So be eccentric. Be extravagant. Be boisterous.
What makes you eccentric makes you valuable, especially in a world of conformist sheep. Wow the masses. Be the electric eel in an ocean of guppies. No fear, only the ability to change it into something worthwhile.
8.) Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement
“I’d rather die of passion than of boredom.” ~ Vincent Van Gogh
The world is filled with people who just passively agree with the system because it’s the easy thing to do. Billions of people the world over are obediently complying with an unhealthy, unsustainable mode of human governance. The problem is that this leads to intellectual laziness on a mass scale. It leads to myopic sycophants. It leads to followers instead of leaders.
Being comfortable with “it’s just the way things are” tends to keep people docile and submissive. There is a trivial pleasure gained in passively complying with the way things are, but there is a far superior pleasure gained in rebelling intelligently against the status quo.
Rational discord in the face of irrational “order” compels the system to balance itself. The pleasure gained from such balance is invaluable.
9.) Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient
“The intellectual is and only can be a militant, engaged as a singularity among others, embarked on the project of co-research aimed at making the multitude. The intellectual is thus not ‘out in front’ to determine the movements of history or ‘on the sidelines’ to critique them but rather completely ‘inside.’” ~Antonio Negri & Michael Hardt
Don’t kiss people with lies. Slap people with the truth. The truth is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it anyway. So reveal it instead. An inconvenient truth, no matter how much it hurts, is always better than a convenient lie, no matter how much it feels good. Honesty is almost always the best policy. People will usually respect painful honesty over soothing dishonesty, even if it doesn’t seem so at first.
Guard against cognitive dissonance by talking about it directly and by having a good sense of humor about it. Be the “singularity among others” by planting meticulous seeds of well thought out, conscientious truthfulness.
Indeed, even just one strategically planted seed of truth has the potential to change the world for the better.
10.) Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool’s paradise
“Maybe you are searching among the branches for what only appears in the roots.” ~ Rumi
Only a fool would think that was happiness anyway. A billion people who appear to be happy about living an unhealthy lifestyle, is still just a billion unhealthy people who have mistaken convenience and comfort for happiness. Don’t give into the hype.
The envy that you feel, if you feel it at all, is a false envy. A fool’s paradise is any kind of unsustainable, unhealthy, violent, stupid, immoral, greedy, corrupt, or mass-destructive social system.
Those who live in such a system and claim to be happy are ignorant fools. There’s more honor in rattling their cages than envying their bars. It’s nobler to attempt to wake them up than to wish you were still asleep.
Don’t be Cypher, cowardly wishing he had taken the blue pill of comfortable deception. Be Neo, courageously accepting the pain that comes with having taken the red pill of truth.
“Children are born loving their parents, and they’re born assuming their parents love them. Their relationship with the family they are born into is their first taste of human connection, and thus, their first taste of love. It doesn’t matter if we in our adult perspective look backwards and say: ‘That was NOT a loving household…’ A child does not know any different than this version of love that exists in their home. Because of this, they associate love with home. The way that they felt in their home and in their relationship with their parents becomes their definition of love” ~ Teal Swan
The first seven years of a child’s life are the most important. Not only are they most transformative in terms of growth and development, but from a psychological standpoint, they are the years that set the child’s ‘programming’, which will determine their personality, how they deal with life, how they define what love looks or feels like, and how confident they are in the world around them, amongst many other things.
Since the first years of life are spent mainly with our parents or caretakers, the relationship formed with them in these formative years sets the tone for how we behave in our adulthood either in relationships with others or just for life in general.
Every child, including those from the happiest or most functional of homes, experiences some level of rejection, sadness, or “trauma” (no matter how big or small).
Healing Our Inner Child
Although we may think that any real or perceived childhood hurts were left in the past or when childhood ended, we may not realize that unless these wounds were properly healed, we are most likely still carrying them around with us in our subconscious.
Until these emotional wounds are brought into our conscious awareness they will manifest in our outward life, which means we will keep finding our self in the same “problems” in our relationships with others until the light of awareness, healing and love is brought to the inner child inside of us that never got tended to.
Since the inner child experiences pain, hurt or rejection in reaction to something the parents or caretakers have done to them, healing the inner child properly will require us to dissect the relationship with our parents to the point that we can find it in ourselves to empathize and forgive them for what they did, or for what we perceive they did to us as a child.
“The past cannot be changed, forgotten, edited or erased it can only be accepted.” ~ Unknown
Intellectually we know that the past cannot be changed, but many people are still holding on to memories from their childhood in which they experienced some negative emotion.
Some may replay these scenarios over and over and re-experience the pain every single time or they may try to stuff it down deeper into the subconscious hoping it will just go away.
Although the time in which these emotions were experienced is long gone, the hurt and the pain we may have experienced from them may still exist. The only thing that will make the pain we experienced from these situations disappear is to bring them into our conscious awareness.
Once we have brought the memories back up, we can then accept them. We acknowledge that they happened, but we also accept everyone for the role they played in the experience.
If we realize that every person is only operating the best they know how from their own level of understanding and awareness, we see that even though as a child we may have perceived that our parents were angry because of us, or rejecting us, or manipulating us or whatever the memory is, that they were only giving us the best they could from their own personal consciousness level.
More often than not, our parents were parenting us in the same way they were parented. This is why in the most severe cases of dysfunctional parenting we will most likely find that abusive people were abused themselves.
As P.D. James said, “What a child doesn’t receive, he can seldom later give.”
Our parents gave us the best they could give, given the tools they learned and received. Once we know this, we can find it easier to offer at least some sort of empathy as to why they behaved in the way they did, and eventually forgive them completely.
The great thing about coming to terms with our relationship with our parents and healing our inner child is that our parents don’t even have to be involved in the process.
By becoming the parent we never had or wished we had, we can address our inner child as if we were that perfect parent that we needed at the time we experienced the emotional hurt. We can then send unconditional love to this child and offer them the acceptance and kindness that we may not have gotten at the time.
Many people use things such as therapy or meditation to get in touch with the inner child inside of them that still needs to be loved and to tell that child exactly what it needs to hear.
By doing this we will find that not only will our relationship with our parents get better, (or if they are not in our lives the way we see them in our mind will be met with more empathy), but problems we have with people and circumstances in our adult life will start to heal themselves.
Our new found love and acceptance for ourselves and for the parents who helped us form who we are as a person will translate into healthier and more functional adult relationships, and also stop the cycle of pain and hurt.
Once we have transmuted old hurts into love, we can offer more love to all the people in our lives.
“We meet ourselves time and time again in a thousand disguises on the path of life.” ~ Carl Jung
If we take any random person then pick five people in their life and interview them about said person we are bound to hear five different perceptions about them. One person may perceive them as funny, kind and warm-hearted while another person may see them as irresponsible, immature, and unintelligent.
So whose perception is the correct one?
One of the biggest key in the path of self-awareness is the knowledge that our perception of others has nothing to do with them and everything to do with us. We literally concoct our own perception about people that we meet based on our own relationship with ourselves and our own personality traits.
The ego, fearing attention being brought to it, tends to always look outside of itself for someone or something to “blame”, when in fact, it is only recognizing its own traits in other people.
How to Find Yourself through Your Perception of Others
For example, let’s say a person has never experienced the feeling of envy, how could they recognize this trait in another person if they have never experienced it? We can only recognize traits in other people that we also possess or at least have possessed, which means turning our attention outward and blaming or judging others is a pointless endeavor.
When we come to realize that our opinions and judgments of other people have nothing to do with them and everything to do with our own ego, we are then able to use every reaction we have towards others as an opportunity to bring light to an aspect of ourselves that needs healing.
“What angers us in another person is more often than not an unhealed aspect of ourselves. If we had already resolved that particular issue, we would not be irritated by its reflection back to us.” ~ Simon Fuller
Our reactions to other people are the keys that unlock the forming of an integral and authentic relationship with our self. If we pay close attention to who or what brings about a strong emotional reaction from us, we are able to utilize this to our advantage. Negative reactions indicate either one of two things.
One being that either we are attached to an idea or belief about the way things SHOULD be, or the way someone SHOULD behave which means we are trying to force our own agenda on to other people, when in fact, no one has to behave the way we think they should.
Anytime we hold people to our expectations of them instead of accepting them as they are, we are sitting in resistance of the present moment.
The other thing a negative emotional reaction can indicate is that there is an aspect of our self that we are not wanting to look at, so we are literally finding it in other people as a clue to us that we need to bring awareness to this trait in ourselves.
As Carl Jung said, “When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate.”
We may think that we are victims of circumstances, or that life is just randomly happening to us, when in actuality, our own unconscious is trying to make itself known to us through our external circumstances and through people that we meet.
When we start seeing our own self as the “problem” in every circumstance, we are then able to shed the light of awareness on all parts of our “shadow” self (or the part of our psyche that our ego tries to hide from others and sometimes even our self) which will consequently heal these traits in ourselves.
In order to truly heal a part of our self that we have become conditioned to hide from the world, we must start to practice 100% honesty with ourselves. If we are experiencing anger, we admit and allow our self to experience anger, when we experience fear, we identify the fear and only become aware of it.
It doesn’t mean we have to judge ourselves as good or bad because of the emotions, it only means that we are aware of it, and are then able to send unconditional love to these parts of ourselves.
Although, it may sound terrible to always see ourselves as the “problem” and always have to turn our hand and point the finger back at ourselves when we so badly want to point it at another person, it actually is the most empowering move we can make. When we see our self as the “problem” we automatically become our own solution.
If it is our own perception of the world and our relationship with ourselves that is causing us to see shortcomings in others, we become completely empowered to change the situation by merely healing the parts of ourselves that is identifying and resonating with the same “problem” in them.
When we start to see our self in everyone we meet, we automatically start forming an honest and authentic relationship with ourselves. In this honesty we are able to cultivate our own awareness, and consequently we become calmer, more confident and more accepting of every aspect of ourselves.
And when our relationship with ourselves is loving and accepting, we start not only seeing these same traits in other people, but we realize that things or people that used to bring about a strong negative reaction from us are now met with forgiveness and compassion.
We quite literally change and heal our relationships with others by changing and healing our relationship with ourselves.
“Crazy wisdom is the philosophical worldview that recommends swimming against the tide, cheerfully seizing the short end of the stick, embracing insecurity, honoring paradox, courting the unexpected, celebrating the unfamiliar, shunning orthodoxy, volunteering for tasks nobody else wants or dares to do, and breaking taboos in order to destroy their power. It’s the wisdom of those who turn the tables on despair by lampooning it, and who neither seek authority nor submit to it. To enlarge the soul, light up the brain, and liberate the spirit.” ~ Tom Robbins
Do you ever feel like the little rebel inside you is being suppressed. Or that your inner revolutionary has been fooled into thinking that there’s no need for revolution. Or that your internal nonconformist has somehow conformed? Well, do not fear.
This article will be a breath of fresh air for each. It’s time to let your freak flag fly. Let your insurgent soul surge. Let your hidden ninja reveal itself in a puff of smoke. Don’t be serious, just be sincere.
So without further ado, here are seven ways you can practice crazy wisdom.
1.) Swim against the tide
“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do it. Because what this world needs are people who have come alive.” ~ Howard Thurman
Go against the norm. Toss a monkey wrench into the status quo machinery. Take the “monk” out of “monkey” and interrogate it to the nth degree. Watch it buckle and bend against your monkey holiness. Laugh with the whole of your heart, then shake it off and find another typicality to atypically topple with your own unique typology.
Swimming against the tide takes courage, but the joy gained from the disruption, especially from disrupting obsolete or unhealthy social structures, is worth the effort.
It’s always worth the initial fear involved, and you’ll find that the more you practice going against the tide, the more you’ll be capable of transforming fear into courage.
2.) Embrace insecurity
“We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world.” ~ Helen Keller
Let yourself doubt. Let yourself crack open. The more you’re able to crack open, come back together, and then crack open again, the more you’ll be able to absorb the wisdom of the universe.
Practice defensive pessimism, a phenomenon in which people imagine worst-case scenarios in order to manage their anxiety. There is wisdom in uncertainty that the certain will never ascertain.
Security is for the fearful. Don’t be fearful, be fearless. Dance with your insecurity like it was your first true love and it’s the last dance you’ll ever dance. Being honest with what makes us insecure counter-intuitively makes us more secure. Like David McRaney wrote, “You can’t improve the things you love if you never allow them to be imperfect.” And since we can never attain perfection anyway, there will always be the need to embrace insecurity and uncertainty.
3.) Honor paradox
“The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.” ~ Bertrand Russell
We honor the paradox by giving it meaning, by being flexible and responsible with our own interpretation of it. At the end of the day, we are meaning-bringing creatures in an otherwise meaningless universe.
It seems like semantic gymnastics, but it’s not. It really just comes down to the fact that we are perceiving an infinite reality using finite faculties.
Because of this, paradox is inevitable. One of those paradoxes happens to be Meaning itself. Another one is Love. But what deliciously beautiful paradoxes they are. Reality itself is not a paradox, it is what it is. But Consciousness, and all the wonderful baggage that comes along with it, is a paradox.
I would even go as far as to say: namaste, the paradox within me honors the paradox within you.
4.) Court the unexpected
“Let go of certainty. The opposite isn’t uncertainty. It’s openness, curiosity and a willingness to embrace paradox, rather than choose up sides. The ultimate challenge is to accept ourselves exactly as we are, but never stop trying to learn and grow.” ~ Tony Schwartz
Don’t suffer from the hell of expectation. Revel in the heaven of the unexpected instead. There’s a joy found in things not going according to plan that only those who don’t take things too seriously can feel. So don’t be self-serious. Be seized by the surprise.
Be clutched by the beautiful crux of the cosmos. When your plans get dashed, roll with it, learn from it, be it, in the moment. Courting the unexpected is daring the universe to bewilder you.
It’s tempting the Great Mystery into a cosmic tango. You might not know the steps, but so what. You’ll either figure it out or make a fool of yourself. Both can be equally fruitful. So grab the unexpected by the hand and give her a twirl. And it wouldn’t hurt you to do a couple of pirouettes in her honor.
Like Henry David Thoreau said, “None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.”
5.) Shun orthodoxy
“The priest is interested in the answers; the shaman is more interested in provoking you to ask the questions that will lead you into paradox and duality. The task of the shaman is not to pursue meaning but to create it, to bring the sacred to an otherwise profane and mundane reality. That takes a daily act of courage and a willingness to make mistakes.” ~ Alberto Villoldo
Slap with the truth all who claim to have achieved enlightenment. If they get angry or offended then they are not on the path toward enlightenment.
If they shrug it off and laugh and say “oh well, there is always more to learn,” then they are on the path toward enlightenment, and they understand that enlightenment is always a journey and never a destination.
Rather than live for a destination, live within a destiny. Shun all who claim to have all the answers, embrace those who ask sacred questions.
The orthodoxy is a blind ox burdened by the weight of parochialism and ancient “good” made uncouth by the spoils of time. It is facile and cursory, at best. Stiff-arm it into the corner.
Or, better yet, transform it into something profound by questioning it to the nth degree, mixing it up into mulch, and then watching it blossom into something beautiful, like when a flower blossoms from the muck and mire of manure.
6.) Volunteer for tasks nobody else dares to do
“There are two kinds of suffering. There is the suffering you run away from, which follows you everywhere. And there is the suffering you face directly, and so become free.” ~ Ajahn Chah
Imagine all the tasks that people are afraid of doing for fear of seeming crazy. Then narrow those tasks down to the most important, whatever they might be, preferably the ones that make your heart sing, and then go do them.
Be proactive. Be the spark in the dried up kindling of the status quo, then fan the flames. Be the catalyst in their cauldron of catatonia, then stir the pot. Inform the uninformed. Forgive the unforgiven. Help the helpless.
Unroost all chickens that have come home to roost. No fear, just sincerity. Dive right into being an amoral agent within any immoral system and you may be surprised at how quickly it moralizes itself. As long as your volunteer work comes from a place of healthy intent then it will always be a sacred act.
7.) Break taboos in order to destroy their power
“But I don’t want comfort. I want God. I want poetry. I want real danger. I want freedom. I want goodness. I want sin.” ~ Aldous Huxley
Falling can be a sacred way of moving, if you allow it to be. Similarly, knocking people off pedestals and high-horses can be a sacred way of moving. When we can break taboos with joyous irreverence and gleeful derision, with healthy mockery and sincere ridicule, we free ourselves up to galvanize the world and help it to grow wings that can break through any perceived ceilings.
Break rules, especially bad ones. Shatter systems, especially outdated ones. Rewrite doctrines, especially dogmatic ones.
Tear down rubrics, especially entrenched ones. Like William Wallace said in Braveheart, “People don’t follow titles, they follow courage.” Follow courage and you’ll almost always end up with a healthier disposition. And even if you don’t, at least you had an adventure.
At least your life wasn’t just a law-abiding, rule-governing, title-honoring, order-obliging, boring waste of time that kept you a slave to an outdated system and only benefited the powers-that-be. Screw the powers-that-be, and their tertiary taboos.
Take the power back by having the courage to challenge their outdated rules. The next generation will thank you for it.
Dalai Lama has always been an inspiration to me. The essence of his teaching is to promote human values – self-discipline, forgiveness, empathy, happiness, peace and love.
Peaceful and disarming, Dalai Lama described himself as a “simple Buddhist monk.” And it is in that simplicity that his lessons emerge. Let’s discover together how his teachings and thoughts will change your life.
1) Love is the absence of judgment
Judgement serves no purpose in our lives. It blocks us from truth, from love, and keeps you stuck in the illusion of separation. Love is our true essence. Love has no limitations, we are all beads strung together on the same thread of love. In the absence of judgment, love is what remains.
2) My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.
Being kind and compassionate is at the core of all spiritual teachings and path. It’s something that everyone can cultivate by choice. Instead of spending your time criticizing others, work on being positive and compassionate.
Kindness gives a sense of well-being and connectedness that improves our own mental health. According to a research, whenever you are kind, your body rewards you with feel-good hormones and helps you stay healthy.
3) Positive and negative actions are determined by one’s own motivation. If the motivation is good, all actions become positive; if the motivation is wrong, all actions become negative.
Any action, whether the result is positive or negative, largely depends on motivation. If the motivation is sincere then the action can be positive, but if our motivation is not pure, even religion becomes smeared.
In this statement by Dalai Lama, motivation refers to a thought and thought determines your intention. So, keep your thoughts pure, always!
4) Remember that sometimes not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck
When things don’t go the way we planned or as we want them to, we tend to look within ourselves. We think about what we could have done differently – it helps us to realign our focus, learn from our past mistakes and without setbacks or a bumpy ride, you would never be able to appreciate the smooth ride.
When you overcome the fear for failure, you are prepared to face any challenges that come your way, and nothing is too difficult to handle. Remember, something better is in store for you!
5) We can never obtain peace in the outer world until we make peace with ourselves
Most of us live in this illusion that happiness and peace is derived from our external world, but the truth is if you are not at peace within, the outside world won’t make any difference to your state of mind.
To be at peace, you have to shift from the future to the here and now. Live in the present as that is all you have. Spend time to reflect and chase away the negative thoughts.
6) Sleep is the best meditation
Sleep is the time when we get in touch with our subconscious mind through our dreams. We travel to a completely different world and return back refreshed. All living beings indulge in sleeping and it is one of the most crucial activities for the well-being of our mind, body and soul.
Sleep deprivation is a huge culprit in negative moods, including anxiety and depression. Never compromise on your sleep!
7) The true hero is one who conquers his own anger and hatred
It is easy to fall prey to negative emotions – anger, hatred, fear, jealousy etc. Anger is a corrosive emotion that harms your mental and physical health. It damages the nervous, cardiovascular and gut system.
Anger, if fed, can also lead to depression. In order to be free from anger and hatred, one requires a strong sense of self-determination, compassion and patience. Make a conscious choice to deal with the emotion and things that make you angry and focus on finding a solution – that would be a heroic accomplishment!
8) Where ignorance is our master, there is no possibility of real peace
Thomas Gray said, “Where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise.”
Many of us only use the first half of the sentence, “Ignorance is Bliss” to avoid getting into situations of complex nature.
Sometimes we ignore because it’s our own fault, out of fear, and fear remains the greatest enemy of peace. Ignorance is the root cause of our piled up frustration which can show up disastrously on some occasion. To evolve and be at peace, one has to rise above the dirt (or adversity) and blossom (evolve) like a lotus.
9) It is very rare or almost impossible that an event can be negative from all points of view
Don’t lose hope if an event or situation is negative or unpleasant, look at the bright side of a situation and embrace what life throws at you. With this attitude, life doesn’t feel like a burden but an ever-learning adventure.
10) True spirituality is a mental attitude you can practice at any time
Spirituality is building a sense of connection to something bigger than ourselves. It is about embracing the interconnectedness of all things, and to awaken to the true nature of self. You can have a spiritual experience while listening to music, walking in the woods, watching the rising sun or whatever nourishes your soul. This keeps your mind, body and spirit healthy!
