The Zen of Dance

I was at the East West Bookstore today in downtown Moutain View and came across this interesting Zen quote on dancing :

"In Dance, no movement or direction is better or worse than another. This, too, is a way to view all of life. See all the "good and bad" things that happen to you simply as movements in the Dance of Life"

The idea of time

One interesting topic brought up in The Power of Now is the idea of psychological time vs physical time. Physical time is used to explain causality of physical events in our natural world, but there is also a psychological time that we use as our own interpretation of the causality of events.

The book addresses that psychological time is an illusion, and that is very much true, but isn't physical time an illusion as well?

It is not completely invalid to conclude that the idea of an occurence or happening is in itself an illusion. What is an occurence?

The Ego's defense mechanism

The idea of a success barrier has been mentioned in some sources.

It defines a self-imposed barrier that one cannot be too successful for fear of loss of reality.

This is especially true for celebrities who become terrified of their own success.

The ego also imposes another form of barrier to the self to impede any progress towards a goal that it believes the self should have innately achieved but yet not done so.

This is a conflict when one cannot accept that they have not reached a goal that their egos feel they should have deserved. Therefore, as they try to progress towards the goal an inevitably encounter any form of failure, they could become extraordinarily dejected and feel wronged by Mother Nature :(

In fact, it is a failure of acceptance of conditions. No right decision can be made without acceptance of the current conditions.

The Purpose of Your Life

I read an interesting DailyOM article today about discovering the Purpose of Human Life. This is the excerpt :

"Most living things belong to a particular soul group and are born knowing their purpose in life. An animal will spend its day foraging for food, taking care of itself and its young, and creating a home. No one tells an animal to do this, yet it instinctively knows how. Humans, for the most part, are not born consciously knowing what their purpose is.

Purpose gives our life meaning. When you discover your purpose, you can live your life with intention and make choices that serve your objective for why you are here on the planet. Finding your purpose is not always easy. You must embrace life wholeheartedly, explore many different pathways, and allow yourself to grow.
"

Another major point in the article is to find that balance point in your life between the stuff you have to do for your basic survival needs and the stuff you truly love to do.

I believe this balance between wants and needs is the purpose of human life.

It is likely that the egoic mind helps to block the humans from their basic purpose on Earth as a mere animal. It makes humans believe they are something beyond what they are. So what is that?

The Ego's operation

Eckhart Tolle mentioned in his book Power of Now that the ego/mind always needs to find enemies to avoid annihilation.

This can become especially evident when the ego refuses to accept the current situation and can install into the human mind false delusions of grandeur. The mind can make the person believe that they are something they are not in the current situation.

This often manifests itself as that "voice in your head"

Went to a Laughter Yoga Workshop at work

I went to a Laughter Yoga Workshop today at work and it opens my eyes on what laughter is.

The workshop is hosted by Dr Arya Pathria ( http://www.laughaway.com/arya.htm ) and basically taught the two basic principles of laughter :

1. Laughter is possible when there is an intention and for no reason at all
2. Laughter is contagious

He goes on to involve the group in a variety types of laughter, ranging from greeting laughter, resigned laughter, and laughing as a group.

And then there is meditation laughter, where you just sit there in a meditation stance and laugh until you can't laugh any more

:)