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05 Nov 2018
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Better Sleep, Improved Mental Health: Three Tips for Both

Getting enough sleep every night is an essential part of maintaining one’s mental health. When sleep disorders come into play, they can lead to problems such as anxiety, moodiness, and feelings of depression. Of course, mental health issues themselves can cause sleep disruption. For instance, people experiencing depression may experience symptoms such as hypersomnia or insomnia. When a person experiences sleep disturbances alongside mental health issues, it can end up being a vicious cycle from which they have difficulty breaking. That’s why it’s so important to maintain sleep hygiene to facilitate uninterrupted rest and better mental health.

Upgrade Your Mattress

If you’re tossing and turning all night and waking up feeling unrested, it may be time to upgrade your mattress. Mattresses should be replaced at least every seven to 10 years (though this number depends greatly on the type), but even if yours is relatively new, it’s worthwhile to consider a different model. Our bodies and their needs change with time, so it is very possible the soft mattresses you loved when you were younger are not giving your spine the support it needs. This can lead to pressure, pain, and inflammation, which makes it difficult for the body to rest properly at night. You wake up with aches and pains while feeling like those eight hours were no more than two. Look into new models of mattresses on the market today and narrow down your search by finding ones that fit your particular sleep needs.

Exercise Every Day

Next time you have difficulty falling asleep at night, ask yourself what you did during the day to use up energy. If you spend the majority of your hours sedentary, it’s likely you didn’t do enough to wear yourself out in order to fall asleep. Humans need activity, but the conveniences and responsibilities of modern life have most of us sitting down all day. Adding exercise to your daily routine may not sound fun, but it could help with insomnia. You may not see immediate payoffs, but with consistency, you will sleep better, deeper, and longer at night.

Avoid exercising right before it is time to sleep; instead, aim for morning or early afternoon. Among the many benefits of regular exercise is the sudden surge of feel-good endorphins as well as the neurotransmitters dopamine and serotonin. However, there are ways to beat post-workout insomnia, so you can’t use “it’s too late” as an excuse not to exercise.

Reduce the Blue

Perhaps the single biggest contributor to sleep problems is the use of artificial lighting and blue light-emitting electronics at night. Blue light is natural — the sun emits blue waves along with the red, orange, yellow, green, indigo, and violet wavelengths that make up our color spectrum. When we are exposed to sunlight, it makes us feel more alert and energetic so we can get through the day. What’s not natural is how often we are exposed to artificial blue light through fluorescent bulbs, LED electronics, televisions, computer monitors, smartphones, and tablet screens. Overexposure to this light tricks the brain into thinking it isn’t night and thus makes it more difficult to fall asleep. Blue light even suppresses the brain’s production of melatonin, the hormone that helps signal to the body that it’s time for bed.

Reduce your exposure to blue light before bed to ensure your body has enough time to wind down and feel sleepy. Instead of scrolling through Instagram or binge-watching shows, try reading before bed to reduce stress, increase empathy, and even improve dreams.

When you don’t sleep well, you don’t feel well. If you are trying to improve your mental health, practicing good sleep hygiene is a must. Consider upgrading your mattress to something that supports your sleep style to prevent aches and pains the next morning. Daily exercise allows the body to expel energy so there’s none left to keep you up at night. Finally, most of us are making it harder to sleep by staring at blue light-emitting screens at night. Turn of the tablets, smartphones, and televisions, and pick up a book for better sleep and mental health.

About the Author: Ascension Lifestyle Contributor Julie Morris

Ms. Morris is a life and career coach who strives to help others live the best lives that they can. She believes she can relate to clients who feel run over by life because of her own experiences. She spent years in an unfulfilling career in finance before deciding to help people in other ways.

24 Sep 2018
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The Benefits of Yoga and Meditation For Seniors: How to Get Started

Yoga and meditation have long been known for their beneficial properties, including reducing stress and anxiety and helping to build muscle strength and balance. They are two of the best activities for people of any age who want to focus on both their mental and physical health, and when done properly, they are excellent ways to stay active even with a health or mobility issue. For seniors, yoga can be done just about anywhere and can be incorporated into daily routines.

Getting started with a new regimen can be difficult for many seniors, however; not only are there often safety precautions involved, but it can also be hard to start a new routine and stay motivated, especially if you have existing health issues. You may be worried about maintaining your balance or hurting yourself in the process. With some careful planning and a little help, you can create a workout regimen that will keep you safe and healthy.

Keep reading to find out how to get started.

Learn the Benefits of Stretching

Stretching can be extremely beneficial when it’s done correctly; not only can it help ease tension, pain, and stiffness, but it can also help reduce stress and allow you to slowly relax. If you experience chronic pain or have arthritis or joint issues, stretching can help you find relief. Just make sure you move through the poses slowly, and always stop immediately if you feel pain. Yoga incorporates lots of stretches into each pose, but they should never hurt.

You Can Do It Just About Anywhere

Yoga has many benefits, but one of the best is that it can be done just about anywhere, at any time. If you’re sitting at a desk for a long period of time and need to stretch your muscles, lay out your yoga mat and do some quick, simple poses to feel better. If you need to alter the poses to fit your needs — seniors with mobility issues can practice yoga in the water or with a chair, for instance — you can do it easily without sacrificing any of the benefits.

Get a Mental Health Boost

Yoga and meditation go hand-in-hand because they focus on mindfulness, which is the art of looking inward to narrow your vision down to the present moment rather than worrying about the past or future. This, combined with breathing exercises and poses, can help you tear down any stress or anxiety you’re feeling for a mental health boost that will stick with you all day. It’s also a great way to practice coping with difficult emotions in the moment.

Know Where to Begin

It’s imperative that you know your limitations and abilities when it comes to your workout routine. In many cases, yoga looks much easier than it actually is, so you’ll want to start slowly and gently. If you haven’t had a workout routine in a long time or have lost muscle mass, it’s important to take it easy on your body at first to avoid injury. Talk to your doctor if you have any questions about the best ways to begin.

Yoga can be hugely beneficial to people of all ages; it’s simply important to understand the proper ways to use your body to make the most of your workout. Talk to a healthcare professional before beginning any new routine, and give yourself plenty of breaks in the beginning. With some care and attention to your own safety, you can create an exercise plan that works for your specific needs.

About the Author: Ascension Lifestyle Contributor Julie Morris

13 Sep 2018
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Cellular Healing of Inherited Trauma

Our life experiences may be passed on to our children and our children’s children through our genes. The open question is, can we make a difference? Will healing our own traumas prevent them being delivered at the baby carriage of our grandchildren? Scientists are now revealing that they have discovered how this genetic inheritance can be turned on or off. The good news: healing personal trauma will make a huge difference to future generations.

According to epigenetics — the study of inheritable changes in gene expression not directly coded in our DNA — our life experiences may be passed on to our children and our children’s children. Studies on survivors of traumatic events have suggested that exposure to stress may indeed have lasting effects on subsequent generations. But how exactly are these genetic “memories” passed on?

A new Tel Aviv University study pinpoints the precise mechanism that turns the inheritance of environmental influences “on” and “off.” The research, published last week in Cell and led by Dr. Oded Rechavi and his group from TAU’s Faculty of Life Sciences and Sagol School of Neuroscience, reveals the rules that dictate which epigenetic responses will be inherited, and for how long.

“Until now, it has been assumed that a passive dilution or decay governs the inheritance of epigenetic responses,” Dr. Rechavi said. “But we showed that there is an active process that regulates epigenetic inheritance down through generations.”

Passing stress from one generation to the next

Researchers have been preoccupied with how the effects of stress, trauma, and other environmental exposures are passed from one generation to the next for years. Small RNA molecules — short sequences of RNA that regulate the expression of genes — are among the key factors involved in mediating this kind of inheritance. Dr. Rechavi and his team had previously identified a “small RNA inheritance” mechanism through which RNA molecules produced a response to the needs of specific cells and how they were regulated between generations.

“We previously showed that worms inherited small RNAs following the starvation and viral infections of their parents. These small RNAs helped prepare their offspring for similar hardships,” Dr. Rechavi said. “We also identified a mechanism that amplified heritable small RNAs across generations, so the response was not diluted. We found that enzymes called RdRPs are required for re-creating new small RNAs to keep the response going in subsequent generations.”

Most inheritable epigenetic responses in C.elegans worms were found to persist for only a few generations. This created the assumption that epigenetic effects simply “petered out” over time, through a process of dilution or decay.

“But this assumption ignored the possibility that this process doesn’t simply die out but is regulated instead,” said Dr. Rechavi, who in this study treated C.elegans worms with small RNAs that target the GFP (green fluorescent protein), a reporter gene commonly used in experiments. “By following heritable small RNAs that regulated GFP — that ‘silenced’ its expression — we revealed an active, tuneable inheritance mechanism that can be turned ‘on’ or ‘off.’”

The scientists discovered that specific genes, which they named “MOTEK” (Modified Transgenerational Epigenetic Kinetics), were involved in turning on and off epigenetic transmissions.

“We discovered how to manipulate the transgenerational duration of epigenetic inheritance in worms by switching ‘on’ and ‘off’ the small RNAs that worms use to regulate genes,” said Dr. Rechavi. “These switches are controlled by a feedback interaction between gene-regulating small RNAs, which are inheritable, and the MOTEK genes that are required to produce and transmit these small RNAs across generations.

“The feedback determines whether epigenetic memory will continue to the progeny or not, and how long each epigenetic response will last.”

A comprehensive theory of heredity?

Although their research was conducted on worms, the team believes that understanding the principles that control the inheritance of epigenetic information is crucial for constructing a comprehensive theory of heredity for all organisms, humans included.

“We are now planning to study the MOTEK genes to know exactly how these genes affect the duration of epigenetic effects,” said Leah Houri-Zeevi, a PhD student in Dr. Rechavi’s lab and first author of the paper. “Moreover, we are planning to examine whether similar mechanisms exist in humans.”

Source

About the Author: Georgi Johnson

You can find the original article here https://www.scienceandnonduality.com/how-cells-undo-the-legacy-of-trans-generational-trauma

More work by Georgi Johnson here: https://www.scienceandnonduality.com/author/georgi

07 Sep 2018
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Mind De-Clutter: 7 Things to Stop Telling Yourself

Living as a woman in the 21^st century can at times feel like a blessing, while at other times it seems to be getting increasingly difficult. We as women seem to have made a pact with society, and keep imposing impossible goals and standards on ourselves: and we just have to be perfect in every possible way. At home, at work, in the kitchen, with our group of friends, in our relationships: there is just no letting up.

Having in mind the fact that all of these standards are a road to self-doubt, and that self-doubt resides firmly in the mind, here are seven things to stop telling yourself, which will help you shed some of that stress that has been mercilessly piling on for years.

You’re Too Old

We all get told we’re too old at some point in our day. Wrinkle creams, skin softening screams, makeovers that will take years off; you name it, we have to hear of it. The secret here is not to listen to what society tells you to do, instead listen to the voice inside.

You’re a strong beautiful woman who will age, just as everyone will; especially the models in those TV ads! If something is bothering you, then by all means find a a spa treatment that will keep it at bay or help reverse it. The signs of ageing are something we’re all aware of, and they are something that it’s fine to want to do something about, but only if it’s because that’s what you want to do.

Don’t be taken in by airbrushed photos of women who look 25 claiming to be 45 — the real world just isn’t like that. Celebrate how your face and figure will change as you age and you’ll find that you’re so much happier!

You’re Too Young

This is the other one we have to hear about. When we’re young, we’re told to dress older, when we’re old, we’re told that looking younger is the be all and end all. There’s no truth in this, and really, you only have to do what makes you happy.

You won’t suddenly find Mister Right if you do exactly what the world tells you to do, you’ll only attract people who are superficial and focused on appearances. If you want to be able to look a bit older because deep down you know it will make you happy, then go for it. If you want to dress up or wear vintage clothes because you feel like you want to break into a new style, then go for that.

Just don’t feel like you have to. Nothing good ever comes from being pushed by a crowd of people to do something that isn’t really you.

Your Hair Could Look so Much Better

Turn on the TV and within 15 minutes an ad will pop up, so that you can hear about how bad your hair is, and how parting with your money will fix it instantly. Nobody likes to hear this, and to be honest, so much of it is said purely to try and sell you products that will quickly eat up your monthly pay packet.

Whilst you may feel like you’re doing the right thing by paying for them, you’ll soon see that there are so many other products you ‘need’. The problem with this is that it’s a never ending cycle that will have you spending more and more as you go in search of a perfection that you’ll never find.

By all means, treat yourself to a bit of a pampering session every now and again if you’re that way inclined, but don’t feel that you have to listen to every ad you hear. Sometimes it’s enough to just tie your hair up and sit back and enjoy some TV!

You Don’t Look Like an Instagram Model

Social media has a lot to answer for when it comes to images. Instagram is full of airbrushed photos where people with amazing physiques make us feel that we need to spend 10 hours a day in the gym. Whilst it’s great for these few people that have got themselves looking a way they’re delighted with, it doesn’t do us any favours when it comes to body image issues.

If you want to look and feel better, then by all means, hit the gym. Share the odd selfie if you’re proud of what you’ve achieved. But don’t feel like you have to kill yourself on the treadmill purely because you don’t look like the Instagram models. They don’t look like that, either.

You need to be on a Better Diet

You’ve probably lost count of how many different types of diets you’ve tried, and you’ll have no doubt heard about dozens more that you never got round to trying. If you want to be able to feel better and have more energy, then to be honest, a simple balanced diet is probably all you’ll need.

See how you get on with a back-to-basics approach, and if you want to take things to the next level, you will have laid the groundwork, and know it’s the right thing to do. But do it because it’s the right thing for you.

You Need a ‘Woman’s Job’

So many of us hear that you have to do certain types of jobs and skip past dozens of others when you’re thinking about applying. No matter what you do, it shouldn’t change how you view yourself. It doesn’t make you any less feminine if you want to work in a garage or for an engineering firm, etc.

You should free your mind of this kind of clutter and you’ll find you’re so much happier for it. There’s no reason you can’t do what you put your mind to, so just make sure you don’t let stereotypes stand in your way.

It’s Okay to Grin and Bear Mansplaining

Mansplaining is super annoying and it’s far more prevalent than you’d think. If you want to be able to get your point across, power through. If you want to cut someone off for talking down to you, just do it.

People may think you’re being a typical ‘bossy woman’, but free yourself from this type of stuff and you’ll be all the more happy for it. Just be you, and the world will be a better place for it!

About the Author: Ascension Lifestyle Contributor, Rebecca Brown

rebecca.dorothy.brown@gmail.com

roughdraft.eu

20 Apr 2018
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Healthy Living: 4 Things to Practice Every Day

Staying healthy doesn’t require several hours at the gym or counting calories at every meal. There are various ways you can achieve overall wellness by incorporating a few simple steps into your daily routine. Here are some of the best head-to-toe health strategies for everyday life.

Drink plenty of water. Modern society has created endless options for buyers. The problem with this is that we may not always make the best decision when it comes to what we consume. This is especially important to remember when we decide what to drink each day. In order to prevent dehydration, the general rule is to drink at least eight cups of water each day. Aside from keeping you hydrated, drinking this amount of water also gets rid of wastes, regulates body temperature, guards sensitive tissues from harm, and lubricates and protects joints.

If you aren’t yet drinking eight cups of water daily, make it a part of your new routine. One easy way to get started is to carry around a reusable water bottle and set a goal to fill it up as many times as needed throughout the day.
Get enough sleep. If you find yourself jittery at night, try taking a moment to clear your mind and breathe. When you incorporate deep breaths before bedtime, this eases you into relaxing, which inevitably makes you more likely to fall asleep. If you experience restlessness frequently at night, you may want to consider the underlying cause. Are you stressed about upcoming projects? Have you been fighting with a friend recently? Whatever the cause may be, acknowledge it and find a way to calm your mind. Getting an adequate amount of rest helps to fight off illness, strengthens cognition, improves decision-making capabilities, and offers many more important health benefits.

Eat well. If you fill your body with junk food, it’s likely you’re going to experience its many aftereffects like feeling sluggish and having less desire to move. According to many dieticians, when it comes to food, the best thing to do is to eat “clean.” This means staying away from processed foods and opting for whole foods like fresh vegetables and fruits. Set a goal for yourself each day to eat a rainbow of colors. This will help to maximize your nutrient intake.
Walk as much as you can and stay active. Have you ever heard of the “move it or lose it” expression? If you think about it within the context of health, it’s pretty accurate. When we don’t move and exercise regularly, the major muscle groups in our bodies have no chance of getting stronger. Our bones also weaken, and it becomes harder to manage weight and blood pressure.

Both walking and taking the stairs are two painless ways to incorporate more activity into your life. Another way to add more walking or movement is to find a job that helps with your health goals—like becoming a dog walker. This particular job has considerable health benefits. It requires exercise, allows you to spend time with dogs, and gives you the opportunity to get fresh air every day. In addition, according to several studies, walking dogs regularly lowers your risks for high blood pressure, diabetes, and obesity. It also allows you to benefit from the feel-good brain chemicals that you get when you pet a dog. Bottom line: The more you move, the better.
The most important takeaway here is to care for your body. You only live once, and you should be as healthy and happy as possible. These tips will help you to achieve both.

About the Author: Julie Morris

Photo credit: Pixabay

28 Feb 2018
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Life In the Middle Ages: Facing the Feisty Fifties

I see my folks are gettin’ on

And I watch their bodies change

I know they see the same in me

And it makes us both feel strange

No matter how you tell yourself

It’s what we all go through

Those lines are pretty hard to take

When they’re staring back at you.

~ Nick of Time by Bonnie Raitt

I got my period on Valentine’s Day. Talk about a literal red-letter day! Never have I been so unabashedly joy-filled at the sight of blood. For the first time, I truly appreciate a euphemism both girls and women have used for generations to refer to their Moontime: “my friend.”

Perhaps I should explain that I am not thirteen. I’m not 37. I’m 50, and this is my first cycle in five months. Menopause swooped in without warning last fall and I dried up like the Sahara. To suddenly bleed after a week in which I did, in fact, feel premenstrual is confirmation that my body’s still experimenting with this shift. It’s not a done deal. There’s yet time to adjust to the idea of being a Crone — and being eligible for membership in AARP (you’ve got to be kidding!)

Embracing the “F” Word

Now that the largest cohort in history is graying en masse, someone turns 50 approximately every eight seconds. Even this formidable fleet can’t stem the tide of aging jokes, however. At 50, the good-natured ribbing begins in earnest. My friend Faith, who celebrated her 50^th just weeks before me, recalled a card she received when she turned 40: “I’m going to have to say the ‘F’ word: forty! Forty! Forty!”

We lamented that the greeting card industry doesn’t seem to think we have a sense of humor a decade later. Why isn’t there a card for 50-year-olds that reads, “I’m at the age where I can freely use the ‘F’ word: fifty, fifty, fifty!!”

My parents, who do not perceive themselves as “old” in their eighties, sent me a hilarious Dr. Seuss parody of “Thing One” and “Thing Two” called, “It’s a Fifty Thing!” The birthday card included lines such as, “Thing Fifty can groove to the latest CD. (And with bifocal lenses, Thing Fifty can see!)”

Hm. It’s one “thing” to major in gerontology and enjoy working with elders in your twenties; quite a different matter when you’re on the cusp of joining a collective that’s marginalized in Western society and rendered virtually invisible.

I remember my mom telling me with pride about a man at the Department of Motor Vehicles flirting with her when she retook her driver’s test at age 65. I was 35 at the time, and even then, wondered aloud in my public speaking class “how much longer” men would continue to flirt with me.

From the vantage point of an additional fifteen years, I find my 30-something fear rather quaint.

Redefining Wrinkles and “Cool”

The fifties promise to be an intriguing balance of living in an aging body while possessing a certain ineffable wisdom and spirit we hadn’t accessed in our younger years. Although the twenty-somethings and teens I meet today often seem wise far beyond where my generation was at their age, due no doubt to the rapid evolution of humanity as a whole, there is much to be said for the joie de vivre that accrues with vintage.

Wrinkles signify ripeness. There’s a reason the honorific, “sage” is usually conferred on an elder.

I met an 83-year-old woman with close-cropped silver hair streaked fuchsia, wearing peace sign earrings. I commented that it was so cool to see “a woman of her maturity” thus attired, to which she replied, “Oh, I wasn’t cool when I was young!”

Reconciling body image with spiritual awareness is, paradoxically, only an issue if one chooses to focus on the physical. When the body becomes background — as it often is de facto in youth, with parts that are well oiled, shapely, firm, and thus, easier to “ignore” — our essence shines forth, and that’s what people see when they read the story in our eyes.

A Bountiful Harvest

Fifty is a time to harvest our joy — and acknowledge evidence of our mortality. While several of my contemporaries have already matched wits with serious illness, and a few have transitioned to the other side of life, I’ve also watched three dear friends meet and marry their life partners in their fifties. As I’ve been casting my soul mate net for a while now, this is heartening news.

Life in the Middle Ages can be bountiful, as Oprah Winfrey, our ultimate generational role model for accomplished aging, said of her 50^th birthday: “All these years I’ve been taking lessons from life experiences and feeling like I was growing into myself. Finally, I feel grown. More like myself than I’ve ever been. If it’s true what Maya Angelou says, that the fifties represent everything you were meant to be, all I can say is, watch out.”

Riley Mackenzie* embodies Angelou’s decree. In her fifties, she studied the subtleties of Argentine Tango, became a serious ceramics artist, and swung from a high trapeze. Now 68, she’s just back from a leisurely road trip around the periphery of the U.S. with her husband of almost, yes, 50 years. She’s also reinventing her marketing business with a partner, another vital woman in her late fifties. Mackenzie says emphatically, “It’s the most fun I could ever imagine having!”

Hot Flashes…of Inspiration

Age, like everything else in life, is a matter of perspective. Six months before my milestone birthday, I fell into conversation with a lively older gentleman as we waited to cross the street. He was searching his pockets for his eyeglasses, and, after I helped him find them, we walked together for a few minutes. He told me he was 100 years old, and regaled me with tales of his life. As we reached a parting of the ways, he turned to me and asked, quite seriously, “So tell me, young lady, have you graduated from college yet?”

Now, that’s the ultimate tonic for the “chronologically gifted”!

As I sit in a local teahouse, sipping rooibos and savoring my feminine cycle along with some exquisite chocolate mousse, I’m tickled by these words from The Reconnections website, on meeting the beloved: “I saw a license plate the other day, on a car belonging to a woman aged 50 plus: ‘Give me chocolate, and no one gets hurt.’ I thought that one was pretty neat until I saw a better one: ‘I’m over 50 and I’m still hot — except now, it comes in flashes.'”

How true. Flashes of insight. Flashes of inspiration. Flashes of unmitigated delight at just how extraordinary life on this beautiful blue-green planet can be. One author refers to the second half-century as “Jubilee Time.”

I’m ready to party. Considering how many playmates I’ll have in the galactic sandbox, it’s destined to be an unsurpassed blast. Bring it on: fifty! Fifty! Fifty!

* name changed to honor her privacy

About the Author:

Amara Rose can pluck a graying hair from her scalp at 25 mph; driving any faster, she waits for a red light. To see what she’s done with her first half-century, visit LiveYourLight.com. Offer her dark chocolate and you open the doorway to friendship.

20 Nov 2017
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How to Meditate in a Busy City

From the perspective of a modern spirit, immersed in overwhelming noise, general overstimulation of the senses, and the growing pain of the world, escape from this agonizing cacophony has become the ultimate advantage.

And many perceive meditation as a way to escape, deep into the peaceful consciousness of their existence, where the ripple effect of the world’s troubles is subdued, and they can calmly enjoy the serene surface of their inner reflection.

However, meditation serves a purpose on the opposite end of the spectrum. It aims to create a peaceful enough environment within your being in order to face the chaos. Meditation is not an escape, it is the only healing entrance into the deepest wounds of our collective existence. And it serves to give you an oasis amidst turmoil, even in the heart of urban lifestyle, and help you transcend the various conditions in which you may find yourself.

Our layers of consciousness

When we are in a hurry to the office, waiting in line in the bank, in a crowded public bus rushing through the traffic jam as much as possible, we are surrounded by the clamor of people, machines and our own thoughts. Everything feels as if we’re overpowered by sensations, flooded with perceptions that are disguised by our own emotions towards them.

Some would say that meditation is impossible in those circumstances. We know it’s necessary.

Still deeper in the undisturbed essence of your being is the clarity of unencumbered perception. A view that is not guided by your personal anguish, impatience or anxiety of such commotion. Tapping into that deeper, most profound awareness is the first prerequisite of meditation, not in spite of your surroundings, but precisely because of them. Silence becomes the most prominent in the middle of chaos.

If you free yourself of expectations, and focus on pure facts, repetitive facts, disengaging from the self-centered mind we constantly occupy, you can let go of the feeling that you are overwhelmed and suffocated by the crowd and the noise of the city.

The shift of focus

We are all different, and yet the same when it comes to struggling with distractions. From noisy car alarms, honking, yelling, to the constant pulsating of our footsteps in the streets, it’s difficult to let go of these superficial layers and remain anchored into the present, unbiased, unaffected.

For some, it’s enough to find a solitary corner of the bus and focus on the rhythm of the street while repetitively touching their rosary and using visualization. For others, a pair of noise-cancelling headphones with soothing sounds of nature or music serves as the ultimate healing tool for a mind bruised with distractions. Ultimately, all of these methods serve the same purpose – focusing your mind on perceiving rather than feeling.

In addition to understanding and observing the natural pattern of your breath, and slowly clearing your hectic thoughts, you can use the pace of the city to your advantage. Every metropolis has its own heartbeat, and every soul you pass by in the street contributes to this timeless rhythm – use it to shift your focus.

Abandoning self-gratification

Our survival instincts are deeply rooted in our being, and affect our daily conduct towards others, as well as ourselves. We’ve naturally become the central point of our universe, perceiving the importance and value of everything through the prism of “I, me, myself”. Yet, this is a very limited insight into the world, and a very self-centered way of attributing values, and meditation gives us a mindset that surpasses these primal, ego-oriented perceptions.

It is precisely when you are surrounded by others, waiting for the green light, or stuck in a stuffy tram, that you have the opportunity to shift your pivotal point of perception onto those of around you. When you let go of those suffocating thoughts “I hate this commute”, “I cannot bear this heat”, “Why does this always happen to me?” – you realize that you are not, and never have been, alone.

True meditation, the essence of inner harmony, can never rely only on self-gratification, the illusion of control, and that famous desire to escape. Meditation, through practice of continual mindful existence, through visualization, and growing awareness of yourself and others, embraces the reality of chaos, it thrives in it. When you let go of searching for literal, physical silence, and create it within, you will have unleashed the extraordinary potential that already resides in you.

06 Nov 2017
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Evolutionary Relationships: The Seven Requirements Of Love

An Excerpt From “Evolutionary Love Relationships: Passion, Authenticity,and Activism“

It is critical to remember that this crisis we are facing is a crisis in which the sacred powers of love in the human soul are being diverted by distraction, by greed, by ignorance, by the pursuit of power, so that they never irrigate the world and transform it. What is needed is a vision of evolutionary relationship as a relationship that helps us come into the real, take responsibility for it, and enact our sacred purpose with a partner, and for the world: when two lovers come together in this dynamic love consciousness, they create a transformative field of sacred energy, from which both can feed to inspire their work in reality.

There are seven requirements necessary, I believe, for this tremendously potent vision of evolutionary love to emerge in the world.

The first requirement is that both beings need to be plunged individually into a deep and passionate devotion of the Beloved, by whatever name they know the Beloved, because without both beings centering their life in God, the relationship will never be able to escape the private circle. From the very beginning it must be centered in the Divine. It must be a relationship that is undertaken in the conscious presence of the Divine for the Divine’s great work in the Universe. Only a relationship that is centered in God, and that has God as the prime actor in the relationship, will be able to bear the vicissitudes of authentic love, of dealing with the challenges of life and service in the world.

The second requirement for an evolutionary love is that both beings must develop a mastery of solitude. In his Letters to a Young Poet, Rilke wrote:

“Authentic love is where two solitudes border, protect, and salute each other.”

They “border” each other, they don’t infiltrate each other’s domain. They “protect” because they realize that the solitude that each one has is the source of inner wealth and inner revelation; they “salute” because they understand that the work of solitude, the work that goes into solitude, the heart work, the yearning, the longing, the deep contemplation of one’s gifts and one’s faults, is a sacred work that is the secret foundation of healthy relationship. In too many relationships in our current narcissistic model, what threatens the person most is the solitude of the other. In a true evolutionary relationship, what can exhilarate one person the most is the other’s solitude, because they know that solitude has the potential to make them a billionaire of generosity, of insight, and of creativity.

The third requirement is that in a true evolutionary relationship there is an equality of power, and that equality is born out of a profound experience of the sacredness and dignity of the other person’s soul. This new relationship that is trying to be given to us by the Mother is what I call the beloved-beloved relationship. One person isn’t the beloved and the other only the lover. Both partners recognize in each other the unique face that God is turning to them in order to bring them the essence of divine truth, which is embodied love. From that recognition of each other as the Beloved flows a natural movement of passionate honoring and service of the other’s life. This gives each person the freedom and the energy and the joy that they need to go out into the world and fulfill their destiny. This is crucial because in the past there has been a vision of inequality of power.

The male has often had the power and the female hasn’t. Dominant and submissive roles between two people have been seen as inevitable.

Now what’s emerging is the mutual recognition of holiness and sacredness expressed in tantric rapture, in an adoration and worship of the other in the core of life.

The fourth requirement follows on from the third: if you are going to have a beloved-beloved relationship, you have to center your whole being and work and evolution in God. You have to be a master of your own solitude so that you can work on what is necessary to deepen that sacred relationship of the Divine. You must also bring the sacred practice of prayer and meditation into the very core of your life, so that the whole relationship can be enfolded in a mutually shared sacred enterprise.

The fifth requirement is that both lovers completely abandon any Hollywood sentimentality about what relationships actually are. As love becomes more evolutionary and conscious, so does each lover’s understanding of each other’s shadow. One of the essential roles of this new love is to make each person in the relationship the safe-guarder of the other’s shadow—not the judge of the other’s shadow, not the denier of the other’s shadow, but someone who recognizes where the other has been wounded, and safeguards and protects them with unconditional compassion without allowing themselves to be mauled or manipulated by the other. This takes an immense effort, because it takes an immense effort to understand your own shadow, and an even greater effort to face and comprehend, without illusion, denial or repulsion, the shadow of the other.

The sixth requirement is that if you are going to enter into the evolutionary process, you have to accept that it never ends, never stops unfolding.

There is no end to transformation, because divine love is infinite.

Evolution is fundamentally a death/rebirth cycle that repeats itself in higher and higher dimensions, and any authentic evolutionary relationship must have the courage to go through the deaths that engender the rebirths. Marion Woodman, the great Jungian analyst and pioneer of the sacred feminine, said to me, “I have had four marriages with my husband, and at the end of each marriage there was a crisis that we had to make the commitment to go through, a projection that had to die. But we stuck at it and we went through it, and the love that we know now in our eighties is the greatest and deepest love we have experienced.”

The seventh principle requirement is that from the very beginning of this adventure into evolutionary love you must make the commitment for it not to be just a personal orgy, a cultivation of an oasis of private pleasure. You must engage consciously in this relationship to make you stronger, to serve the planet, to recognize that it is a relationship not only grounded in God, not only infused by sacred practice, but it is from the very beginning dedicated to making both people more powerful, more reflective, more passionately engaged with the only serious truth of our time: The world is dying, and we need a major revolution of the heart to empower everyone to step forward and start doing the work of reconstruction and re-creation that is now desperately needed.

About the author: Andrew Harvey

Andrew Harvey is an internationally acclaimed poet, novelist, translator, mystical scholar, and spiritual teacher. He has written and edited more than 30 books — including the best-selling titles The Hope and The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. He has won the Christmas Humphries Prize (A Journey in Ladakh), the Nautilus Prize twice (The Hope, Light the Flame), and appeared in two recent films (Dancing in the Flames, and Ethan Hawke’s Seymour: An Introduction). He was also the subject of the 1993 BBC film documentary The Making of a Modern Mystic. He has taught at Oxford University, Cornell University, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, The California Institute of Integral Studies, and the University of Creation Spirituality as well as at various spiritual centers throughout the United States. He is the founder and director of the Institute of Sacred Activism. He is a kind-hearted rascal with a penchant for red pashminas, Maria Callas, white lions and Chicago pizza.

26 Sep 2017
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Of Two-Way Streets and Enriching Dichotomies

Our world of apparent duality offers a wealth of disguised enrichment opportunities. Consider:

A cyber buddy who currently lives creatively without residence wondered why a stranger would open her home and heart to her. She emailed, “I don’t understand why she’s being so amazingly generous. I keep telling her she just blows me away.”

I responded, “You never know what her own journey is…she may have needed to serve someone in exactly this way, and you are providing a golden opportunity, so it is a mutuality.”

This is the way energy works. When my lifelong friend Ellie fell and broke her hip at 96, requiring a lengthy convalescence in a rehabilitation center and later at home, I initially despaired about why Spirit didn’t simply call her Home.

Then I had a flash of insight: the enforced passivity enabled my fiercely independent friend to learn to receive, and blessed those who assisted her with the joy of service. I told her, “You would never have allowed it otherwise.” With wonder and her trademark humility, Ellie exclaimed, “Amara, you’re right!”

The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful

What appears adverse can be advantageous. I needed to park my car on a different street due to an upcoming festival, and planned to be out of town the following week. I gave the young man who acts as my “car surrogate” the spare key, and asked him to please move the car back once the festival was over.

Unbeknownst to me, a road crew was about to repave the street; tow-away signs went up the day after I left. If the festival hadn’t been scheduled (and, therefore, if I hadn’t given Danny my spare key) my car would have been parked in its normal spot — and towed during the week I was away!

More profoundly: A dear friend was in a near-fatal motorcycle crash earlier this year. After a month in the ICU, he learned he’d need a walker once out of bed, and would have only minimal use of his right hand for the rest of his life (he’s a southpaw, but still…). Eight months later, Rick says, “The accident was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

During his convalescence he lost seventy pounds and began exercising daily as part of his physical therapy program; the combination reversed his adult-onset diabetes. He’s grateful every day for the gift of life, and more open than he’s ever been. He says, “I cry if I’m happy, I cry if I’m sad.

“And you know what? It feels amazing. I have nothing to hide now; what others think of me is no longer my concern. I can be emotionally honest. I feel like this is another piece of the silver lining surrounding that terrible trauma.”

Sustained by his new outlook and the outpouring of love and support from friends and family, Rick’s regained almost full use of his right hand, and returned to work — as a practicing physician. Practice makes perfect.

Once you’ve been through the fire, you’re recast as pure essence; the superficial no longer holds sway in your life.

How Your Light Is Spent

Milton’s sonnet, When I Consider How My Light is Spent, exemplifies the nature of life’s dichotomies, and how we choose to interpret our time here. The full text reads:

When I consider how my light is spent

Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,

And that one talent which is death to hide

Lodg’d with me useless, though my soul more bent

To serve therewith my Maker, and present

My true account, lest he returning chide;

“Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?”

I fondly ask. But Patience to prevent

That murmur, soon replies: “God doth not need

Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best

Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state

Is kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed

And post o’er land and ocean without rest:

They also serve who only stand and wait.

“Apprehension” means both anxiety and understanding. If you apprehend the meaning behind Milton’s final line, you will understand that simply being is what matters most.

Whoever or whatever your messenger is, listen deeply. Once you apprehend the message, invite yourself to let go, so that you may embrace this wisdom farther along life’s spiral. Allow yourself to be amused by the alchemical nature of any apparent dichotomy that shows up in your life. And know there’s an invisible cosmic trampoline beneath you, so you can rebound from pain’s mirage, spread your wings, and fly.

About the Author:

Amara Rose is a metaphysical “midwife” for our global rebirth. She offers spiritual mentoring, e-courses, a CD/mp3 of the journey to awakening, and an inspirational monthly newsletter.

Learn more at LiveYourLight.com. Connect with Amara on Twitter and Facebook.

17 Jul 2017
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The Art of Awareness

As we move into the next phase of our global renaissance, copious creativity is the axis on which our elevation will turn. How deeply are we willing to tap our inner reservoirs? Can we expand our perception of what constitutes “art”?

José Argüelles, who adapted the evolutionary secrets of the Mayan Calendar for the Western mind, saw art as the unifying field, a path to help us move “from biospheric waste to artistic regeneration,” by attuning ourselves to a natural time frequency expressed as an equation: T(E) = Art. Energy (E) factored by time (T) equals Art. Energy is essence: a rock, a flower, a star, a human being. Time is a frequency. When we use our energy in concert with natural time cycles, we are living creativity. In other words, Time is Art…not the clock on the wall or the cash in your wallet.

Eye of the Beholder

What this means in terms of cross-cultural energy exchange opens unimagined doors. A woman traveled from Denmark to the tiny West African country The Gambia, toting numerous colorful plastic bags — prized by Gambian women as symbols of status and respect — to use as barter. (Women of The Gambia also recycle worn or ripped plastic bags into one-of-a-kind purses).

In the marketplace, she discovered a hand-carved figure of an African goddess and, through gestures, opened negotiations to purchase the stunning piece.

But the indigenous artist had no interest in money. She wanted plastic bags. The Danish visitor tried to give her all the bags she’d brought, explaining that there was a surplus of these in her country. The Gambian sculptor accepted three, and each woman felt she’d enjoyed the better bargain. Plastic bags or a unique woodcarving: equally sacred art in the eye of the beholder.

Then there is the children’s book that became a collaboration between two Jewish translators, a Protestant editor, a Muslim painter and a non-profit publisher in the deep South. It was a collective endeavor all the way, explained one rabbinical writer: “An Arabic Sufi tale (originally penned in what is now Iraq) translated by a rabbi into Hebrew in the Middle Ages and translated by us (into 21^st century language and sensibility), with a Sufi publisher and a Pakistani artist.” The subject matter — animals protesting their treatment by humans — transcended all ethnic, cultural, and religious boundaries.

The Art in our DNA

The universal urge toward the aesthetic is coded in our cells. Theologian and author Thomas Moore writes, in Care of the Soul, “Children paint every day and love to show their works on walls and refrigerator doors. But as we become adults, we abandon this important soul task of childhood.” When we relinquish this soul expression to professional artists, “we are left with mere rational reasons for our lives, feelings of emptiness and confusion, and a compulsive attachment to pseudo images, such as shallow television programs. When our own images no longer have a home, a personal museum, we drown our sense of loss in pale substitutes, trashy novels or formulaic movies.”

Because art arrests our attention, living “artfully” might require of us something as simple as pausing: taking the time to shift from acquire to inquire, to let go of buying more in favor of being more. This is what honoring our collective creative impulse can do for humanity: restore us to wholeness, holiness, health. “Whole”, “holy” and “heal” all spring from the same root. To be whole is to be balanced and harmonious in body, mind, soul and spirit.

It’s this level of awareness that will characterize the coming Psychozoic (“spirit life”) era, says Argüelles, when, having rediscovered who we are, we can create a culture based on the three virtues of true time: autonomy, equality, and loyalty to the truth in every moment. These are strikingly similar to the Three Commitments delineated by The Reconnections: stay free, stay present, follow the energy.

We already have fusion food: a culinary blending of cultures to delight the palate. Now we’re primed to feed our deeper hunger, to fuse mind and heart into healing art, and reawaken the sacred dimension in daily life.

And if we make a subtle shift — move the “h” in heart from the start of the word to the end — we create “Earth”. We live in a heart circle. Earth heart. The beat goes on.

About the Author:

Amara Rose is a metaphysical “midwife” for our global rebirth. She offers spiritual mentoring, e-courses, a CD/mp3 of the journey to awakening, and an inspirational monthly newsletter.

Learn more at LiveYourLight.com. Connect with Amara on Twitter and Facebook.