After a break we then read the following.
Sense
of awe as powerful as drugs for reducing inflammation
Spiritual
feelings, or a sense of awe when we look at a beautiful scene or hear
uplifting music, cause a powerful anti-inflammatory response in our
body that's every bit as powerful as drugs, researchers have said
this week
This
sense of the 'other' boosts the immune system, and lowers levels of
cytokines, proteins that cause inflammation in the body. Inflammation
has been associated with heart disease, type 2 diabetes, arthritis,
and even Alzheimer's disease and clinical depression.
"Awe,
wonder and beauty promote healthier levels of cytokines, and this
suggests that the things we do to experience these emotions-a walk in
nature, losing oneself in music, beholding art-has a direct influence
on health and life expectancy," said researcher Dacher
Keltner, a psychologist at University of California at Berkeley.
To
assess the impact of positive emotions on inflammation, the
researchers recruited 200 young adults who, on one given day, said
how often they experienced amusement, awe, compassion, contentment,
joy, love and pride; those who had the most experiences also had the
lowest levels of Interleukin 6, a cytokine that's a biomarker of
inflammation. “Once
you accept life without struggling against it, you can see that
everything serves you in one way or another. A lousy meal helps you
appreciate and remember a good meal.
A defeat strengthens you for the next victory. If you try not to quantify and judge things and accept them as part of your overall experience, you become mature. All of a sudden that power that should have been yours from the beginning is returned to you as a calm individuality – a creative stillness that allows you to BE. Acceptance unshackles you from the restraints that you’ve created for yourself, and it allows you to explore inside your own individuality.”
What would it mean, how would it change things, if, this year – a new one just begun – you, me, anyone listening could take this advice? Acceptance without struggle. And awareness that everything happening that we don’t like is actually serving us in some way. It is all in how we choose to use our thoughts. And the life we are creating is made from our thoughts.
Our thoughts seemingly arise out of nowhere, capture our attention, torment us for a while if they are at the negative end of the continuum (and with the brain’s natural bias toward the negative, they often are) and then, eventually, leave us alone. It feels we are at their mercy. The wisdom and spiritual traditions tell us we need to let go of the egoic mind (the mind that generates thoughts) and find the calm stillness of the Higher Self behind it. Herein lies the answer to our distress. It is said the mind makes a wonderful master but a very poor servant. For most of us, our minds, the monkey mind (or the lower mind in the theosophical tradition) is our master. My proposition is this: can we decide, right now, to turn this around and make 2018 the year of change of mind? From master to servant the mind’s status can be changed. What would it take?
Acceptance – according to Stuart Wilde and others. Acceptance is allowing life to unfold without imposing the ego’s preferences upon it. Michael Singer wrote the story of his life on this path, entitled, “The Surrender Experiment”. His realization that the monkey mind with its never-ending chatter was just, well, weird. And why was it so? What was that about? He set to find out and embarked on a spiritual journey that took him to a place of ongoing, every day, every moment surrender. What occurred was remarkable. When, through his practice, he learnt to drop his busy thinking mind, with its constant commentary, its negativity and unending worrying – he discovered that life took care of him! He didn’t have to try to control it anymore. And, miraculously (to us, who live in the world we think of as reality) everything worked out for his highest good. Ultimately. In fact, what we perceive of as incredible and miraculous is simply the outworking of the higher intelligence – Source, the God Force, the All. Call it what you will. The intelligence that underpins this life of ours knows what is right for us. We don’t. We have so little control in truth. And how desperately we cling to the idea that we have to control things, in order for everything to be okay. The opposite, it seems is true. It is when we let go and get out of the way, that life is able to unfold most perfectly for us.
“Love nothing but that which comes to you
Woven in the pattern of your destiny.
For what could more aptly fit your needs?” ~Marcus Aurelius
I want to go a little deeper here. So, we stop trying to control, we let go, we accept whatever occurs. We learn to say yes, instead of no, to whatever life presents us with. Big stuff. Probably not going to happen overnight. Surrender is going to be a practice requiring some dedication and self-discipline. Meditation is key because it is at a fundamental level training in mindfulness. Or rather, mindlessness. We must observe the nature of the mind, to understand it – then we let it go. Meditation offers us this opportunity.
Our story is the one the little voice keeps telling us. It is the product of years and years of conditioning, from our loved ones and our society. It is the product of a karmic legacy that was crystallised in events of early childhood. It is the product of our ego’s primary mission – to keep us alive in a physical body: hence the vast scope of fears and what if’s that adrenalize our bodies and brains, keeping us in a state of hyper-sensitivity to any real or imagined threat. In short, our story is the product of the dominance of our small self. I’ve had enough of it – and if you feel the same way, let’s do this. Let’s change our vibration – from fear to surrender and trust, and from resistance to acceptance. What have we got to lose? Just our small selves. And behind these small selves of ours is our Higher Self.
The esoteric wisdom has been telling us this for eons. Sadly, the message has become more and more obscured in this most dense of material eras.
