TOOLS FOR TRANSFORMATION – MEDITATION

Dec 15
2012
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Two Perspectives on Meditation as a Tool for Transformation

Dr. Amit Nagpal, New Delhi, India, and

Dr. Janet Smith Warfield, Florida, USA

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Dr. Amit Nagpal’s Perspective

For introverts and silence lovers, meditation is probably the most powerful personal transformation tool. While chanting and Vipassana may be good examples of formal meditation techniques, living in the moment, silence and simply observing your breath may be good examples of informal meditation techniques.

Here are some of the major benefits of meditative/contemplative practices:

Finding Joy and Peace

The conscious mind is the source of stress and limiting beliefs. Silencing the conscious mind helps us not just relieve stress but rather find peace and joy. I personally believe, “Meditation should not be used as a reactive tool for handling stress but rather used as a proactive tool for creating joy.” In fact my collaborative book (with 19 thought leaders from 6 countries) highlights that money is not the only source of joy but connecting with self, discovering our deep passion and so on are sources of joy which the society is yet to fully tap.

Understanding our Passion and Purpose

Self-reflection with the help of meditation is the best way to discover our true and deepest passion. We can use many spiritual and non-spiritual tools to discover our passions but using meditation can make the process of discovery much faster. If you feel more comfortable with self reflection or plain contemplation or sitting silently surrounded by nature rather than meditation, it is very much fine. The sub-conscious provides us the wisdom, intuition and clarity of thinking to find out what we truly want. We have many passions in life or many hobbies we feel passionate about, but it takes time to discover our deep passion. Here is a post I wrote, “Discover Your Deepest Passion.”

Boosting Our Creativity

Meditation releases Theta waves which boost our creativity and provide us inspiration. My advice to creative professionals is to practice meditation to see exponential growth in their creativity. Meditation boosts our creativity through reflection, though practice and repetition play a critical role in honing creative skills. A desire to boost creativity through meditation can create stress and expectation, which may backfire. So just meditate to relax and improved creativity will be a side benefit. Here is an interesting post, “How I Regained my Lost Creativity.”

Beauty and Charisma

When one has peace within, the face being the index of the mind reflects that as peace written all over you which makes you look beautiful and attractive. Inner beauty comes from a stress-free mind and a confident, giving personality. Someone has rightly said, worry is like a rocking chair; it gives you something to do, but it doesn’t get you anywhere. Here is a detailed post on “Beauty and Charisma through Meditation.”

Tapping the Sub-Conscious

Prayer and meditation also increase levels of dopamine, often referred to as the brain’s pleasure hormone. During meditation the conscious mind gets silent. As a result, we are able to hear the sub-conscious mind or we can say that the sub-conscious gets activated. Then begins the sweet journey of creativity, joy, wisdom, intuition, awareness and in fact, a point of ecstasy and oneness, where none of these matter.

(If you fail at meditation or have failed in the past, then you must read this post.)

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Dr Amit Nagpal is a Personal Branding Consultant and Deepest Passion Coach. He is based in New Delhi, India and specializes in personal branding with a holistic touch. His philosophy is, “Enlarge as a Human Being, Excel as a Social Media Being and Evolve as a Personal Brand.”

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Dr. Janet Smith Warfield’s Perspective

Background:

Meditation is a mind-body-spirit practice originating in ancient Eastern spiritual traditions and used throughout the world for thousands of years. It calms the conditioned mind, relaxes the body, and allows the practitioner to connect to a much larger, more encompassing energy, variously labeled “God”, “The Tao”, “Higher Power”, “Allah”, “Jehovah”, “Universal Consciousness”, “YHWH”, “intuition”, “creativity”, Cosmic Energy. The practitioner learns to trust this power because of the amazing growth, freedom, and spiritual strength it provides.

Benefits of Meditation:

  1. Relaxed awareness
  2. Stress release
  3. Letting go of fear
  4. Channeling rage into constructive action
  5. Mental self-regulation
  6. Improved focus
  7. New ways of thinking
  8. Single pointed concentration
  9. Correct understanding
  10. Humility
  11. Effortless speech
  12. Effortless action
  13. Building internal energy
  14. Developing compassion, love, patience, forgiveness
  15. Openness to synchronicities that effortlessly resolve challenges
  16. Indestructible sense of well-being
  17. Bliss
  18. Transformation

Enhance Your Experience with:

  1. A quiet location
  2. A comfortable position
  3. An open attitude
  4. Mental focus

Some Forms of Meditation:

  1. Mindfulness meditation
  2. Transcendental meditation
  3. Mantra meditation
  4. Zen Buddhist meditation
  5. Breath meditation
  6. Relaxation response
  7. Action meditation
  8. Sound meditation
  9. Reiki meditation
  10. Guided meditation
  11. HeartMath meditation
  12. Walking meditation
  13. Crystal bowl meditation
  14. Chanting
  15. Rituals
  16. Jungian meditation

Areas in Which Scientific Research is Being Done:

  1. Relief of chronic back pain
  2. Minimizing hot flashes in menopausal women
  3. Relieving asthma
  4. Improving the ability to focus and prioritize
  5. Releasing stress in caregivers of elderly patients with dementia
  6. Fibromyalgia
  7. Cancer
  8. Hypertension
  9. Psoriasis
  10. Changing brain and immune functions in positive ways
  11. Anxiety disorders
  12. Women’s health

Here is one example of a guided meditation:

 

Here are some other resources:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfFJ6BI1l_E

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mx-cJrVUBPE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wbC2n-9FKI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWttCv0p6WQ

Enjoy!

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Dr. Janet Smith Warfield serves wisdom-seekers who want understanding and clarity so they can live peaceful, powerful, prosperous lives. Through her unique combination of holistic, creative, right-brain transformational experiences and 22 years of rigorous, left-brain law practice, she has learned how to sculpt words in atypical ways to shift her listeners into experiences beyond words, transforming turmoil into inner peace. For more information, see wordsculptures.com, janetsmithwarfield.com, and wordsculpturespublishing.com.

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Written by admin in: Awareness, Beauty, Calm, Conditioned thinking, Conscious mind, Energy, Fear, God, Personal transformation, Silence, Tools for Transformation, Transformation, Trust |

Two Perspectives on Speaking Our Own Truth

Dec 11
2011
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Two Perspectives on Releasing Social Filters and Speaking from the Truth of Who We Are

Dr. Amit Nagpal, New Delhi, India, and

Janet Smith Warfield, J.D., Florida, USA

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Dr. Amit Nagpal’s Perspective

I have suffered a lot in life because I have refused to use filters. Maybe I was born brutally honest and ruthlessly frank!

There have been times when I have told women to their face, “Yes you are looking fat” (when they asked for my opinion). Well that’s my opinion, take it or leave it. I don’t claim to be telling the truth all the time, but yes I am telling my version of the truth, what seems true to me.

Inspired by Gandhi, but a bit more complicated, my autobiography will be entitled, “My Experiments with Complete Truth, Ruthless Frankness and Brutal Honesty.” If I survive for the next 20 years, I will write a brutally honest autobiography. I will tell my version of truth, my failures, my successes, my troubles, my self-inflicted suffering. I don’t care whether people will be interested in reading it; I will write it to give vent to whatever emotions have been trapped inside me due to social filters, and I will write it for myself.

Sometimes I have wondered, “Do people really want to know the truth? Or do they prefer sweet lies and diplomacy? Have I paid too high a price for my brutal honesty? Do Indian and eastern cultures like filters and do not respect straight forwardness? Is there some lack of inner confidence which makes us look for sweet lies and reject bitter truth? Is life already too bitter and we should not make it more bitter by truths?”

I still believe we need to develop inner confidence to speak and hear the truth. In the short term, lies can be sweet. But if I tell an ugly woman, “You look beautiful”, will it change the facts? Will I not spoil my own brand and credibility in the process and give her false hopes? But I also believe, if you have inner beauty it will reflect on your face and will make you beautiful (though not in the traditional sense of the term).

In the long run, truth is always better. But in this fast paced world, who is bothered about the long run?

Anyway, I will try to be kindly honest now.

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Dr. Amit Nagpal is a Personal Branding Consultant, passionate Blogger, and Motivational Speaker based in New Delhi, India. He specializes in personal branding with a holistic touch. His philosophy is “Take Charge of your Life and your Brand” He writes a Blog, “The Joys of Teaching”

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Janet Smith Warfield’s Perspective

“Mom, most people function with filters. You don’t.” My oldest son offered this observation after an emotionally-charged family phone conference where my youngest son hung up on us, offended by a remark I had made.

I thought a moment and agreed. “No, I don’t use filters.” I speak my truth from the core of who I am, right here, right now, in this present moment, with these people, surrounded by this environment. It is a unique moment carrying its own energy. I am not willing to mask and distort the energy of who I am with people I love, even when it hurts. I want intimacy in as many relationships as possible.

Yet there are times when I do use filters. I use them when discernment and previous experience have shown me there are people I cannot trust to care for my welfare as they would care for their own. Then I need to use filters to protect both them and me.

Can my truth of the moment change? Absolutely and often quickly when others are also speaking without filters from the core of their own beings. They offer me a perspective I might not previously have thought of or additional information I didn’t previously have.

I do know that speaking from my unfiltered core upsets people who only feel comfortable operating through filters. Is it because I’ve lived every single one of those filters myself and know them well from the inside out? Because I’ve lived them, I can penetrate them. That’s threatening for people who believe their filter is Truth.

My youngest son had commented that there were consequences to my speech and actions. I know that and don’t take either speech or action lightly. But are he and his wife aware that there are also consequences to their speech and actions? Eastern religions call it karma.

So how do we move forward in relationship and collaboration when one person needs filters and the other is functioning from the core of who they are? There’s clearly a misalignment of communication and energies. Intimacy is not possible when people function from filters, although etiquette and polite conversation certainly are.

“I consider myself a pretty good mediator,” my oldest son said, “but I don’t know where to go from here.” Neither did I.

“I think I am simply going to stop taking initiative and stop seeking out relationships with people who need filters,” I said. “If and when they want intimacy, I’m here.” I can still love them. I can pray and meditate for all of us when we’re stuck in our conditioned filters. I can even just keep my mouth shut when I’m around people stuck in filters. But is it worth the price?

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Janet Smith Warfield works with wisdom-seekers who want understanding and clarity so they can live peaceful, powerful, prosperous lives. Through her unique combination of holistic, creative, right-brain transformational experiences and 22 years of rigorous, left-brain law practice, she has learned how to sculpt words in atypical ways to shift her listeners into experiences beyond words, transforming turmoil into inner peace. For more information about Janet, go to www.janetsmithwarfield.com; www.wordsculpturespublishing.com; and www.wordsculptures.com.

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Copyright © 2011 – Janet Smith Warfield. All rights reserved.

 

Written by admin in: Assertiveness, Collaboration, Credibility, Energy, Gandhi, Honesty, Intimacy, Karma, Social filters, Suffering, Truth |