The Work of Byron Katie

Recently I had the good fortune to attend a self discovery workshop conducted by a monk, Bhante Kumara of the Sasanarakkha Buddhist Sanctuary in Taiping. The most impressive part of the workshop was the last portion of the workshop, which was based on the Work of Byron Katie.

Katie’s work is focused on eliminating sufferings by understanding and seeing the true cause of our sufferings. The work is revealing as it shows us the error of our thinking, beliefs and perceptions, which is the root cause of our sufferings.

Katie has come up with a structured tool that makes it very easy for us to recognize these errors within us using this Judge Your Neighbor worksheet [right-click to download]. You can also download this worksheet from http://thework.com

To see the Work in Action, go to http://thework.com where there are short video clips of Byron Katie in action.

The Daffodil Principle

Several times my daughter had telephoned to say, “Mother, you must come to see the daffodils before they are over.”

I wanted to go, but it was a two-hour drive from Laguna to Lake Arrowhead.

“I will come next Tuesday”, I promised a little reluctantly on her third call.

Next Tuesday dawned cold and rainy. Still, I had promised, and reluctantly I drove there.

When I finally walked into Carolyn’s house, I was welcomed by the joyful sounds of happy children. I delightedly hugged and greeted my grandchildren.

“Forget the daffodils, Carolyn!  The road is invisible in these clouds and fog, and there is nothing in the world except you and these children that I want to see badly enough to drive another inch!”

My daughter smiled calmly and said, “We drive in this all the time, Mother.”

“Well, you won’t get me back on the road until it clears, and then I’m heading for home!” I assured her.

“But first we’re going to see the daffodils. It’s just a few blocks,” Carolyn said. “I’ll drive. I’m used to this.”

“Carolyn,” I said sternly, “Please turn around.”

“It’s all right, Mother, I promise. You will never forgive yourself if you miss this experience.”

After about twenty minutes, we turned onto a small gravel road and I saw a small church. On the far side of the church, I saw a hand lettered sign with an arrow that read, “Daffodil Garden.”

We got out of the car, each took a child’s hand, and I followed Carolyn down the path. Then, as we turned a corner, I looked up and gasped.

Before me lay the most glorious sight.

It looked as though someone had taken a great vat of gold and poured it over the mountain peak and its surrounding slopes. The flowers were planted in majestic, swirling patterns, great ribbons and swaths of deep orange, creamy white, lemon yellow, salmon pink, saffron and  butter yellow. Each different-colored variety was planted in large groups so that it swirled and flowed like its own river with its own unique hue. There were five acres of flowers.

“Who did this?” I asked Carolyn.

“Just one woman,” Carolyn answered. “She lives on the property. That’s her home.” Carolyn pointed to a well-kept A-frame house, small and modestly sitting in the midst of all that glory. W e walked up to the house.

On the patio, we saw a poster. “Answers to the Questions I Know You Are Asking”, was the headline.

The first answer was a simple one. “50,000 bulbs,” it read.

The second answer was, “One at a time, by one woman. Two hands, two feet, and one brain.”

The third answer was, “Began in 1958.”

For me, that moment was a life-changing experience. I thought of this woman whom I had never met, who, more than forty years before, had begun, one bulb at a time, to bring her vision of beauty and joy to an obscure mountaintop. Planting one bulb at a time, year after year, this unknown woman had forever changed the world in which she lived.

One day at a time, she had created something of extraordinary magnificence, beauty, and inspiration. The principle her daffodil garden taught is one of the greatest principles of celebration.

That is, learning to move toward our goals and desires one step at a time, often just one baby-step at a time and learning to love the doing, learning to use the accumulation of time. When we multiply tiny pieces of time with small increments of daily effort, we too will find we can accomplish magnificent things. We can change the world.

“It makes me sad in a way,” I admitted to Carolyn. “What might I have accomplished if I had thought of a wonderful goal thirty five or forty years ago and had worked away at it ‘one bulb at a time’ through all those years? Just think what I might have been able to achieve!”

My daughter summed up the message of the day in her usual direct way. “Start tomorrow,” she said.

She was right. It’s so pointless to think of the lost hours of yesterdays. The way to make learning a lesson of celebration instead of a cause for regret is to only ask, “How can I put this to use today?”

Use the Daffodil Principle. Stop waiting…..

Until your car or home is paid off
Until you get a new car or home
Until your kids leave the house
Until you go back to school
Until you finish school
Until you clean the house
Until you organize the garage
Until you clean off your desk
Until you lose 10 lbs.
Until you gain 10 lbs.
Until you get married
Until you get a divorce
Until you have kids
Until the kids go to school
Until you retire
Until summer
Until spring
Until winter
Until fall
Until you die…

There is no better time than right now to be happy. Happiness is a journey, not a destination.

So work like you don’t need money. Love like you’ve never been hurt, and dance like no one’s watching.

How do I stop negative thoughts?

This article is by Rhonda Bryne of The Secret fame

“How do I stop my negative thoughts?” – is a question that I have been asked many times. If you have ever asked this question then you will feel such enormous relief in knowing the answer, because it is so simple. How do you stop negative thoughts?

You plant good thoughts!

When you try to stop negative thoughts, you are focusing on what you don’t want – negative thoughts – and you will attract an abundance of them. They can never disappear if you are focused on them. The “stop” part is irrelevant – the negative thoughts are your focus. It doesn’t matter if you are trying to stop negative thoughts or control them or push them away, the result is the same. Your focus is on negative thoughts, and by the law of attraction you are inviting more of them to you.

The truth is always simple and it is always easy. To stop negative thoughts, just plant good thoughts! Deliberately plant good thoughts! You plant good thoughts by making it a daily practice to appreciate all the things in your day. Appreciate your health, your car, your home, your family, your job, your friends, your surroundings, your meals, your pets, and the magnificent beauty of the day. Compliment, praise, and give thanks to all things. Every time you say “Thank you” it is a good thought! As you plant more and more good thoughts, the negative thoughts will be wiped out. Why?

Because your focus is on good thoughts, and what you focus on you attract.

So don’t give any attention to negative thoughts. Don’t worry about them. If any come, make light of them, shrug them off, and let them be your reminder to deliberately think more good thoughts now.
The more good thoughts you can plant in a day, the faster your life will be utterly transformed into all good. If you spend only one day speaking of good things and saying “Thank you” at every single opportunity, you will not believe your tomorrow.

Deliberately thinking good thoughts is exactly like planting seeds. As you think good thoughts you are planting good seeds inside you, and the Universe will transform those seeds into a garden of paradise. How will the garden of paradise appear? As your life!

Big Mind Big Heart of Genpo Roshi

Introduction to Big Mind

1. Facilitation of the Controller

2. Facilitation of the Skeptic

3. Facilitation of the Vulnerable Child & the Protector

4. Facilitation of the Damaged Self and Fixer

5. Facilitation of the Seeking Mind (Desires)

6. Facilitation of the Non-Seeking Mind

7. Facilitation of the Big Mind

8. Facilitation of Drop Off Body-Mind & Big Heart

9. Facilitation of Yin-Yang Big Heart

10. One Heart Mind & Integrated Free Functioning Self

3 Untold Manifestation Insights that makes The Secret works

By now, almost everyone has heard of The Secret movie. Many have also tried putting what was taught in the movie into practice in their own lives.

The results?

While some have been successful, the majority had cried “foul”. They claimed that the Law of Attraction does not work for them.

If you are one of these people, then you need to know that the Law of Attraction is a natural law and it works for everyone, everytime, everywhere – just like the law of gravity. If it is not working for you, the likelihood is that you’ve got some of the steps wrong.

Here’s a free report that offers 3 insights to help set it right for you:

3 Insights into The Secret

Most free report offers very general information that is of little value to the reader, but not this report. The 3 insights are quite an eye opener. In fact, I was able to use 2 of the insights in my recent public talks on the Law of Attraction. So I urge you to get this report now.

3 Insights into The Secret

The Incredible Power of Intention in Manifesting

A lot has been said about the power of intention, yet many still do not get its true significance. This article is written with the intention (no pun intended) to clarify by looking at the mental components and processes of intention. Once you have seen the full picture, it will be easier to understand why intention is so powerful.

One of the limitations of conveying a message or meaning with words is that the word itself has deeper meanings which we do not see, thus we miss out the deeper processes and qualities that are associated with the particular word. Intention is one such word. To understand it, we need to look deeper.

Definition of Intention

The definition of intention is, according to Merriam Webster Online Dictionary, a determination to act in a certain way. Intention, therefore, is a desire to act. We can see here that there are two very important components to the quality of intention.

The first is the desire or determination and the second is the action involved. For intention to work for you, both components must be there.

Desire

The desire we talk about here is one that is clear and is associated with a will or determination to act on the desire. This clear desire or intent in our mind is our asking or letting the universe know that this is what we want to manifest. The act of publicly declaring your intention works to clarify what you want as well as to strengthen your resolve to act on it. You become committed. You are bound by your words. You also weakened your inner resistance to your stated intention.

When your intention is clear, the universe can easily process the instructions you gave it. This is in contrast to a wishy-washy, uncertain, non-committal kind of desire or wanting that serves only to confuse the universe and everyone else trying to help you. Ask and it is given, and with a clear committed intention, the universe obediently gives you what you asked for.

The Art of Allowing

However, asking is only the first step in the process of creation. The next step is allowing yourself to receive. This process of allowing is not as simple as it seems for it requires great faith in the universe. You cannot receive if you do not believe that the universe will provide.

This is an interesting paradox.

When you do not believe that the universe will provide, then you get exactly what you believe. In this case, you get nothing. When this happens, then it unfortunately reinforced your lack of trust in the universe and perpetuates the vicious cycle of distrust in the universe.

On the other hand, when you have absolute faith in the universe, you get what you believe and what you asked for gets manifested for you.

Thus the world’s most famous manifestor said, “Ask and know that it is done, and you shall receive it.”

In short, ask – believe – receive!

So, what can we do if we do not believe in the universe? How can we replace this limiting belief with a better one? There are in fact many methods to transform our beliefs. We will delve into this in another article.

Action

To receive, you have to act on the little coincidences, synchronicity and opportunities that seem to come to you at the right place at the right time. Acting on them in alignment with your intention will move you towards your goal, which is the manifested product of your intention. Intention, then, is the cause and your goal manifested the effect. This is true for all creation. Each must begin in the mind (intention) and ends in physical manifestation (form).

7 Things You Should Know about Mind Power

Every since the natural Law of Attraction was popularized to the masses through the phenomenal success of The Secret movie, just about every one is trying out his or her own version of mind power and mental manifestation.

However, there are a few basic things we need to know before we even begin.

1. You are a divine being

Modern man is so pre-occupied with the need to eke out a living that he is only aware of and is focused on his physical existence and needs. He is largely unconscious of his other existence – the formless and limitless mind.

In order to master your mind power, you need to be fully aware of this aspect of your existence, and realize that this is the power to your creation. This is the aspect that directly links you to your spirituality.

Begin each day remembering this divine nature of yours and you will begin to cultivate a new habit of purposeful creation.

2. Your mind is the creator of your experience

You are the creator of your own life and a co-creator of the universe you live in. Whatever you experience in your life – good and bad – is a mirror reflection of the inner state of your mind.

“As within, so without” is not just a nice saying. It is the actual description of how the universe works. When your mind is filled with garbage – negative thoughts and emotions, constant judging and blaming, resentments and irritations – it attracts precisely the same into your life. Likewise, when you have predominantly positive thoughts – unconditional love, compassion, gratitude, joy and blamelessness – then you attract into your life a happy and joyful experience.

3. You are fully responsible for your creations

Since you are the creator of your own life through your thoughts, you are 100% responsible for your own creations. If you are experiencing a life you do not like right now, it is all the result of your past thoughts. Therefore, you cannot blame your parents, your siblings, your spouse, your children, your unfortunate circumstances and any other kind of excuses for your conditions.

The idea is that you begin to accept full responsibility for your life and drop the habit of judging and blaming others. Only when you have done that will you be able to fully master your own destiny. Otherwise, you will only continue to look for someone or something to blame for your misfortunes.

4. You are creating all the time, whether you are aware of it or not

After watching The Secret movie, many people think that now they can begin to create a life that they want, as if all these times they have not been creating it. Know that you are creating every moment with your thoughts. You are doing it now even as you are reading this article. Creation is a moment to moment process and the only point of creation is NOW.

The point is we are not learning to create only now. We have been creating all the time. The difference now is that we want to create consciously. We want to be fully aware of what we create.

To do so, we need to be fully aware of what thoughts we allow in our mind. We want to be able to have only good positive thoughts and throw away the bad negative thoughts. We want to be fully conscious of what we are creating and therefore attracting into our lives.

5. To create consciously, you must master your mind

This is probably the most difficult challenge for most people. We are in the habit of living our lives without giving much thought to what goes in and out of our mind. We have been living on default or autopilot. It has become a mental habit that is hard to break.

To create our life consciously, we need to change this mental habit. We must have absolute mastery over our mind. We consciously determine what goes in and out of our mind, and choose only positive thoughts while discarding the negative ones.

This requires mental training or mind mastery. This is very much like an athlete who trains his body to perform as he wishes. With mind training, we want to train our mind to perform as we wish.

6. The key to mind mastery is mindfulness

Mindfulness or self awareness is the mental tool we need to master our mind. We need to sharpen this mindfulness and raise it to a new and higher level of awareness – a level that allows us to be fully aware of when our thoughts just begin to arise, what they are and to consciously change the negative thoughts as they arise and replace them with positive thoughts.

This simple objective is by no means easy to accomplish. It requires constant effort to be mindful. Only with persistence and discipline can this be achieved.

Mind training is easy to understand but not easy to do. That is why it is said that even an 8 year old may understand it but even an 80 year old may not be able to practice it.

7. Not everyone is ready for mind training

While it is true that a good teacher can find the right approach to teach any student, not every one who wants to learn mind training is ready for it. Those who are mentally unstable would not be suitable for it. It is certainly not for the mentally ill.

Sometimes certain new methodology such as brainwave entrainment is used as an adjunct to mind training. This may not be suitable for those with epilepsy or a history of fits.

So, before you begin your mind training, do your homework and learn as much as you can about it. There are tons of books on mind power. Some classic books on this new thought movement that I strongly recommend you read are those written by authors such as Wallace D. Wattles, Thomas Troward, James Allen, Annie Besant, Ernest Holmes and many more. They are well written, easy to understand and provide a good solid foundation to the understanding of how our mind and the universe work.

Once you have fully understood the principles, you can begin your own mind training.