The Stoning of Soraya M

The Shariah law, metes out the stoning to death punishment for anyone convicted of adultery. Another sentence that I have heard of, is the severing of limbs, if one is found guilty of theft. The question that I keep asking myself, how did such law come about? Did it really come from God? Did God really tell us that we have to stone someone to death if that person is found guilty of adultery? Why does God ask us to resort to such harsh measures when He is known to be all merciful and ever forgiving? Can God not think of any other way to resolve such ‘crime’? Does God really need to kill His disobedient subjects so He can uphold morality in society?

I can keep putting forward the questions, but I am sure that there will always be an answer to justify such actions. And even if the justification do not suffice, the question will be put to rest by citing that this is the sacred law of God and that we cannot question it. We are mere mortals and we will not understand. We are Gods subjects and we are subject to his laws. But the thing is, we only hear about these laws from men who are the so called authorites on these laws.

These men are either appointed by other men in power or the society at large and are accepted and revered for the power and influence they wield. So they ultimately judge and say what we should or should not do. So the question that beckons to be answered is this – is this then really Gods law or is this the law devised by these religious authorities? We can only ask ourselves and draw conclusions.

Anyway, the title of this article is also the title of an Iranian movie I watched this morning. The story revolves around Soraya, whose husband is seeking a divorce from her, to enable him to marry a younger bride of 14 years of age. Soraya does not want to give in to the divorce because she requires her husbands income to support her children. The husband does not agree to any alimony if the divorce is granted. Soraya gets a job to tend to the household chores of the town mechanic, who had recently lost his wife and has a son to care for. She was asked to perform these duties by the town authorities. The mechanic would pay her wages for her duties and she reckons that if she earns enough, she can then fend for her children and eventually grant her husband the divorce.

But the husband, wanting impatiently to marry the 14 year old, had decided to use this situation to his advantage. He had accused Soraya of seducing the mechanic and this is considered adultery. Since her husband wields power and has influence over the town authorities, he had threathened the mechanic to support this false accusation.  The town authorities presided over this accusition and decided that Soraya was guilty of adultery. She was sentenced to death by stoning, as per the Shariah law. The town’s folks gathered and together they stoned Soraya to death and later celebrated the restoration of honour and morality.

Now putting all the above aside, let us ask – who is ultimately responsible for Soraya’s death? If we are influenced by our physical world, then we will have dozens of people to blame, chiefly the husband. But the hard reality is this, and as I have written in my previous articles – every person is responsible for all events, situations or experiences that occurs to them. So if you go by this, then Soraya is responsible for this experience that befell her. Is this a good or bad thing that happened to her? Well, there are no good and bad things in this world. You are given what you attract. Could she have avoided such experience? Yes, but it would have been a big challenge for her to transcend the conditioning and believes that is so deeply ingrained in her, having grown up in a society that upholds and reveres such religious laws. This religious laws, that such society upholds, seems to favour the male gender and as I understand, discriminates the fairer sex, which ultimately is the message the movie sets to deliver.

So what do the women folk of such society need do if they feel they are suffering and being discrimated againts? Well, start with your thoughts and feelings. Stop harbouring or living in fear. Stop thinking that you are powerless. Stop thinking that you do not have a choice. Stop thinking that this is your destiny. Stop blaming others or your environment for your ‘misfortunes’. Accept the reality of things and the situation you are in presently, for this is what you have attracted. The universe is ever obliging – it gives you everything you attract. Take and accept the fact that you are responsible for whatever it is that you are facing presently. Once you have accepted this, think of the life you desire. Think of how or what you would like your life to be in future. Imagine what you would be doing in this very fulfilling, purposeful and enjoyable life. Think and habour these thoughts 24/7 in the face of your present situation. If enough number of women were to do this, then the collective consciousness of this society will change and you will start seeing this change happen. It may take time but it will happen.

We can learn from the experiences of Dr. Viktor Frankl. Dr Viktor Frankl, a Jew, was subjected to the horrors of the Nazi death camps but survived it. Dr Frankl carried a positive thought and envisioned himself being alive in future to fulfill a certain purpose despite being subjected to the most brutal and inhuman treatment in the Nazi concentration camps of Auschwitz and Dachau. Dr. Frankl lost his father, mother, brother and wife in the Holocaust, and only he and his sister survived.

While he was in the concentration camp, Frankl observed: “Other things being equal, those apt to survive the camps were those oriented toward the future—toward a task, or a person, waiting for them in the future, toward a meaning to be fulfilled by them in the future.” He also found that those who had nothing to live for were the ones who died quickest in the concentration camp. Frankl attributed his own survival to his determination to recreate and publish a manuscript that had been destroyed during the war, as well as love for his wife. He helped many others survive the death camps too; by helping them find a reason to live.

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Holyson

Stress Management

A couple of days back, a friend of mine quit her job. She mentioned that she was too stressed up at work and it was affecting her personal life big time. Secondly, she also did not want to jeopardize the many years of friendship she has with the company owner – her boss. They have been friends for many years when she was a business owner herself. They were in the same line of business. But along the way, she gave up her business, due to financial constraints, and took up employment with her friend. For almost a year working there, all she experienced was tension, distrust, suspicion, anger, etc between them. I could see that she exhibited stress whenever she spoke of work or her friend.

The reason for this article is to address stress or tension, not only at the workplace but in our lives in general. I am sure many can relate to the experience mentioned above. So what do we do? What can we do? How do we work and live in a stress-free environment? Tough question! There are many self-help management based books out there on techniques and approaches we can adopt to better improve our working environment. But many of them tell us how we should ‘manage or control our outside world’. Outside world here means our external circumstances – how we should conduct ourself with our co-workers, how we should manage our workload, manage our time, etc. Yes, this does help to some extent but it does not resolve the problem permanently.

Let’s take a look at some of the things that stresses us up at the work place – incompetent subordinate, missing the deadline, a ‘ruthless’ boss, never-ending pile of workload, a co-worker who is better than us, condemnation despite our best efforts,  co-workers who are not cooperative, back-stabbing, a depressing routine and the list goes on and on. Now all these things that I list here are the things we see on the outside of ourselves, the externals, that which we experience physically. These are what we would call the effects. Now if there are effects, then there must be a cause. So who or what is the cause? Well, we are. Ponder that for a minute before we burst out dismissing it.

Solving the problem permanently will require us to get to the root cause of the problem and that lies within us. So instead of managing our externals, what we really need to manage here is our ‘inner-self’ and that is the only thing we need do. By managing our inner-self, we not only ensure we enjoy a better working environment, but one that is sustainable.

Most of us must be familiar with the principles of Law of Attraction. We attract what we think, consciously or unconsciously. In short, we attract every single experience in our lives. If we will agree with the principle of Law of Attraction, that it can be used to attract the good things we want in life, then we must also agree that it can also attract the so called ‘bad’ things in life. And if we can also agree everything we attract is as a result of our thoughts, then we will also agree that we are the cause of these so called ‘bad’ things.

There is one important point we need to note here – relieve from stress can only happen when we acknowledge that we are the cause of and responsible for all our experiences. This is the first step. Stand up and take responsibility for our own doing. Stop blaming our external circumstances. Just acknowledging this bring great relieve because now we can do something to manage our stress because it is within our control, as opposed to externals, which is beyond our control.

Once we have done that, the second thing we need do is be conscious of our thoughts all the time. This is what we mean by managing our inner-self. We need to manage our thoughts. We must be able to realize when we start having ‘bad’ thoughts. And when we do, we need to recognize it and acknowledge it. And we need to ask ourselves why are we harboring these thoughts? By doing this regularly, we will begin to see the connection between our thought, our emotions and our experiences. Through acknowledgement of our thought, we bring these thoughts to light. Through this action, the so called ‘bad’ thoughts will lose its power to affect us and our experiences. And to make this measure more effective, replace the ‘bad thoughts’ with ‘good thought’. So instead of manifesting an ‘unwanted’ experience, we manifest or experience the things we want.

Holyson

Are Desires Good or Bad?

It dawned upon me the other day, how many might see the contradiction between this aspect of the spiritual teachings and the law of attraction practice. This is because while the Law of Attraction encourages us to have strong desires in order to manifest anything we want, one of the tenets of spiritual teaching is that desire is the cause of all suffering.  So does this mean when we conjure up desires per the law of attraction practice, we are inevitably inviting suffering to ourselves?

Desire can be the cause of suffering IF we get the following wrong

 1. The reason why we have a particular desire

2. How we go about trying to fulfill that desire

3. How we re-act when our desire is fulfilled

 I will try and explain this using the example of money. So for example, we desire to have a million dollars.

The reason why we have this desire – the wrong way

Now if the reason why we have such a desire is because we are having a feeling of lack financially, then we have IDENTIFIED with this situation of ours where we lack money. So what happens is we, knowingly or unknowingly, will incessantly think of this situation. This results in us strengthening this identification. Such identification will cause us worry and this is what we deem as ‘suffering’ and it is a negative thought. In addition to this, per the law of attraction, we will continue to manifest this ‘lack’ situation because we will only attract what we identify / or think about most of the time. So this will result in more agony or worry aka ‘suffering’.

How do we go about trying to fulfill this desire – the wrong way

Now we desire to go get this million dollars. Instead of detaching from the process of receiving this million dollars and letting universe take its course, we keep thinking on how this money will be manifested. We then take certain action, inspired by our ‘uncontrolled’ ego, that maybe in contradiction to the flow of the universe. It will take too much effort on our part. This too will result in exasperation, exhaustion and frustration when we do not get what we desired. This will tire us out and probably torment us. Hence we have induced suffering.

How we re-act when our desire is fulfilled – the wrong way

Now lets say, we do manifest this million dollar. Since, this was manifested with a feeling of lack, we will probably guard it like a hawk since we want to be careful alas we lose it. This is ATTACHMENT. We might begin to worry and be weary of people around us. This will lead to restlessness of the mind. So we induce suffering. ATTACHMENT to and IDENTIFICATION with anything in this material universe is the cause of all sufferings because it leads to many negative thoughts and emotions.

So then how do we go about ‘managing’ our desires?

The reason why we have this desire – the right way

It is essential that we understand the true origins of our desires. Desires for anything should not result from any of our ‘uncontrolled’ ego wants for security, power, status, possessions, etc. The ‘uncontrolled’ ego always operates from a sense of lack and it wants something to fulfill this lack. If any of our desires rises to fulfill such lack or needs, we can be damn sure we are heading for suffering street because it can never be fulfilled or even when it does, the fulfillment is transient and it will want more. So it is imperative we ask why do we REALLY desire certain things and understand its roots. There can be only one reason – because we want to EXPERIENCE it. So taking the example above, what we really wanted was to experience the feeling of having enough money. And this is the thought we should carry – that we have enough money. Since we are spiritual beings, we already have everything so we do not desire something because we do not have it, but because we want to EXPERIENCE it.

How do we go about trying to fulfill this desire – the right way

Always remember that anything we desire, we already have. The only thing is, for most of us, it takes time for it to manifest in its physical form. We are spiritual beings and remember that we have the ability to manifest anything we desire in an instant but we have not been using this gift of ours ‘efficiently’. Hence it will take time for the things we desire to manifest. But we should not get attached to this process of manifestation. The universe will work in its own way, to bring into existence what we desire. We just have to go with the flow. Do not try and figure out how the universe if going to answer our call. Once we do so, we are influenced by the ego and we have introduced ATTACHMENT. This will inevitably lead us to take actions not-in-harmony with the universal flow.

How we re-act when our desire is fulfilled – the right way

Experience your desires and let it go. Remember this – everything in this material universe is temporary and it can never bring us lasting satisfaction. Both the Buddhist tradition (spiritual) and the teachings of Abraham (Law of Attraction) emphasize not getting attached to anything in this world. Feel free to enjoy and appreciate physical reality for what it is, but don’t depend on it in any way for your happiness and sense of well-being. Just enjoy and experience it while it last. Do not get attached to anything in this physical world. Once we learn to embrace this idea, then we free ourselves from sufferings.

When we move up the rungs of spiritualism, we will find that we have fewer desires as we realize that we already have everything we want. We will begin to realize that we have unconditional love and total bliss. In this state, we do not need anything else hence the absence of desires.

Holyson

Japan Tsunami and the Collective Consciousness

“Did you hear about the tsunami in Japan?” belted out a colleague of mine at office. Then she hurriedly calls someone on the telephone and asks that person to tune into CNN. I wasn’t quite sure what the sensation was all about. I heard of the earthquake in Japan but since earthquakes have become such common occurrence, I did not think much of it. I googled to see if there was any news on this tsunami, my colleague was obsessed with. It was then that I realized the severity of the situation.

I contained myself, not getting exited or passing any judgement. Nevertheless, I could not help getting a sense of awe and the fleeting feeling of how helpless we are in light of all these natural disasters. The sheer force of the tsunami is terrifying. Buildings, cars, trucks and every other thing in the path of this ‘monster’, carried away or destroyed ‘with ease’.  It has been five days now since the tsunami hit and now Japan is faced with another challenge and a more serious one at that – nuclear crisis. At the time of this writing, they are frantically trying to fire-up the water-pumps to cool down the fuel rods.

Lets take a step back and look at things on a global perspective. The event that took place in Japan is the recent calamity. But just a few week earlier, there was an earthquake in New Zealand and massive flooding in Australia. Go back in time a little bit more and I would think that calamities, natural or otherwise, are on the rise around the world. But why are these happening?

Where I live, it is very common to hear people say that our weather has gone all wacky. Is has become so unpredictable. Couple that with all these calamities happening around the world, and they say that the world is coming to an end. And how did they get this notion? Does 2012 ring a bell? The movie by the same title helped fortify this belief.

So, coming back to the question – why is all these happening? What is causing it? If you have read my earlier articles, you would have come across one on collective consciousness. This consciousness is the one that retains all human experiences, emotions, feelings, fears, etc – a database of sorts. But what has this got to do with the tsunami in Japan?

What we see in our daily lives, this physical existance of ours, is a reflection of our innerself – our thoughts, beliefs and emotions. The key word here is reflection. All that we experience in the physical world is created by us, internally. The law that governs this is the law of cause and effect; and law of attraction. Our inner thoughts, beliefs and emotions are the cause. We then attract what we think and the effect is what we experience in our outer world.

Through this law of cause and effect, just as  our individual thoughts, beliefs and emotions mirror perfectly what we experience individually in our life, it is the collective thoughts, beliefs and emotions of the 6 plus billion individuals around the world which collectively join to create the various events, conditions and circumstances in the world on a much broader scale.  Regardless of whether we are aware of it or not, this pool of collective thought energy plays an extremely important role in and affects the outcomes, which make up every aspect of our life. 

In addition to this, the quality of this consciousness is also crucial. Our collective thoughts is the seed that gives rise to the quality of the collective consciousness. If planted with negative thoughts, such as thoughts about doomsday, then that is what we will get. It is this quality of the collective consciousness of the planet which determines worldwide events such as peace or war, poverty or abundance, harmony or discord, love or hate and serves as the cause which is responsible for natural disasters. So by looking at the events that is taking place around us, we can gauge the current state or quality of this collective consciousness presently.

So having understood the above, what do we have do? Since our collective thoughts are the cause, this is what we need to change in order to see real difference in our worldly situation. But you may ask how do I get the entire population to think positively in light of all these calamities? Well, just do your part. A positive thought within one person can affect the collective consciousness of one hundred people. In addition to that, we should not get attached to our worldly situation or harbour of negative thoughts and emotions as it is only going to bring us more of the same. We need to resolve to not let our present situation affect the quality of our thoughts. Do what we have to do and take necessary action in face of these calamities but ensure our thoughts stay positive. Then, and only then, will we see improvement in the situation.

Holyson

Awareness of Consciousness

Most dictionaries would give the following definition to the word consciousness – an alert cognitive state where you are aware of yourself and situation. That is true. But the question here is who are you? Who is this ‘yourself’ that you need to be aware off?

Before we get on to answering that question, lets see the different types of consciousness. Consciousness is energy and it takes several forms. There is the spiritual consciousness, which is part of the Creator or Godhead. Then there is the ego consciousness, which every human develop and mould from their infancy. There is also the collective consciousness that governs groups of beings. In the case of us humans, we have the collective human consciousness.

Ego Consciousness or Mind Consciousness

The ego consciousness or simply known as the conscious mind is the consciousness that allows us to function in this objective world. It is finite in nature and is connected to the physical world. The conscious or objective aspect of mind. This consciousness is what determines your normal or day to day level of awareness. It is the consciousness that gives us individuation or creates separateness between beings. It enables us to enjoy the pleasures and pains of life but its experiences are all transient in nature. It is never lasting and a lot of our sufferings can be attributed to our identification with this consciousness.

Collective Consciousness or Sub-Consciousness

The Collective Consciousness is made up of the “perceived” individual consciousnesses of the planets population which serve collectively to form a “Matrix” or appearance of reality from a physical perspective. It stores data for the preservation of human existence and its trancendance will result in us being able to perform super human feats or miracles. The Collective Consciousness is also referred to as the Gaia Mind that attempts to keep you limited and in check. Those who choose to remain asleep and “unconscious” of this aspect of mind are kept in just that state. In check and limited as the vast majority is. 

The Spiritual Consciousness or Super-Consciousness

The Super consciousness is the One Consciousness – The God Head. It exists in every creation in this universe be it animate or inanimate. Each one of us humans have this consciousness in us and it is the same in each and every one of us. This is the consciousness that exists as an integral part of the “One True Mind”. The Super-Conscious mind is the omniscient, omnipresent, all knowing and ever present Source which serves and determines how EVERY event, condition and circumstance, both the physical as well as the meta-physical into infinity unfolds.

So coming back to our earlier question. When we say being conscious is being aware of yourself – which one of this consciousness is you – the real you? Well, if you picked the last one, you are spot on. But the dilemma that besets us is, we identify very strongly with the ego consciousness. The path to happiness is for us to shed this identification and recognize our spiritual consciousness and understand that we are all the same and one with the God Head. Our goal ultimately in life is seeking our way back-to-unison.

Holyson

Suicides – Destruction of Self by the Ego

Last weekend I met up with several friends, who are all doctors. Amongst them, was this doctor who specializes in medical emergency management. I must say, I never knew that there was such a specilization. Anyway, what this specialization entails is the initial management of all cases that comes through the emergency room. This person is the front line, so to speak.

That aside, I was convinced that most cases they handle must have resulted from road accidents or some other forms of trauma. That was affirmative. But this person also said that quite a lot are suicide cases. I was taken aback. Suicides? It ranks second after trauma.

Just the other day I read in the paper of a high school girl who leaped to her death because she was jilted in a relationship. I think she was only 16 or 17.

Why do people commit suicide? Why are they giving up on life? I guess I am not wrong in saying that most people who commit suicide, must surely think they cannot live with themselves any longer. The anguish or depression is unbearable. If they are themselves, who is this person they cannot live with? This person they cannot live with is their ego / pain-body. Their egos have driven them to their death. But how did this start.

Let us look at ego. Each and everyone of us have an ego. And we as a human race also have a collective ego. Ego creates your identity, albeit a false one. Almost all people identify with their ego. They say this is who I am. The who that is created by the ego. And one way ego creates this identify is by attaching itself to material things or situation, etc. Oh, yes, I am the owner of this new Mercedes or I am a highly successful executive, etc. When we lose the things we identify with, we get upset or emotionally disturbed. This ‘negative’ emotion’ builds up inside of us and creates an energy body or entity known as the pain body. This negative energy or pain body coupled with the ego’s need for identification, results in ‘attack’. Attack here can mean anger or negative action directed at someone else or towards one’s ownself.  

A pain-body may be dormant 90% of the time but in a deeply unhappy person, it may be active up to 100% percent of the time. Pain-bodies are entities made up of negative energy. Some pain-bodies are obnoxious but relatively harmless, for example like a child who won’t stop whining. Others are vicious and destructive monsters, true demons. Some are physically violent; many more are emotionally violent.

The pain-body wants to survive, just like every other entity in existence, and it ensures its survival by getting us to unconsciously identify with it. It will then rise up, take over and lives through ourselves. It will feed on any experience that resonates with its own kind of energy, anything that creates further pain in whatever form: anger, destructiveness, hatred, grief, emotional drama, violence, and even illness. So the pain-body, when it has taken over our selves, will create a situation in our life that reflects back its own energy frequency for it to feed on. Pain can only feed on pain. Pain cannot feed on joy. It finds it quite indigestible.

Once the pain-body has taken over our self, we will find we want more pain. We become a victim or a perpetrator. We want to inflict pain, or want to suffer pain, or both. There isn’t really much difference between the two. We are not conscious of this, of course, and will vehemently claim that we do not want pain. But look closely and we will find that our thinking and behavior are designed to keep the pain going, for ourselves and others. And it will comes to a point where it will drive us to commit murder or suicide. 

The only way we can reduce the ‘intensity’ of this pain body, is by being consciously aware of our emotions. If we find ourselves harbouring an unpleasant emotion, we have to recognize and ‘treat’ it immediately. But this again, is only treating the symptoms. The real treatment is detaching ourselves from our ego identification.

Holyson

The Missing Element in the Law of Attraction

I believe the law of attraction has become a common vocabulary in our lives. Most people I speak to, would have heard of it. And what do you think it is exactly?

Well, the law of attraction or LOA, for short, is how you can attract the experience you want/desire in your life. If you have read my earlier post, you would understand that we are all spiritual beings. And one of the powers we have is the ability to manifest anything we want or bring about an experience we desire, at an instant. That is right – at an instant. We have this power. But our access to this power has been obscured some what. I will explain this in a later post. As such, if we ‘desire’ something now, it takes a while for it to manifest.

I am sure most of you would be familiar with the mechanics of LOA. There are plenty of articles written on this. As such, I will not dwell on this. But what you need to know is that it fundamentally revolves around vibrations.

What I want to address here is why for most people, this LOA does not seem to work. There is one key element that is missing from the equation. The steps required in manifesting anything you desire, be it an experience or material object, is as follows

Step 1 – You have to be specific and very clear on exactly what you want. I am talking about details here. You visualize your desires. Your visualization has to include all your senses and you need to also invoke your emotions. You need to visualize that you already have what it is you desire.

Step 2 - You let go and let the universe answer your call. Do not dwell on how you are going to achieve your desires.

Step 3 – Been prepared / ready to receive your desires. 

So there you have it. The above are the 3 simple steps you need do to have anything you want or desire.

Now the duration it may take depends on certain other things. And one of these is the mising element I spoke about earlier. This element in part of Step 3 and this is the part that most of us miss out. Being prepared meaning being in a ‘receiving mode’. And this simply means that we have to be in a ‘feel good’ nature at all times. Feel good nature in this case would mean being happy, thankful, joyful as opposed to being angry, dejected, etc. Positive vibrations. So why feel good? Remember, the mechanics of LOA revolves around vibrations. Feel good or happy vibration bring to you good things – your desires. Sad or dejected vibration, push your desires away from you.

So if there in one thing you need to do, it is for you to remain in a ‘feel good’ state at all times. And you can be sure you can do this if you practice. 

Holyson