Simple rules for effective communication

Communication is a verbal and emotional exchange of energy which can be extremely effective if properly directed. Many couples today face challenges in their relationships because they fail to communicate effectively with their partner.

Listed below are some simple guidelines for meaningful and purposeful communication which can help to resolve issues rather than magnify them:

1. Always focus on the Here and Now

It is always important to avoid cross references to the past. When we continuously bring up past issues then we are stripping from the person the ability to make a change NOW. People are willing to make changes and may be desiring to do so but constant to past issues puts the other person on the defensive.

2. Focus on 'I' messages

When a person talks about his own feelings, the other's compassion naturally arises. Instead of focusing on the other person's actions and criticizing them, it is better to explain how the situation is affecting the speaker himself/herself. This negates the belief that a critical attitude is being adopted and a blame game is being initiated. Instead it becomes a means of communicating your own vulnerability.

3. Use Specifics; no Generalizations

Effective communication occurs when a specific problem or issue is addressed. Generalizations are a broad spectrum of attitudes and beliefs which cannot be changed all at once. Pick up one particular issue, deal with the effect it is having at this present time and how it affects the speaker, and then try and resolve the issue through dialogue. Specifics can be addressed. Generalizations cannot be changed.

4. No Bunching and Dumping

Sometimes there are a number of issues which need to be resolved. However, a comfortable and effective dialogue can be undertaken when a whole host of grievances are not bunched together and dumped on the other. This creates a hostile environment and there is a tendency for the other person to withdraw into silence or erupt in anger.

5. Employ a feedback mechanism

It is always best during communication to explain what you speak. This ensures that there will be less emotional volatility during the verbal process and it will guarantee you a response. It is essentially an attempt to draw out the other person's thoughts and feelings also so that any changes in perception can be monitored and any common ground between the participants can be drawn out.

These are very simple but tremendously effective and powerful means of diffusing the emotional charge especially when situations of marital discord are being dealt with. Every human being is a unique individual and emotional compatibility is best achieved when this uniqueness is acknowledged and appreciated and yet some attempt is made to find grounds of common interest rather than wanting to change the other person into one's own perception of the ideal.

Belief, Attitude, Result

The universe is a triumvirate. Religion propounds the trinity of the Supreme being as Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, or the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Science propounds the theory of energy, matter and antimatter. Psychoanalysts study the conscious, unconscious and the super conscious. In the same way human behavior and its outcome is a threefold process of right belief, leading to right attitude and resulting in beneficial results. In the same way that energy can never be created or destroyed, these behavioral processes are interlinked and constantly circulating in the same energy field.

These are self evident truths and need little explanation or discussion. Arguments arise when perceptions of right beliefs, attitudes and results begin to differ. There are many value systems in the world, many religious creeds and philosophies but one simple, logical and uplifting mantra for a fulfilling life is that we are all created in the image of the Supreme energy with unlimited potential to achieve our aims and script our destinies. One simple belief which can change the way we look at ourselves and at the world around us.

Experience the surge of energy which rushes through your system if every morning and before sleeping you reiterated to yourself one positive thought with faith and commitment which is that you are blessed to be in the human form with unlimited potential and ability. Slowly the spirit will absorb this information, start sending messages to the brain , and gradually your mind will begin to alter its perceptions about the world around you - your physical surroundings, the people you interact with, your own personality and presence. With heightened positive awareness, greater comfort with your own physical body and exuding an aura of joy you will stride through the day with a new attitude. Your actions, words and thoughts will be full of confidence, clarity and joy and you will achieve results which had hitherto seemed unattainable.

The time for change is NOW - not for changing the world, the collective consciousness, the climate, or all the other manifold disasters we have consciously or unconsciously contributed to, but for changing our individual consciousness and the way in which we perceive ourselves. That is the call we must heed and joyfully embrace.

Soul Ascension

Each and every one of us is a divine soul who has taken birth only to experience some emotion or some aspect of learning which can only be manifested in our 3 dimensional world. However, we all also carry with us the burdens of energy fragments of unresolved issues from previous lifetimes, and sometimes energy loops we are trapped in because of some curses or vows at some point in our soul journeys, Today there is so much awareness which is available to everyone to tap into their subconscious minds, to release the buried and suppressed memories,to resolve them and rewrite your life scripts so that negative emotions can be converted into positive.

People who rigorously cleanse their energetic and emotional fields can then get in touch with their Higher Self and actually understand why they have taken birth in this current life, what they have come to learn or resolve, and how far away or how close they are to soul ascension. Nothing happens by chance, people come into our lives for a reason, and most often the person who victimizes you the most is the soul who has made a pact with you to behave in a certain way so that you can learn the lesson you have come here to imbibe. ,

Today, I have found great peace of mind and completely rid myself of my asthma, allergies and the deep depression which I had fallen into. I feel a curious kind of detachment and a far greater sense of calm. Today we are shifting out of the apartment we have been living in for the last 8 years. We will now stay in our own flat in Mumbai. The period of transition is always a little unsettling but this will be my true test of how much in control of myself I actually am.

Intention and Implementation

Just explore sometime the difference between religious conditioning and beliefs and the actual words of the enlightened Masters and you will find a vast difference between intention and implementation. Religion is about power and control of the masses through indoctrination and fear, and spirituality is about freeing the soul from these layers of trappings and allowing it to see the reason and purpose of its journey to this plane and to realize that there is no fear and no punishment except on Earth and it is there for a reason.

I feel I am no longer trapped by my karmas, because I can see where they are coming from and I know that I can largely negate them in this lifetime whenever I so desire, and take charge of my own life, now and in the future. Everywhere, the choice is mine and that is empowerment. Knowledge, money, social status, family, possessions, nothing will go with me when I shed this physical body, but the emotional charge which my feelings carry at the time of death will remain. That emotional charge is all I want to work on.

I read something very interesting today. It said that coma is largely self-induced, and in that state, the soul can review its learning without the interference of external stimuli. Then when it departs the world, it has largely cleansed itself of its delusions and illusions. That immediately put me in mind of my mother's 18 day comatose state in the hospital, and the profound change in her physical appearance that all of us noticed when she actually died. I had noticed earlier also that she looked beautifully peaceful when she passed away. Probably while she was in coma, she made peace with herself, understood and felt satisfied with the learning experiences she had garnered, and felt the light of unconditional love embracing her, making the journey out of the physical body easy for her. My mother-in-law used to wonder why we allowed her to survive for those 18 days but today I realize how important that time and that experience was for my mother's growth and what a profound sense of peace that gives me.

Creativity

Creativity is an inborn talent or you may say a fundamental truth about humans which can neither be implanted or destroyed. We are all creating our reality every minute from the time of our first breath to our last. Every thought we think is manifesting itself as the reality around us, so we are all creators.

Yes, family, school, social environment, and past soul experiences impact our minds and hamper the creative choices we make, but they can never subdue it. The light and the dark are within us and the moment we sit up, become aware that we are solely responsible for our state of mind and being, and that we can change our circumstances just by becoming less judgmental about ourselves by analyzing where the dark thoughts are coming from, then we have transcended the system.

I am not talking big words without having walked the whole process painfully and finally deliriously joyously. While I looked at myself through the eyes of the Jaipur clan, the Gupta fraternity, and other myriad factors, I was unhappy, physically diseased, and completely unsure of myself. Today I stand tall and confident, wanting no confirmation or back slapping from anyone, secure in my own space, and ready to share my abundance with others. It only required a change in my thinking and the realization that I am not responsible for anyone but myself.

I do not know how many breaths are written in my life story and absolutely no clue about how long other people including my children, spouse or parents are going to share my space. I might outlive them, or they will outlive me. That is immaterial. The only important thing is what am I thinking, because that is creating magnetic waves around me and impacting the lives of those people who are in my space. My energy generates responses which then rebounds on me and activates reactions or responses at my end. Ultimately I have to see whether my original thoughts are coming back to me and helping to exalt me or destroy me. No one else has any hand in my happiness or unhappiness because I am solely responsible for inviting the higher or lower vibrations into my life.

If you ever want to share anything, I am always available. Take care and smile, because the world is such a beautiful place, your home is so pretty, and you are so blessed to be alive today, right now, in a time when our whole earth system is undergoing a shift - when the dawn of the New Age has already begun.

Hypnotherapy and the Theory of the Mind

Hypnosis by definition is a state of nervous sleep in which the subconscious mind takes control over the conscious mind. We slip naturally into states of hypnosis when we sleep, daydream, or when our mind becomes so overloaded with information that we feel ourselves tuning out. Stress, anxiety, boredom, trauma can induce hypnotic states without the conscious awareness of the subject.

There are two schools of hypnosis, mainly the Eastern and Western schools. In the Eastern school, better known as Tantra, control is taken away from the client. The conscious mind is overpowered and the client’s responses are guided by the Tantric.

The Western technique of hypnosis formally developed by Dr. John Kappas allows the client to retain partial control of his conscious mind. The client gives permission to the therapist to enter his space and work with him. The hypnotherapist is a mind surgeon, gaining access to the subconscious mind by overloading the conscious mind with suggestions and information and forcing it to open the doors of the critical filter. The subconscious mind is 6000 times stronger than the conscious mind and positive suggestions implanted in the subconscious can help the client to overcome issues which may be challenging them.

Hpnotherapists help people to Heal. The word Heal comes from Hale which in turn means to make Whole. A certified hypnotherapist is trained to make Whole a person’s space without medication. A person’s space essentially refers to

Thought
↓ ↑
Emotion +ve/-ve
↓ ↑
Energy (Aura) +ve/-ve
↓ ↑
Body ( Brain )

The mind consisting of Thoughts, Emotions, and Energy works on the Body through the Brain. Mind is the software and the Brain is the Hardware which drives us. In simple terms we can say that the Body is the Car, the Mind is the Driver, and the Soul is the Fuel which powers us. A hypnotherapist works on all levels of a person’s space, using techniques to balance the energy field, change negative emotions into positive by helping the client to identify and vent out painful feelings, and most importantly and most effectively improve the thought process of the client by superimposing +ve files over the –ve files in the subconscious.

Thoughts are the most powerful activators of all the functions of the mind. They generate feelings which are E – motions or energy in motion, which in turn impacts our energy field or aura. Free flowing energy flows through the meridians in the body with ease and we feel a sense of physical well being and because our energy field is positively charged we invite others into our space with joy and happiness. When our thought processes are impaired, it affect us psychologically ( emotionally) and the motion of the energy in our bodies is disturbed. Our energy meridians get blocked and we begin to experience Dis – ease which manifests itself in the body as various disorders like headaches, arthritis, cancer, or other mild or even life threatening diseases. Schizophrenia, migraine, arterial blockage, diabetes, allergy, Parkinson’s , substance abuse are all related to emotional states generated by impaired thought processes and can be worked on through hypnotherapy.

The same theory holds true for our ease or dis- ease in our interactions with other living beings. All of us live in our own microcosm comprised by our mind, body and soul. Then we have others who live in our macrocosm. These are our family, friends, neighbors, colleagues and all the people and things with whom we interact during the course of our lives. Everything that happens to us inside our microcosm ripples out into our macrocosm. In other words, What is Inside is Reflected outside. The only requirement is to Change Ourselves because any change we make in our microcosm will reflect in our macrocosm.

We never react to people based on the Now, but on experiences they trigger in files in our subconscious mind. This is why we find ourselves reaching out to some people even if they have entered our space very recently and withdrawing or retracting from people who are family and whom our rules tell us to respect and venerate. What is important for us to understand is that people whom we perceive as our enemies are really Teachers who have come into our space to give us a lesson.

As we Heal, and our subconscious mind begins to correlate its reactions with the experiences which were stored in its files from this or past lives, then our frequency begins to change. Our awareness of the Truth begins to widen and the people in our macrocosm will move with us or move out based on the choices they make about their willingness to tune into our frequency. Our auric field will strengthen and we will begin to attract people who are vibrating with the same energy that we are.

As an alternative healing process, hypnotherapy is one of the most powerful mediums of healing because it works directly at the level of thought and thus impacts all the systems of which we are comprised. Allopathy and homeopathy deal with the physical body ; acupuncture, acupressure, and Reiki etc impact the energy meridians ; psychiatrists analyze the client’s emotions and suggest alternatives emotional states to balance the client’s space. A hypnotherapist on the other hand is merely a neutral mirror, allowing the client to see all of himself – his thoughts, emotions, energy field, and physical body and allowing him/ her to reach deep into his subconscious mind to find his own answers to his issues. The therapist empowers the client to become Whole without any medication, merely by using the tremendous power of the client’s subconscious mind to generate its own healing.

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Osho - Laughter is the very essence of religion

Osho - Laughter is the very essence of religion. Seriousness is never religious, cannot be religious. Seriousness is of the ego, part of the very disease. Laughter is egolessness.

Yes, there is a difference between when you laugh and when a religious man laughs. The difference is that you laugh always about others -- the religious man laughs at himself, or at the whole ridiculousness of man's being.

Religion cannot be anything other than a celebration of life. And the serious person becomes handicapped: he creates barriers. He cannot dance, he cannot sing, he cannot celebrate. The very dimension of celebration disappears from his life. He becomes desert-like. And if you are a desert, you can go on thinking and pretending that you are religious but you are not.

The whole play of existence is so beautiful that laughter can be the only response to it. Only laughter can be the real prayer, it is gratitude. If seriousness is lost, nothing is lost -- in fact, one becomes more healthy and whole. But if laughter is lost, everything is lost. Suddenly you lose the festivity of your being; you become colorless, monotonous, in a way dead. Then your energy is not streaming any more.

It is as if a man is just trying to live on a cookery book and has forgotten to cook food; just goes on studying books about food and how to prepare it and how not to prepare it, and argues this way and that -- and is all the time hungry, all the time dying, and has forgotten completely that one cannot live on books.

That's what has happened: people are living on Bibles, Korans, Dhammapadas, Gitas -- they have completely forgotten that religion has to be lived. It is something that has to be digested. It is something that has to circulate in your blood, become your bones, your very marrow. You cannot just think about it. Thinking is the most superficial part of your being. You have to absorb it!

Inside you you have everything, and you are searching everywhere. What else should a joke be? You are a king and acting like a beggar in the streets; not only acting, not only deceiving others, but deceiving yourself that you are a beggar. You have the source of all knowledge and are asking questions; you have the knowing self and think that you are ignorant; you have the deathless within you and are afraid and fearful of death and disease.

When one becomes enlightened, laughter is almost a natural by-product; spontaneously it comes -- for the simple reason that we have been searching and searching for lives for something which was already there inside. Our whole effort was ridiculous! Our whole effort was absurd. One laughs at the great cosmic joke. One laughs at the sense of humor that God must have or the existence: that we have it with us already and we are searching for it. One laughs at one's own ridiculous efforts, long long journeys, pilgrimages, for something which was never lost in the first place.

There is nothing more valuable than laughter. Laughter brings you closest to prayer. In fact only laughter is left in you when you are total. In everything else you remain partial, even in lovemaking you remain partial. But when you have a really heartfelt belly laugh, all the parts of your being -- the physiological, the psychological, the spiritual -- they all vibrate in one single tune, they all vibrate in harmony.

Hence, laughter relaxes. And relaxation is spiritual. Laughter brings you to the earth, brings you down from your stupid ideas of being holier-than-thou. Laughter brings you to reality as it is. The world is a play of God, a cosmic joke. And unless you understand it as a cosmic joke you will never be able to understand the ultimate mystery.

Everybody takes himself and others seriously. That's the way of the ego to exist. Start being a little more playful and you will see ego evaporating. Take life non seriously, as a joke -- yes, as a cosmic joke. Laugh a little more. Laughter is far more significant than prayer. Prayer may not destroy your ego; on the contrary, it may make it holy, pious, but laughter certainly destroys your ego. When you are really in a state of laughter, have you observed? -- the ego disappears for a moment. You are again a child, giggling. Again you have forgotten that you are special. You are no longer serious, for a moment you have removed your fixation with yourself.

Watch when you laugh: where is the ego? Suddenly you have melted, suddenly you are liquid, no more solid, but flowing. You are not old, experienced, knowledgeable. All buddhas have laughed when they awaken. Their laughter is like a lion's roar. They laugh, not at you, they laugh at the whole cosmic joke. This moment, this time we have is a celebration of our godliness, so let us laugh and merge our energies with the total, for that is the true religion