Aging: An Acquaintance With Absence
[Exploring Life] Absence is an emotional state of awareness in which we feel a deep sense of loss; the death of a loved one or friend invokes the deepest sense of loss. The feeling of absence originates in the poignant contrast between the presence of someone or something and the impossibility of ever being able [...]
Memory: The Cult of Remembrance
[Exploring Life] How many misleading or false beliefs and assumptions do we preserve in our memories? And how many of these false beliefs and assumptions have been assimilated as a result of cultural conditioning? It would be immensely difficult to conduct a statistical inventory of our memories in order to quantify the exact number of [...]
Contemplation: The Mind in the Yoga Sutras – 2
[Exploring Life] The Five States of Mind: Pantanjali (2nd century B.C.) is a pioneer of the mind. The uncharted terrain he ventured into was the inner landscape of the mind. His method was the direct observation of his own mind. In this sense, Pantanjali was both scientist and artist of the inner realm of existence. [...]
Emotional Terrain: Anger
[Exploring Life] Anger is a strong emotional reaction in response to a perceived provocation or injustice. The emotional reaction consists of an often unintended improvisatory abyss of displeasure, irritation, resentment, outrage, and enmity. Anger is an extreme reaction that takes our body and mind to the very edge of a threshold in which rationale thinking [...]
Nature of Belief: Dying to Live
[Exploring Life] How do our beliefs change when we are faced with our own mortality? Our lives are fragile and inexorably transient. Our presence will transform when we die. The nature of our transformation at death is an unknown and, in spite of our proficiency in creating fanciful stories that propose an explanation and perhaps [...]
Nature of Belief: Escaping Cultural Confinement
[Exploring Life] Culture may be viewed as a universal tendency for people within stable geographic populations to create sets of beliefs, values and expectations that serve to create a sense of social coherence. It may be that culture is an offspring of the innate human need to belong. Perhaps culture originated as groups of people [...]
Nature of Belief: The Realm of Evidence
We interpret our experiences in life through a complex and often hidden network of beliefs. The human brain is a belief engine; beliefs are the apparatus and raw materials of the mind. They lie at the core of our emotions, determine our subsequent behaviour, and shape the course of our lives. In a basic sense, [...]