June 28, 2019

PAUL LENDA: “How to Maintain Awareness Even While You Are Sleeping”

“Mindfulness doesn’t have to end when you go to sleep. You eventually reach a moment when you don’t seem to be sleeping at all. Your body will still rest and rejuvenate, but your mind will remain aware.”

~Paul Lenda

You probably know how helpful, and even crucial, mindfulness is to a balanced, calm, and fulfilling life.

Far beyond just something you do while sitting in lotus position with your eyes closed, mindfulness can also be done standing, walking, and lying down. You may not even get the inner calm and visionary insight you would expect from sitting in a traditional meditation posture.

It’s not practical to sit in meditation for more than a few hours a day. What do we do then, in order to stay in conscious awareness of our thoughts? You bring that mindfulness into everything you do during your waking state: mindful eating, mindful drinking, mindful driving, and any other action we experience in our daily lives.

Great! Now you have figured out that you can have continuous conscious awareness of your thoughts in the present moment during your waking life. What will happen when you go to sleep though? You will lose conscious awareness and your subconscious will take over. It seems like all hope is lost, right?

Nope!

Mindfulness doesn’t have to end when you go to sleep. Once you train yourself to maintain conscious awareness during sleep, you will only have a short period when you are in deep sleep (around 15% of the sleep cycle). Once you have developed conscious awareness, the more you train yourself, the more awake your mind feels. You eventually reach a moment when you don’t seem to be sleeping at all. Your body will still rest and rejuvenate, but your mind will remain aware.

How to Stay Mindful During Sleep

To start practicing staying mindful while asleep, start by lying down in your bed.
Close your eyes and focus on the in and out breaths right up until the moment you fall asleep.
Perform a sweep with your awareness over your entire body until you’re asleep.
As soon as you wake up, continue your simple mindfulness practices of sweeping and breathing.

Once you master this, upon waking up you will be in a state of mindfulness. You will be attentive and watchful of your thoughts as they come and go and as you go in and out of the state of total calmness, samadhi. With your conscious breathing, you will ebb and flow with the Universe itself.

What’s more, you will stop having night terrors and talking in your sleep. You will sleep and wake up peacefully without anything bothering you.

Even though you lie down in bed and go to sleep, it will be as if your mind didn’t. You will maintain alertness and attention. This is why, once you start maintaining mindfulness during sleep, you will barely ever even dream. If you do have dreams, they are exceptionally lucid, surreal, and vivid ones that don’t feel like dreams at all. Instead, they feel like significant messages or true experiences.

While you watch over your mind with conscious awareness, there doesn’t seem to be any mental processing which needs to be done that is the usual fuel for dreams. You sustain a deep presence and mindfulness within your mind.

When you wake up while being in a state of mindfulness, your mind is bright, lucid, and well-rested. You will find that you are even less irritable and bothered by whatever life may throw at you.

Since your mind stays sharp and responsive, the continuous mindfulness will allow you to examine and explore with ease. You will find it pretty easy to deal with anything that would potentially arise moment to moment.

Cultivating the Mind for Conscious Awareness

You may have previously thought that it would be impossible to have a mind at total peace and serenity while asleep. After all, dreams sometimes seem like such a mishmash of abstract symbols that create intense scenes that makes us forget we are even in those dreams (unless we are lucid while dreaming, which is a fascinating way to play with the dream world).

Once you learn to cultivate mindfulness in both waking life and during sleep, people and situations won’t disturb your peace. You will maintain your clarity of insight into all situations, no matter what they are.

If you do still find that certain situations and circumstances disturb your inner calm, that’s alright. As long as you can become aware of how you are reacting, you can take conscious control over your reactions. You can bring your awareness back to the present moment and remind yourself that whatever is happening, is impermanent and will pass.

There is a sense of empowerment when you truly realize that you have conscious control over your awareness, even in sleep. Start practicing this method every day and night and begin to notice an increase in lucidity and inner peace.

~via WakeUp-World.com

September 6, 2018

NEZEL PADAYHAG: “10 Tips How To Become The Best Person That You Can Be”

We all have bigger potential within us than we think we have. We can be and do much, much more. We can influence the world on a much bigger scale.

Success in all areas of life depends largely on how you carry yourself. Whether you want to be the best lover or worker, you can’t become one without having to work for it.

You need to be the best that you can be before you can attract the best things and the best people to come your way.

You need to be aware, though, that becoming your best self doesn’t mean things will flow smoothly in your life. You may still encounter hardships along the way.

Yet, these things are easy to handle when you have become the best version of yourself. The suggestions below will help you become one.

10 Tips How To Become The Best Person:

1. Love yourself the way you want to be loved.

There is no one in the world who can provide you the love that you need except your own self. You alone know yourself inside out, including your strengths, weaknesses, failures, successes, and quirkiness.

If you can love yourself despite some of the things that you hate in yourself, then it would be easier for others to love you the same.

In the same way, you can’t love others for who they truly are if you can’t love yourself for who you really are. Make it a point to love yourself genuinely and be energetically vibrant.

2. Go deeper and discover the beauty within you.

As Aristotle pointed out, “Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.” It’s because while growing up, we have been conditioned to believe we need to become someone else.

Seeing yourself other than who you really are may block you from seeing your true beauty.

You are a divine being destined to spark. But you can’t see yourself this way unless you connect to yourself much more deeply.

3. Accept your own uniqueness.

Avoid the pitfall of comparing yourselves with others. You have your own journey and have a different path to take.

Don’t be afraid to express your unique self because that is who you are. You don’t need approval or validation.

Follow your own unfolding and focus on your unique gifts. You alone carry the kind of gift you are intended to share with the world.

4. Forgive and heal yourself.

Carrying grudges decreases your life force. Forgive others even if they don’t ask for it. Forgive yourself too.

Healing begins with the act of forgiveness. When you forgive, you free yourself and heal yourself from all the pains that you may have accumulated for so long.

Once freed, you begin to gain access to your life force.

5. Be aware of your inner critic.

Most often, your inner critic is your worst critic, telling you to be more than what you can be. Don’t fight this inner critic because you will only waste your energy.

Instead, be more compassionate with yourself.

When this critic speaks tell yourself how much you love yourself for all that you are. Love conquers all, your inner critic included.

6. Follow your gut feeling.

Learn to honor your gut feeling or intuition.

Most often, it carries the answers to your questions and serves as a guide in making important decisions.

Your intuition is your inner knowing that only wants the best for you.

7. Practice meditation.

A regular practice of meditation goes a long way.

Meditating for at least 15 to 20 minutes a day is enough to calm your mind, free you from stress, and enhance your well being.

It’s also a great means of connecting with your inner being.

8. Honor your body.

Your body is your physical manifestation in this world. It’s how others connect to you on a physical level.

When it’s in good shape, your connections outside and inside can go smoothly.

Give it the self care that it needs. Feed it with nourishing food, get enough rest, and do physical exercises.

9. Design your best life.

You have in your capacity the full power to design your life the way that inspires you to wake up every morning with vigor and excitement.

You can create a unique living that suits your special needs.

It’s the kind of life that may not be the ideal one in the world’s standards, but one where love prospers and where you can be absolutely happy.

10. Strive to make a difference in your small part of the world.

Wherever you are, you can make a difference in your own unique way.

Your contribution may be small, but giving all your best to the world can create ripples that will ultimately touch the lives of more people than you could expect.

Even becoming the best person that you can be is enough to create a spark in the hearts of others that you may come into contact with.

Remember, the greatest person you are to meet in this world is still within you. Awaken that person and be the best that you can be.

~via LifeCoachCode.com

July 12, 2018

SARA K. WASSER: “5 Ways To Cultivate Peace & Love Through Your Words”

Have you ever pondered the relentless strength of the tongue? It is a small part of the body yet it carries great power!

We use our tongue to praise Destiny and, in another breath, curse Destiny’s design. We pour praise and contempt from the same mouth

How can this be?

What change might we affect with a transformation of our speech?

Let’s transform our corner of the world with the love seed of our words.

If you’d like to see a shift happen in your business, with your coworkers, in your personal relationships, or even more broadly within your culture then follow these 5 steps. You have the power and influence to transform unhealthy, destructive, stifling, and caustic environments.

The first step to bringing peace into any negative situation is to refuse to participate in any negative conversation about someone else unless you can be part of the solution to the problem.

How often has it happened to you that a coworker, friend, or family member approaches you with something akin to: ”Have you heard the latest about Sally? Did you know that she left him; her son is on meth; her daughter is pregnant; he lost his job; she cheated on him; she was fired; they lost their home; he lost custody of his children”, etc., etc., etc.? Once those negative thoughts get planted in your mind, they will color absolutely everything else you hear about that individual and their situation.

Instead, learn deflection questions. Deflect the negativity with an innocuous and distracting question, “What did you eat for breakfast today?” “Did you ever get around to watching that movie?” “How’s the renovation progressing?” Throw the bearer-of-bad-news off with a distracting question.

Secondly, if you hear something negative about someone you love then check in with them. Allow yourself the opportunity to discern the truth of the situation firsthand rather than working from someone else’s input and point of view.

Ask questions of love and concern, free of accusation and suspicion. “Is there anything I need to know?” “Is there anything you need right now?”

Thirdly, if you hear something that haunts you don’t assume that it’s the full truth. This can be something in your immediate family or circle of friends. It can also be something cultural, something in the media.

Exercise the higher energy of listening and sharing love. We don’t need to know the details of what’s happening. It feels better to love than to know the private details of someone else’s life or pitfall.

Fourthly, refuse to judge information about someone at face value. This pertains to those within close proximity to you. Whatever you hear, remember there’s two sides to every story.

There’s no such thing as a one-sided story, not in real life.

If you hear something negative about someone, the human tendency is to shut off (to some extent) to that person. Remember, negative news is not to be taken at full value.

If something negative is spoken to you before you can deflect, quickly speak 4-5 positive thoughts aloud concerning that individual in order to discourage your mind from harboring unsubstantiated negativity towards that individual. This will allow you to remain in a state of peace and love towards that person.

Finally, step number five, if you need to confront someone, don’t tell anyone else. If you process your heart with people about negative information about someone else, especially if you’re going through a divorce or a business separation, they will take what you say at full value. This might feel good in the heat of the moment, but when the emotion, hurt, or betrayal dissipates you will be left with a network of friends who can only support you in making a decision that’s based on your emotional state rather than a state of clarity, stability, and groundedness.

For this reason, it’s good to have 2-3 close friends or processors that serve to talk things through with you. If you have this small, consistent group of processors they will come to know you well enough to be able to discern your moodiness, emotionalism, hurt, and anger so that they can provide trustworthy input rather than a mirroring of your own emotions. Your processors will come to know your tendencies and hear you and love you appropriately for where you are in that moment.

If we prove trustworthy with people’s reputations in our mouth and we start to love them and care about who they are, we will gain influence in places that we could have never otherwise gained entrance. This principle extends to every circle of our respective cultures.

Before you even have need of them, pick 2-3 people that you’re going to do life with over the next five years. Even if they’re not going to be around for the next five years, pick them as if they are. These people will be your processors.

Over the course of the next 7 days, watch your mouth. Every night, rehearse the conversations you had that day. This isn’t a time to beat yourself up or wallow in regret. It’s meant to be a simple exercise for improvement, not debasement. Simply ask yourself, “What could I have done differently? What could I have said better? How could I have honored them more? What could have built that relationship more? When I was talking about her, did I do it well? When I shared that story, was I honoring?”

If you’re looking to make a lasting change, rehearse each day’s speech at the close of the day for the next 30 days. Let’s discipline ourselves to make every decision out of peace and love.

We can start to do this by asking a couple simple questions: Where was peace in that moment? Where was love in that moment?

By our very nature, we are change agents, equipped to affect history and humanity. Let’s leave a legacy of peace and love.

How will you consciously invite peace and love into your speech today?

~via ConsciousReminder.com