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Excerpt from Marianne Williamson's Lecture "The Power of Stillness"

The following transcribed excerpt is a profound teaching from Marianne Williamson on how we push away that which we most long for by grasping.  This is part of a lecture by Marianne recorded live in Los Angeles on October 5, 2010.  The message is timeless.

I love that section in the Course of Miracles. I love that whole idea that the ego’s dictate in love is “seek but do not find”. We are constantly on a search for love and we are constantly on a search for the various things that we think would mean love. So it could be the love of a person, it could be a certain kind of job, or it could be a certain form of anything. But we are always seeking for that which we think will complete us. 

However, when we are following the dictates of the ego, in doing so we are so misguided in our perception of what it is that is love and what it is that truly completes us, that misperceiving we behave in the very way that self-sabotages and makes sure that we repel rather than attract what it is that we want. We all know what it is to mess up because you cared too much. Sometimes we do this with other people. Sometimes we do this in job interviews. There is a certain way to be hungry that is a good thing, but there is another way of being hungry that is filled with a kind of frantic grasp. And when we are grasping for something, I’ll be okay if I can be in this relationship, I’ll be okay if I can have this place to live, I’ll be okay if I could have that money, I’ll be okay if I could have that job. God does not grasp. God is not overwhelmed. God is not worried. And our purpose on this earth is to learn to love as God loves.   To learn to love as God loves is the same thing as saying to learn to think as God thinks. 

Excerpt from "The Toxic Mind" by Armand DiMele

 

 

In "The Toxic Mind", host of “The Positive Mind” radio show and founder of the DiMele Center for Psychotherapy, Armand DiMele,  along with special guest Roberta Maria Atti, talks about the side effects of suppressing feelings like anger and frustration, and discuss ways to prevent the side effects from suppressing emotions and how to heal them.  Following is an excerpt from this important program.

 

 

 

Hey listen -- here’s something for you to consider. Consider this: the continual suppression of emotions during fight or flight reactions results in atrophy, an endogenous toxicosis in noradrenic neurons. How do you like them apples? That’s what our program is going to be about today. Today we’re going to be talking about this and that sounds pretty technical, doesn’t it? Well, Roberta and I have uncovered The Biology of Mental Illness and Violence, and it’s really remarkable, by E. Van Winkle. And by the way, this work is available in 23 languages. It’s called “The Toxic Mind”. E. Van Winkle just woke up to write this article. 

Let’s start with the theory, the idea here, the following hypothesis, right? The continued suppression of emotions means you feel something and you don’t let yourself manifest it. It comes up, you feel it, and it gets shut off for one reason or another. During fight or flight reactions, now that means when you’re excited, nervous, or tense, when your body is saying we have to do something and we’re going to get all ready for action. So that’s the fight or flight reactions, that if you don’t do something when your body says we’re ready to do something about the situation, it results in a toxic accumulation. Now that’s what we’re going to look at today. 

This is a really interesting thing. How could that be? How does it work? Well, we know how it works because we see it all the time. Your leader at work is in a miserable mood and they bark at you, and you get upset but you can’t say anything about it. So it boils. Part of the suppression of emotions is actually what is the backbone of civilization.   We as civilized humans, we suppress emotions in part because it’s necessary in order to function in a human society.

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Armand DiMele bio and links

Lesson Six from Jon Kabat-Zinn's "Letting Everything Become Your Teacher"

We are delighted to bring you another lesson from Jon Kabat-Zinn's terrific guide:

LETTING EVERYTHING BECOME YOUR TEACHER: 
100 Lessons in Mindfulness

LESSON 6: Do-It-Yourself

In this regard, cultivating mindfulness is not unlike the process of eating. It would be absurd to propose that someone else eat for you. And when you go to a restaurant, you don’t eat the menu, mistaking it for the meal, nor are you nourished by listening to the waiter describe the food. You have to actually eat the food for it to nourish you. In the same way, you have to actually practice mindfulness in order to reap its benefits and come to understand why it is so valuable. 
 
 

Jon Kabat-Zinn Bio and Links

Available on BetterListen! -- Jon Kabat-Zinn's The World of Relaxation

Available on Amazon -- Letting Everything Become Your Teacher

 

Lesson Five from Jon Kabat-Zinn's "Letting Everything Become Your Teacher"

A brief but important lesson Jon Kabat-Zinn's latest book:

LETTING EVERYTHING BECOME YOUR TEACHER: 
100 Lessons in Mindfulness

LESSON 5: Lifelong Commitment

 

As with meditation practice itself, this learning requires a lifelong commitment to continual inquiry and a willingness to modify your perspective as you acquire new knowledge and arrive at new levels of understanding and insight. 

Jon Kabat-Zinn Bio and Links

Available on BetterListen! -- Jon Kabat-Zinn's The World of Relaxation

Available on Amazon -- Letting Everything Become Your Teacher

 

Lesson Four from Jon Kabat-Zinn's "Letting Everything Become Your Teacher"

Today's lesson is on just that -- lessons -- from Jon Kabat-Zinn's thoughtful guide:

LETTING EVERYTHING BECOME YOUR TEACHER: 
100 Lessons in Mindfulness

LESSON 4:  Lessons

In part your vision will be molded by your unique life circumstances, by your personal beliefs and values. Another part will develop from your experience of the meditation practice itself, from letting everything become your teacher: your body, your attitudes, your mind, your pain, your joy, other people, your mistakes, your failures, your successes, nature—in short, all your moments. If you are cultivating mindfulness in your life, there is not one thing that you do or experience that cannot teach you about yourself by mirroring back to you the reflections of your own mind and body. 

 

Jon Kabat-Zinn Bio and Links

Available on BetterListen! -- Jon Kabat-Zinn's The World of Relaxation

Available on Amazon -- Letting Everything Become Your Teacher

 

Lesson Three from Jon Kabat-Zinn's "Letting Everything Become Your Teacher"

Today we are delighted to share with you another lesson from Jon Kabat-Zinn's wonderful book:

LETTING EVERYTHING BECOME YOUR TEACHER: 
100 Lessons in Mindfulness

LESSON 3: Personal Vision 

To sustain your commitment and keep your meditation practice fresh over a period of months and years, it is important to develop your own personal vision that can guide you in your efforts and remind you at critical times of the value of charting such an unusual course in your life. There may be times when your vision will be the only support you will have in keeping up your practice. 
 

Jon Kabat-Zinn Bio and Links

Available on BetterListen! -- Jon Kabat-Zinn's The World of Relaxation

Available on Amazon -- Letting Everything Become Your Teacher

 

Excerpt 3 from the "Be Here Now" Talks with Ram Dass

  Available for the first time in digital download, we are so pleased to be able to offer rare lectures recorded live in New York City in 1969 by Ram Dass.  These talks went on to become the basis of his international best-selling book Be Here Now.  Here is another transcribed excerpt from one of these ground-breaking teachings.

When you go from physical to astral to causal, you are still with the subtlest desires, the desires for pure idea.    Thought creates matter. Mind creates matter. The causal plane is the world of ideas that creates the universe.   

Right at the top of the causal plane is what we call the God head. It’s the first place into the universe of form. It’s the first world of form. It’s the place where God created the universe. His mind, his thought, manifested into the universe. His thought manifested into all of the lower levels of the causal plane, all of the astral plane, and all of the physical plane. His thought manifested into all of them. And when you go back and back and back and back, you go to that place where you become one with the God head. You are God at that point. You are the idea that lies behind the universe. You literally are it. You’re not making believe you are it, you are it.