Who Am I?

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Look in the mirror and admire an original masterpiece. A one-off, never to be repeated work of art. You are unique and that is partly due to your combination of genes. Unless you are an identical twin it’s a combination that has never been seen before. Genes can tell fascinating stories. And the story of your life is probably the most important of all. We'd all like to understand ourselves better, and there's no better time to start than now....

This is your moment....In your own personal “big bang” moment when you were conceived, a sperm and egg met for the first time. Each of them was carrying a special delivery. Half of the instruction manual for how to build a human. Magic happened, the two sets of instructions came together and the rest is history.It could so easily have been different....But you have received only one of several million possible instruction manuals your parents could have put together. The chances they ended up with you are too remote to grasp. If your parents kept on having children, they’d have to visit the maternity hospital another million billion times to stand a chance of producing another child with your genes. It never happens.

Unique experiences: Genetically speaking you are a new invention. But there's another dimension to your uniqueness. Every experience you have had in your lifetime has made an impact on who you are seeing in the mirror right now. The direction you faced in the womb, your experiences at school, even how well you slept last night. They all make you unique.

We all live in different worlds. Nobody can claim that their life has been the same as yours. You might be wealthy or poor, a megastar, or an anonymous face in a city of millions. You may have an older brother, be an only child, have mixed race parents, live on the sunny side of the street…or in an igloo.

Your genes make you unique, but so does your life. It is different from every other human life on earth. Different beginningsFrom the moment you were conceived you have been dealing with unique surroundings. You may have had quite a different nine months in the womb compared to that of your brother or sister. Do stressed out mothers-to-be produce agitated babies? A link has been noticed and its just one sign that our different experiences count from very early on.

…and once you are born then just about anything can happen. And almost everything that occurs during your childhood and adolescence could be having an impact on your health, your career and the relationships you are forming today.


There was a child went forth every day,
And the first object he looked upon and received with
wonder or pity or love or dread, that object he became,
And that object became part of him for the day or a certain
part of the day . . . or for many years or stretching cycles of years.

The early lilacs became part of this child,
And grass, and white and red morning-glories, and white and
red clover, and the song of the phoebe-bird,
And the March-born lambs, and the sow’s pink-faint litter,
and the mare’s foal, and the cow’s calf, and the noisy
brood of the barnyard or by the mire of the pond-side
. . . and the fish suspending themselves so curiously
below there . . . and the beautiful curious liquid . . . and
the water-plants with their graceful flat heads . . . all
became part of him.

.............................................from “There Was A Child Went Forth,”
...........................................................by Walt Whitman

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Everything we have seen and touched and heard and experienced has, in some way, made us who we are. Whitman considers all the many things in just one day that will touch on the life of a child. From here he goes on to think about the child’s teachers and classmates, the people he passes on his way to school, his parents, the streets he walks, and finally the changing light of sunset, and a solitary bird flying across the sky.

What in your day contributes to who you are? Of those things you noted which contribute to your preferred story for yourself? Did you identify with the angry, the sad, the difficult, the obstacles OR did you identify with the grace, the gratitude, health, home, privelge, the holy?

from Scholastic Publishing / Memoir Writing

Listening – not another task

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It is the province of knowledge to speak, and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.
Oliver Wendell Homes, Sr.

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Listening isn’t another thing to do, another task or activity that you have to add to your list of chores or self-growth to do list. It’s actually a way of being, something that comes naturally. What has happened in modern times is that we have been coaxed out of this natural way of being, a way of being able to listen to ourSelves and be tuned in to our intuition. Over time the inundation of media, the methods used by the education system, and the diminished support of familial and community relationships, has led us to listen outside of ourSelves for the clues and cues for how we choose to respond to ourSelves and our environment.

Listening is an underused action-oriented discipline. The best way to re-cultivate this natural, instinctual process is to take the time to do it rather than rushing ahead with action or thinking. During your day, stop every so often, even just for a few moments and focus on yourself, your body, your mind, and your spirit. Check in with them and ask how they are doing. They will tell you if you take the time to listen. Also, and the greatest marvel of all, they will never lie to you. They have no reason to since we are wired to not self-harm, but rather to pleasure.Listening is a hidden treasure in finding life's meaning for you and your unique contribution to building a better world. It is necessary to develop an integrated relationship between your mind, your body, and your spirit. Self-Communication is an essential skill for developing and maintaining the integrity of your inner self. It is also primary to developing and maintaining your integrity with the outer world.Learning to listen to your inner voice can give new direction to opportunities, circumstances and decisions.

Listening is a vital part of effective communication and relationship. The relationship we have with ourSelves is the most important relationship we have. If we are not in direct and effective communication with ourSelves how can we be in good relationship with others and the world we inhabit?

Listening has a therapeutic effect. It is a doorway to self-awareness. Genuine listening opens the door to self-awareness: awareness of our own feelings, thoughts and motives. In effect we are also listening and sensitive to our own inner states. This in itself is a very important path to discovery. It is the gateway to clarifying our own values, dealing with our own inner conflicts, and discovery our own intuition and spirituality.

It is important to become a supportive rather than an interferent participant in these communicative interactions between you and all of your parts. Being harsh, critical, and judgmental closes down all communication within yourSelf just as they close down communication between people. If you can not be a patient and careful listener to yourSelf, you will not only miss what your body is saying, but you will not hear what the people you love are trying to tell you.

Self-Communication is only as valuable as the way in which you use it. It is not a tool meant to enable you to police and/or intrude upon your own natural physiological processes. Instead, it is a skill which facilitates the knowing of yourself, simply because you are worth knowing. We all have something to contribute to our world and the best way to discovering that is to listen to ourSelves in a loving and compassionate way. When we do this our life becomes easier, more productive, more meaningful, and more enjoyable.

I have learned that the head does not hear anything until the heart has listened. And what the heart knows today the head will understand tomorrow.

- James Stevens

Copyright 1995. Permission to reprint by:Peace Center Theosophical Society

The Noble Eightfold Path

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The Noble Eightfold Path describes the way to the end of suffering, as it was laid out by Siddhartha Gautama. It is a practical guideline to ethical and mental development with the goal of freeing the individual from attachments and delusions; and it finally leads to understanding the truth about all things. Together with the Four Noble truths it constitutes the gist of Buddhism. Great emphasis is put on the practical aspect, because it is only through practice that one can attain a higher level of existence and finally reach Nirvana. The eight aspects of the path are not to be understood as a sequence of single steps, instead they are highly interdependent principles that have to be seen in relationship with each other.

1. Right View
Right view is the beginning and the end of the path, it simply means to see and to understand things as they really are and to realize the Four Noble Truth. As such, right view is the cognitive aspect of wisdom. It means to see things through, to grasp the impermanent and imperfect nature of worldly objects and ideas, and to understand the law of karma and karmic conditioning. Right view is not necessarily an intellectual capacity, just as wisdom is not just a matter of intelligence. Instead, right view is attained, sustained, and enhanced through all capacities of mind. It begins with the intuitive insight that all beings are subject to suffering and it ends with complete understanding of the true nature of all things. Since our view of the world forms our thoughts and our actions, right view yields right thoughts and right actions.

2. Right Intention
While right view refers to the cognitive aspect of wisdom, right intention refers to the volitional aspect, i.e. the kind of mental energy that controls our actions. Right intention can be described best as commitment to ethical and mental self-improvement. Buddha distinguishes three types of right intentions: 1. the intention of renunciation, which means resistance to the pull of desire, 2. the intention of good will, meaning resistance to feelings of anger and aversion, and 3. the intention of harmlessness, meaning not to think or act cruelly, violently, or aggressively, and to develop compassion.

3. Right Speech
Right speech is the first principle of ethical conduct in the eightfold path. Ethical conduct is viewed as a guideline to moral discipline, which supports the other principles of the path. This aspect is not self-sufficient, however, essential, because mental purification can only be achieved through the cultivation of ethical conduct. The importance of speech in the context of Buddhist ethics is obvious: words can break or save lives, make enemies or friends, start war or create peace. Buddha explained right speech as follows: 1. to abstain from false speech, especially not to tell deliberate lies and not to speak deceitfully, 2. to abstain from slanderous speech and not to use words maliciously against others, 3. to abstain from harsh words that offend or hurt others, and 4. to abstain from idle chatter that lacks purpose or depth. Positively phrased, this means to tell the truth, to speak friendly, warm, and gently and to talk only when necessary.

4. Right Action
The second ethical principle, right action, involves the body as natural means of expression, as it refers to deeds that involve bodily actions. Unwholesome actions lead to unsound states of mind, while wholesome actions lead to sound states of mind. Again, the principle is explained in terms of abstinence: right action means 1. to abstain from harming sentient beings, especially to abstain from taking life (including suicide) and doing harm intentionally or delinquently, 2. to abstain from taking what is not given, which includes stealing, robbery, fraud, deceitfulness, and dishonesty, and 3. to abstain from sexual misconduct. Positively formulated, right action means to act kindly and compassionately, to be honest, to respect the belongings of others, and to keep sexual relationships harmless to others. Further details regarding the concrete meaning of right action can be found in the Precepts.

5. Right Livelihood
Right livelihood means that one should earn one's living in a righteous way and that wealth should be gained legally and peacefully. The Buddha mentions four specific activities that harm other beings and that one should avoid for this reason: 1. dealing in weapons, 2. dealing in living beings (including raising animals for slaughter as well as slave trade and prostitution), 3. working in meat production and butchery, and 4. selling intoxicants and poisons, such as alcohol and drugs. Furthermore any other occupation that would violate the principles of right speech and right action should be avoided.

6. Right Effort
Right effort can be seen as a prerequisite for the other principles of the path. Without effort, which is in itself an act of will, nothing can be achieved, whereas misguided effort distracts the mind from its task, and confusion will be the consequence. Mental energy is the force behind right effort; it can occur in either wholesome or unwholesome states. The same type of energy that fuels desire, envy, aggression, and violence can on the other side fuel self-discipline, honesty, benevolence, and kindness. Right effort is detailed in four types of endeavors that rank in ascending order of perfection: 1. to prevent the arising of unarisen unwholesome states, 2. to abandon unwholesome states that have already arisen, 3. to arouse wholesome states that have not yet arisen, and 4. to maintain and perfect wholesome states already arisen.

7. Right Mindfulness
Right mindfulness is the controlled and perfected faculty of cognition. It is the mental ability to see things as they are, with clear consciousness. Usually, the cognitive process begins with an impression induced by perception, or by a thought, but then it does not stay with the mere impression. Instead, we almost always conceptualize sense impressions and thoughts immediately. We interpret them and set them in relation to other thoughts and experiences, which naturally go beyond the facticity of the original impression. The mind then posits concepts, joins concepts into constructs, and weaves those constructs into complex interpretative schemes. All this happens only half consciously, and as a result we often see things obscured. Right mindfulness is anchored in clear perception and it penetrates impressions without getting carried away. Right mindfulness enables us to be aware of the process of conceptualization in a way that we actively observe and control the way our thoughts go. Buddha accounted for this as the four foundations of mindfulness: 1. contemplation of the body, 2. contemplation of feeling (repulsive, attractive, or neutral), 3. contemplation of the state of mind, and 4. contemplation of the phenomena.

8. Right Concentration
The eighth principle of the path, right concentration, refers to the development of a mental force that occurs in natural consciousness, although at a relatively low level of intensity, namely concentration. Concentration in this context is described as one-pointedness of mind, meaning a state where all mental faculties are unified and directed onto one particular object. Right concentration for the purpose of the eightfold path means wholesome concentration, i.e. concentration on wholesome thoughts and actions. The Buddhist method of choice to develop right concentration is through the practice of meditation. The meditating mind focuses on a selected object. It first directs itself onto it, then sustains concentration, and finally intensifies concentration step by step. Through this practice it becomes natural to apply elevated levels concentration also in everyday situations.


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