Mindhacks

The Hidden Importance of Giving: Bill Harris’ Secret to His Own Phenomenal Success.

Bill Harris has been involved in personal development for over thirty-five years as a seeker, teacher, public speaker, author, musician, composer, therapist, workshop leader, and founder of the Centerpointe Research Institute.

And more recently, you would have seen him in the hit movie, “The Secret”

In this special interview that I’ve recorded with Bill, he’s going to share with you some of his deep insights on the nature of the mind, meditation and brainwave synchronization.

But he’s also going to go a little beyond that and answer some controversial questions - including what he believes to be the big flaw with the philosophy of the “The Secret” and why so many people still struggle with the concept of the Law of Attraction.

You are going to discover a truly remarkable man with a personal philosophy that demonstrates the importance of giving and the incredible results that follow…

Check out the interview here.

As a personal note, I’ve been a HUGE fan of Centerpointe and the Holosync system, so I’m really going to stress how absolutely mind-blowing it is to have a chat with THE Bill Harris. So make sure you check it out, and tell us what you think too!

Deepak Chopra Meditation Video

Here’s a fantastic video from a PBS special featuring reknowned celebrity guru, Dr. Deepak Chopra. Here, he gives a light discourse on meditation and its benefits for the mind and body.

If you are interested in learning more about meditation and how it can help you acheive a better and more fruitful life, check out the Silva Life System!

The Path of a Silva Instructor

Recently, a good friend of mine, Karol Zelazny was intervied on Jabbercast by BigJD, an internet radio DJ and former student of Karol’s.

In the interview, Karol talks about the Silva Method and what the incredible benefits that people can have from this system. Find out how a childhood accident would change his life forever as well as how an unassuming hand-out for his seminars become his acclaimed book, Walk on Water in the World of Symptoms!

Click here to download an mp3 of the interview to see how a great Silva instructor started his journey on the better path! (right-click and save-as)

If you are interested in finding out more about Karol Zelazny, check out his website and his new book, Walk on Water in the World of Symptoms.

Click Here to Find Out More!

Meditation: The Perfect Remedy for Extremely Stressful Jobs

After a hard day slapping tickets on parked cars and absorbing the abuse of irate motorists Edinburgh’s traffic wardens are being encouraged to meditate their troubles away.

The “blue meanies,” as they are known in the Scottish capital, are to be offered stress therapy to help them cope with their thankless task.

ACPOA Parking, the company that hires wardens in the city, said it was in negotiations with a firm that offered stress management sessions, including shamanic meditation which uses drumming to send people into a trance.

“The job is quite stressful and staff have been asking for this service for quite some time,” said contract manager Hector Saunders.

ACPOA said more support was needed for those working to keep the city’s congested roads clear. Last week APCOA ordered its 80 wardens off the streets after a death threat was broadcast over personal radios, and in another incident a warden was assaulted.

The company said it would pay for the £3,000 a year therapy. Edinburgh council has backed the stress-reduction initiative.

In some parts of the country, meanwhile, the vilification of traffic wardens has become so bad that they have been issued with body armour.

More than 30 police forces have handed out bullet and stab-proof vests to protect wardens from angry drivers.

In Hartlepool it is mandatory for wardens to wear vests while on duty.

Source

I’m writing this in response to a few questions about the misconceptions about meditation in the hope that I can clarify what meditation can do for people who are looking some straight forward ways to better relaxation, mental focus, and reduced stress!

So - You want to start meditating?

It’s a religious / spiritual experience

Meditation allows your MIND to enter a state of awareness or mindfulness. Meditation, if anything helps you become more aware of what our over-cluttered minds are thinking. Think about it like organizing a messy drawer of socks, or organizing your refrigerator. Meditation helps us take inventory of what floats about in our minds, and sometimes what to do with those thoughts too!

Some say, that this relaxed state, is the same state that’s used by hypnotherapists, like Roberta Temes, to help people solve a whole host of issues like Weight Loss and increasing Productivity.

However, if you’d like a religious of spiritual experience. There are plenty of schools of thought that can help you accomplish this — BUT ONLY IF YOU CHOOSE IT!

I need to wear tights / robes / and shave my head

Meditation, like any other exercise, requires effort. Like in running a marathon, there’s effort involved in your muscles, breathing, and even clothes you wear.

However, unlike any other exercise, meditation only requires 1 piece of equipment: your mind. Meditation requires you to be in a comfortable posture that can help you go into a deepened mental state, thats all. No spandex required.

Take a look at Burt Goldman, he may not be dressed like some guru or yogi, but he’s mastered how to focus his mind like one!

I’ve got no time to meditate. And I don’t want to sit on a mountain asking for the “secret to life”

Meditation takes as long as YOU WANT. It can be as short as a 5-minute session, or it can be as long as a few days. Take as long as you require to accomplish the results that you want. But don’t feel forced to become a hermit in a jungle meditating for days on end if you don’t WANT to.

For example, Jose Silva, the Mexican-American, who introduced dynamic meditation to the Western World. His methodology only requires short amounts of time to accomplish HUGE results.

Sitting cross-legged and headstands give me muscle pains and gas

Then DON’T.

Meditation and Hatha Yoga, although sharing a few common philosophies, are two different techniques. Hatha Yoga, with their handstands, ploughs, and other advanced positions requires physical control. Meditation, on the other hand, only requires the your mind.

However, with that said, if you are interested in increasing your physical well-being, Hatha Yoga is a great way to accompany meditation.

There are SO many ways you can meditate easily and simply too!

I have to be a hippie to meditate

Many major corporations encourage the use of meditation to reduce stress in working environments. In fact, many insurance companies are offering reduced premiums if their policy holders start meditating.

You don’t need to be vegetarian or become an eco-terrorist to meditate.

Anyone can meditate.

And all YOU need - is your mind!

If you have any additional misconceptions you’d like to clarify, leave us a comment. Tell us what you think!

Meditation Resources

The Silva Ultramind System

The American Monk

www.MeditationLiving.com

Editor’s Note: Creativity is such an amazing facet that we all possess as human beings; the untapped potential of the human mind is infinite. Following on from other themes I dug up this fascinating article that looks at different forms of creative thinking - we should move from ‘thinking out of the box’ to ‘no box thinking’

Learn to Tap the Genius Within

Sushma Mohan

Innovation is the key to competitiveness, said President APJ Abdul Kalam recently. And thinking creatively is just what Ay Thomas Louies teaches in his training programmes which are popular among corporate giants.

Connecting to the Infinite

Though world-renowned music composer Beethoven suffered from a hearing disorder, the music he created mesmerised people. How was it possible? “That was because he was connected to the infinite, and therefore he didn’t need his five senses to create his music,” says Ay Thomas Louies, founder of the Morpho Thinkers, a training academy that propounds human consciousness as the ultimate reality.

No Box Thinking

“Everyone is familiar with the idea of out-of-the-box thinking, which simply means a non-traditional way of solving a problem. But what we are stressing upon is the need for no-box thinking which lays in the hands of man the power of infinite possibilities, the power to do anything,” explains Thomas, whose other fields of interest cover palmistry, graphology, hypnosis, vastu, reiki, pranic healing and kriya yoga among others.

Elaborating the concept of no-box thinking, Thomas says:

“Every person in this world has a genius hidden in him. Every one is like a Pentium 10 processor that is yet to be invented, with a vast potential to do things even beyond one’s imagination. All one has to do is to…tap the higher intelligence that has the ability to make miracles happen.”

The methodology developed by Thomas to help one achieve this encompasses the mind, body and soul. “My technique enables one to establish a conscious connection with the higher intelligence and then choose the belief system to interpret what is received through that channel,” Thomas explains.

In his training session, Thomas teaches his students how to take the mind to that optimum level where there is no limit to what one can achieve. He uses active meditation and yoga to further increase the effectiveness of the training.

 Works With Corporate Giants

A qualified engineer with an MBA in marketing and finance from the Institute of Business Administration and Training, Bhubaneshwar, Thomas’ training package — Accessing Higher Intelligence — has already found demand among corporate giants like Godrej, Shell Castrol and ICICI Prudential, among others.

Thomas says, “Unlike earlier times when creativity was generally linked to what researchers, inventors, scientists and artists did, in the current competitive world, the need for creativity is greater in every field. Everyone now is looking for new solutions to old problems. This is possible through no-box thinking.”

Morpho Genetic Field

According to him, what sets one individual apart from the other is his/her ability to tap the universal intelligence. “You can call that higher intelligence the Brahma, God or the Collective Consciousness. The scientists have named it the Morpho Genetic Field — the space filled with intelligence. If you take any two atoms, the space proportional to the space between the two atoms is equal to the space proportional to the space between two galaxies.

This shows the immense potential hidden even in the minutest component of the universe, utilising which, what one can achieve is only limited by one’s power of imagination,” he adds.

In the workshops conducted by Thomas, the students are taught to reach the alpha state of mind (to access the infinite field of intelligence) through various techniques like Morpho Breathing, Art X and F Square.

Morpho Breathing requires the person to concentrate on the breathing cycle with focus on the third eye. With proper training and constant practice one can reach the alpha state.
The next technique, Art X enables one to reach the alpha state through auto-suggestion. Besides this, F Square (Focal Focus) dwells on synergising energy to reach the alpha state.

Thomas Alva Edison once said, “Ideas come from space. Most of my ideas have come to me through intuition.” This statement by one of the world’s greatest inventors says a lot about no-box thinking, feels Thomas.

Meditation Compared With No Box Thinking

Meditation is of immense help in developing one’s power of intuition and creativity. “But while with meditation you can improve your creative abilities by 25-30 per cent, the technique of no-box thinking helps you to take a 100 per cent leap as a creative individual,” claims Thomas.

The training package — Accessing Higher Intelligence — is available as either a session of two hours or for a whole day. Thomas conducts the workshops.

check out the article>>

Each year, more and more evidence emerges that meditation - somehow - makes us feel happier and better about ourselves. The following story is about one man, who having studied Buddhist meditation, has developed a “formula” to allow us to all feel happier about ourselves.

The happiest man in the world? … and you can learn how he does it, says academic-turned-Buddhist monk

By Anthony Barnes, The Independent, Published: 21 January 2007

To scientists, he is the world’s happiest man. His level of mind control is astonishing and the upbeat impulses in his brain are off the scale.

Now Matthieu Ricard, 60, a French academic-turned-Buddhist monk, is to share his secrets to make the world a happier place. The trick, he reckons, is to put some effort into it. In essence, happiness is a “skill” to be learned.

Left: Portrait taken in 1999

His advice could not be more timely as tomorrow Britain will reach what, according to a scientific formula, is the most miserable day of the year. Tattered new year resolutions, the faded buzz of Christmas, debt, a lack of motivation and the winter weather conspire to create a peak of misery and gloom.

But studies have shown that the mind can rise above it all to increase almost everyone’s happiness. Mr Ricard, who is the French interpreter for Tibet’s spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, took part in trials to show that brain training in the form of meditation can cause an overwhelming change in levels of happiness.

MRI scans showed that he and other long-term meditators - who had completed more than 10,000 hours each - experienced a huge level of “positive emotions” in the left pre-frontal cortex of the brain, which is associated with happiness. The right-hand side, which handles negative thoughts, is suppressed.

Further studies have shown that even novices who have done only a little meditation have increased levels of happiness. But Mr Ricard’s abilities were head and shoulders above the others involved in the trials.

“The mind is malleable,” Mr Ricard told The Independent on Sunday yesterday. “Our life can be greatly transformed by even a minimal change in how we manage our thoughts and perceive and interpret the world. Happiness is a skill. It requires effort and time.”

Mr Ricard was brought up among Paris’s intellectual elite in the 1960s, but after working for a PhD in biochemsitry he abandoned his distinguished academic career to study Tibetan Buddhism in the Himalayas.

A book of philosophical conversations he conducted with his father Jean-François Revel, The Monk and the Philosopher, became an unlikely publishing phenomenon when it came out in France in the late 1990s.

Mr Ricard is to publish his book Happiness for the first time in the UK next month.

Related Links:

More about Matthieu Richard on Wikipedia.

Mind controls body in extreme experiments

By William J. Cromie, Harvard Gazette Staff

In a monastery in northern India, thinly clad Tibetan monks sat quietly in a room where the temperature was a chilly 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Using a yoga technique known as g Tum-mo, they entered a state of deep meditation. Other monks soaked 3-by-6-foot sheets in cold water (49 degrees) and placed them over the meditators’ shoulders. For untrained people, such frigid wrappings would produce uncontrolled shivering.

 If body temperatures continue to drop under these conditions, death can result. But it was not long before steam began rising from the sheets. As a result of body heat produced by the monks during meditation, the sheets dried in about an hour.

Picture Left: A Buddhist monk has his vital signs measured as he prepares to enter an advanced state of meditation in Normandy, France. During meditation, the monk’s body produces enough heat to dry cold, wet sheets put over his shoulders in a frigid room (Photo by Herbert Benson).

Attendants removed the sheets, then covered the meditators with a second chilled, wet wrapping. Each monk was required to dry three sheets over a period of several hours.

Why would anyone do this? Herbert Benson, who has been studying g Tum-mo for 20 years, answers that “Buddhists feel the reality we live in is not the ultimate one. There’s another reality we can tap into that’s unaffected by our emotions, by our everyday world. Buddhists believe this state of mind can be achieved by doing good for others and by meditation. The heat they generate during the process is just a by-product of g Tum-mo meditation.”

Benson is an associate professor of medicine at the Harvard Medical School and president of the Mind/Body Medical Institute at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. He firmly believes that studying advanced forms of meditation “can uncover capacities that will help us to better treat stress-related illnesses.”

Benson developed the “relaxation response,” which he describes as “a physiological state opposite to stress.” It is characterized by decreases in metabolism, breathing rate, heart rate, and blood pressure. He and others have amassed evidence that it can help those suffering from illnesses caused or exacerbated by stress. Benson and colleagues use it to treat anxiety, mild and moderate depression, high blood pressure, heartbeat irregularities, excessive anger, insomnia, and even infertility. His team also uses this type of simple meditation to calm those who have been traumatized by the deaths of others, or by diagnoses of cancer or other painful, life-threatening illnesses.

“More than 60 percent of visits to physicians in the United States are due to stress-related problems, most of which are poorly treated by drugs, surgery, or other medical procedures,” Benson maintains.

The Mind/Body Medical Institute is now training people to use the relaxation response to help people working at Ground Zero in New York City, where two airplanes toppled the World Trade Center Towers last Sept. 11. Facilities have been set up at nearby St. Paul’s Chapel to aid people still working on clearing wreckage and bodies. Anyone else who feels stressed by those terrible events can also obtain help at the chapel. “We are training the trainers who work there,” Benson says.

The relaxation response involves repeating a word, sound, phrase, or short prayer while disregarding intrusive thoughts. “If such an easy-to-master practice can bring about the remarkable changes we observe,” Benson notes. “I want to investigate what advanced forms of meditation can do to help the mind control physical processes once thought to be uncontrollable.”

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