This is a Daoist story about how beliefs create reality, and about attachment, from the Book of Lieh-Tzü translated by Lionel Giles in 1912.
“There was once a man who, though born in Yen, was brought up in Ch'u, and it was only in his old age that he returned to his native country.
”Yen was the northernmost State of ancient China, while Ch'u was bounded by the left bank of the Yangtsze.
”On the way thither, as they were passing through the Chin State, a fellow-traveler played a practical joke on him.
“Pointing to the city he said: 'Here is the capital of the Yen State'; whereupon the old man flushed with excitement. Pointing out a certain shrine, he told him that it was his own village altar, and the old man heaved a deep sigh. Then he showed him a house, and said: 'This is where your ancestors lived'; and the tears welled up in his eyes. Finally, a mound was pointed out to him as the tomb where his ancestors lay buried, whereupon the old man could control himself no longer, and wept aloud.
“But his fellow-traveler burst into roars of laughter. 'I have been hoaxing you,' he cried; 'this is only the Chin State.'
“His victim was greatly mortified; and when he arrived at his journey's end, and really did see before him the city and altars of Yen, with the actual abode and tombs of his ancestors, his emotion was much less acute.”
As you can see, the traveler’s belief that he was in his ancestral town created his reality and generated a lot of strong emotions for him even though it wasn’t true. Before you react to any statements or thoughts that may generate an emotional charge for you, make sure they are a reflection of reality.
Attachment can also generate strong emotions, just as did the attachment of the man to his native land. After he had spent his strong emotions believing the wrong place to be his homeland, his attachment became less and when he did arrive at his destination, he was able to view it with the detachment and calmness that bring about health and wellness.
The tip for this week is two-fold; before you believe something, make sure it’s real, and detachment allows you to maintain your harmony, happiness, and health.
Since tomorrow is the Autumnal Equinox, it seems appropriate to talk about balance.
What balance is not, is a state of frozen equilibrium. Balance is all about living in harmony with life’s up and down cycles.
Think back to playing on a see-saw or teeter-totter when you were a child. If you sat there in perfect balance, going neither up nor down, that was no fun. The fun was swooshing up when you pushed off with your feet, and then landing with a bump when you came back down.
Life is a dynamic process, and the fun is often found in the many activities that fuel your busy schedule like work, sports, family outings, and running those seemingly endless errands we all have on our To-Do lists.
However, in order to create or maintain excellent health, you don’t want to be landing with a bump at the end of the day or the end of the week. That’s what robs you of good health.
When you have a few busy days in a row, schedule some down time to relax and rejuvenate, finish reading that book you started, or call an old friend to catch up on the latest news, or go for a leisurely walk in the woods or a park to get some fresh air.
If you have to dine on fast foods while dashing between appointments most of the week, treat yourself to a home-made dinner of fresh foods on the weekend. Don’t look at cooking as a chore, see your meal as a gift to yourself of healthy nutrients!
Take some time out to meditate, even if it’s only a few minutes a day in which you focus on your breathing. The effects of meditation are cumulative; the more often you do it, the longer-lasting are the benefits of improved focus and attention, healthy blood pressure levels, and greatly reduced levels of stress hormones that deplete your immune system and leave you vulnerable.
So, have fun on that teeter-totter because that’s what life is all about; it should be fun, but make sure you are in control of how hard you land!
This is an article with two videos from the website of Dr. Joseph Mercola. He, as well as Roger Jahnke, a Master in Taiji and Chinese Medicine, have published several interviews and reports on scientific discoveries and studies that show you are not at the mercy of your genes, and that genetic expression of diseases for which you are "at risk" can be averted when you know that your emotions have far more control over your genetic expression than was ever dreamed possible.
In other words, living in joy and harmony instead of being stressed out and crazy can mean the difference between being healthy and getting cancer!
Here is the latest article from Dr Mercola's website and two videos that accompany it. Enjoy!
The New Biology- From Victim to Master of Your Health
(7 minute 36 second video)
The Four Myth Perceptions of the Apocalypse (www.Mercola.com)
(6 minute 30 second video)
Dr. Mercola's Comments (on the second video):
This is my second interview with cellular biologist Bruce Lipton, PhD., who is one of the leading authorities on how emotions can regulate genetic expression, as explained in his excellent book The Biology of Belief, which was published last year.
Dr. Lipton’s new book is Spontaneous Evolution, which was just published just a few days ago.
In this interview, he discusses “the four myth perceptions of the Apocalypse.” These are the myths that society has bought, up to now, as actual science.
However, over the last two decades or so, leading edge science has shown them to be not only flawed, but entirely false, providing such profoundly different answers that it will undoubtedly change the way we live in the future.
Myth # 1 : You Live in a Mechanical Universe
The first myth perception is that the world, especially biology and medicine, operates through Newtonian physics. It says you live in a mechanical universe. According to this belief, your body is a physical machine, so by modifying the parts of the machine, you can modify your health.
As a physical machine, your body responds to physical “things” like chemicals and drugs, and by adjusting the drugs that modify your machinery, doctors can modify and control life.
Now, with the advent of quantum physics, scientists have realized that this theory is flawed because quantum physics show that the invisible, immaterial realm is far more important than the material realm.
In fact, your thoughts may shape your environment far more than physical matter. Einstein himself is quoted as saying: “The field is the sole governing agency of the particle.” What that means is that invisible energy is the sole governing agency of matter (the physical world).
It’s interesting to note that the word ‘spirit’ by spiritualists, and the word ‘field’ by physicists, use the same definition for those two words.
So, the new science is actually taking us back, and shows that your thoughts, your attitudes, your beliefs, and the invisible environment, are more primary in shaping your life than anything in the physical world is.
Myth # 2: Your Genes Control Your Life
In his book, The Biology of Belief, Dr. Lipton explains the foundation of epigenetics, and how the true secret to life does not lie within your DNA, but rather within the mechanisms of the cell membrane. In this way – which is contrary to conventional medical science – it is actually the cell’s membrane -- operating in response to environmental signals picked up by the membrane’s receptors -- that control the “reading” of the genes inside.
What does this mean?
It means that you are not controlled by your genetic makeup. Instead, your genetic readout (which genes are turned “on” and which are turned “off”) is primarily determined by your thoughts, attitudes, and perceptions!
The major problem with believing the myth that your genes control your life is that you become a victim of your heredity. Since you can’t change your genes, it essentially means that your life is predetermined, and therefore you have very little control over your health. With any luck, modern medicine will find the gene responsible and be able to alter it, or devise some other form of drug to modify your body’s chemistry, but aside from that, you’re out of luck…
The new science, however, reveals that your perceptions control your biology, and this places you in the role of Master, because if you can change your perceptions, you can shape and direct your own genetic readout.
It places YOU in the power position, for better or worse.
As Dr. Lipton says,
“This is very relevant to the world that we are in because we have to take back a belief that we have power over our lives. Because our current perception is that we are victims, and since perceptions control life, if you believe you are a victim, you become a victim. When we change our perceptions, we can become masters. So we are moving out of “victimhood” into mastery.”
Myth # 3: Life is Based on Survival of the Fittest
The third misperception is the Darwinian belief that life and evolution is based on the survival of the fittest, which is an inherent competition and a struggle for existence that goes on forever.
The new science, however, shows that this is incorrect; that evolution was not based on competition, but rather on cooperation.
This is a profound difference, and it tells us that if we want to evolve as a species, we must stop competing, and begin to recognize our coherence – that we evolved to live as a harmonious community of people, living on this planet as one living “thing” called humanity.
Myth # 4: Life Evolved as a Random Process
This is another Darwinian theory. The significance of this myth is that, based upon it, you have no purpose here, and humans are somewhat disconnected from the environment altogether.
It says that you got here by accident, and since humanity was accidental, humans have no real purpose here on planet earth.
The new biology, on the other hand, reveals that you are in fact an extension of your environment.
In fact, every time an organism is introduced into an ecosystem, its function is to balance it and keep it stable. When viewed from this perspective, you realize that the function of your existence here on earth is to create harmony and stability within your environment.
Says Dr. Lipton,
“… humanity evolved as a compliment to an environment. The very scary situation is, if we destroy the environment that created us, then essentially, we are destroying the foundation of our existence.”
New Solutions for Old Problems
I have long maintained that your emotional state plays a role in nearly every physical disease -- from heart disease, to depression, to arthritis and cancer. Even the conservative Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) states that 85 percent of all diseases have an emotional element.
If your thoughts and emotions play such a significant role in modifying your biology and your health (and I believe they do), then treating your emotions becomes an essential part of optimal health.
Terms like “energy medicine” and “energy psychology” are terms that have sprung up in response to these shifts in perception of reality, and I’ve long been an advocate of energy psychology tools to address underlying emotional traumas that can trigger disease, or keep you locked in a disease pattern.
Meridian tapping techniques, for example, which works on several levels of your collective mind-body-spirit simultaneously, can help you get a better handle on your emotions and buried pain, including the stress from unexpected tragedies.
Optimal health might really hinge on dealing with, and resolving your emotional traumas as quickly as possible; not letting old emotional wounds linger and fester.
In severe cases you might not be able to perform the techniques satisfactorily on yourself, in which case I would highly recommend you seek out a trained professional. Dr. Patricia Carrington provides a list of certified practitioners across the world, plus helpful advice on how to choose a practitioner that is right for you.
*** end of article ***
I'd just like to add that Affirmation Movies are also a great way to get a handle on your emotions, and work through conflicts in beliefs that are a major cause of chronic illness. To learn more about that, please visit Affirmation Movies.
Your tip this week is actually coming from Eckhart Tolle in his book A New Earth.
I was reading this the other night, and he's talking about the "modalities of awakened doing" which means how we live our lives and do all the things that we do in a conscious manner.
He talks about the three modalities of Enjoyment, Enthusiasm, and Acceptance. While Enjoyment and Enthusiasm probably don't need a whole lot of explanation, Acceptance is really interesting in the way he presents it, and that is what I want to talk about today.
I’m going to read from his book A New Earth, pages 296 to 297.
"Acceptance
"Whatever you cannot enjoy doing, you can at least accept that this is what you have to do. Acceptance means: For now, this is what this situation, this moment, requires me to do, and so I do it willingly.
"Performing an action in the state of acceptance means you are at peace while you do it. That peace is a subtle energy vibration which flows into what you do. On the surface, acceptance looks like a passive state, but in reality it is active and creative because it brings something entirely new into this world. That peace, that subtle energy vibration, is consciousness, and one of the ways in which it enters this world is through surrendered action, one aspect of which is acceptance.
"If you can neither enjoy or bring acceptance to what you do – stop. Otherwise, you are not taking responsibility for the only thing you can really take responsibility for, which also happens to be the one thing that really matters: your state of consciousness. And if you are not taking responsibility for your state of consciousness, you are not taking responsibility for life."
That's the end of our quote.
Remember, every single thing you do, every attitude you bring to those things, is a vibration that you are putting out into the universe.
You are also taking it in to your body and creating your outer physical being as well as your inner physical being.
So, this week, think about Acceptance when you're doing something that is not your "cup of tea" as they say. Just accept that there it is, and that's how it is, and if you don't like it you know it's going to get better!
