I can’t recommend ‘The power of now’ enough!

If I had to pick only one book as a lifelong companion, it’d be ‘The power of now’ by ‘Eckhart Tolle’.

Like wine, this book gets better as it ages. I’ve had this for almost seven years now. Throughout all those years, the book has shaped me in the best possible ways.

For, anyone interested in spirituality, ‘The power of now’ is the comprehensive beginner’s guide. For those who are anxious or depressed, this book could give some practical solutions.

Here are some invaluable gems I got out of this book. Enjoy!

1. Time isn’t real:

It isn’t a philosophical statement which is subject to individual judgement. Time literally does not exist. We made it up for convenience. When we think of the past, we do that now. Same goes to the future.

2. Inner Body awareness:

It is said that, Jesus ascended to heaven with his body. He never abandoned it. This saying marks the time period when humans started seeing the body as less of a hindrance to spirituality and more of an ally.

Inner body awareness is a great practice to not lose yourself amidst the chaos of life. Eckhart Tolle dedicated a whole chapter towards the inner body and talks about how your body could be a great vessel for being more present. If you are looking for an app to help you with inner body practices, I suggest Headspace. It has a whole different section about getting in touch with the body, and its really good.

3. Sound as a portal for presence:

Sound and silence, both can be great pointers to help us be more present. Listen to the various types of sound around you. Focus, and you will feel more present. An even better exercise is to listen to the silence. This will calm your mind down.

4. Anger management:

As a young adult, I used to complain a lot and get angry at my parents all the time. But as I kept practicing inner body awareness, I started to catch myself whenever I would start getting angry, I am calmer and more peaceful. If anger doesn’t serve a purpose, we have the choice to let it go. Mindfulness practices enable us to exercise that choice.

5. Your emotions are not ‘You’:

I’ve come to realize that my emotions are just chemical reactions inside my body. They influence my mood and fuel my thoughts. But they are not me. I don’t have to act upon them. I am not sad, I feel sad. I am not lazy; I just have a habit of laziness.

Obviously, I highly recommend this book to anyone. The world would be a better place if more people got some control over their ego. At a time when we are so disconnected with reality that we are ruining our own home planet and waging war against own species, this book is a must read to regain some sanity.

 

Humans are Running on Outdated Software: Part 2

In part one of this post I talk about Endorphin, Dopamine and Serotonin. Go check out that first if you haven’t already- here

I said that serotonin can be dangerous. But how? Well, it can make us want status so much that we forget to care about other humans. Which is not good. Corporations are sometimes on the victim side of this as their serotonin boosted Executives forget about employee’s well being.

If you feel like you need more confidence, what you need is a boost in serotonin. An easy way to get that is to by keeping good posture.

It’s time to talk about Oxytocin now. It’s often referred to as the ‘love chemical’ as it gives us sense of bond and fondness towards someone else. Oxytocin can make you want to do good for another person and feel good for it. It created comrade in armed forces and other organizations. Lack of Oxytocin and too much dopamine and serotonin in an organization may lead to too much competitiveness where everyone is trying to one up the other person. But boost oxytocin and people become cooperative and creativity flows.

There’s one more brain chemical that I want to talk about briefly. It’s called Cortisol.

Cortisol is anxiety, stress, feelings of threat. I makes our heart pump faster and our blood go quicker. It prepares us for fight or flight. It’s what pro’s call excitement before a performance and beginners call nervousness.

Cortisol is awesome for all this reasons and more. But sustained exposure to it all the time can cause from fatigue and headache to various diseases. It can generate bad mood which in turn ruins marriages and disturbs children’s mental health.

What causes a sustained overexposure?

Overly competitive workplace, low job security, anything that causes feelings of threat- like maybe comparing your humble life with the great life everyone else seem to have on display for Instagram etc.

All the other animals benefit immensely from these brain chemicals. For example, a herd deer will stop eating when they feel a Lion approaching, run for their lives with high doses of cortisol in their blood and then rest when safe. Their cortisol level will go down and they will start eating and chilling again.

But, we humans don;t live in an organic natural environment like that anymore. We are in a more advanced and sophisticated society.

We have excess of food and we can eat easily whenever we want. So there’s no need for us to be stuffing all the food at once as our dopamine tells us to. We abuse the good feelings of dopamine by watching excessive porn, gambling and staying an unusual amount of time in social media sites. All of these are harmful and should be avoided.

We live in a society where every workplace is highly competitive and there’s always backstabbers (read Lions) lurking around. For this, we are in a dangerously high dosage of cortisol- all the time! This chemical was not designed to fight in this new environment we created and now its ruining our mental and physical health and relationships.

That is why I say we humans are running on outdated softwares. Do we need an upgrade? Maybe! But also maybe not! As we can always make conscious changes in our actions. We can chose not to overeat and we can chose not to waste our lives in social media. We can refuse to work in a stressful workplace or instead we can meditate and learn how to control our own stress levels.

Socrates said, “know thyself”. This is more imperative now than ever. We need to learn about how we function so that we don’t become a victim of our own system.

See you in the next post 🙂