Postcards from the Funny Farm

When I ran across Dorian’s Blog “Buddha of Hollywood,” I was instantly curious.  Since I live so close to Hollywood and know a few “oddballs” that have come out of that town, I figured I had a tiger by the tail with this blogger.  Since then we have exchanged emails a few times and I have learned of his interest in meditation.  While I meditate and practice TM as well as the Relaxation Response in my life, I found out his knowledge was in some different aspects.  I was pleased when he agreed to 2 part guestblog on meditation.  I hope you enjoy his writing as much as I do.

When my friend Damien asked me to guestblog on self improvement, the first thing I did was to go to my book shelf and pull out my old psychology books. I ended up with a pile that would take me a year to research and I thought to myself “Well, this is not going to work.”  I’m not going to be able to train somebody to do psychoanalysis and therapy by writing blog posts.

Considering that 90% of the daily psychological bruises we are facing are small incidents, stuff not worthy taking it to a therapist.  (You wouldn’t go to a surgeon to put a band aid on your finger cut, would you?) Then only about 10% of our problems are of that magnitude that requires professional help.

Instead of getting too deep into the academic aspect of psychology, I thought that I could come up with something more practical.

The following posts are going to give you a series of tools to deal with the small stressors of the daily life. They will teach you how to be more relaxed, give you more energy, prop up your self confidence and optimism, and make you fell better and more enthusiastic about your life. Watch for the posts in this series, I hope they will benefit you.

Part I – The Concept of Relaxation Meditation

I wish I could come up with another word for meditation since what we are going to learn and practice has a lot more to offer than the classical meditation techniques.
Let’s say that we are going to learn how to use our mind, brain if you want to call it so, at a higher level and capacity. We are currently using only about 10% of our mental capacity. That means that using just 20% would double your brain output. Can you imagine what it would be like to function at 100% mental ability?
The problem we are facing as human beings is not that we are not equipped to deal with our daily problems or that modern life has become unmanageable and our brains can not keep up with it. Our problem is that we are running our brain with both the acceleration and the brake pedals to the floor at the same time. The gains in performance and improvements that I’m taking about achieving are not some miracle supernatural voodoo trick but they can be made.

You are not going to gain anything that you already don’t have, just the knowledge and ability of mastering your own mind.

We will start understanding the “Relaxation Meditation” in this post by examining the concept.

RM is relaxing your mind in a controlled, voluntary fashion. Sounds simple enough, but there are a lot of people in the field who don’t distinguish between physical and psychical relaxation, this is an important point to make.  RM means relaxing the mind as well as the body.

Have you ever worked on a project so difficult and so demanding that sitting in front of your computer screen or a piece of paper your brain just spaces out and you find yourself staring at the screen with your mind completely empty?  As I close this post, consider the benefits to RM:

Benefits. Even if you practice only this simple form of meditation the benefits you will incur are tremendous. From dealing with the daily stress to improve brain function to improved immune system, this meditation is essential in your mental and physical well being. The simple benefits like improved sleeping and improved energy will be apparent very soon after you start your practice. The more profound changes will take a longer practice time but your rewards will be worth the time and effort.  In my next guestpost here at Postcards from the Funny Farm I will dive right in and show the practice of RM.  So watch for it here next week!

Boy that is sometimes easier said than done. Have you ever got so uppity at someone only to find out later you were wrong? It’s a bad feeling let me tell you. Kind of like when your baby has a really bad diaper and for the life of you you can’t remember where your wife put the wipes. Tonight I waited on the phone for the longest time with the bank thinking I had an unapproved transaction on my statement for $15. After going through it with three people on the fraud line, I realized the mistake was mine … wow.

I think I’d like to be the nice person for a change. Do you think people say that about you? We all get frustrated and we all have issues. Come on, let’s face it … we ALL do. Instead of bumming the world out about it, how about we decide to be a nice voice on the phone, a nice face passing on the street, or a nice “voice” of writing on internet comments. This world is so screwed up and there is more pain around you than you could imagine. Let’s focus on that “be nice” energy point and see where it gets us. Are you game?

Before I close I just want to encourage all my readers about an opportunity to write on an exciting subject. It pretty much applies to anyone, so everyone can go for it. It’s for my current contest and you don’t have to do anything special, just link to this site. The prizes are pretty good I think and everyone who enters will get their share of new traffic. More details here.

My mom and I have been talking a lot lately about the book A New Earth. If you haven’t heard of it yet, you soon will. Oprah has fully endorsed its author, Eckhart Tolle, and we all know that what Oprah endorses, sells like crazy. But Tolle is a very humble guy. He claims his ideas were all around him and that he didn’t invent them. Pretty humble for a guy who’s probably going to become the next psychology writer billionairre. More and more people I talk to about the book tell me they have either read it, or want to read it. But this guy isn’t hype, he has great vision in his book. If you haven’t read it yet, you should.

I remember getting a similar feeling about a book when I read M. Scott Peck’s psychology book: The Road Less Traveled. ” When I read great books like these, so full of truth and help, it’s like relaxation comes from he page, into my eyes and throughout my body spreading calm and joy. I’m still on chapter one of A New Earth, but what I have read so far is pure genius. My goal is to write a review of it very soon, so stay tuned to Postcards from the Funny Farm for that. I want to do this to spread the news about this amazing little book. Tolle’s insights on spiritual meaning in the world around us are really revolutionary and life-changing. Whether you are going through something as simple as trying to experience life more or something as serious as working through drug rehab and the like, this book brings out a strength you didn’t know you had.

At any rate, my mom told me a story from his book the other day that really intrigued me. She also watches the author every Monday she can on Oprah’s website where he does a regular video “town hall” style class where people can participate and ask questions. She gave me some good advice from him regarding negative people. Lately I’ve been getting some bad energy from people in all areas of my life and it’s beginning to worry me. Why am I attracting this sort of energy? Is it the way I talk? Is it the things I say? How do you deal with negative people anyway? We’re supposed to stay positive ourselves but what about when we can’t control bad energy around us. As I’ve speculated on here in the past, we should ignore it but as some of you commented, that isn’t always the best option. There is an alternative to ignoring Tolle offers that I prefer. It’s a phrase to have waiting in your back pocket. When negative people spout all sorts of negative things, just tell them this:

Is that so?

You can respond without reacting. Reacting is the “ego” as Tolle calls it. Responding is more of the being who you are inside coming out. There are so many good energies in my life these days now too, but why is it that I allow the bad ones to bring me down? It isn’t even rational to pay the most attention to negativisim. Another book by Tolle is called simply: “Stillness Speaks.” I would agree with that, wouldn’t you?

Anyone coming into your emotional space and saying “blah blah blah (something negative - you fill in the blank here)” should never take your good energy. Simply nod your head and say “is that so?” I love this mantra and I intend to use it from now on. If you tell me the sky is falling, I can say calmly “is that so?” If you tell me something is impossible I will say “WHY?’ Then, if you tell me why I will say: “is that so?” If you make a point on a forum I don’t agree with, there is no need to argue or even debate. All I need to do is consider what you have said and then say: “is that so?” Think about it, for real life or even social internet connections, it’s a pretty good mantra! Revolutionary thoughts like these take meditation. Here is a video I ran across of Tolle talking about getting that into our daily lives.

How are you reacting to bad energy in your life?