Gita's Blog

By Gita Saraydarian

The Ancient Wisdom Teachers were men and women trained in scientific thinking. Their Teachings provided a road map to achieve healthy and balanced physical, emotional, and mental bodies as well as a way to reach the higher consciousness that is beyond the world of the three bodies. The instruments at their disposal, used to measure the effectiveness and results of certain practices, were their own highly developed psychic senses and their life experiences. They did not need MRI scanners; their senses functioned as scanning mechanisms. They could see, feel, smell, touch, and hear the effects of the Teaching in their own lives and in the life of their students! Interestingly, humanity took these guidelines as a matter of religious or spiritual faith until very recently. In the last 25 years or so, we have developed sophisticated machines that could see into our brains and map the changes that take place in our physical mechanism as a result of our physical, emotional, and mental lifestyles.

Take for instance the practice of meditation. Every spiritual discipline teaches some sort of meditation practice as the central theme of its system. Through meditation, we learn to discipline our physical, emotional, and mental bodies and slowly engage our mind to understand life from the level of causes. By so doing, we learn to distinguish the differences between the material life and the life of the non-material. In fact, we begin to appreciate the complexity of the non-material aspects of life and see to what extent our emotions, feelings, thoughts, expectations and such affect us every day in every part of our life. It is only when we consciously raise ourselves above the personality bodies (physical/emotional/mental) that we are able to make dramatic and systemic changes in our life. This is often called the process of building “soul consciousness” and comes about from the practice of serious, scientific meditation, which is the same as serious and deep thinking.

Scientific research is now providing compelling evidence that supports what the Wisdom Teachers presented to us for thousands of years! The research is showing that our brain can grow and be kept healthy through our life choices and practices, especially meditation. The emotion/mind/body connection is no longer an esoteric field; it is being studied seriously by leading Universities and medical professionals. (See below for interesting references).

In a recent lecture on Scientific Meditation, I discussed the basic form of meditation that will engage our mind in a deep and creative way. This kind of meditation is often called “seed thought” meditation. It is one of the most advanced and powerful mental training methods known. Taught by the Great Sage Patanjali, this kind of meditation trains us in clear thinking and slowly helps us develop the ability to link to the higher mind and higher spiritual bodies and levels of consciousness. In modern language, this is also called “critical thinking” or “scientific thinking” where our thought process is not hampered by habit, prejudice, personal agendas, ego, as well as illusions or expectations and so on. Rather, our thinking is guided by the process of discovering cause and effect in the material and non-material worlds.

In the YouTube clip attached below, you will see a brief introduction to four of the five steps of basic meditation. In the next few months, I will be presenting additional lectures on the topic of scientific meditation, parts of which will also be available on YouTube.



In brief, the Five Steps are:
1. Achieve a state of relaxation of physical, emotional, and mental bodies.
2. Disassociate from the three bodies and environment.
3. Think about a serious topic from a level of higher consciousness.
4. Write your thoughts and impressions.
5. Share the energy by sending blessings to others.

Enjoy!
Gita
__________________________________________

The one-hour lecture was presented at TSG Center on January 11th, 2009 and it is available on DVD as well as CD/Downloads.

Further References on Meditation:

1. Patanjali is said to have lived anywhere from 800 BC to 10,000 years ago! His treatise on meditation is explained by Alice A. Bailey in the book The Light of the Soul and remains, in my opinion, one of the most sophisticated and exhaustive treatises on how and why to practice meditation properly.
2. Torkom Saraydarian: The Science of Meditation is a very good introduction to the process of scientific meditation. See also other books on meditation by the same author.
3. TSG University-Meditation Courses focus entirely on the process of scientific meditation in all their courses.
4. We are not destined to have mental health problems, anxieties, disorders and dementia. See the work of Dr. Amen in support of how to achieve optimum brain health.
5. Below are links to exciting and informative articles on scientific research showing the influence of meditation on the brain:
Brain during Meditation
Brain scans show why meditation works
Compassion meditation changes the brain
Meditation increases attention
Meditation alters brain structure
_______________________________________________
Gita Saraydarian is the Founder and President of TSG Foundation, an organization dedicated to the Ageless Wisdom Teachings. For a complete list of past blogs and other writings, click here.
Copyright Notice: Gita’s Blog articles are copyrighted by The Creative Trust, 2009.

By Gita Saraydarian

The idea of "hope" has been in the news the last few years in the United States in the most inspiring and brilliant fashion. Millions of people have enthusiastically responded to the call of hope from Barak Obama. No matter what the pundits and cynics said and trumpeted into our daily news, people paid attention to the message of hope and, slowly, they started to follow with their hearts, minds, checkbooks, and feet.

Hope speaks to our hearts and we respond because this is one element without which we have no life. Once we find someone who gives us hope and demonstrates hope, we fall in love with that person and the possibilities that he or she represents for us. It is difficult, if not impossible, to fall in love with someone who is full of doom and gloom. Even if we find a way to "fall in love" with such a person, we end up resenting and hating the person and we even hate ourselves and what we have become. This is certainly not a good place to be emotionally or mentally because it blocks our creative and life-giving impulses and makes us into spiritually “dead” people.

Why? Because we want hope; pure and simple. No matter how philosophically sophisticated and inellectually seductive are the arguments and discussions against hope and the condition of having “an over optimistic” view of life, we still want the stuff of hope. We do not want to succumb to hopelessness and misery, no matter how hard life gets. Inherent in every human being is the element of hope. Take that away, and we fall into deep despair. This is why we respond to it; we are genetically engineered to thrive on hope, just as we thrive with love and joy and kindness.

Hope is more than a useful political slogan; its helps us grow and expand in subtle ways that are deeply spiritual and meaningful in the depths of our souls. Here are some excerpts on hope that I love and wanted to share with you:

“Hope prevents negative thoughtforms from building themselves within your aura. Negative thoughtforms are the cause of many failures. Hope creates a sphere of consciousness in which negative thoughtforms cannot breed. When the consciousness is free from negative thoughtforms, higher impressions can reach it and register themselves upon it.”

When we seriously entertain negative thoughts, we embed these forms into our aura. In turn, they become blockages for the flow of energy within our bodies. We feel the weight of them and we feel disconnected from the world. We develop a sense of distance and, at the meantime, our entire world shrinks to a narrow and tight circle that suffocates us physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.

“A person, a group, or a nation advances by hope. Hope creates a proper atmosphere in which growth and development become possible.”

How interesting is this statement that we advance by hope! It makes sense to me. As long as I have hope for my future and my expansion of understanding, I keep trying to search for ways to find that understanding and the answers to my questions.

“Those people who change crises into a process of purification and opportunities for transformation, victory, and achievement are called "the hopes" of the nation and the world, who stand in front of humanity as paths leading toward greater achievements, new courage, daring, and striving.”

This is so true. No matter how people try to undermine those who give us hope, it is those very people who give hope who will eventually triumph. We are all silently cheering for them because this is what we want to dare to have. We celebrate their courage and daring to hope. When we see how others triumph even in dire circumstances, we start to do the same. We are always waiting for those kinds of people to lead the way for us. This is so interesting. I often ask, “what does it take for people to dare and to question and to go beyond the ordinary?” It is usually when they can be inspired by someone or something that gives them hope and the power of the possible. Someone opens the path for us, and we willingly submerge ourselves into that lovely stream of hope.

How do you increase hope in your life? Here are10 ways:

1.Never hope for something harmful, neither for yourself nor for others.
2.Try to see positive elements in any person or event.
3.To increase our hope, we must also read the biographies of successful and victorious people.
4.daily, for a few minutes, visualize success, victory, and the manifestation of beauty in ourselves and in the world as a whole.
5.Do not run your life on the gears of defeat.
6.Do not feel sorry if you failed or were defeated. (There is always a good lesson even in failure.)
7.Whenever you see difficulties on your path and feel discouraged, look back and see how many miles you already crossed on the path of your progress.
8.Seek the company of successful and enlightened people.
9.Sit by a river and watch it flow.
10.Try to face all your labors as if the One Self is working through you for the benefit of the All-Self.

“When you limit your thoughts about yourself, you cut your contacts with the opportunity found in the One Self. Feel and know that it is the One Self Who thinks and acts through you. Recognize the One Self, and free yourself from the limitations of your separate self. All victories are achieved by the One Self; all failures are met by your separate self.”

I wish for you a day filled with hope. No matter what is happening in your life right now, remember that you can overcome any difficulty with the rays of hope. The whole creation celebrates when we are filled with hope and are able to overcome difficulties. This is the way of evolution, growth, and expansion. With hope, we travel the path of finding our own true voice.

Dare to dream and dare to Hope! That is what makes you the joy that you are.

Gita

For a free download of the entire Chapter on Hope, please click here for PDF copy.
_________________________

All quoted materials are excerpted from Challenge for Discipleship by Torkom Saraydarian.

Copyright: The Creative Trust. All rights reserved.

Gita Saraydarian is a spiritual teacher and the Founder and President of TSG Foundation, an organization dedicated to the Ageless Wisdom Teachings. For a complete list of past blogs and other writings, click here.