By Dinesh Nath

Spiritual or self-help teaching is a slippery path to walk upon. Being a spiritual teacher comes with a danger that one can have a notion of knowing without knowing. For example, i t is one thing to intellectually understand yoga is good for the healthy body but then doing it every day to keep the body healthy is an entirely different thing. Similarly, it is one thing to understand the benefit of practicing acceptance for the peace of mind then to living the acceptance.  Let's  expand upon it a bit. There are three kinds of understandings viz intellectual, experiential and existential. The first level of understanding is the intellectual understanding which is the most superficial one, like understanding of the mental phenomenon, methods of quietening the mind, and one can easily intellectually understand this knowledge or inner science which is very similar to the understanding of any other field like physics, chemistry, mathematics etc. Here the process mostly involves gath

Stop correcting and start living. The whole business of correcting starts because we could see fault with people or situation in the first place. Energy is focus on others and outer. And in the process we loose time and energy to live the life we always wanted to live. Therefore it is more intelligent and wise to start doing the things and start living in a way we cherish our life rather than correcting people and situation. When we start living the life we always wanted to live that makes us happy, while on the contrary when we focus on correcting people and situations, there is deep seated pain/sadness or anguish which propel us to correct things. If we focus our life energy on living and start doing things we cherish, we feel contented and happy. And once we are happy in doing what we are doing and in life at large we find lesser faults with people and situation. In the process we become happy inspiration for beinging positive change which comes effortlessly. So stop correcting an

There is wisdom beyond every event. There is love beyond every person. There is infinity beyond every object. Sri Sri Ravi Shankar These are beautiful lines spoken by world renowned spiritual leader and humanitarian Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. Though sounds very simple but these few lines are impregnated with vast wisdom which immediately bring the shift in consciousness by little dwelling. Other significance of these ' sutras ', the tenets of wisdom is that it covers most of mind stuff/activity/thought. If carefully deliberated one find mind dwells either on events, people or objects most of the times and all most all over conflicts whether personal or otherwise can be attributed to these three dimension of existence namely events, people and objects. Interestingly, events, people and objects brings two kinds of experiences, pleasurable or miserable. When these attributes brings pleasurable experience mind develop craving for those events, people or objects (e.g. partyin

I stumbled upon this Histomap created by John B. Sparks, was first printed by Rand McNally in 1931. The Histomap describes how different civilization rose and faded with time. Expansion of any civilization represented by horizontal expansion on the graph. It is interesting to note these expansions and spreading of civilization was short lived. e.g. say Roman, Mongols or Greeks etc. Any attempt to expand quickly either militarily or by imperialistically became the extinction of that civilization in quick span of 100-300 years. It seems these kind of military expansion tired these culture and these culture weathered in short span. In this chart only Indian (Hindu) and Chinese civilization has sustained the test of time and one thing which is common to both these Asian giants that they have not gone out militarily or imperialistically around the world. Rather these cultures has spread on different part of the world by teaching and their inherent science of life. This seems to be an

So what it means to be an ideal teacher. We all are student of life as well as serve as teachers to others at many juncture of life. Lots of people come in our contact and learn many thing about us and from us while sometime we take this formal role of teacher. I was writing my teaching philosophy and came up with following write up. Please go through and share your view on being an ideal teacher. This will help me to take different perspective as well as this exercise will help you as well to be a better teacher when situation needed. I am sure many of you remember this pic: Teaching is one of the most noble profession which is mother of all other professions. Since childhood, I have had a passion to learn anything and everything, not only knowledge but also the style of great teachers who shaped me. Now, when I look back; I find, it was not just teaching but a character-building process. This realization has helped shape my temperament to be an inspiring teac

Stress is the root cause of all evils! Stress clogs our intellect, creates smoke-screen on our memory and induces disturbed emotions and under these impaired conditions even sane individual with all the formal training in ethics and moral values falter and indulge in violence at metal, verbal or action level which further fuel the stress in individuals as well as societal level.  In the wake of such times when the news of gun-shooting in US hitting headlines almost everyday, or safety and security of women is being compromised by heinous crime like rape against women and many other kind of emotional violence by creating terror of fluctuating market place and creating financial mess and sky rocketing-inflation, the helpless mind cries out for change. A change which can sooth the mind bring harmony among fellow human beings and in our society. Keeping this intention to create a violence-free and stress-free society, Art of Living Founder Sri Sri Ravi Shankar will join millions ar