Enjoying The Joy

Light is Light

2012-03-03T15:13:00.000+02:00

"In the right light, at the right time, everything is extraordinary." ~Aaron Rose

My motto is to lighten up to become enlightened because due to my inquisitive nature, I easily become too serious and feel the heaviness of responsibility of my own development on my shoulders. Enlightenment makes us feel light. Maybe that is why I love it when someone makes me feel like a feather when they lift me up when dancing. I also love to swim for the reason that it makes me feel weightless. Lightness makes me feel free or freedom makes me feel light.

People who make me laugh or allow me to make myself laugh are precious to me. But what makes me laugh today might not work tomorrow. Today I might be in a sarcastic mood and tomorrow I might find it "the lowest form of wit." Today I might laugh at some sexual jokes and tomorrow I might find them insensitive and lacking of taste.

I guess it all traces back to being present in the present moment and not taking oneself or others so seriously - we're all going to die anyway and usually people have good - or at least ignorant - intentions. What helps is the right kind of biochemical balance. Is the sun shining, have you slept well, have you received physical touch, have you gotten all the important vitamins and minerals in your nutrition, have you avoided toxins etc.?

Let's help each other to spread light in the form of positivity, telling jokes and laughing at them, helping each other to live lighter in any way we can. "Dare to reach out your hand into the darkness, to pull another hand into the light." ~Norman B. Rice

Love Burn-out

2012-02-20T19:51:00.000+02:00

"Expand your definition, allow your conception of love to go beyond your emotional needs, and your whole perspective will change. You won't see failure and defeat. Far from it - you'll see the perfection. At every moment, from the second you were conceived in the womb, your life has been about love. Your existence is an expression of love, the only real expression it can have. Everything else is an illusion." - Deepak Chopra

Don't give more than oozes out of you naturally. If you don't like what you naturally emit, change your nature, and don't expect your nature to change in an instant. In the meantime, breathe in and breathe out. Concentrate on your heart chakra and let its light shine upon yourself and others.

You don't stay in a relationship because of children or your pride or anything of the sort. You stay together with your partner because your soul has chosen this partner to fulfill your mission in life. You don't continue the relationship because you are afraid that you wouldn't find a better one or because you are addicted to the pleasure that is left in the relationship. If the choice was not made by your soul but by your ego, you might be with the wrong person but you could still make the relationship right if you wanted to.

Ask yourself how can you make your soul to feel at home right now. If it cannot feel at home with this person, take time to be alone and purify your heart by spending time with it, by giving attention to it. Let it experience everything it has to feel before you can let go of it all and start anew - with the same or a new person. And remember what Carl Jung has said: "Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves."

Unbearable Compassion

2012-02-12T14:17:00.001+02:00

"It can be said that there is one general rule for everybody. In order to approach this system seriously, people must be disappointed, first of all in themselves, that is to say, in their powers, and secondly in all the old ways... A man... if he is a scientist should be disappointed in his science. If he is a religious man he should be disappointed in his religion." - Gurdjieff (by Ouspensky)

If man is a lover, he should be disappointed in love, because that is the only way to get deeper into the experience of love. In other words, in order to become a better lover, one should be disappointed in his ability to love. When disappointments in you or your partner come, don't get discouraged. It could be a sign that you are becoming better lovers. I think it is very important to remember this nowadays when it's so easy to meet people and start relationships. Sometimes you grow and move forward by meeting new people and having short relationships, and sometimes you are presented with another kind of possibility - a possibility for sharing a lifetime together. A relationship can end easily but it always has consequences.

Sometimes the disappointment in love comes in the form of being unable to receive love. For some people compassion can be so overwhelming that they cannot receive it because they feel they are losing control if they cannot "payback" the love that is given to them in abundance. I want to use the compassion I experience to pass it forward as best as I can, and not feel inadequate if I cannot, for a reason or another, show it the same way it was demonstrated to me. All of us might not be able to be compassionate with the person we have received the love from in other ways than wishing them well. Yet, we can always let the love flow to the outside world by paying the compassionate deeds forward in other ways so that we allow our lives to be abundant with love.

Can you bear compassion right now? If so, how can you spread it?

Love and Money

2012-01-26T00:38:00.002+02:00

"Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not money, I am become as a sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not money, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not money, it profiteth me nothing. Money suffereth long, and is kind; money envieth not; money vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things... And now abideth faith, hope, money, these three; but the greatest of these is money." - I Corinthians XIII (adapted) in the Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell

The film "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps" was a good reminder of the fact that even if anything is possible, we should always pursue our dreams in a wise and loving way. I believe, that most people try to pursue their dreams in a wise and loving way but don't always succeed, and then they resort to unwise quick-fixes. Why is it that so often people get a somehow imbalanced relationship with money? I think it is because the people have, indeed, placed money on the most important place in their lives - like that sarcastic modification of the Bible verse from the Corinthians reveals. Fear (=money) has taken the place of love.

We seem to either struggle with our inner worth or we are too cocky thinking that we are more valuable than others. This unawareness manifests itself in an ambiguous relationship with money. What complicates matters even more is that with money we can get many nice things that seem to make life easier and more enjoyable. I believe that abundance is our true nature, but holding on to it, is not. This still doesn't mean that you should be careless with money. You are not careless with your love or health, so why should you be that way with your money?

My way of looking at money is that, at the same time I'm working on increasing my material wealth, I'm also working on getting along with less. The real freedom comes from not needing anything material to be in a state of bliss - even if while being in human form it's pretty nice to enjoy all our senses - and according to my experience money helps in that. Eckhart Tolle has said, that those who have not found their true wealth, which is the radiant joy of Being and the deep, unshakable peace that comes with it, are beggars, even if they have great material wealth. So, I urge you to get your priorities right: be sensible but not fearful with money (remember that you can't take your material possessions with you when you die), love and enjoy virtuously all that the world has to offer.

‎"If you have 'needing money' in your vibration, then you will keep attracting needing money. You have to find a way of being happy NOW, feeling good NOW, and being in joy NOW, without the money, because those great feelings are how you will feel with the money. Money doesn't bring happiness - but happiness brings money." -Rhonda Byrne

Living the Dream

2012-01-19T16:15:00.001+02:00

"We need to give each other the space to grow, to be ourselves, to exercise our diversity. We need to give each other space so that we may both give and receive such beautiful things as ideas, openness, dignity, joy, healing, and inclusion." ~ Max de Pree

I was struggling to figure out how to organize my life the best so that I can live my dream, until I realized that I don't have to change anything in my outer circumstances to do that; all I have to do is to embrace the fact that I have already everything I want. I just have to make myself ready to live the dream. In other words, I need to develop the virtues I need in order to live my dream. Very often we have a rosy idea of a life we want to live - including a certain kind of work and a partner, and in my case a child that would make the dream life possible. Yet, it is just a fantasy impossible to fulfill because I couldn't live it true due to my flawed character.

Ever since I realized that I am not a victim of life but an active creator of it, I've understood that I'm the only block in the way of fulfilling my dreams. What makes life beautiful? I would say the combination of love and free will. We can use our free will to love or to divide. Dream life, therefore, is formed through specific demonstrations of all kinds of love. I feel like I already have the dream career I want and I'm already married to the father of my future child even if I'm single in the real world. Knowing the core values and traits that I have and want to develop are enough to attract the right kind of career and person in my life whenever the time is right.

Relationships are funny: we crave for them when we don't have one, and when we have one, too often we take them for granted and get bored. So, I see my situation like this: I'm in a long-distance relationship with the love of my life. I'll be true to him no matter how he behaves right now. He needs to do what he needs to do now. I'm ready and I can wait (because I'm busy bit by bit building my dream career) - like he would be on a long business trip. If either one of us falls down, I know we'll get up again, and one day when we have been up long enough, also the physical distance disappears and we are united. Not by a wedding ring or a house or a baby or lawful agreements but by love that is impenetrable.

How do you know?

2012-01-15T01:05:00.000+02:00

"When you meet the other half of your soul, you will know in a flash why it hasn't worked out with anyone else until now and be grateful to all those who rejected you and let you go. You will see each one of them was an angel guiding you in the right direction. Take that view point now and be at peace." - Jackson Kiddard

I’m a very curious person and I ask questions all the time – either from myself or from others. I crave to understand. Increasing the awareness is my greatest passion – increasing it through and for love specifically. That is why I have asked myself countless times: "How do you know who is The One?"

I have come to the conclusion that, first, you have to know yourself – and that takes a lot of soul searching if you wish to have the correct interpretation. You have to be as honest as possible about who you are and who you want to become. Then, follow your heart. I believe that there are many compatible partners but only one who is the correct one right now.

And because I’m a hopeless romantic, I make the map of my life even more challenging by insisting that there exists The One for me. There are many people who have crossed our paths before and that is why we feel greater affinity with some people than others. However, it is only with The One that we have been connected from the beginning of time and we will spend the Eternity together.

We keep changing forms but the connection is never lost and every time we learn to read our maps correctly, we find each other again. Every time the encounter is as surprising, magical and beautiful like it would be happening for the first time. Only the feeling of home reveals that we have met countless times before or rather we have always been connected.

New Year's Resolution

2012-01-02T12:23:00.000+02:00

At Christmas I played the Transformation Game for the first time. It is a fun “self-help game” that helps you to make happen the transformation you want for your life. The only thing I want from life is a constant virtuous and euphoric existence – nothing more, nothing less. I thought this would be a perfect New Year’s Resolution.

I have been so fortunate that I’ve already been blessed with the material things I have longed for and I well know their transient nature by now. The fulfilment they promise is temporal and after the fulfilment has passed, you might end up feeling even emptier than you felt in the first place.

I still have goals and hopes but not desires, which I would have to fulfil no matter what. I would, for example, love to have my novel published if it will be a meaningful contribution to this world. I mean that I wouldn’t want my novel to get published if it wouldn’t be able to help anyone of its readers to feel my empathy towards their human existence or give insights, or help them to solve a problem in their own lives, or inspire them to fulfil their highest potential or to make their dream a reality, or simply entertain them and keep them away from doing something deconstructive. These are the same goals I have as a dream coach even if the greatest wish is to help people to help themselves and other living beings.

In my private life, I’d love to be able to know that I have found the soul mate, with whom I’m ready to face whatever life would throw at us – and it would be reciprocated. I would love us to form a team that would naturally grow into a family including biological family and friends and their children – whether they’d be physically near or far. However, if the Universe decides that I can better increase my awareness through and for love as a single, I’ll do my best to embrace that too.

My wish with this blog post is to ask blessings upon all your New Year’s resolutions that will make our world a more beautiful place for us all.

The New Notebook

2011-12-23T11:04:00.002+02:00

"The best love is the kind that awakens the soul and makes us reach for more, that plants a fire in our hearts and brings peace to our minds, and that's what you've given me. That's what I hope to give to you forever. I love you. I'll be seeing you." - The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks

One of the most exciting times in my life is when I start a new notebook. I just got a beautiful notebook as a Christmas gift, and I've been sniffing it and holding it in my hands like it was a long lost lover. To start a new notebook is a kind of a holy moment for me. I feel awe in the presence of the blank papers. I believe that it is always a start of a new path and how I begin, is highly significant. This belief makes me humble and excited about the mystery that will gradually unfold on the pages.

I want to find the right kind of meditative quotation that will pave the way for a richer future. Maybe I will write my motto in life - lighten up to become enlightened - on the first page so that the notebook will be true to my real self and will support my mission - increasing my awareness through and for love. I could also add the title of this blog - enjoying the joy - and the name of my company - virtuous arts - to the first page because I still wish to continue to create and enjoy the joy through virtuous arts.

However, I would also like to have a new specific theme for this notebook and that way for the coming year as well. Things that come to mind are health, work, and a family in a broad sense. I guess all these could come under the title of Peaceful Passion.

I wish you all a Peaceful Christmas and a Passionate New Year 2012! Thanks for staying tuned. :)

"Will you do something for me, please? Just picture your life for me? 30 years from now, 40 years from now? What's it look like?" - The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks

Dream Consulting

2011-12-10T11:33:00.003+02:00

"Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it..." — Elizabeth Gilbert, "Eat, Pray, Love"

My company Virtuous Arts was established to help people to create and enjoy arts, and that way help joy to spread. I don’t think I could have a nicer job than helping people to fulfil their dreams. It is truly an honour to assist people in dreaming and manifesting their dreams. Manifesting dreams is not always easy, and I can't give you easy answers and formulas to fulfil your dreams instantly. Patience and individual effort are almost always required. However, the effort can be fun like it is for children to learn to walk, and patience is required less and less if you enjoy the steps along the way to your goal.

I find it sometimes hard to balance between developing the egos and not upsetting them too much. I do my best to show that I love and respect the people I teach or consult even if I'm constructively criticizing their actions. People come to me usually to learn or develop a skill or change a life circumstance, which means they want to change, but often times the inner resistance to change still exists strong - at least in the realm of the subconscious.

I want to remind myself and others that we are all in the life long school of joy, and developing our egos should always be in the service of increasing everyone's joy. If you have lost sight of the joy, you need to loosen up a bit, or if instead you find yourself getting bored, you'll need to demand more of yourself. You only need to stay aware and present, and you'll be able to maintain the right balance.

“Observing that all change is based on nonchange is tremendously important. It points out that your existence, which is enmeshed in change, must be rooted in a deeper state of being that never changes.” – Deepak Chopra

Addicted to Love

2011-12-01T09:22:00.000+02:00

Can love be harmful? Not the unconditional one, but the romantic love for sure!

Love can become an addiction just like alcohol or cigarettes. Addiction is the memory of pleasure, as Deepak Chopra has succinctly put it. There is nothing wrong with pleasure or its memory, but if it starts to control you, it is really not a pleasure anymore. You have then become its slave and you can't actually even enjoy it. If you are in love with someone, you have to remember that you can never own anyone. You can only love someone and hope your love to be reciprocated. If the other person doesn't respond to your love, you have two options: to wait or to forget. Either way, you will also have to let go. If you can't let go of the result of fulfilled waiting or forgetting, you could be addicted to it.

How do you know if you're addicted to love or not? Answer these two questions:

1. Do you find yourself unable to stop obsessing over an ex-partner or someone who has rejected you in the past even though it is disrupting your daily life?
2. Do you use the quest for love to avoid dealing with pressure or your responsibilities?

If you said yes to either one, you might be an addict.

"Love addicts are attracted to the passion and excitement of a relationship, the high emotion... It makes them feel alive and desired. ... Love addicts are in love with love and relentlessly seek the security of a relationship. Emotionally they go too far too fast every time and mistake intensity for intimacy. The rush of falling in love that love addicts experience releases the same pleasure hormones in the brain as cocaine, and can be similarly addictive." Marie Claire, August 2011 Issue

So, what to do when you have become addicted to love? One option is to deal with it is to write the chart of your romantic relationships. Becoming aware of yourself and the patterns of your love life may reveal something that you need to work on in order to live a more fulfilled life with more addiction-free love.

The Fairy Tale Continues

2011-11-16T21:44:00.000+02:00

This is a continuation of the tale I started telling on the 20th of September 2010 (http://enjoyingthejoy.blogspot.com/2010/09/virtues-for-romance.html):

The boy who had felt excited about the greatest challenge he had ever been confronted with was beginning to feel weary. His battle for the Good against the Evil of mediocrity, virtues as his weapon, wasn't looking too good. He hardly remembered the time he had been able to share with his princess before going off to the battle.

He had followed the advice from The Wise as best as he had been able to, but staying aware and focused on the purity of the feeling he had for his princess and their possible lifetime - and perhaps even all eternity - together had turned out to be more difficult than he had expected. He had gotten distracted by some other beautiful people he had met in the battlefield and now he felt like he had failed.

But then he looked again a photo of his heart's chosen one and remembered The Wise saying that if he would not give up, one day he would wake up his mind and heart fully cleansed from all impurity and then the blissful existence with his Soulmate would become a possibility. Feeling of home pervaded his whole being as he dreamt about holding her in his arms. Suddenly it became clear to him that the war here was over for him and, with the courage he had gathered during the battles, he would now enable him to fight for the heart of his princess in her presence. It was time for him to return and declare his love for her.

How she would respond to his declaration, and what would happen afterwards, was impossible to know but he knew that this leap of faith would help him in developing his virtues no matter what the result would be.

Getting Up Again

2011-11-12T10:44:00.001+02:00

‎"The truth is that nobody moves forward without falling down. It's how you pick yourself up that makes the difference." -Deepak Chopra

If you or someone close to you have acted in an unskillful way, see the beauty in it and forgive. Then confront yourself or the other person about it in a loving way. Behind our every action is a beautiful need that we are trying to fulfill. So get to that need instead of dwelling on the mess that has been made in trying to fulfill it.

I have not always behaved as skillfully as I could, and sometimes I become really upset with myself. I know, however, that getting upset will not help anybody. How to behave in a constructive and joyful way after one has screwed up? To start with, one has to understand what has exactly gone wrong. Sometimes it is just a vague feeling that things could have gone smoother. But after listening for a while to one's body, thoughts and feelings as objectively as possible - like as an outsider - one knows what is wrong. When it is clear what has gone wrong, it is time to take action to repair the damage as much as possible and not to get deeper into the swamp. Finally one can breathe in deeply and acknowledge the shared wisdom of all the mystics: all is well. Things could be better but, hey, next time you'll know better!

The best present we have been given is this life of ours, and what we can do in return to show our appreciation for it, is of course, to live it to the best of our ability. As Eckhart Tolle shows us in his magnificent book "The Power of Now", in the present moment, problems do not exist and that we are already complete and perfect.

"Forgiving does not erase the bitter past. A healed memory is not a deleted memory. Instead, forgiving what we cannot forget creates a new way to remember. We change the memory of our past into a hope for our future." - Lewis B. Smedes

Focusing the Aim

2011-11-08T13:58:00.001+02:00

"It is impossible for you to do what is right in your heart and it's wrong for someone else. One right action is right for the whole world. Come to this place of knowing exactly what you are not and rest in completely in what you are. That's the innocence in you. When you come to this place, everything flows for you." - Mooji

A very dear friend of mine had her first baby three days ago. Witnessing that beautiful miracle of life reminded me of my aim to become a writer mom. I've been conscious of that desire for at least ten years now. I've had other interests as well, which have probably side-tracked me every now and then, but have still been complementary to these goals.

I've been trying to find the right steps to reach this aim by planning many different scenarios after it didn't happen naturally with my ex-husband. Not so long ago, I realized that I won't find the answers by trying to think through all the options. I just have to find myself. I don't know if you know what I mean, but I get lost in my thoughts very easily. I start to think what I need to do, what other people expect of me etc. I realize now that those thoughts and expectations are not me. In order to find the real me, I just need to relax and breathe. By concentrating on my breathing and getting aware of my body, I find the real me.

Then, from this genuine place of being, I can ask what is my real goal in life? Increase my awareness through and for love, and lighten up to become enlightened, which I have thought manifests itself the best as a writer mom. When I concentrate my attention on that what should my life look like? Light, full of committed love and creativity. Is it that now? No. Why? Because I'm trying to make decisions that would allow my life to look like that instead of just being light, fully committed to creativity and love.

I believe that my life could be light and full of love right now - even without my own biological child and an established career as a writer if, instead of trying to convince myself and others, I would just accept myself and my situation as it is. Why am I then making it harder for myself? Why is it so hard to accept myself and my situation? Because I want proof that I am worthy of reaching my aim. In order to love myself, I think that I have to make everyone else happy first. I believe other people when they say that only I can make them happy, even if deep down I know it's not true. My insecure ego just wants to feel loved and listens to those cries like the word of God.

So, in order to get back to the flow, I will need to do right actions or refrain from actions altogether. Not to listen to what other people want or what they think I want and need. I need to focus on self-love and respect.

Breathing in the Pain

2011-11-01T09:49:00.002+02:00

"Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things." - Winston Churchill

I think the most of our problems in this life result from either trying avoid pain, sugarcoat it or get a rid of it. The only constructive way to deal with pain is to accept as it is and forgive the person who you think has caused the pain and acknowledge that this person is ultimately you. You have some sort of beliefs that say that if this or that happens, it is painful. Of course there exist "objective" physical pain as well but I believe most of it is psychological.

Deepak Chopra instructs that letting go of toxic emotions is the essence of learning how to forgive:

1. Taking responsibility for your emotion.
2. Witnessing the emotion.
3. Defining or labelling the emotion.
4. Expressing the emotion.
5. Sharing the emotion.
6. Releasing the emotion through ritual.
7. Celebrating the release and moving on.

In yoga there is a belief that if the energy flows freely in the seven chakras - energy centers - of our bodies, we won't get sick. We can help the energy centers to function better through massage, relaxation and breathing exercises. We can also aim to prevent pain by leading a healthy lifestyle, eating a balanced diet and getting enough sleep, but we can never fully prevent pain from entering our lives because we can never fully control other people's free wills and nature - neither do we usually control ourselves fully either.

Just acknowledge the pain for what it is, express it, share it and then release it. If you try to resist it, it will cause an energy blockage that will weaken you and make the pain even more painful. Pain is a mass of sensations, not a thing that is best experienced as it is and not to get caught up with thoughts about it. It keeps changing from one sensation to another. I hope one could face the pain with confidence ready to relinquish any resistance one may feel towards it through one's breathing. Once the pain has been acknowledged, one can start becoming aware of all the pleasure that is going on in the present moment, like sunlight on one's face, the smell of freshly brewed coffee, the warmth of another human being and so forth. There is always something pleasurable in one’s experience – no matter how subtle. If only one could let the pain be one of the things that one is aware at this particular moment in time, allowing all sensations to come into being and pass away moment by moment.

"Fear is the memory of pain. Addiction is the memory of pleasure. Freedom is beyond both." - Deepak Chopra

Dancing to Bliss

2011-10-05T10:00:00.001+03:00

"Dancing is the loftiest, the most moving, the most beautiful of the arts, because it is no mere translation or abstraction from life; it is life itself." ~ Havelock Ellis

Dancing can be just a good sport; it's hard for me to motivate myself to run nowadays but very easy to dance for hours on end with good music. It can also offer a way of experiencing yoga: the union with oneself and the world through the unison with one's partner and the music. There is no need for sexual connotations even if many non-dancers see it that way. It can be nice to be close to another human being just because it's also nice to be close to some other living thing - like an animal or a tree. I guess it comes down to sharing refreshing energies that the exercise stirs up.

I see couple dancing as a great way to step into the realm of the present moment because you are fully present in your body. It is a great discovery that happens through letting the music lead the leader while the follower can just enjoy the ride by relaxing fully to the unpredictability of the dance. Together with the music the couple creates a unique piece of art in the moment. Of course all dancing can also stir up energies in the lowest chakras, but I suspect the stirring up has started already in your mind before you begin the dance. One can feel different energies and I just hope that people would come to dance in order to bathe in the thoughtless ocean of bliss, like children do.

Life is like a dance partner who never gets tired of dancing. A perfect dancer is someone who is fully present at the moment of dancing. He has a good enough technique so that he doesn't feel restricted in his movements. He is able to relax and play with the music. He knows how to listen to the body language of his partner and to enjoy his own movements. A perfect dance represents an ideal communication: both parties are authentic and want to understand each other and make it a beautiful experience for both. A perfect dancer makes you relax and inspires you to surprise even yourself. At best, something higher is dancing through the dancers and even the leader feels led. Just when you think it’s time to rest after learning the steps impeccably, life introduces new possibilities and the dance continues.

Joseph Campbell has told a story in the "Myths to Live By" of an American delegate at an international conference on religion, trying to figure out what a Japanese Shinto religion was all about: “'We’ve been now to a good many ceremonies and have seen quite a few of your shrines. But I don’t get your ideology. I don’t get your theology.’ The Japanese paused as though in deep thought, and then slowly shook his head. ‘I think we don’t have ideology,’ he said. ‘We don’t have theology. We dance.'”

Also in his other writings, Campbell often encouraged people to experience life rather than theoretize about it, so I hope to see you dancing soon!

Sexy Self-Confidence

2011-09-15T13:15:00.002+03:00

"Truth alone is sexy." - Pocholo Martínez Bordiú

It is hard when you sense that someone you love sees something ugly in you. You already know that that this imperfection exists in you and when someone you love confirms it, it is amplified ten-folds. The only cure for this is to console yourself with the fact that your loved one is still imprisoned by his/her ego too much to experience the beautiful unconditional love that doesn't care about "imperfections". Imperfections make us human. They give us character and bring color to our lives. Sharing imperfections builds intimacy. They help us to develop ourselves and our surroundings. Embrace them, don't try to push them away. At the same time cultivate humble wisdom, since arrogance is not sexy either!

I used to be terribly shy and lacking in self-confidence. I think this was due to the fact that I had received a lot of praise for my accomplishments and appearance. I had never found that place inside me where I was good enough as I was - without all the achievements and even if I'd be "ugly". It was only through the love of my ex-husband and writing my novel - pursuing my dream - that I learnt to love myself unconditionally. So, do as I did: fake it until you make it! Trust that the absolute awareness is guiding you every step of the way and you will never need to lack self-confidence anymore.

Things that I find sexy are things that I also appreciate greatly like authenticity and empathy. Another important factor for sex appeal is self-confidence. Only a person who appreciates him/herself seems genuinely desirable to others. That way you don't have to fulfill any other purpose with love-making than just connecting with love and enjoying the process along the way. How can you then make yourself more self-confident?

Here are some tips I have collected over the years to my personal self-confidence bank:

- Find a hobby that keeps you physically fit --> It will help you to function better. You are more able to enjoy love-making when you actually have energy for it - and flexibility isn't such a bad thing either. It will also help you to like your own body because you have become team instead of being enemies.

- Love-making builds up self-confidence. --> To be loved and to be loving in a physical way has proven out to be healthy in many ways.

- Increase positive thinking by re-reading the good days in your diary. --> We create our lives in our minds.

- Share your joy with others. --> We are social beings and it brings tremendous pleasure to see how we can contribute to the happiness of other people.

- Challenging yourself is good. --> It is very good for self-confidence to step sometimes out of your comfort zone and put your effort into something new without judging how it will go.

- Dare to be different. --> When you embrace yourself as you are, and let go off the "you" you think you should be, you have taken a big step towards building a healthy and sustainable self-confidence.

Blissful Routine

2011-09-01T23:30:00.000+03:00

"Everything we need is here in us. Everything for fuller being. There is a kind of sacred descent of attention that can bring this about. Seeing the obstacles, thoughts, feelings, yes, perhaps a pressure that keeps me from it. But if I can relax inside, just allow the pure attention to flow in, be in that. Very natural. It's what we are." - Michel de Salzmann

I've been very happy lately but not blissful like I was blissful one afternoon in the end of June. I haven't missed that bliss but I hope that I could be in that state constantly or at least more often. To be honest, I hoped that I would have achieved that state by going to listen to His Holiness the Dalai Lama, but I suppose that for being influenced by his energies I was either listening to him too far away, or I was expecting it to happen - too attached to the result - and, therefore, not letting it happen.

I don't see any reason why I couldn't be in that state of enlightenment at all times though. It only made me bursting with love without any attachment. My goal in life now is to be in a state of bliss, not to achieve anything outer like a beautiful home or a flourishing career. I have been able to witness through reading my old diaries that the outer desires I have had, have all changed. I wanted a certain kind of career, and then another one. I wanted a certain kind of house, then I wanted another one. I wanted a certain kind of lover, and then another one. It is endless because we are supposed to play with those outer things while we are here on Earth. However, once you find the unchanging part inside yourself, which is the source of bliss and which unites you with the Creator and the whole world, you don't have to drift like a leaf in the wind anymore. You have accessed your inner anchor that allows you to serve the world in a state of bliss through your talents in a joyful way, and then all the outer pieces of the puzzle fall into their places effortlessly. From connecting to this anchor, you will be able to keep the big picture in mind as you go on dividing your loving awareness to the relationships, work, home, leisure and possessions. I will personally strive to improve them all continually but slowly enough to keep it comfortable, yet at the same time constantly preparing myself to let go of them, to die every instant.

Happiness is in doing, not getting what you want. If you don't enjoy what you are doing, don't go changing your life situation right away but stay still and listen to your inner wisdom. Improve your health and self-discipline; create yourself a healthy and enjoyable routine that you can follow. Lasting bliss doesn't come from an outer source like going to listen to a guru but through a blissful routine that doesn't feel so blissful in the beginning but will yield sweetness when it is finally established. In the meantime, spend time with people who you love and who love you unconditionally. Get a breath of fresh air. Have faith. Be aware of all the little blessings you are showered with at all times.

"Attention: a sacred energy coming into me. Be sensitive to it. Recognize again and again that it is there." - Michel de Salzmann

The Mysterious Change

2011-08-01T00:08:00.000+03:00

"Being at ease with the uncertainty and mysteriousness of life is one of the greatest gifts of wisdom. - Deepak Chopra"

Life can change in an instant, even if it usually changes so slowly that we don't even notice it. Sometimes we love the sudden change, for example, when we meet someone who makes our hearts jump. At other times we are terrified, like when someone dear to us suddenly passes away. I used to want to have everything as clear in my mind as possible and the idea of change was usually appalling to me because it would always upset the harmonious status quo I had created in my mind.

I got frustrated so many times because of trying, for example, to figure out who to choose as my life partner until one day I realized it has to happen naturally like there's no need for choice because there is only one person I love and with whom I can breathe easily. This world is filled with beautiful egos and beautiful souls and sometimes they are even in the same package! So, how would you know with whom you should pursue a relationship, with whom to go on a date, with whom to be a friend and with whom a friendly stranger. I believe that in a way you can know only with whom you should be at this particular moment and if the next moment you come to same conclusion and so forth, you might have found the right life partner for you.

This kind of living and loving can feel tiring or it can feel exciting - most likely both. The main thing, however, is to take care of your own resonance. You cannot control outer things and by trying to do so you only create misery. Instead, you should do everything in your power to stay connected to the Love within, to the source of all life and energy, to enjoy the joy. For me it happens through aware and balanced living where there is stability and room for change. We need to live consciously and true to our principles at all times. Anyway, what a privilege it would be to share a life with another human being dedicated to keeping himself in constant resonance with Love. When you are lead astray by earthly worries, someone would gently love you back to the divine sphere of the souls and vice versa...

"The outer purpose is to arrive at your goal or destination, to accomplish what you set out to do, to achieve this or that, which, of course, implies future. But if your destination, or the steps you are going to take in the future, take up so much of your attention that they become more important to you than the step you are taking now, then you completely miss the journey's inner purpose, which has nothing to do with 'where' you are going or 'what' you are doing, but everything to do with 'how'." - Eckhart Tolle

The Beautiful Surrender

2011-07-01T00:00:00.003+03:00

"Everyone has a spirit that can be refined, a body that can be trained in some manner, a suitable path to follow. You are here to realize your inner divinity and manifest your innate enlightenment." - Morihei Ueshiba

Last week I wanted to be someone else. I felt like I wanted to be someone more talented and virtuous. I felt like I needed to develop my character but all I could do was just to stand still or go backwards. Thanks to my friends, however, I was able to feel lovable even with all my faults, and I smiled again. Yet, I still wanted to fall in love again but I knew I couldn't force it. The most beautiful things in life have to happen to us, we can't make them happen. We have to receive them as gifts. We can't earn love, but we can make ourselves more lovable by behaving like a person in love would behave.

And suddenly, after having heeded my own advice, I had the same enlightenment experience I had had a few years back after a major surrender, after I had let go of the idea of romantic love. The unity was amazing. Everything was so beautiful. The colors were richer and I felt pure, unconditional love towards everything and everyone.

This time I was able to analyze the experience better because I could now understand it also with my mind - at least to some extent. A pregnant friend of mine was with me when the enlightenment experience peaked. I felt like we were one and the same and I felt like I was as much pregnant as she was - she was just a different form experiencing the pregnancy. However, I could love the baby girl just like my own, just like I was able to love my friend like a baby - a pure soul deserving complete love, respect and nurturing. It was overwhelming. I didn't need anything. I was completely filled. I just wanted to share my love unconditionally and in a pure way with the whole world.

I had wanted to fall in love and I did, not to any man, but to myself and all the manifestations of myself that can be seen in every little detail of this world. It's indescribable really... And very inspiring. I'm now more and more determined to become my best self again so that I can love myself and the whole world better and more constantly.

"To enjoy good health, to bring true happiness to one's family, to bring peace to all, one must first discipline and control one's own mind. If a man can control his mind he can find the way to Enlightenment, and all wisdom and virtue will naturally come to him." -Buddha

Human Experiment on Celibacy

2011-06-09T19:08:00.001+03:00

"All cravings are the mind seeking salvation or fulfillment in external things and in the future as a substitute for the joy of Being. As long as I am my mind, I am those cravings, those needs, wants, attachments, and aversions, and apart from them there is no 'I' except as a mere possibility, an unfulfilled potential, a seed that has not yet sprouted." - Eckhart Tolle

I just forced myself to a human test: I wanted to know how celibacy would influence me. Would it help me to gather more spiritual and emotional clarity?

The results in a nutshell:
- I had a strong experience of kundalini rising.
- I became addicted to standing on my head until my shoulder and my neck started to ache too much to continue the practice.
- My immune system got weaker and I had a flu since I don't remember when.
- I ate a lot of chocolate and I started to cook and eat more than before.
- I started to surround myself with orange things (Any correlation to the orange rope of munks and yogis?).
- First I thought about sex very often but gradually the celibacy did bring me more and more emotional clarity and I would spend more time with people to whom I related to first and foremost on the spiritual level.
- I started to enjoy meditation more.
- My senses became stronger; I almost got orgasms just by smelling flowers.
- I lost my desire to dance.
- I became less creative.
- I found true love. :)

We will never be truly joyful as long as we live from our egos. Egos have been given us in order to work on our karma, to develop our character, to further the evolution of our awareness, in short, to experience this life here on Earth. However, this life is "just" a game. The reality lies beyond this life and that is why we desire to make our lives count for something more than any of our Earthly achievements, experiences or pleasures. Learn to love and you will enjoy living even when things seem outwardly tough. Connecting with other people, serving them without waiting for anything in return, is true love. Thank You for those people who have inspired me to love them. Thank you for having let me love you. Like Alanis Morissette sings:

"You owe me nothing for giving the love that I give
You owe me nothing for caring the way that I have
I give you thanks for receiving it's my privilege
And you owe me nothing in return."

The Travel Partner

2011-05-22T10:38:00.000+03:00

"the only thing that is ultimately real about your journey is the step that you are taking at this moment" - Eckhart Tolle

A friend of mine asked me why on the one hand we want to share the rest of our lives with one special person and on the other nothing seems to be good enough for us? I have talked about this before but let's look at it from a new angle today. Life has many metaphors and a journey is one of them. Do you like traveling alone or with a friend or with a beloved? I guess I belong to the group who would say I like them all, which means that if I would be in a relationship, I would prefer space from my beloved to spend time also alone and with my friends. Yet nothing beats a romantic holiday with your one and true love; time to stare into each others eyes and merge into one entity, lose boundaries and dive into euphoria.

However, finding that special someone is not that important to me and my friend because we enjoy being alone and with our friends, as well as our childhood family members. It is due to this non-urgency to find a mate that makes us picky - or to lose our interest quickly when we discover something in the potential mate that we think would create unnecessary problems in the long run. I don't see this as a negative thing. I think this is a great opportunity to work on ourselves - finding the wholeness first and foremost as an individual. Then hopefully one day we'll meet another whole human-being who has individually grown into the same direction as we have. However, if we would not ever meet The Travel Partner, that wouldn't matter too much in the end, because we would have enjoyed the journey anyway.

So my friend, instead of concentrating on the fact that you haven't met The Travel Partner yet, enjoy the joy - find the joy in the details of your life right now!

All Eggs In One Basket

2011-04-25T11:52:00.003+03:00

"The individual, through prolonged psychological disciplines, gives up completely all attachment to his personal limitations, idiosyncrasies, hopes and fears, no longer resists the self-annihilation that is prerequisite to rebirth in the realization of truth, and so becomes ripe, at last, for the great at-one-ment. His personal ambitions being totally dissolved, he no longer tries to live but willingly relaxes to whatever may come to pass in him." - Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (p. 204-205)

My intuition has resurrected again. It's Easter and I decided to put all my eggs into my intuition's basket. I realized that all my desires are calls from my Soul to commune with my ego. With ego I mean the J.M. Davies who acts in this world and experiences it with all her senses.

I just found a letter to my unborn child, which I wrote almost five years ago, and I asked myself why am I still so far away from giving birth to a baby. Then it came to me: my intuition wants me to develop the motherly aspect of my immortal soul at this particular time in my ego's life. What are the aspects of motherhood that are eternal? Patience for sure, not forgetting unconditional love and wisdom. These are also the aspects that have helped me not to make babies at whatever cost. If I am to have a child, I want him/her to be born into a loving family of two adults who love themselves and the other person purely on the soul, body and mind level. It doesn't actually matter if I won't ever have a child in this lifetime. What matters is that I find all the aspects of my soul and perfect them to the best of my ability. When both lovers listen to their souls honestly and let their intuition guide them, they won't expect anything from the other person. Instead, they will fulfill their needs first and foremost on the spiritual level. As I already said, the need for offspring could be a call to develop one's maternal/paternal qualities. The need for sexual gratification could be a call to merge completely with the beloved or the Universe. The need for financial support is often a need to experience more safety and security, and so forth.

Today, on Easter Monday, I encourage you to put all your eggs in your Soul's basket. Search for it and when you've found it, love it to the best of your ability. When you feel a desire arising, ask how you could answer to it on the level of your soul first. Once you have answered to that question, your intuition will lead you easily to its manifestation on the ego level as it sees fit. If you would try, instead, to answer to your need on the ego level, it would be silly to put all your eggs in one basket because in the sphere of ego everything is ephemeral.

Nothing Will Ever Be the Same Again

2011-03-07T00:04:00.000+02:00

“Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.” - Maria Robinson

Thank you for all your private and public comments! I greatly appreciate your contribution to our dialogue. I think it's great that you have given joy a chance in your life. The best help for staying in the state of joy is awareness. The meaning of my life is to increase awareness through and for love, therefore, this blog is just one tool for that. I've been guiding my own and your awareness to the things that I find beneficial for maintaining a joyful state of being because it makes loving easier.

I decided that from now on I won't post regularly on every Monday. Here is enough material for you to keep focusing on the joy as such. What I will do instead, is to start recording the old posts to a Youtube channel. I want to start my day by listening to things that remind me of my purpose here on Earth while I'm putting the make-up on in the morning or when I'm ironing or cooking. So, here's the link to the Youtube channel of Virtuous Arts: http://www.youtube.com/user/VirtuousArts.

When you connect to your soul/love/god within, you'll be able to feel a joyful peace that is beyond description. That is all I wish for you. Let's keep sharing our thoughts so that we can increase the joy in the world. :)

Walk the Talk

2011-02-28T00:00:00.002+02:00

"What the heart gives away is never gone ... It is kept in the hearts of others." -Robin St. John

I believe I am walking the talk I’ve been giving you for one year now; I am, indeed, enjoying the joy. It doesn’t mean that I never feel negative emotions. I do. I feel sadness every now and then. I’m also learning to feel hatred that is directed towards the evil in this world, so that I could find constructive ways to combat it. However, I do my best to stay aware so that I wouldn’t dwell on the negative feelings. I just experience them and observe them and, if necessary, act on them. I don’t mean that when I’m angry, I should go and punch somebody. What I mean is that the anger is telling me that something is wrong and I should do something about it - but never in an angry way.

It has truly been a joy and honour to dream with you. Manifesting dreams is not always easy. I haven't tried to give you easy answers and formulas to fulfill your dreams instantly. My intention has been to open your eyes to the little things in life that make all the difference. Awareness, patience and individual effort are almost always required. However, the effort can be fun like it is for children when they learn for example to walk, and patience is required less and less if you enjoy the steps along the way to your goal.

I would love to hear now whether you would still like me to continue to post these blog updates. If so, what kind of topics would you like to hear more of? I would also greatly appreciate if you would share any personal experiences you have had during this year in relation to this blog and/or in regard to finding joy in your personal and professional lives.

I wish everyone a life filled with the simple joy of being! :)

"The necessary condition for the existence of peace and joy is the awareness that peace and joy are available." - Thich Nhat Hanh

The Pulse of Life

2011-02-21T00:09:00.001+02:00

"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." -Ralph Waldo Emerson

I have talked here how energy can be found inside oneself and sustained through awareness. It is important to make ourselves aware also physically. The negative control dramas can be changed into positive personal traits when one is connected to the real source of energy that lies in us all. It starts with taking the responsibility of our own feelings and actions. Hence, our minds can help our energy levels to stay up. We can also forget the mind and work straight with our bodies. Many people have experienced how physical exercises actually give energy rather than take. Yoga is definitely a form of exercise that increases the positive energy for one to function as a balanced person in changing circumstances.

Yoga postures focus first on the health of the spine, its strength and flexibility, because the spinal column houses the all-important nervous system. By maintaining the spine's flexibility and strength through exercise, circulation is increased and the nerves are ensured their supply of nutrients and oxygen. When the nervous system is working well, the body stays better under mind's control and helps the practitioner to stay healthy: "Health is a state wherein all organs function perfectly under the intelligent control of the mind." - International Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centers

When your body is healthy, it is easier for you to stay centered and give good energy to everyone you meet. Life is about experiencing the love that unites us all. Learn to tap into the pulse of life by keeping your life simple.

“Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.” -Frederic Chopin

Intuition to Love

2011-02-14T00:00:00.003+02:00

"Really important meetings are planned by the souls long before the bodies see each other." — Paulo Coelho (Eleven Minutes)

Isn't it so that we crave to have beauty and meaning in our lives? Especially on special days like today - the Valentine's Day - we want to experience something magical. Where most people go wrong is that they expect other people or external things to do the trick. The attention is diverted away from oneself, like with the control dramas.

I like that quote from Paulo Coelho because it gives importance to both - the soul and the body - but in the right order. However, most people never let their souls to dream the most beautiful dreams to reality because their minds are in a hurry to fix things to fulfill the needs of the body. They are trying to rationalize instead of following their heart, intuition or whatever you'd like to call the invisible guidance that most of us have sometimes felt.

I remember that when I was younger it was very hard for me to understand the concept of listening to my heart. I felt like my heart was mute and the only irrational guidance I could "hear" came from the pheromones. The talk of the pheromones was the instinctual guidance of being a human, but it had nothing to do with the romantic guidance of the heart that I was encouraged to listen to. It was only through learning to meditate and enjoy staying still that I started to trust the voice of my gentle heart. The voice was very quiet to begin with but nowadays it is very clear, and consequently life has become a lot easier, even if people don't always accept "my heart tells me so" as a valid explanation for making decisions. However, it is widely known that even the toughest business decisions are made with the gut.

So, trust your gut feeling and allow your intuition to guide you to love. As one is connected to the Love, one can be happy alone or with a pet, friend or a lover. It doesn't matter if you don't have a chance to extend your love beyond yourself, what matters is that you can experience a real feeling of love. It is better that you do your best to find that tiny bit of real love towards yourself than expecting to be showered with love by someone else. Whatever your situation is, let this Valentine's Day be filled with beauty beyond all your dreams!

Sustainable Energy

2011-02-07T10:22:00.005+02:00

"We believe we must get attention, love, recognition, support, approval - all forms of energy - from others. We adopt a way to pull the energy in our direction by the kind of interactions we had as children with our parents." - James Redfield

Last week I mentioned control dramas as an example of negative patterns that tend to occur at home when people are not aware. Control drama is a concept I first encountered years back in the novel "The Celestine Prophecy" by James Redfield. People very often feel lack of energy and due to that they try to compete for it with others. We learn our control dramas as children in interactions with out family members who are trying to pull energy out of us. In the novel Redfield categorizes the control dramas into four groups: Intimidator, Interrogator, Aloof and Poor Me. Most of us have one dominant way of manipulating energies even if some people use different combinations of these in different circumstances.

"Intimidators get everyone to pay attention to them by force of loudness, physical strength, threats, unexpected outbursts. ... They make you feel afraid or anxious. ... They initially engage others by creating an aura of power. ... As you strive to prove yourself or answer to [Interrogators], the more energy you send their way. ... Hypervigilant, their behavior may range from being cynical, skeptical, sarcastic, needling, perfectionistic, self-righteous, to viciously manipulative. They initially engage others with their wit, infallible logic, facts, and intellect. ... Aloof people are caught up in their own internal world of unresolved struggles, fears, and self-doubt. ... Their behavior ranges from disinterested, unavailable, uncooperative, to condescending, rejecting, contrary, and sneaky. ... They initially engage through their mysterious, hard-to-get persona. ... Always pessimistic, Poor Me's pull attention to themselves by worried facial expressions, sighing, trembling, crying, staring into the distance, answering questions slowly, and retelling poignant dramas and crises. ... Poor Me's initially seduce by their vulnerability and need for help."

The starting point for overcoming the control dramas is, of course, becoming aware of them, accepting them, and then finding more sustainable ways to gain energy. A great way to gain inner energy without taking anyone else's energies, is through meditation - in or out of sauna. Just paying attention to your breathing, and how it affects your body, is a good starting point for becoming centered internally and, hence having sustainable energy at your disposal.

Coming Home and Going to Sauna

2011-01-31T00:05:00.002+02:00

“Home is not where you live, but where they understand you” - Christian Morganstern

Have you ever had that feeling that you have found a place inside yourself where you feel at home? It can happen when you meet someone, or when you go to a city, it can be the work you do. At home you feel like you are easily understood and things run smoothly with effortless effort. Yet, the physical home for us is very often not like that. People tend to snap at each other. They only see things that the other members of the family have done "wrong". Why is it so that home is so easily turned into hell?

I believe the main reason for disruption at home is due to people taking home and family for granted. They think that at home they can be what they really are - even a very impolite and mean person. Yes, basically one can show his/her worst sides at home and still receive love in return. However, one should aim at making even a greater effort to be civil and loving at home. It doesn't mean one can never relax and let the steam out. At home one needs to have space to let go of the negative energy that has infiltrated one's being so that one can connect with one's loving soul again.

In the Nordic countries we have many saunas, where one can literally let the steam out. I see saunas as our meditation rooms. You go there to cleanse physically and mentally. Therefore, I suggest that the next time you feel like lashing out on someone, you go and prepare the sauna instead. Throw so much water into the stones that all your anger and worries melt away and come out of the sauna as a relaxed and recharged teddy bear.

If sauna doesn't work for you, go for a walk instead, or dance and sing while cleaning your home. The main thing is that you do something positive on your own. When you have raised your own spirits, you can establish healthy boundaries at home. If then one of the family members starts to play some control drama on you, you won't get sucked into it. Instead, you can observe it objectively and choose a loving and a rational way to react to it.

The Lover of a Lifetime

2011-01-24T00:23:00.002+02:00

“Countless thousands of couples have discovered that the best sex is experienced within a loving marriage. Such sex goes way beyond physical gratification. It creates a deep emotional, psychological and even spiritual bond which has the power to communicate love in a way that transcends words. Our sexual relationship can express our love for each other tenderly, regularly and passionately over years of married life.” - Nicky & Sila Lee (The Marriage Book, p. 275)

Who wouldn't want to be the lover of a lifetime? Yet, very few people think that people should know how to make love just by following completely their instincts. Maybe it could work in the Garden of Eden but it certainly doesn't work in our flawed world in which people's instincts get influenced by all kinds of cultural stuff. Therefore, one should study the matter from reliable sources. In their Marriage Book Nicky & Sila Lee jot down these six factors as the qualities of a great lover: communication, tenderness, responsiveness, romance, anticipation and variety. It's not the size of the penis or the duration of the intercourse that matter so much, or even how often you have sex. Even if Kama sutra does suggest that it makes life easier if the size and the libido of the man and woman match.

Sex as a need has probably always been controversial. Yes, our body is coded to look for an intimate partner in order to reproduce and enjoy along the way. Yet, following blindly the calls of pheromones does not make a person happy - at least not the majority of people. It makes the mind and soul captive to one's body, whereas, what we really want is freedom from all kinds of bondages. This doesn't mean you should repress your sexual urges, quite the contrary. If you try to repress them, they'll only come back stronger and harder to cope with. Again you should embrace yourself as you are.

According to tantric tradition, reaching an orgasm too often is not good. However, tantric tradition doesn't try to fight the sexuality but to channel it differently through increasing awareness and with the practical help of different kinds of yoga and meditation techniques. The sexual energy is a great power that can be channelled into the benefit of the mankind, and it starts with an individual. Learn to control your sexual energy little by little and you'll become free to enjoy love making at its best - fulfilling your needs holistically, and maybe even transforming you and your partner deeply.

Role-loving

2011-01-17T00:01:00.002+02:00

"What really matters is not what function you fulfill in this world, but whether you identify with your function to such an extent that it takes you over and becomes a role that you play. When you play roles you are unconscious. When you catch yourself playing a role, that recognition creates a space between you and the role" - Eckhart Tolle

We have various roles in this life. We use them like clothes. Today I will wear my writer role. How do writers dress? For me it's something comfortable like woolly socks, cozy pants and a wrap in winter time. Yesterday I was a dance and yoga teacher; a training outfit. Tomorrow I'll have some important business meetings; a suit. And so on. I believe some people are happier with fewer roles, whereas other people need more variety. I guess it's harder for a person with fewer roles to accept that the roles are not the whole picture, whereas for someone with many roles it's impossible to believe that a single role would capture the reality as it is.

However, all of us need to learn to love ourselves with and without the roles we play. How can we love ourselves? By honestly examining ourselves and facing everything we discover without positive or negative judgement. There is always someone who is better or worse than we are on the ego level, but we are all equal on the soul level. There is a place for all of us here with the skills, talents and attributes we have at the moment. If we want to change from this place to another, we first need to accept where and how we are now, only then a genuine change can happen. Don't resist - embrace yourself and life!

Enjoy the fact that you can play many different roles like you were acting on stage. If you happen to play your role badly, don't worry, it is just one of the roles you play, not the whole truth about you.

"Choosing self-love challenges the collective paradigm of guilt and shame that has controlled us for thousands of years. ... If we go the route of the ego, we'll never feel worthy of self-love. If we choose to live our Spirit, we'll be instantly liberated." - Sonia Choquette

Get On With It!

2011-01-10T09:11:00.009+02:00

Don't think too much, just do it. Do what you know you ought to do right now. The longer you postpone it, the harder it becomes to do.

First, write down what you want in life. What is the myth or mission guiding your life? What is the metaphor or motto of your life? Write down the guiding words of your life somewhere you can see them regularly. For example my mission in life is to increase my awareness through and for love and my motto is to lighten up to become enlightened. So whenever I'm going to do something I do my best to check if it's in accordance with these two guiding principles of my life. Then if it is, I will do it without weighing too many pros and cons or otherwise wasting time planning the right time for executing the thing; now is the best time to do what we are supposed to do in this life.

On a more concrete level, you can divide things further to the things you simply must do like breathing, sleeping, eating, washing yourself and working. Then into things you love to do, things you might like to try and things that would be good to do but not necessary. Then start balancing them into action. When you act constructively, you are doing yourself a favor. If you postpone something, you will easily begin to feel bad about yourself, and when you feel negative, you'll attract negative outcomes. Instead, love yourself knowing that you are acting as best as you can at this moment in your life. As long as you are acting out of the joy of action and for the benefit of the common good, you can be joyfully confident. Everything starts with baby steps, so be patient enough to stay aware of all the steps of your journey.

‎"Doubt reflects the ego, which is bound in time and space; love reflects God, eternal divine essence." - Deepak Chopra

Sugarcoated Souls

2011-01-03T00:08:00.006+02:00

"the Good of man is the active exercise of his soul's faculties in conformity with excellence or virtue, or if there be several human excellences or virtues, in conformity with the best and most perfect among them. Moreover, to be happy takes a complete lifetime." - Aristotle

Life requires a little bit of effort but to me it seems that a human being naturally resists it. I want to be in a good shape physically because it makes me feel good and I'm able to function better - even mentally - that way. However, if the exercise hasn't become a routine for me, I, instead, choose to read a book at home. Reading a book is not a sin but will eventually make me feel weary if not coupled with healthy nutrition and exercise. This is why we should always strive to find the right balance of doing something we love and doing something that is good for us. The beauty of the matter is that the more we do what is good for us, the more we will learn to love the good.

That is the way to develop virtues - practice little by little. If you try to change your life radically, you'll soon abandon the pursuit and might even start to live in a more unhealthy way for a short while. This doesn't mean you should never do it. I think that pushing the limits every now and then is good too. Like Oscar Wilde says: “Everything in moderation, including moderation.”

Don't sugarcoat your soul; you should not try to make life too easy for yourself. Easy life - a life that doesn't challenge you in any way - will not make you joyful unless you are fully enlightened. Try to challenge yourself and your surroundings gently so that you can feel proud of yourself at the end of each day, but never forget to be merciful to yourself and others.

"A garden requires patient labor and attention. Plants do not grow merely to satisfy ambitions or to fulfill good intentions. They thrive because someone expended effort on them." -Liberty Hyde Bailey

The Wonder of Continuous Birth

2010-12-27T09:54:00.002+02:00

"My passion, both as psychiatrist and as Dice Man, has been to change human personality. Mine. Others'. Everyone's. To give to men a sense of freedom, exhilaration, joy. To restore to life the same shock of experience we have when bare toes first feel the earth at dawn and we see the sun split through the mountain trees like horizontal lightning; when a girl first lifts her lips to be kissed; when an idea suddenly springs full-blown into the mind, reorganizing in an instant the experience of a lifetime." - Luke Rhinehart in the Dice Man (p.12)

We have just been celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ 2010 years ago and it made me think of the symbolism of Christmas. The redeemer was born to help you become free from any bondages you have right now. You don't need to deserve the redemption in any way, you just need to accept it. Why is it so hard for people to accept the free gift of love? I guess people don't want to accept it because if they do, they become vulnerable. Love can be a terrifying experience because it reveals that ego's certainty is an illusion:

“If you follow love, your life will become uncertain, and the ego craves certainty. You will have to surrender to another person, and the ego prizes its own will above anyone else's. Love will make your feelings ambiguous, and the ego wants to feel the certainty of right and wrong. Many of her experiences that cannot be comprehended by ego apply to love - a lover is confused, spontaneous, vulnerable, exposed, detached, carefree, wondrous, and ever new." – Deepak Chopra

Above all Christ's love makes it possible for us to start anew, which prepares us for the coming year. It takes time for the body to adapt to changes, so bear with any New Year's Resolution at least three months and see how you feel then before quitting frustrated about not seeing any results. It is also worth stopping to reflect back every once in a while. Sometimes even a significant change is difficult to see when you're a work in progress, constantly changing. Give your body, soul and mind plenty of time to adapt to a new lifestyle and enjoy the continuous birth of you.

Christmas Treasures

2010-12-20T00:00:00.002+02:00

“The greatest gift you can give another is the purity of your attention.” - Richard Moss

We are approaching the time of the year when people start making plans for the new year and going through what has happened during the past one. Did things go better or worse? Did you learn anything along the way? How much did you enjoy your life this year? Are you any closer to liberation or enlightenment?

I got into the habit of making treasure maps after reading Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way a few years back. They are not only a great tool for visualizing one's dreams but also for following the fulfillment of them. So easily we forget that the things we take for granted today, first existed only in our dreams. Take extra time this week to appreciate all the existing treasures in your life. What are they? Are they your home, family, friends, or perhaps a new job, shoes or a book? Maybe you consider as a treasure some words you finally heard after a long wait? Or do you treasure your health? Have you reached an objective that has yielded positive influence on a wider scale? Did you manage to stop a bad habit? Did a stranger smile at you when you needed it most? Our world is filled with treasures, we are all rich with them, we just need to see them and appreciate them as such, and not only run after new treasures all the time.

Now that you are preparing for Christmas, remember that the attitude you have when you give the presents is at least as important as what you give. Give things out of love, not out of obligation. Don't stress that you will give a wrong gift, you won't if your intention is a positive and unselfish one. Being loving to everybody at Christmas is better present than any gift given with a lot of negative turmoil. If you don't have time to find or the means to give the kind of gifts you'd like to, let the people know your intention creatively - make a poem, sing a song or why not blog about it. ;)

Players Play Alone

2010-12-13T00:00:00.002+02:00

“When we come together to play and be, we are truly ourselves. When we are truly ourselves it is wonderful, and when we act collectively in that wonder we do transformative work for our community and our world.” - Brad Colby

I think that in general people should play much more. However, this should not be confused with being a "player" who manipulates people in order to get what he or she wants from other people. Adults should play similar games as children play. Unfortunately, I feel like the opposite is the case; if adults are playing any games, they are often highly damaging. I see the decadence of pure fun as a vicious cycle that goes something like this: women fall for players and dismiss the good guys. Then the players hurt the women who, in turn, become bitter. Each time it becomes harder for a woman to trust a guy and she becomes accustomed to live by herself. Then when a good guy approaches, the embittered woman is not impressed and doesn't encourage the good guy to continue to woo her and the good guy goes back to his nicely established single life and decides to forget women all together.

Players are smooth talkers and know what, when and how to do things. Women tend to neglect the good guys who can be a bit clumsy sometimes and can spoil the romantic mood by being themselves. But why can't women find the clumsiness cute? It is honest, genuine and, I would say, more interesting than the neatly packed players' advances. However, the players can be entertaining and I can see that, if a woman is under the influence of any mind altering substances, how easy it can be to fall for the tricks of a player and, if prolonged, mistake the manipulation of feelings for love. Love is an emotion that can be nurtured but it is not only an emotion. Healthy love makes sense and is joyful in an uncomplicated way. The excitement to healthy love comes from playing innocent games together - not playing dishonest games with someone.

Being a player in the negative sense of the word doesn't yield happiness to anyone. Even if the player can have a surge of enormously pleasing power through his games, the outcome is sad: the player plays alone. He is in control of the game but doesn't share the joy with anyone. I believe that the player starts to play the game after some painful experiences because he doesn't want to get hurt anymore. It's okay to learn to woo a woman but once you have been successful, let go of the power game and enjoy the joyful games two adults who respect each other can play.

Playmate for Life

2010-12-06T13:33:00.000+02:00

"Anyone can be passionate, but it takes real lovers to be silly." -Rose Dorothy Franken

When intimacy comes along, I have to be willing to show my weaknesses and deal with the disappointment of my partner in finding out about my flaws and showing it in one way or another. I don't want to trouble anyone with my imperfections - I don't like the disharmonious chords in life's symphony. Yet when I'm connected to the Love within, I don't mind other peoples' imperfections at all; it only gives me a chance to show my love better. Seeing into someone with all the beauty and ugliness that is in there and accepting it all, makes love possible. Without intimacy there is only puppy love, but intimacy doesn't mean that you have to be serious, quite the opposite in fact. With a sense of humor that both individuals in a relationship can adopt, the couple can achieve real intimacy easily and pleasantly.

So, what is real love to me? Real romantic love is beauty and service, it is an overwhelming feeling of peace, lightness and passion. These are the qualities Deepak Chopra puts on soul's love in his book "Reinventing the Body, Resurrecting the Soul": unselfish, giving, blissful, warm and safe, self-sufficient, needing no outside validation, innocent, uncomplicated, kind, compassionate, constant, expanding, comforting and sacred. I think that, in addition to fun, people have neglected the sacred aspect of love too much in our society. For example, we should treat our bodies like they were sacred temples. I believe God intended us to show love physically to only one person in practice even if in theory we should be able to love everybody that way. One of the reasons S/he wants us to have sex with one person only is because it makes life more simple, and simple life leads to happiness. However, if you have had sex with more than one person, it doesn't work the same way for you anymore. It's more complicated now. Still, it's never too late to start becoming more conscious of the sacred meaning of making love.

An important part of appreciating the sacredness of love is doing your best to really look at the object of your love with open eyes and listen attentively without any preconceived ideas about how that person should be like. I challenge you to grasp the complexity of God and human beings as they are without needing to change anything. Just look deep inside yourself and accept what you find - better, love what you find - and show it to someone who is willing to see into you.

Finding Your Fairy Tale

2010-11-29T00:01:00.001+02:00

"Just living is not enough" said the butterfly fairy, "one must have sunshine, freedom and a little flower." - Hans Christian Andersen

What was your favorite fairy tale as a child? Does that still influence your life? Are you unconsciously trying to live that fairy tale true in your life? Is that what you really want or should you leave that childhood dream behind and create your own fairy tale? There exists a wide discussion on what fairy tales actually are but I leave that aside now defining fairy tale here as the script on how your life would ideally unfold your personal utopia.

Happiness is the goal for most people - whether it is conscious or subconscious. The ways to happiness vary considerably according to one's personality and life experiences, culture and so forth. Then one has to find a balance between instant gratification and long-term joy. The more mature and pure an individual is, the closer the two are. Children are pure but completely immature, which is why their parents need to guide them to find lasting happiness. Adults, on the other hand, tend to lose the purity of innocence as years go by, and that makes enjoying the moments harder for them - at least without any mind-altering substances.

These two aspects are the reason I have written a fairy tale for adults. I want to help people to get in touch with the innocence of childhood that makes every moment a wonder. You can start anew every day, still making use of what you have learnt along the way. Ask yourself how you would live today if you were free from the bondages of your past choices. Then start incorporating that into your life in a virtuous way. Create your own fairy tale and you'll notice that you'll attract people with a desire to experience a similar fairy tale in their lives. When you no longer have contradicting desires, life becomes magically enchanting as it is.

Loving Inspiration to Transformation

2010-11-22T00:00:00.002+02:00

"You are right that spiritual evolution will affect all aspects of our life, including relationships. Sometimes that means the relationship deepens and expands into new areas, and sometimes it means a phase of development is finished and it is time to move forward independently. If a relationship ends because the two are not able to offer what the other needs to grow, then that means both are better off if they are free to pursue their next stage of growth. It is natural to feel some sadness and grieve the loss, but the love that was shared should be acknowledged and appreciated as well. Even if a relationship does not last a lifetime, that does not mean the love it generated should be undervalued or diminished. It was perfect and right for the time and that is all you can ask of any relationship, whether it is for 50 days or 50 years." -Deepak Chopra

In Buddhist tradition there is a belief that all phenomena are impermanent by nature and this is why we should learn non-attachment. Everything changes every second - including our love relationships. Therefore, it is madness to hold on to something that existed yesterday, it would be fighting against our nature. If we want to make a relationship last, we have to maintain the connection first and foremost to the Love within, which connects us to God or The Supreme Awareness, if you prefer calling it something more impersonal. Then that connection will tell us which way we need to develop. When we know that, we should communicate it lovingly to our partner. Then it is time for our partner to find out whether s/he can continue on the same path with us without compromising his/her integrity and spiritual evolution.

Looking to the past helps us to be grateful for the fulfilled wishes and to avoid the unskillful behavior that resulted in unwanted results. Looking to the future gives us hope and helps us to cope with sometimes stressful transition periods. However, life is here and now, and the past and the future should enable the full presence right now. Time flies by and the speed only seems to increase as the years pass. Don't waste it on indecision or jumping into conclusions. Use every moment wisely appreciating each one as a gift. Be a blessing for someone. Learn to enjoy giving and you will be in constant euphoria because there are still lots of needs to be met in this world. Use love to inspire you to transform into the butterfly you were meant to be and help others to transform thanks to the butterflies your love plants into their stomachs. Don't let your love to become a prison, instead, make it a fortress for freedom that lovingly encourages transformation.

Heaven Is Where the Heart Is

2010-11-15T00:10:00.002+02:00

“Ask yourself whether the dream of heaven and greatness should be waiting for us in our graves - or whether it should be ours here and now and on this earth.” —Ayn Rand

I'm back home in Finland now and I love it even if it is not sunny and doesn't have the tropical heat of the Bahamas. I have reconnected with many beautiful souls I missed whilst abroad. There is always something pleasant about our physical surroundings as well as something negative - if you want to look at it that way.

When I saw a book called Utopia in the local bookshop, it was love at first sight. Somebody had done the scientific research I had thought about doing in order to do a PhD, and put it neatly in a popular book form - thank you Mr. Merlin Coverley! I was introduced to the utopias of the world in real life and in fiction.

It made me think that my utopia is a place where everyone is virtuous and healthy. Everybody is peacefully joyful as they perform the duties they have themselves chosen to make the best use of their talents in order to make the society well-functioning. Everybody lives in abundance. In my utopia we are able to be vulnerable at all times because of everybody's saintly nature nobody will try to manipulate or use anyone in any way. Nobody has to fear in this place because nobody is needy due to the constant connection to the Divine Source of loving energy. Mercy is its religion and the politics is based on perfect justice.

How can we reach this paradise? In the end everyone wants to live in a loving world. Do your thoughts contribute to the making of this place a more loving one? Because we'll get there one person at a time, we have to start looking at our minds and hearts. We - and the societal structures - should lovingly encourage people to become more and more virtuous. In order for people to stay motivated to develop their virtues, they will have to enjoy it. What has encouraged or inspired you to develop your virtues?

Independence of the Soul

2010-11-08T08:02:00.004+02:00

"We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith; if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.” - Romans 12:6-8

So often in the spiritual circles you hear two swearwords: ego and money. Sure, they can restrict one's ability to enjoy life to the fullest, yet on the other hand they are essential as long as we are a part of any society and we have not yet reached the independence of the soul. Having enough money and strong enough ego aim at independence, which is vital for a balanced life. However, once you have become independent, you should strive towards interdependence. We all have an equally important task to perform in this society; we are to glorify God with our lives. In addition to our unique talents, God has given us the capacity to love, and it is our common duty to develop the skill of loving.

Real independence doesn't mean that we have to live alone and that we shouldn't need other people for anything, even if we should strive to minimize our needs or fulfill them ourselves. We certainly shouldn't expect others to fulfill our needs. However, outwardly we can never be fully independent, or maybe it is possible for a very handy and balanced person in a paradise island rich in fruit, vegetables and fresh water. Therefore, instead of outer independence, the focus should be in reaching the independence of soul and creating positive connections to other people in this world - and why not other worlds too!

How to reach the independence of soul then? There are many different ways to get there but they all aim at getting to know one's soul, which, in turn, means time spent in some kind of meditation and introspection. Then after one has grasped the nature of one's soul, one should aim at bridging the gap between ego and soul by transforming ego to support the flourishing of one's soul. Yoga gives great tools for this. As one learns proper breathing, exercises and rests enough, eats healthy and energizing food and can control one's mind, one has reached the real independence that brings freedom and joy into one's life. Then it is time for this independent soul to help the other souls to reach their full bloom and make this world the blossoming paradise it could be.

Love at First Meeting

2010-11-01T00:02:00.007+02:00

“Who you are transcends space, time, and cause-and-effect.” – Deepak Chopra

I have realized that for me time is rather irrelevant because I can connect with people on a deeper level immediately. If one is able to connect with the soul of another person, one doesn’t need years in order to get to know that person, it is instant. Of course one needs time in order to know the mundane things about the person and his/her likes but the important things one can find out instantly. Like is there a biological connection between you too – do his/her pheromones entice you? Or do you click on a mental level? You either get each other or you don’t, and that’s apparent right away. You can also find out immediately whether your souls feel at home with each other or not.

Where things go wrong is that our needs can fog our perception on some or all levels. Let’s say for example that you just hunger for human touch. Then you meet someone who is interested in you but without your lack of the company of another human being you wouldn’t be interested in that person – your biological compatibility is not ideal. Still you start the relationship because you think you need to give him/her time in order to find out whether you’d match in the long run. You cannot just dismiss someone like that, or could you? Personally the need to believe good about other people has many times fogged my perception. From now on I try to remember that even if deep down people are good and full of love, it can be masked with evil ego structures that I cannot dismiss. That is why even if one believes in having connected with the other person's soul, people have to spend time together doing mundane things. It is also important to observe how the person you are interested in interacts with different kinds of people. Actions, not words, reveal the real character.

Before finding that someone to do mundane things with, think what kind of person you would like to be in practice. Then work on becoming that and you'll attract similar kind of people to you.

Too Impatient for Romance

2010-10-25T00:20:00.004+03:00

"Love is a condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own." - Robert Heinlein

I have talked about the importance of virtues for an exceptionally happy relationship, and today I will talk about the importance of patience starting with the comparison of a child-parent relationship.

Children have a limited mind capacity that is growing rapidly all the time, however, parents need to help their children to make decisions when they are not yet capable of seeing the bigger picture. Parents want to give everything they can to their beloved children but they don’t give them everything they want because some of the things children want are either not good for them or impossible to give.

I believe that our Creator behaves the same way with us. S/he loves us and wants us to have good time on Earth. Sometimes we mistake something to be good for us, whereas it isn’t, and we are sad or even angry when we don’t get the thing we would have wanted. That is a call to let go. If that thing was indeed good for us, it will come to us. The same logic works with other human beings too with the exception of free will.

If you fall in love with someone and you think that you two would be a perfect match, you will get a chance to prove it one way or another to the object of your love. Then again, if you only think that somebody would be good for you, that relationship will not see daylight. It has to work both ways. However, if you genuinely fall in love with someone and you think you’d be the right partner for him/her too, all you need is virtues.

If you patiently and consistently show the object of your love that he or she is the one, the object of your love will respond. How else would you know if someone loves you, if he or she doesn’t show it with time and affection? Love is magical and why we fall for someone instead of someone else is a mystery, whereas loving is very simple and straightforward, you only need to develop your virtues and serve the object of your love.

Sainthood for the Selfish

2010-10-18T00:01:00.009+03:00

“According to researchers, making other people happy proves to be a fast track to happiness, and its effect is long lasting. Turning to creative expression to make yourself happy can also generate positive results that last a lifetime.” – Deepak Chopra

I am living the dream! I write this in the Bahamas occasionally glancing towards the white sandy beach followed by the turquoise ocean. I have eaten fresh fruit – I have never seen so big peaches before – I have practiced yoga and meditation, swam, read and written some. This is the selfish part of my dream life. The other, unselfish part, is giving back to God and the world through service. I hope that taking care of my own needs – the sunlight, time outside in the nature, rest, right kind of food and exercise, the pleasure of aesthetics and the company of like-minded people – will enable me to give back.

I pay careful attention to the things I can be grateful for and thank other people involved whenever I can in different ways: sometimes with words, sometimes with smiles, sometimes as a tip, sometimes as a helping hand or a prayer. Loving service can take many different forms. I humbly hope that my writing can be of service to some people. I believe that taking care of my hygiene and looks can be considered a service to the people around me. I intend to look and smell good for the wellbeing of everybody, not in order to boost my ego. I am convinced that my prayers for the world and its inhabitants is an important service – even if I’m not a nun living in a nunnery, which I have, in fact, considered a few times in my life.

We are supposed to enjoy our lives in a virtuous way. Not deny pleasures in order to get closer to God or neglect our own needs in order to fulfill other people’s needs. This Earth could be a paradise for us all, we don’t need to hoard or compete with others in order to find happiness. As I’ve said before, we just need to make ourselves lovable to ourselves first. When we feel lovable, we can accept the free gifts of the Universe that our Creator is giving us in different ways, often times using other people – angels in disguise – to manifest them.

Be selfish for a moment and write down your wishes and dreams. Then put that paper away somewhere from where you can find it after a couple of months to see if any of them have come true. In the meantime, be as grateful and virtuous as you can in every situation you encounter. Above all, however, love everybody to the best of your ability.

Seasons of Joy

2010-10-11T00:02:00.001+03:00

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;

A time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;

A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

A time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

A time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to throw away;

A time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

A time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.

If there is really time for all this, we should make the best out of all these. How can we make giving birth enjoyable? How can we make the death peaceful? Ask questions and you'll get the answers if you listen with an open mind free from preconceived ideas.

Equanimity is the way to react to whatever life throws at you; knowing that this too shall pass. Whether it is something positive or negative in your life, the lesson is to learn to let go and not be attached to it. The river keeps rolling on. There's no reason to try to resist the change, just embrace it by being fully immersed in the joy of the moment. Time flies. Don't waste it on indecision. Forget the decisions, just do what you can today to reach your dream or to keep it alive.

Don't forget that you also need to work for fulfilled dreams. So often people think that when they've reached a goal - be it a job, relationship, home, health, or whatever tickles their fancy - they should come up with a new goal. There is a point about keeping moving but there is also great beauty found in digging deeper. You can get more out of life by going deeper into the skill of a job, into deeper intimacy with your partner, keeping renovating your home, maintaining your health through preventative methods, and so forth.

Joy has many different faces. What does she look like to you today, in this particular season?

Imperfect Body Mates

2010-10-04T00:15:00.010+03:00

I've been talking a lot about soul mates but what about physical compatibility. Isn't it important? I believe it does play a role in choosing a mate even if priority is in the matching of two souls. Somehow it is easier for me to believe that souls are eternal whereas bodies aren't. Then again in Christianity there is a belief about resurrection bodies; when we die, we get healthy heavenly bodies that will enable us physicality also in Heaven. What about minds then? Are minds eternal? Some would say that we wouldn't need to use our minds in Heaven because there wouldn't be any problems to solve. But people like mind games such as chess even here on Earth, so why would we like to abandon our minds when we move on to another level of existence? Or does it all end after our brief time here on Earth?

I think that it is not so important to know what is going to happen. What is important is the fact that we live every moment of our lives virtuously fully anchored in the present. Why virtuously? Because that way we'd be prepared for Eternity in case it is true. I believe that only virtuous living is sustainable and yields everlasting joy. As I've said before, the greatest virtue is love - the unconditional version of it. Love is when you love someone just because that person exists. Like any creator, who creates a piece of art or a human, loves the product of his/her creative labor. It is easy to love your "baby" because you made it. However, we should love everybody like that, like they were as worthy of our love as our own creations. There can be many things in people that we don't like - let alone love - still we should love them despite their flaws. This way we make this experience of life more joyful for all.

Flaws are actually an invitation to love. If we were flawless, we wouldn't need other people's love, yet we could still enjoy it. However, it would be harder for us to show love to a flawless person. How do you show your love to someone who doesn't need anything from you? With acts of service of course but does that flawless person need any service? What's worse, what if you are giving "the wrong kind of service" to him/her. Imperfections bring color into our lives. They are not matters of life and death. Let's take our and other people's flaws more lightly! Lets just laugh at the flaws, because they are actually quite ridiculous, and let's love the perfectly lovable people hidden under them. Then when you'll find a flaw in yourself you can forgive yourself easier having been merciful towards the imperfections in other people.

Love your mate with all his/her imperfections because the perfect soul-mind-body mate does not exist due to our inconsistent natures. Learn to love and let go and you'll increase the perfect soul-mind-body connection moments in your life. Just be diplomatically authentic because, at their best, authenticity is sexy and diplomacy is love.

Ego Expectations

2010-09-27T00:00:00.003+03:00

"To be loved is the soul's food." - C.S. Lewis

You don't want to be loved because of your ego - wealth, looks, wit and so forth. Therefore, why do you look at the ego of the other person? The world tells you to do so; very often people evaluate you according to your accomplishments and you mirror it in your own opinion of yourself and others. This, however, is not sustainable. The same way your soulmate doesn't need your ego to be perfect (you don't have to fulfill all the external qualities of his/her wish list) you shouldn't look at the egos of the people you meet.

It is actually quite strangely common that a person who has little to offer on ego level expects all from the other person's ego. I believe this comes down to the void inside the person. This person is actually trying to fill the void inside with an outwardly desirable partner. Let me tell you: this won't work in the long run! Deep down the insecurity would break the bliss, unless the person would somehow realize the need to fill the void from inside independently from the partner.

C.S. Lewis' novel "The Great Divorce" depicts a great example of this through the characters of angelic spirit Sarah Smith who resides in Heaven and the spirit of her husband the Dwarf-Ghost who has come from Hell with a busload of other souls to see their loved ones and to decide whether they could stay in Heaven or whether they'd like to return to Hell.

When Sarah meets the Dwarf-Ghost, his companion, a puppet called the Tragedian, starts to talk to her on behalf of the Ghost. The tragedian says that he has been worried about her being there without her husband and that she must miss him terribly. Sarah replies that it's not so, ”There are no miseries here.” Her happy response seems to hit the Tragedian heavily. The discussion continues and it becomes clear that when they were alive, Sarah had been emotionally weak and loved her husband because she needed to feel loved. She apologizes for not having loved him for his own sake. What upsets the Tragedian is Sarah saying that she is no longer weak and lonely, but happy and strong. He demands an explanation for why she does not feel pity towards him. She responds that she refuses to feel sorry for people that deliberately make themselves feel terrible, who use pity for a sort of blackmailing, ”hold joy up to ransom”. The last words of the Tragedian are ”You do not love me.” "I cannot love a lie," Sarah responds. "I cannot love the thing which is not. I am in Love, and out of it I will not go."

The more connected one is with his or her soul, the easier it is to develop one's ego traits because one is not attached to them. The soulful person knows his or her own intrinsic value and doesn't need outer validation for it and is, therefore, free to love.

Virtues for Romance

2010-09-20T00:23:00.005+03:00

Once upon a time there was a boy who met a girl he believed could be The One. Never before had he instantly felt so right about being with someone. He felt that with her his soul was at home at the same time it was traveling to new interesting horizons. This made him peacefully excited. He did not want to mess it all up like all the other relationships before her. Determined to do everything right this time, he went to consult the Wise.

They told him to stay aware and focused on the purity of the feeling he had for her and their possible lifetime - and perhaps even all eternity - together. "Do not get distracted by all the other beautiful souls and bodies you will meet - they have just come into your life to help you stay focused on your Soulmate. When you will catch yourself thinking impure thoughts, let them go and empty your mind. If emptying your mind feels too hard, look at a picture of your loved one and hold the ideal of your soul companionship in your heart. Be merciful to yourself and keep getting up every time you fall short of your ideal. If you do not give up, one day you will wake up your mind and heart fully cleansed from all impurity and then you can enjoy a blissful existence with your Soulmate - provided that she has felt the same about you and put the same effort into developing her virtues."

The boy felt excited about the greatest challenge he had ever been confronted with. Finally he was ready to battle for the Good against the Evil of mediocrity, virtues as his weapon.

Virtues are the basis of romance. You need to cultivate faith, hope, love, patience, wisdom, justice, courage, temperance, humility and magnanimity if you desire to experience true love. You don't need to be the smartest, the funniest, the richest, the best looking or the best lover to attract your soulmate. Our souls are always perfect, whereas our egos will never be. Authenticity and the purity of the heart are a great starting point to charm a person. As one is authentic, one can get in touch with one's soul, which is always lovable.

Joy of Seasons

2010-09-13T09:25:00.008+03:00

"Change is the only constant" - Lucretius

I love the brisk air and autumn* colors under the Finnish sun. Experiencing them made me realize that we have again entered a new season. There’s no point holding on to summer any longer or fearing a dark and cold winter to come. We should, instead, rejoice in the fall.

There is a specific joy to be found in each season of our lives as well. Sometimes it’s easier to find than at other times, yet it is always there if you know how to look, or rather how not to look for anything, just empty your mind. The only thing constant in our lives and in nature is change. Our soul needs change so that it can grow, which is its ultimate goal: to grow into Godlikeness.

"A spiritual path has only one reason to exist: it shows the way for the soul to grow. As it grows, more of spiritual truth is revealed, more of the soul's promise is redeemed." - Deepak Chopra

As one’s soul has become one with God, all the need to choose has ended, and there is only one thing to do at each moment of one's life. Then one can either accept that and feel the joyful peace that follows the non-resistance, or one can decide to go against the current until one has to choose again the right or wrong.

When we are in the flow, the only thing to do is to stay aware and let the flow lead the way. If we always add some margin to our lives and allow ourselves to meditate, we will always know when we are going off the flow. Then we should stop and let the natural course of affairs take us to the joyful flow that runs through the different seasons of our lives.

* I don't particularly like the word fall, which is why I've used its British counterpart here even if I've mainly used American English in the blog. ;)

A reason, a season or a lifetime:

Practical Spirituality - Gentle Challenges

2010-09-06T12:24:00.003+03:00

Spirituality gives meaning to life but what does it mean? With spirituality life makes more sense – it actually adds the sixth sense to your life. Spirit is the source of inner strength, joy and energy that we need in order to live a thriving life. Therefore, it is important to start your day by connecting to the Source.

It’s as if you are a laptop that can be charged during the night. In the morning you decide whether you want to stay connected to the Source via the cable or whether you will use up the stored energy. If you keep connected to the Source, you don’t lose your charge during the day. You just need to keep checking that the cable stays attached while you are out and about. There are also differences in batteries in regards to how long they last without the connection to the Source.

In this blog I have been talking about different ways of finding the joy and keeping the joy in mind in everyday life, and I have urged you to write down what works for you. Now I go one step further by asking you to describe your Source. What is your God or Soul like? What is the basis of all your beliefs? I ask this because I believe that the more real it becomes to you, the stronger its positive impact on your practical living will be. Today, because it is the beginning of Autumn, I give you a lot of homework for your school of life. In addition to visualising your Spirit, I encourage you to start writing a spiritual diary because the key to genuine change is awareness. There isn’t just one way of doing it, experiment with what works for you. Through jotting down how much attention you give to the spiritual aspect of your life, how much sleep you get, what kind of food you eat, how much you exercise and what virtues you are developing, you will naturally start to increase the balance in your life.

Don’t blame yourself if you are not happy with the chart you get when you start. Just be proud of yourself, because you are doing something in order to take better care of yourself by honestly examining yourself and being willing to change. Challenge yourself gently, otherwise you’ll get overwhelmed, and feeling discouraged you’ll stop before any permanent change has occurred.

The Free Gift of Life

2010-08-30T00:02:00.004+03:00

‎"Change is never a matter of ability, it's a matter of motivation." - Tony Robbins

I have this idea of myself that I want to be like: "Love shone not from her face only, but from all her limbs, as if it were some liquid in which she had just been bathing." - C.S. Lewis (The Great Divorce)

I want to become the perfect manifestation of divine love, and it is love that inspires me to develop towards my goal. I love the hormonal high of the infatuation that makes unselfish giving effortless. That is the phase of love that I prefer because I prefer myself as a genuine giver more than I do as a receiver. How could I, therefore, have a constant crush on myself and consequently be able to develop in true loving? Thinking what I am like when I have a crush and behaving accordingly - playing infatuation - is the key. As you play loving, you'll start to feel loving and that's when the change can happen.

"What I think and feel and what I get are always a match. And so, if I want something different than what I've been getting, I have to, somehow, generate different feelings." - Abraham

My intention is therefore to make the feeling of loving a habit. It doesn't always happen automatically but it is possible. I always felt terrible when people said that they don't love their spouses anymore but they are still together because love is not about feelings but commitment to hard work. Yes, love is a commitment to work for love but I won't give up until I feel blissful every time I love someone. Think about it, would you like somebody to love you back out of duty? I don't think so. As you want to give love freely, you also want to receive it freely.

The Universe, or God, or The Ultimate Principle on which this Universe functions (whichever you prefer calling it), works according the same logic. When you want something, you plant the seed in the Universe. Then you have to let go of the desire because only that way the Universe can give it to you as a free gift of love. Don't try to control life too much. Just learn to love and enjoy the gift of life!

I have realized that the best way to let go of any desire is to concentrate on the present moment, and the best way to concentrate on the present moment is to enjoy it. In order to enjoy it, I practice yoga or dance, read and write, dream with people I love or talk to interesting strangers with beautiful energies, go to concerts, watch a film cuddling in bed, cook a delicious dinner with care or go out to eat using all my senses, spend time out in the nature, just to mention a few ways I enjoy living this life.

How do you enjoy life?

Enjoying the Steps

2010-08-23T00:00:00.000+03:00

“When you dance, your purpose is not to get to a certain place on the floor. It's to enjoy each step along the way.” - Wayne Dyer

I love to dance and it has taught me many important lessons in life. When I'm dancing with a partner, I get the most out of a dance if I'm able to tap into the power of the present moment. If I try to guess what my partner is going to do, I'm not enjoying as much as I am when I fully let go and react to the music and body movements as it all happens. It helps to have the technique in place but the real art happens when one is able to enjoy the moment as something unique that cannot ever be reproduced.

Last week I reached two work-related objectives. It felt relaxing and made me more confident about fulfilling the rest of my dreams - when the time is right. We need to work in order to reach our goals but we should never get stuck in the "accomplishing mode". I keep repeating this to myself over and over because, for some reason, it is so easy to forget: life is here and now - it does not start when I reach an objective or fulfill a dream.

The attitude along the way is what matters the most. Are you relaxed, joyful and hopeful at this particular moment in time? If so, good for you! If not, why not? "Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?" (Matthew 6:27) Aiming at being "zen" whatever life deals for you, is the best gift you can give yourself. Of course you can also try to make the ride smooth by making life harmonious outwardly, however, you can never fully control the outer things. But you can learn to tame your mind, and when you do, the world becomes your oyster. "He who has controlled his thoughts, is a veritable God on this earth." - Swami Sivananda

Before you have your thoughts fully in your control, continue to have goals but, more importantly, do your best to enjoy every step you take towards them appreciating them as unique opportunities that you are allowed to enjoy only once.

Soulful Self-Confidence

2010-08-16T00:06:00.003+03:00

"It's not who you are that holds you back, it's who you think you're not." - Anonymous

When I formulate a dream and focus on it, I very often start to feel like I'm not good enough or really worthy of reaching the goal. In short, I lack self-confidence, which is a positively realistic attitude. Why is that? There can be many reasons for it, ranging from my past experiences, my personality, an in-built trait of all people to the possibility of our society wanting women to feel inferior to men or young people to old people. Ha, I still consider myself young! The right question isn't really why I lack self-confidence. What I should be asking is what the lack of self-confidence is telling me and how I can change it.

As I see it, self-confidence comes down to feeling worthy of love. How can we be worthy of love? We are simply born into this world. You can't buy or manipulate self-confidence. Self-confidence is your birthright sprouting from the love that created you. You are loved, therefore you are.

By making ourselves more lovable to ourselves, we make it easier for us to feel worthy and accept love. However, the real self-confidence comes when we understand our true nature through meditation. Meditation brings you into connection with your soul. It helps you to remember that you are not your thoughts or your body. You experience life through them but you are infinitely something more - your unique soul.

"Self-confidence expels the fear, the distrust, the sentiment of insufficiency, the lack of courage. Someone that has confidence in Self, knows no fear, because he/she is in connection with God consciously and more importantly, actively." - Natha Yogacenter 2006

In and Out of the Flow

2010-08-09T00:00:00.002+03:00

I promised to talk about the blocks that prevent people from living the joyful life and being in the flow. Last week I started in the flow but suddenly the next morning I had gotten out of it. Being aware and realizing that one isn't in the flow anymore is a good starting point. Then I began to think what is different to the previous blissful day: there was low pressure and I had woken up a couple of times in the middle of the night. The more significant thing was, I presume, the fact that I was expecting to continue in the flow. In other words, I had a preconceived idea that because I was joyful yesterday, I will feel joyful again today.

I decided to do something that has made me feel better in the past - and these things are different for everybody, which is why I encourage you to jot down what works for you. I did a bit of writing, yoga, meditation, visualization, had breakfast, and worked. Still feeling sluggish. Hmmm... I decided to go for a walk - fresh air and a bit of exercise would surely cheer me up. Okay, I realized a few work related things I needed to do while walking and sat down to admire the beautiful sea scenery for a while. Then it occurred to me, I hadn't really been grateful about anything that day. I was just expecting things from myself. I expected myself to be enlightened enough that I wouldn't fall out of the flow anymore. Then I gave myself a permission to be a human being with humane flaws and desires.

"It is perfectly possible for an enlightened person, if the need for the male or female polarity is not met, to feel a sense of lack or incompleteness on the outer level of his or her being, yet at the same time be totally complete, fulfilled, and at peace within." - Eckhart Tolle in The Power of Now

I had seen "Good Will Hunting" - a great film on love - the previous night and watching it had created a subliminal clinging to romantic love. Yes, I found myself out of the flow because I was too attached to my desire to be in loving arms instead of having the whole bed for myself. The desire was subliminal because it is clear to my mind that I don't just want a pair of any arms around me but only the special ones.

This brings us to the core of the confusion of knowing ourselves: we are multifaceted beings with bodies, minds and souls. Our brains have four different compartments that tell us sometimes seemingly contradictory messages. Therefore, it is important to get to know all the aspects of oneself and work to bring them in harmony if we want to stay in the flow continuously. The inner harmony manifests itself as self-confidence, which is the key to joyful living.

Imagination - The Science Fiction of Life

2010-08-02T00:07:00.003+03:00

"Science fiction is largely based on writing rationally about alternative possibilities."

What kind of life would you like to lead? Can you imagine it in positive terms? If you can, it is only a matter of time that the steps to your goal will reveal themselves if you are able to free yourself from your blocks and be fully present in every moment of your life. However, freeing yourself from your blocks and, therefore, being in the now - instead of the past and future - is not easy. We will come back to dealing with blocks in the near future but now I'd like to concentrate on the positive aspect of putting imagination into practice.

I believe that psychic abilities - that could help you achieve the dreams your imagination has come up with - may be achieved by anyone who learns the proper mental and physical discipline. What is needed, is the pure desire - kundalini. Kundalini resides in the sacrum bone in three and a half coils. Yoga proposes that this energy can be "awakened" by a guru (spiritual teacher), but body and spirit must be prepared by yogic austerities such as pranayama (or breath control), physical exercises (like the asanas of hatha yoga), visualization, meditation and chanting. Kundalini can also awaken spontaneously, for example through love, serving people and through some intense experiences, such as childbirth.

Kundalini is considered an interaction of the subtle body along with chakra energy centers and nadis channels. Each chakra is said to contain special characteristics and with proper training, moving kundalini energy through these chakras can help express or open these characteristics. When kundalini awakes, it tries to force a passage through this hollow canal, and as it rises step by step, layer after layer of the mind becomes open and all the different visions and wonderful powers come to the Yogi. When it reaches the brain, the Yogi is perfectly detached from the body and mind and the soul finds itself free. The arousing of kundalini is said by some to be the one and only way of attaining Self-Realization or Self-Knowledge, which is considered equivalent to Divine Wisdom. Divine Wisdom brings the aspirant pure joy, pure knowledge and pure love, which ultimately lies at the core of every dream. Or am I wrong?

"In oneself lies the whole world, and if you know how to look and learn, the door is there and the key is in your hand." - J. Krishnamurti

Failure in Love

2010-07-26T00:39:00.002+03:00

"The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return." -Eden Ahbez

There can be failures in loving but there's never a failure in real love. People come into your lives for various reasons and seasons. However, the ultimate meaning of every encounter is the same: to help each other to become more aware of our true selves, our souls or whatever you want to call our essence, which are intimately linked to being present in the state of real love.

"Our disposable culture has taught us to believe that transformative love is the stuff of fairy tales, but nothing could be further from the truth. From the very beginning, we humans were built to love, to be loved, and to be transformed by love." - Gregory K. Popcak in "The Exceptional Seven Percent: The Nine Secrets of the Worlds Happiest Couples."

We try to fulfill the greatest of our needs in various ways - consciously or unconsciously. The more aware we become, the easier it becomes to find sustainable love. The source of sustainable love is inside us, and other people just reflect that to us - some better than others. However, even if being connected to the real - sustainable - love within is the most important thing, romantic and friendship love shared with other love-filled people are gifts to us as human beings. The romantic or friendship love can also become sustainable if we learn to love, first and foremost, the real selves of our objects of love. We can then learn to love others without any other needs than just sharing the air we breathe. Sure we can also enjoy our bodies and minds with each other but we don't need them to fulfill anything in us.

"Exceptional love lies within you, because Exceptional love is your innate call; it is the essential ground of your physical, emotional and spiritual being. It is what you were built to do." - Gregory K. Popcak

Exceptional loving becomes possible through awareness and presence, which are skills that can be trained. I believe it will take me this lifetime to excel in loving and that is why the meaning of my life is to aim for awareness through and for love. What is a perfect lover to you? Why don't you try becoming that for yourself?

Healing the Wounds of Love

2010-07-19T10:25:00.008+03:00

"God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world." - C.S. Lewis

I have said already a few times here that loving is worth it even if it will be followed by heartache. So what are we supposed to do when love makes us bleed? Not, for example, what I just heard had happened to a very young couple with a baby. The young mother had not allowed the young father - nor the grandparents - to see their baby-girl for three months, which is almost half of the age of the little one. I don't know what had made the young mother so upset but I do know that not allowing the baby to receive the love from her father and his family, wouldn't be the answer.

When we experience pain, whether it is due to love or something else, we shouldn't try to push it aside or hide from it. We'd be better off concentrating on it fully as an objective observer and breathe in deeply. What makes pain more painful is that we let our minds make it into a bigger deal than it is. For example, if someone doesn't want to receive your love, it's their loss, isn't it? If you truly love, you just want to give. However, if you wanted something in return, it wasn't really pure love. You were using the object of your love to fulfill your needs. And can you then blame them if they didn't want to receive your "love" and ran away from you? If you truly love but your love is not reciprocated, it does not really matter since loving is a gift first and foremost to you - it feels like enlightenment, provided there are no attachments or expectations involved.

The next time you feel pain remember that it is talking to you, trying to help you become more aware and truly joyful by getting rid of all the attachments and expectations. Understand why the wounds are there and they will soon be healed.

"Things and conditions can give you pleasure, but they will also give you pain. Things and conditions can give you pleasure, but they cannot give you joy. Joy is uncaused and arises from within as the joy of Being. It is an essential part of the inner state of peace, the state that has been called the peace of God. It is your natural state." - Eckhart Tolle

What Is Love?

2010-07-12T01:23:00.001+03:00

"What is often referred to as love may be pleasurable and exciting for a while, but it is an addictive clinging, and an extremely needy condition that can turn into its opposite at the flick of a switch. Many 'love' relationships, after the initial euphoria has passed, actually oscillate between 'love' and hate, attraction and attack. Real love doesn't make you suffer. How could it?" - Eckhart Tolle

Conflict and confusion in life often result from communication. We give different meanings to different words. I believe that communication has become even more complicated in today's world where we are in contact with people from all over the world speaking different languages as their mother tongue and associating the equivalent English words to varying meanings. Not to mention the difficulty of conversing through digital media deprived of all the cues of non-verbal communication - which in itself has national variations.

The author Stuart Lichtman gives a clear example of the complexity in reaching mutual understanding by asking us to describe the color green through association. We can actually recognize 1,000 shades of green, which means that your understanding of green is probably completely different from mine. This became clear as I, for the first time in my life, dyed my hair red this week. When people saw the result, for many it didn't match the image they had about red in the first place. Colors are still quite simple and don't normally cause too much heartache, but what about words like "love"?

C.S. Lewis has written a book called "The Four Loves" in which he divides love into four different categories through their greek names: storgy meaning affection, philea meaning love between friends, eros meaning romantic love, and agape - the "love in the Christian sense" as he puts it. I think that as I have written about love, I have mainly written about the romantic love and the charity as C.S. Lewis calls agape intermittently.

So, when we are talking about other forms of love than agape, or compassion as Buddhists label it, I think there is always the possibility of getting hurt. But don't you think it's worth it?

I Love, therefore I Live

2010-07-05T00:13:00.004+03:00

"I think, therefore I exist" is the famous saying of Descartes and how true that is. But why on Earth would we be satisfied with just existing? I prefer to think that because I love, therefore I live.

I'll give you an example of how love makes us live.

Once upon a time there was a little boy who had been playing with the finest toys in the world. He had been amused many times but after a while the amusement grew weary and he had to get a new toy or he would get very unruly. His parents were getting desperate, they didn't have any more money to buy any toys for him nor had they the time to make the toys for him because they had to work in order to put bread to the table. One night before going to sleep the mother was praying on her knees to find a solution to their problem. She fell asleep in tears but woke up gently with the sun tickling her eyelashes. She knew right away what she needed to do with her son. She told the boy that he has gotten sacks of new toys and the boy's eyes started to sparkle. "Where are they, mother?" the boy eagerly questioned. "They are hidden everywhere in this house, you find clues in your old toys, go and look for them." the mother urged her son with a calm smile on her face. The boy started to look for clues and started to see the old toys in new ways. Consequently he started playing happily with the old toys and forgot to look for the new ones. And they lived happily ever after.

Being fully present with an open mind and heart is the key to loving and living.

"Time and reading did not change me. But love changed my life" - Paulo Coelho

Effortless Effort

2010-06-28T00:01:00.003+03:00

"Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future." - Oscar Wilde

When one is striving to become more virtuous, one might not always feel joyful. The individual effort is an effort but the joy after the effort is worth it. Especially because when a person is fully virtuous - a saint - the joy is constant. I truly believe that it is our vices that make us miserable. Or rather the dissonance between the knowledge about virtues and putting them in practice. When one has enough wisdom to see the right conduct but not the temperance to yield to it, one experiences discomfort. Then again, if someone hasn't received any virtuous education, that person might be happy to lead an immoral life. Yet, it is not true joy and it can be taken away any moment the objects that bring happiness are taken away. Think of gangsters for example, they can seem happy with their power but they are in a constant state of fear of losing it.

According to some studies, it seems that temperance is the hardest virtue to develop for human beings. Why do you think this is so? I believe the answer lies in the fact that in Heaven we don't need to practice temperance because we would automatically know the right amount of food, exercise, rest and play we need - like animals do. I actually feel like it comes down to the individual effort of clearing and controlling the mind through concentration and meditation. The mind can help us to develop our virtues by helping us to see whether our thoughts and actions are helping or hindering us in our virtuous pursuits, and the more virtuous we are, the easier it is for us to truly stay in the present moment of beauty, love, creativity, joy and inner peace. Just don't trust the mind blindly before it is completely and constantly pure.

"Love is not effortless. It becomes demonstrable or real only through the fact that for that someone (or for ourself) we take an extra step or walk an extra mile." - M. Scott Peck

All Is Well

2010-06-21T01:52:00.033+03:00

"Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart ...
Who looks outside, dreams.
Who looks inside, awakens."
- Carl Jung

Three of my friends have their birthday today and I started to think what I could give them as a birthday gift. I wanted to give them something special that would make them feel like reality is better than their dreams. Anthony de Mello has said that we can be happy right now. We don't have to get anything or achieve anything to find happiness. We are joyful by nature. It is only the stamps that people put on themselves and others that cause us dissatisfaction. We have a natural desire only to love and to be free. It is of course very easy for me to grant these to my friends, so easy that it would be rather odd if I'd say to them that, as a birthday present, I grant them freedom to be and to love.

However, when we talk about a romantic relationship, it becomes almost impossible to allow the other person to be fully free and to love freely. We tend to fabricate all kinds of expectations of communication and conduct. Ownership seems to go hand in hand with romance because we are just following the golden rule: do to others as you would like them to do to you. We want to be in a unique role in our lover's life. Certainly we want to be unique to our friends as well but we don't expect our friend to be a friend only for us, whereas we do - at least most of us - expect our partner to grant their amorous attention only to us. We all encounter trouble in our relationships due to these preconceived ideas. Getting upset will not, however, help anybody. One can only breathe in deeply and acknowledge the shared wisdom of all the mystics: all is well. Right here and right now all is well despite all of the discords in the harmony. What matters is that we continue to write the symphony.

Happy life is a continuous creative movement shared with others. We are to live in Love whether we have a romantic relationship in our lives or not because that is our natural state of being. We are to be the lover we want first and foremost to ourselves and then to others. I believe, therefore, that the best present I can give my friends is to continue to be a positive mirror to them; help them see themselves as objectively as possible, to remind them that all is well and encourage them to keep going forward in life - slowly enough to enjoy the scenery on the way.

"Don't change: Desire to change is the enemy of love.
Don't change yourselves: Love yourselves as you are.
Don't change others: Love all others as they are.
Don't change the world: It is in God's hands and he knows.
And if you do that change will occur
Marvellously in its own way and in its own time
Yield to the current of life unencumbered by baggage."
- Anthony de Mello

Magician of One's Own Life

2010-06-14T13:40:00.013+03:00

"To live the life of an entertainer is living like a millionaire without having a million dollars." - Michael Ammar, Close Up Magician

We create our own lives through thoughts, actions, habits and character. First you have to learn to clear your mind of all clutter, for example, through meditation. Then you can choose what you want to think and afterwards those things will magically appear into your life. Sounds too easy? Well, it's not. It's simple, but very often the most simple things, such as staying aware of our thoughts, are the hardest ones to do.

What can help or hinder the magicianship of our lives, is our surroundings. Have we surrounded ourselves with people who encourage us to be free and creative or are we constantly facing restraints and complaints from the people who are supposed to love and care for us? This doesn't mean that we should just delete the negative people from our lives - that would be very unloving of us - but we could try confronting the negativity by helping them to see the positive possibilities in our lives. Positive possibilities are endless, it is only our limited minds that create the false restraints. Therefore, we need more creative play in our lives to inspire our imagination.

In the end we are responsible for our own entertainment in life. Sure it helps if someone close to you is fun and cheerful but we should never expect anyone to keep us optimistic and make our dreams come true. Besides, it's much more fun to partake in making the magic than just enjoying its results.

When was the last time something magical happened in your life? What was it?

Everyday Euphoria

2010-06-04T14:34:00.012+03:00

"Heaven on Earth is a choice you must make, not a place you must find." - Wayne Dyer

Now that The Football World Cup is starting again, I began to think of ways in which we try to find euphoria in every day life. With the world cup starting there are lots of people with high hopes that their country will do well so that they will experience lots of highs but obviously apart from the winning team, there's more chance of experiencing lots of lows. Why then, do people put themselves through the almost inevitable low just for a tiny chance of the high? It must be in our nature to strive for the highs in life. We feel more alive when we're high. And being alive, conscious in the moment, is the key to blissful life. Being low occasionally isn't as bad as to be in the middle all the time. When one doesn't feel highs and lows, one stagnates into numbness. As one feels numb, one doesn't feel alive because there's no passion for anything.

"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket - safe, dark, motionless, airless - it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell." - C.S. Lewis

Life is supposed to be lived passionately and therefore feeling alive is essential. One can feel alive without extraordinary things such as big sport events, but I guess it is sometimes easier to "resuscitate" oneself back to the pulse of life through an event that many people are directing their energies toward. I think we can find euphoria in everyday life by looking at it from a fresh angle. One practical thing I like to do is to thank for the coming day the first moment I wake up: "Thank You for this wonderful opportunity to experience this existence here on Earth today. I will do my best to honor this gift by being aware and embracing all the little details with an open mind and enthusiasm."

How do you find euphoria in every day living?

Virtuous Arts

2010-05-31T08:20:00.001+03:00

“Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.” – Pablo Picasso

When I was younger I didn't know how to enjoy arts the way I do nowadays. I think it was because I was in such a hurry to live and learn. My French teacher in Paris said to me that you're so young, that's why you are in a hurry. I didn't understand it then but I do now. "Hurrying is the flesh trying to do more than the spirit is leading it to do" - Joyce Meyer

I feel like I have found myself and developed my skills enough to be able to enjoy whatever comes along thoroughly. In short, I believe that I have developed a healthy self esteem that allows me to enjoy art and not to go to art museums in order to learn something or become more sophisticated. I also acknowledge now that I don't have to see all the paintings in a museum or to spend time with the pieces I don't find interesting. Looking at one painting and achieving a meditative state whilst immersed in it is more than enough. Art does indeed wash away the dust of everyday life from the soul if we let it.

Paulo Coelho quite recently quoted Kandinsky on his blog: "Art is a power that should be aimed at developing the soul. If art does not do this job, the abyss that separates us from God is left without a bridge. The artist owes his talent to God and has to settle this debt. To do this, he has to work hard, know that he is free in his art but not in his commitment to life. Everything he feels and thinks is part of the raw material with which to improve the spiritual atmosphere around him. Beauty, whether in art or in a woman, cannot be empty; it has to be at the service of humankind and the world.”

This represents my concept of virtuous arts - arts that fill our hearts and minds with good and noble. Art to me is a dynamic concept, which is supposed to live and develop at all times. However, it should not violate the subjective right of a human being or an animal to life. A virtuous artist produces virtuous arts naturally and the virtuous audience is invigorated by it. For me the role of arts can vary; arts can bring aesthetic pleasure to the viewer or listener, they can bring about revelations, they can shake the current concepts of thought and social order, they can bring peace.

Arts are closely linked to our emotions. What emotions have you experience the last time you enjoyed arts?

Daring to Dream

2010-05-24T10:47:00.019+03:00

Lately I've been thinking how everything that I have wished for has become reality if I have kept believing in it and really wanting it. I was able to rejoice for one fulfilled dream last week after a year of waiting and that made me think about the meaning of dreaming.

Time to wait is really quite irrelevant, what matters is the attitude and action while waiting. Life is really about sowing through dreaming and manifesting the dreams, not reaping. Certainly reaping the harvest - fulfilling the dreams - is rewarding but the pleasure of the achievement of a goal lasts only for a while and then it is time to dream again so that through dreaming one is able to manifest the dreams through meaningful activity.

One of the biggest things that debilitates us from dreaming is fear. So easily I become frightened of failure and very often my surroundings reinforce that fear in a form of a protective parent, well meaning friend, or an acquaintance who tells about someone who really got burnt by life. Instead of trying to protect each other from possible failures, we should encourage our loved ones to follow their dreams and let them know that we'll love them no matter what, and if possible to help them through our wisdom and know-how.

According to the law of attraction, by being positive we attract the positive outcomes into our lives. Even if the law of attraction wouldn't work, the worst would come to worst and one wouldn't increase the positive outcomes, one would certainly have enjoyed the ride more by being courageously optimistic than fearful. Daring to dream means also not giving up on one's dreams when it seems like they are not going to manifest the way one imagined in the first place. Sometimes the outcome is even greater than one was able to hope for.

Celebration of the Spirit

2010-05-17T00:06:00.008+03:00

"That is the miracle of love that we are completely lovable even when we are imperfect because we are whole." - Deepak Chopra

As I became a year older last week, I was happy to notice that the years had actually matured me a bit. I had been able to increase the role of the Spirit in my life. Certainly my ego was glad to receive attention and gifts but at the same time I felt like my soul was able to use the ego's happiness - positivity - for my spiritual growth. I remember asking for fruit of the Spirit years ago and now that I started to think about them, I felt like I had truly been blessed by them. The fruit of the Spirit is a physical manifestation of a Christian's transformed life. Even if I've learnt about them through Christian tradition, I don't see any reason why anybody from any set of beliefs wouldn't like to manifest them in one's life.

The attributes of the fruit of the spirit are love, joy, peace, longsuffering (patience), gentlesness (kindness), goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance (self-control). One can of course always develop further in these attributes or in the constance of them in one's life, however, I think it was important for me to finally accept myself as I am - far from perfect but tentatively manifesting the traits I've been praying for. I've always been very hard on myself and consequently on others as well. Now I finally felt like I only need to concentrate lovingly on my own development and let the other flowers bloom at their season. My main mission in life as a human being is to get to know my own soul by increasing my awareness and capacity to love and be loved. How this will manifest itself in this life is a daily mystery that I'm grateful to experience to the fullest by embracing the little details of life. I can use virtues as a map but by connecting to my heart I will be guided by my intuition.

Therefore, in my opinion daily practises of opening the heart chakra are vital. Instead of judging with your mind, just give it a try - no one has to know about it! One way to do this is to sit in a meditation position holding left hand on the heart and the right hand on top of the other and to be peacefully still, and perhaps you'll hear the symphony of the Spirit.

The Paradise on Earth

2010-05-10T09:00:00.001+03:00

The idea of a Heaven, Paradise, Shambhala, Utopia, Shangri-La, has always intrigued people. Have you ever wondered why? Some psychologists say it comes from the early experiences of a baby merging with his or her mother while drinking milk from the mother's bosom and falling asleep while doing it. I believe it is something in-built in us and we get glimpses of it as we merge together with a beloved - whether in a child-mother relationship, or as two lovers, or as an ecstatic connection to God.

Yesterday was Mother's Day in my part of the world. I celebrated it with my adorable mother and felt so grateful for all the love she had showered me with and still continues to bestow on me today. Yet at the same time sweet sorrow filled my heart because I am not yet a mother myself. When I was a little girl I felt that my mother hadn't been ambitious enough because excelling in being a housewife and mum was perfectly enough for her. I decided, instead, to concentrate on a career first and foremost, children would probably follow eventually, but I thought I would never derive meaning to my life from them. Now at the age of 30 I feel grateful for having gotten everything else in life I could have possibly asked for, except a child. Certainly I would still like to bring peace to the whole world and stop the suffering of all the sentient beings, and most probably, achieving that would bring along a considerable amount of personal pleasure as well! However, ironically I nowadays see parenthood as one of the most ambitious tasks in the world and the best birthday present I could ask for would be a thriving pregnancy leading to a healthy baby and a happy family. “Being a full-time mother is one of the highest salaried jobs... since the payment is pure love.” - Mildred B. Vermont

This unfulfilled desire makes me humble in the same way we are humbled by the ash coming out of the volcano in Iceland. There are still numerous things out of our control in this world. We just have to have faith, hope and love. These three aspects of human life make life worthwhile. While we are in this world, we need all of them, but as we enter Paradise, the only thing needed is love. I believe that living in and for love is the closest we can come to achieving Heaven on earth. However, waiting to experience a mother's unconditional love for her offspring feels like longing for Shambhala; one knows that in order to attain that blissful place, one has to be able to first attain the blissful state of being.

The Sun Exposes Our Needs

2010-05-03T00:02:00.007+03:00

“We never understand how little we need in this world until we know the loss of it” - J. M. Barrie

I found myself utterly contented as the month of April turned into May, my beloved birth month. Sun is shining again and flowers and leaves are starting to develop. I bought some fresh herbs and placed them on the windowsill. Life. The hibernation is over and I feel alive again together with my environment. All this made me realize how great is my need for sun and warmth in keeping me content, and I decided to re-read Maslow's theory on the hierarchy of needs.

Abraham Maslow first introduced the theory in "A Theory of Human Motivation" in 1943. Maslow studied what he called exemplary people such as Albert Einstein, Jane Addams, and Eleanor Roosevelt, rather than mentally ill or neurotic people. His theory was fully expressed in his 1954 book "Motivation and Personality."

Maslow's hierarchy of needs is portrayed in the shape of a pyramid, with the largest and lowest levels of needs at the bottom, and the need for self-actualization at the top. First come the physiological needs like homeostasis (the balance of a particular system like the Earth and a human being), breathing, food, water, excretion, sleep and sex. Then comes the need for safety: security of body, employment, resources, morality, the family, health and property. This is followed by our need for love and belonging, which are fulfilled through friends, family and sexual intimacy. Next ladder portrays the needs for esteem; self-esteem, confidence, achievement, respect of and by others. On top of the hierarchy is the need for self-actualization; morality, creativity, spontaneity, problem solving, lack of prejudice and acceptance of facts.

I wouldn't necessarily see our needs in a hierarchy; I see them as a sum that varies in shape. Sometimes we are desperate to fulfill some of the "higher" needs even if all of the "lower" needs are not met first, and sometimes we don't feel needy at all. Some wisdom traditions teach that we actually have everything we need inside ourselves. There are even examples of people who can go on without food and water for long periods of time, which indicates that there exists a possibility for conquering even the basic human needs.

However, if an environmental catastrophe would occur and we would not be able, for example, to see the sun for years, how would the humans survive? How can we compensate the unfulfilled needs, like the lack of sunlight, in a constructive way?

Balance

2010-04-26T08:58:00.003+03:00

In the need of inspiration, I opened again one of my favourite books "The Artist's Way" by Julia Cameron, and one sentence triggered my attention: "we often resist what we most need." Past week I felt like so many things were hard work. Not just work but communicating with people and performing the mundane routine things one has to do, like cleaning, grocery shopping, paying bills etc. I felt like I wanted to have a holiday from life, or rather, a part of me wanted to continue the holiday I had had a week earlier.

Why was my vacation so lovely? I didn't have to push myself to do anything, everything just flowed. I woke up when I wanted to, I did things I wanted to, and I went to sleep when I wanted to. So, it was the freedom of choice and the abundance of time that made life beautiful. After my week off I could have still declined going back to work but it would have had consequences that I would have had to deal with. Responsibility can sometimes feel heavy. But if I hadn't fulfilled my responsibilities well prior to my holiday, I wouldn't have been able to enjoy the holiday so much. Therefore, we come back to the balance again. This time paying a special attention to the balance of responsibility and freedom. I believe we all need both but for some people responsibility is more important than freedom and vice versa.

I think that my natural inclination is towards freedom, therefore, restrictions that come from responsibility can sometimes feel overwhelming. Especially when I believe that I know how to use my freedom in a responsible yet unconventional way. But I suppose that sentence "we often resist what we most need" would in my case mean that, if I would like to develop as a human being, I should increase my responsibilities instead of the freedom I crave.

What is the thing that you resist the most right now and can you see that embracing it could improve the balance of your life?

Limerence on Life

2010-04-19T00:00:00.007+03:00

"Life is like an ice-cream. Enjoy it before it melts."

I have always thought that the joy one feels when infatuated should be more or less our natural state of being. It makes people naturally optimistic: "a limerent person tends to emphasize what is admirable in the limerent object." Balance of hope and uncertainty is what keeps limerence alive and when we think about it, isn't that what life should be all about. We should never lose hope and, yet, we can never be sure of anything in life, except Love. With Love I mean God or whatever represents the ultimate goodness and bliss. Love is said to give us hope and help to cope with uncertainty. What is it in Love that makes these things happen? I would say it is the soul connection. As one is connected to one's soul, one is connected to Love and then everything makes sense and one feels euphoric.

There are different ways of connecting with one's soul. One of them is love, which goes through different stages; starting from attraction, heightening in infatuation or limerence, continuing to courtship and hopefully reaching the life-transforming intimacy. As one has entered the intimacy one should still work to maintain the positive energy of infatuation. Tantric yoga has many insights into being able to evoke the desired energy in the latter, naturally calmer, state of love. All of the teachings come down to the balance of yin and yang, the lunar and solar, the feminine and the masculine energies.

"Embracing paradox is a way to move beyond our conditioned controlled worldview. It opens our consciousness into an acceptance of the mystery and uncertainty of life, and that unpredictability is part of what makes life so interesting, fun, and beautiful." - Deepak Chopra

Health Is Wealth

2010-04-12T09:54:00.001+03:00

Health is something one starts to think about in the absence of it, and this is not so common when we are young. However, I have always been intrigued by health. One of my favourite reading as a child was four heavy volumes of a series of books on alternative healing called "Terveen elämän salaisuudet" (The Secrets of Healthy Life). The mystery involved in being healthy fascinated me. There were so many ways to take care or heal oneself. For a little girl the perfect health seemed to come down to healthy mind and that is why I thought I wanted to become a psychiatrist for a long time. However, at some point I experienced a political awakening and I felt that actually our surroundings influence greatly how healthy our minds can become and, very modestly, I decided to change the structures of the society instead so that nobody would have to visit a psychiatrist in the utopia we would create!

How to get to that healthy utopia? I don't believe in violence, so that leaves out revolution and terrorism. Philosophy, arts and religion clarify to us in what kind of utopia we would be like to live in (and please write down comments about your ideal society), then it is up to politicians, engineers, doctors and others to make it into a practical reality and for teachers to pass the information on to the next generation.

Yoga philosophy is the most holistic and practical one I have encountered so far. Swami Vishnu-Devananda, one of my gurus, has said that “Health is wealth. Peace of mind is happiness. Yoga shows the way.” Yoga teaches that if a person lives against the natural laws, he or she becomes ill. Similarly, if a person violates the ethical principles, he or she will suffer. Therefore, we come back to the importance of growing awareness. If we don't know the natural laws and ethical principles, we can stay healthy and happy with luck but if we know them, we can slowly learn how to live accordingly without even thinking about them.

Health is the building block of joy, awareness is the foundation of health. Please, do share your favourite health tips with us!

Lighten Up to Become Enlightened

2010-04-05T16:39:00.003+03:00

“Don’t take life so seriously, you’re not going to get out of it alive anyway.”

One of my mottos is lighten up to become enlightened. I want to be witty and funny but that doesn’t come to me naturally - and I'm too kind for sarcasm. When I was a little girl, I was a princess and princesses weren’t funny in those days. Thank God for Hollywood and Shrek! When I grew older I became a moralist and we all know how much fun that is. As I finally started to loosen up, it seemed like few people would get my sense of humour – either because it was too weird and morbid for their taste or because they were conditioned to the idea that a blonde woman simply couldn’t be funny. Again, thank God for Legally Blonde and Reese Witherspoon!

Not so long ago I was told that the degree of humour one can master reflects how spiritually advanced that person is. I decided to google my question for further knowledge: “Why is a sense of humour important for spiritual development?” Firstly, nothing interesting came up. Just clichés about how a healthy sense of humour is important for spiritual development and it is good to be able to laugh at oneself and so forth. Then I encountered an article by Ken Ewing called “Spirituality and Humor.” In that article he mentioned an intriguing book: Henri Cormier’s “The Humor of Jesus.” I got excited right away and started to think that we'll have to explore this theme in more than just one blog update.

We just celebrated Easter Sunday and, therefore, I wanted to share with you Ewing’s thoughts on Jesus’ trial and resurrection: Jesus’ “sense of humor as it impacted His own spiritual life enabled Him to face with confidence His most trying days of passion before the Cross. ... There is an old saying that ‘He who laughs last, laughs best.’ And who had the largest and most robust last laugh in history? God, through the resurrected Jesus is able to laugh sin and death in the face – God prevailed not evil. It was God’s triumphal loving laugh that makes it possible for us to have hope and humor in our lives.”

Being serious is simply not healthy, especially if the solemnity is accompanied by stress. Humour, which can help us to look at life from a healthier angle, is an essential quality in love. How do you, my dear readers, interpret this? There are no right and wrong answers, so please feel free to share for example how humour has helped your love lives to flourish!

“Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.” – Oscar Wilde

Listening to the Music

2010-03-29T00:07:00.001+03:00

"Thoughts of love, peace, contentment, purity, perfection, Divinity, will make you, and also others around you, perfect and Divine." – Swami Sivananda

I have said that the theoretical framework for happiness is easy, it is the practice where many stumble. Therefore, we will concentrate now on the practical side of joy. Knowledge, awareness about yourself and your surroundings, is crucial in order to act in a constructive way. How then do we increase our wisdom?

Through meditation. There is a law of mind that says that if a thought or an idea prevails in mind, all the other thoughts and ideas gradually have the tendency to submit to the prevailing thought/idea. This is the basic principle of meditation. I think it is because of this that many religions urge one to believe only in one good God and think of Him at all times.

The prevailing thought is created by concentration, and the movement of the mind around that particular thought is meditation. Therefore, concentrate on something noble, and when your mind wanders away, bring it back gently. Our mind is unruly by nature but when we manage to tame our own mind, its power becomes enormous. Healthy life style, virtuous inputs, proper food and exercise are some things that can help us to concentrate on "our God".

Meditation does not need to happen sitting quietly, eyes closed and repeating OM in one's mind. That works for some people, for others meditation may come easier while listening to a beautiful piece of music or watching one's beloved at sleep. Your actual thought is not important. The main thing is the purity - or absence - of the thought.

"You will be bathed in the ocean of bliss when all thoughts are extirpated. This state is indescribable. You will have to feel it yourself."– Sri Swami Sivananda (Thought Power)

Dance of the Soul

2010-03-22T09:19:00.003+02:00

What are your dreams? Do you know how to pursue them? What are you waiting for?

Following your dreams will bring you to the path of self-discovery and spiritual growth, which will lead to freedom and real love, manifesting itself as creative enjoyment of the joy.

Before you can make any major decisions about the course of your life, you’ll have to get to know and love your real self. Therefore, you need to learn how to increase your wisdom and capacity to love and be loved in return. What we are looking for is actually inside ourselves but, when we are not mature enough to admit it or not spiritually developed enough to practically manifest it, we use relationships or career or material things to mirror those underdeveloped aspects of our psyches. Loving someone else helps us to love ourselves and brings us closer to the realisation that we are love and therefore we do not lack anything.

One can manifest one's dreams by changing either one's character or one's circumstances. Complications will occur. Don’t give up – continue on your chosen path committed to your goals but flexible in your approach. Develop your self-discipline and mercy. The theoretical framework for finding the love within is easy, it is the rigorous daily practice of virtues that makes it challenging. Just know that the questions are answered when you will find the love within, and the conflicts will be resolved through trusting in life and giving it all to God, the Universe, the Divine Love – no matter how you want to call it. Discover your faith and find true love in the process of following your dreams.

True love brings happiness without any reason. True love is pure and perfect without owning anyone or achieving anything. True love brings passion and peace for life at the same time. Life becomes a dance when you connect with your soul and lose yourself in the joy of the moment. Finally there will not be anything in the way of enjoying the joy. Just keep listening to the music!

The Joy of Love

2010-03-15T06:27:00.001+02:00

“The dramatic psychological shift that occurs whenever we fall in love is actually a temporary state of spiritual liberation, a glimpse of who you really are.” – Deepak Chopra

So, you don’t need an outer other half in order to fall in love, you can fall in love alone. When you honestly think about it, whenever you have fallen in love with someone, have you really fallen in love with the person as he or she is, or have you fallen for some missing piece in your life and built a story around it? Therefore, it is important to find the Love Within before you can truly fall in love with someone else. However, this is not easy!

How can one love oneself in a society where nothing is good enough? Just pause for a second now. What would be good enough for you today and in thirty years' time? Most likely the honest answer is that you don’t know. How could we know when most of us have only vague ideas about what we like now let alone tomorrow or in ten years' time?

Behind all the moving attributes, however, lies an unchangeable core and that is unconditional love or soul as some people call it. Therefore, you will have to connect with your soul in order to find love, truth and meaning in this life. How to do that? Be silent, meditate, breath in, breath out and smile. Then act. But act only from that place of serene joy. If you don’t know how to act, ask advice from wiser people. Read books, listen to talks, and converse with people you think have got it right.

You can be in love at all times, the joy of love is always in your reach. Like any other skill, it only takes practise to tap into that blissful state we call love.

“The most important thing in life is to become a passionate lover. If you have been a passionate lover in life, then you will be a lover in death, a lover in the tomb, a lover on the day of resurrection, a lover in Paradise, and a lover forever.” – Rumi

The Basic Dissatisfaction of Life versus Joy

2010-03-08T11:03:00.001+02:00

Yes, negative feelings seem to be part of life. How could we experience the positive emotions if we wouldn’t feel the flip side of the coin? I don’t think we could feel all the exhilarating positive emotions without the other end of the continuum, which are the negative emotions. I believe, however, that we could experience a constant serene joy if we would be willing to let go of the hype of the positive feelings that follow, for example, from falling in love.

That serene joy is often called peace of God. It is a place where one can breathe easily. It is easy to feel when one is sitting on a warm Caribbean beach, or standing on a mountain in the Alps. Nature is a source of that serenity. Another place to find that joy is in the arms of someone who loves you and who you love back unconditionally – whether we are talking about a mother or a lover. Or one can feel it after some solitary meditation or prayer time. The ways of finding that joy are endless and depend on who you really are. What makes you tick?

As strange as it sounds, most of us don’t know ourselves. We have all kinds of labels that describe us, but who are we deep down? Getting to know oneself is linked to the theme of my novel; truly knowing oneself and learning to love oneself as one is – with warts and all – makes it eventually possible for oneself to enjoy the joy of living. Without knowing oneself, one can have only random moments of joy. However, as one gets to know one’s real self, one is able to tap the pool of serene joy whenever needed.

Where does the dissatisfaction in life come from? I believe it comes from not really knowing oneself. If we would know ourselves, we would be able to accept life as it comes and change it gradually to increase the joy. Or we could accept the full responsibility of engaging in ephemeral positive feelings. Taking time to get to know ourselves can feel like a waste but it is not. Many people put so much time into getting to know famous people by watching TV programs or reading magazines. Why wouldn’t you put that time into getting to know someone with whom you’ll spend the rest of your life?

“To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.” – Oscar Wilde

Starting to Enjoy the Joy

2010-03-01T10:01:00.000+02:00

Enjoying the joy is the theme of my first novel. Today, on the first of March 2010, I start sharing my joy with you through this blog. I have realised that what matters are the practical details of how to enjoy one's life. That is why I will show you weekly how it is possible for me to enjoy the joy of living even when life is challenging and when it feels like there's no joy to be found.

The beautiful white snow is gone now and we will have to survive the ugly slushy period here in Helsinki, Finland, for sometime now I think. But it makes the way for spring and a new life cycle.

"Because just as winter is followed by spring, nothing comes to an end: after reaching your objective, you have to start again, always using all that you have learnt on the way." - Paulo Coelho

I think it's the transition periods that are always hard to cope with, no matter if we are talking about weather or personal growth. However, right away when we let go of the need to achieve something and concentrate on enjoying the little things in life and seizing the moment, we suddenly realise that we, or our surroundings, have changed into something new, which feels exhilarating. This is a time to rejoice and be grateful.

New challenges will occur because that keeps us going and experiencing life in different ways. When we are faced with those challenges, we should not moan or complain. Instead, we should look at them as a puzzle we need to solve. Don't we all love to solve the mysteries with Poirot? Why does it then feel so repulsive to solve our own problems? Because it is real and we are afraid that we won't be able to solve the problem, and that we'll make grave mistakes. However, how else do we learn? If we would never encounter our limits, how would we know whether we are on the right track or not?

"You can't plan in advance how to meet the next challenge." - Deepak Chopra

What I want to emphasize is that no matter what situation we are faced with, we'd be better off finding the joy in it - that simply makes life more enjoyable. My wish is that through my contemplations and your comments we can increase the joy in the world.