Reasons You Should Never Get A Job

It’s funny that when people reach a certain age, such as after graduating college, they assume it’s time to go out and get a job.  But like many things the masses do, just because everyone does it doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.

In fact, if you’re reasonably intelligent, getting a job is one of the worst things you can do to support yourself.  There are far better ways to make a living than selling yourself into indentured servitude.

Here are some reasons you should do everything in your power to avoid getting a job:

1) Income for dummies

Getting a job and trading your time for money may seem like a good idea.  There’s only one problem with it.  It’s stupid!  It’s the stupidest way you can possibly generate income!  This is truly income for dummies.

Why is getting a job so dumb?  Because you only get paid when you’re working.  Don’t you see a problem with that, or have you been so thoroughly brainwashed into thinking it’s reasonable and intelligent to only earn income when you’re working?  Have you never considered that it might be better to be paid even when you’re not working?  Who taught you that you could only earn income while working?  Some other brainwashed employee perhaps?

Don’t you think your life would be much easier if you got paid while you were eating, sleeping, and playing with the kids too?  Why not get paid 24/7?  Get paid whether you work or not.  Don’t your plants grow even when you aren’t tending to them?  Why not your bank account?

Who cares how many hours you work?  Only a handful of people on this entire planet care how much time you spend at the office.  Most of us won’t even notice whether you work 6 hours a week or 60.  But if you have something of value to provide that matters to us, a number of us will be happy to pull out our wallets and pay you for it.  We don’t care about your time — we only care enough to pay for the value we receive.  Do you really care how long it took me to write this article?  Would you pay me twice as much if it took me 6 hours vs. only 3?

Non-dummies often start out on the traditional income for dummies path.  So don’t feel bad if you’re just now realizing you’ve been suckered.  Non-dummies eventually realize that trading time for money is indeed extremely dumb and that there must be a better way.  And of course there is a better way.  The key is to de-couple your value from your time.

Smart people build systems that generate income 24/7, especially passive income.  This can include starting a business, building a web site, becoming an investor, or generating royalty income from creative work.  The system delivers the ongoing value to people and generates income from it, and once it’s in motion, it runs continuously whether you tend to it or not.  From that moment on, the bulk of your time can be invested in increasing your income (by refining your system or spawning new ones) instead of merely maintaining your income.

Sure it takes some upfront time and effort to design and implement your own income-generating systems.  But you don’t have to reinvent the wheel — feel free to use existing systems like ad networks and affiliate programs.  Once you get going, you won’t have to work so many hours to support yourself.  Wouldn’t it be nice to be out having dinner with your spouse, knowing that while you’re eating, you’re earning money?  If you want to keep working long hours because you enjoy it, go right ahead.  If you want to sit around doing nothing, feel free.  As long as your system continues delivering value to others, you’ll keep getting paid whether you’re working or not.

Your local bookstore is filled with books containing workable systems others have already designed, tested, and debugged.  Nobody is born knowing how to start a business or generate investment income, but you can easily learn it.  How long it takes you to figure it out is irrelevant because the time is going to pass anyway.  You might as well emerge at some future point as the owner of income-generating systems as opposed to a lifelong wage slave.  This isn’t all or nothing.  If your system only generates a few hundred dollars a month, that’s a significant step in the right direction.

2) Limited experience

You might think it’s important to get a job to gain experience.  But that’s like saying you should play golf to get experience playing golf.  You gain experience from living, regardless of whether you have a job or not.  A job only gives you experience at that job, but you gain “experience” doing just about anything, so that’s no real benefit at all.  Sit around doing nothing for a couple years, and you can call yourself an experienced meditator, philosopher, or politician.

The problem with getting experience from a job is that you usually just repeat the same limited experience over and over.  You learn a lot in the beginning and then stagnate.  This forces you to miss other experiences that would be much more valuable.  And if your limited skill set ever becomes obsolete, then your experience won’t be worth squat.  In fact, ask yourself what the experience you’re gaining right now will be worth in 20-30 years.  Will your job even exist then?

Consider this.  Which experience would you rather gain?  The knowledge of how to do a specific job really well — one that you can only monetize by trading your time for money — or the knowledge of how to enjoy financial abundance for the rest of your life without ever needing a job again?  Now I don’t know about you, but I’d rather have the latter experience.  That seems a lot more useful in the real world, wouldn’t you say?

3) Lifelong domestication

Getting a job is like enrolling in a human domestication program.  You learn how to be a good pet.

Look around you.  Really look.  What do you see?  Are these the surroundings of a free human being?  Or are you living in a cage for unconscious animals?  Have you fallen in love with the color beige?

How’s your obedience training coming along?  Does your master reward your good behavior?  Do you get disciplined if you fail to obey your master’s commands?

Is there any spark of free will left inside you?  Or has your conditioning made you a pet for life?

Humans are not meant to be raised in cages.  You poor thing…

4) Too many mouths to feed

Employee income is the most heavily taxed there is.  In the USA you can expect that about half your salary will go to taxes.  The tax system is designed to disguise how much you’re really giving up because some of those taxes are paid by your employer, and some are deducted from your paycheck.  But you can bet that from your employer’s perspective, all of those taxes are considered part of your pay, as well as any other compensation you receive such as benefits.  Even the rent for the office space you consume is considered, so you must generate that much more value to cover it.  You might feel supported by your corporate environment, but keep in mind that you’re the one paying for it.

Another chunk of your income goes to owners and investors.  That’s a lot of mouths to feed.

It isn’t hard to understand why employees pay the most in taxes relative to their income.  After all, who has more control over the tax system?  Business owners and investors or employees?

You only get paid a fraction of the real value you generate.  Your real salary may be more than triple what you’re paid, but most of that money you’ll never see.  It goes straight into other people’s pockets.

What a generous person you are!

5) Way too risky

Many employees believe getting a job is the safest and most secure way to support themselves.

Social conditioning is amazing.  It’s so good it can even make people believe the exact opposite of the truth.

Does putting yourself in a position where someone else can turn off all your income just by saying two words (“You’re fired”) sound like a safe and secure situation to you?  Does having only one income stream honestly sound more secure than having 10?

The idea that a job is the most secure way to generate income is just silly.  You can’t have security if you don’t have control, and employees have the least control of anyone.  If you’re an employee, then your real job title should be professional gambler.

6) Having an evil bovine master

When you run into an idiot in the entrepreneurial world, you can turn around and head the other way.  When you run into an idiot in the corporate world, you have to turn around and say, “Sorry, boss.”

Did you know that the word boss comes from the Dutch word baas, which historically means master?  Another meaning of the word boss is “a cow or bovine.”  And in many video games, the boss is the evil dude that you have to kill at the end of a level.

So if your boss is really your evil bovine master, then what does that make you?  Nothing but a turd in the herd.  Who’s your daddy?

7) Begging for money

When you want to increase your income, do you have to sit up and beg your master for more money?  Does it feel good to be thrown some extra Scooby Snacks now and then?

Or are you free to decide how much you get paid without needing anyone’s permission but your own?

If you have a business and one customer says “no” to you, you simply say “next.”

8) An inbred social life

Many people treat their jobs as their primary social outlet.  They hang out with the same people working in the same field.  Such incestuous relations are social dead ends.  An exciting day includes deep conversations about the company’s switch from Sparkletts to Arrowhead, the delay of Microsoft’s latest operating system, and the unexpected delivery of more Bic pens.  Consider what it would be like to go outside and talk to strangers.  Ooooh… scary!  Better stay inside where it’s safe.

If one of your co-slaves gets sold to another master, do you lose a friend?  If you work in a male-dominated field, does that mean you never get to talk to women above the rank of receptionist?  Why not decide for yourself whom to socialize with instead of letting your master decide for you?  Believe it or not, there are locations on this planet where free people congregate.  Just be wary of those jobless folk — they’re a crazy bunch!

9) Loss of freedom

It takes a lot of effort to tame a human being into an employee.  The first thing you have to do is break the human’s independent will.  A good way to do this is to give them a weighty policy manual filled with nonsensical rules and regulations.  

This leads the new employee to become more obedient, fearing that s/he could be disciplined at any minute for something incomprehensible.  Thus, the employee will likely conclude it’s safest to simply obey the master’s commands without question.  Stir in some office politics for good measure, and we’ve got a freshly minted mind slave.

As part of their obedience training, employees must be taught how to dress, talk, move, and so on.  We can’t very well have employees thinking for themselves, now can we?  That would ruin everything.

God forbid you should put a plant on your desk when it’s against the company policy.  Oh no, it’s the end of the world!  Cindy has a plant on her desk!  Summon the enforcers!  Send Cindy back for another round of sterility training!

Free human beings think such rules and regulations are silly of course.  The only policy they need is:  “Be smart.  Be nice.  Do what you love.  Have fun.”

10) Becoming a coward

Have you noticed that employed people have an almost endless capacity to whine about problems at their companies?  But they don’t really want solutions — they just want to vent and make excuses why it’s all someone else’s fault.  It’s as if getting a job somehow drains all the free will out of people and turns them into spineless cowards.  If you can’t call your boss a jerk now and then without fear of getting fired, you’re no longer free.  You’ve become your master’s property.

When you work around cowards all day long, don’t you think it’s going to rub off on you?  Of course it will.  It’s only a matter of time before you sacrifice the noblest parts of your humanity on the altar of fear:  first courage… then honesty… then honor and integrity… and finally your independent will.  You sold your humanity for nothing but an illusion.  And now your greatest fear is discovering the truth of what you’ve become.

I don’t care how badly you’ve been beaten down.  It is never too late to regain your courage.  Never!

Source: This article was written by Steve Pavlina on his website www.stevepavlina.com

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Our Society Is Diseased. These Powerful Retro Illustrations Will Show You Why.

John Holcroft is an illustrator who creates satirical illustrations of modern day life. Due to the brilliant way he tackles modern issues in his unique 1950s art inspired retro style, his pieces have recently started to go viral.

His work focuses on modern issues such as our reliance on Facebook to fulfill our egos, outsourcing, and the modern financial system. The end product is a highly accurate yet haunting series of illustrations that will make you think hard about the world we live in.

More of John Holcroft’s work can be found at: johnholcroft.com | Behance | Facebook

What did you think of these illustrations? While they may not be happy or uplifting, they shed light on a whole range of modern issues that we as a society could, and should work on.

Biggest Life Secrets forgotten by Mankind

The more I ponder about life, the more I come to one solid realisation: The biggest curse and predicament of modern Man is forgetfulness. Like a creeping malaise, forgetfulness has seeped through all of Man’s being and doing. Individually, collectively, historically or culturally, we are spellbound to forget.

We haven’t only forgot our past but also our place in the present and our responsibility of the future. On a personal level, our ego-based state of consciousness is on a mission to keep us in this state of forgetfulness – to break the link to our being as a whole and to the interconnected web of life and universal consciousness. On a collective level, this forgetfulness is perpetuated and reinforced by social and cultural means – mainly by being tranced into a reality of unconscious consumerism, inauthentic lifestyles and a materialistic mindset.

Here is a list of what I believe we have forgotten, or more importantly, a list of things to remember:

1. We forgot our place in the natural world:

In the last couple of hundred years we have detached ourselves from nature. We have exploited, ravaged, consumed and attempted to control nature to appease our greed driven by self-absorbed madness. We tried to distance ourselves from the natural circle of life. We forgot how to listen to and understand the natural rhythms and cycles of the earth – its signs and languages. We forgot to follow nature’s path and live in balance with it.

2. We forgot our connection to life and the cosmos:

By detaching ourselves from nature, we forgot that we are deeply connected to it and to the cycles of the universe. Some tribes on the outskirts of ‘civilisation’, and who still follow ancestral ways, have preserved this connection with respect and reverence. We, on the other hand have instilled a sense of separateness which drove us out of balance and in dis-ease.  We forgot how all consciousness is interconnected and weaved into a delicate and beautiful dance.

3. We forgot our ancient wisdom:

We forgot our ancestral wisdom. In the quest to gain scientific knowledge through the rationalisation of our mind, we forgot the wisdom through the opening of our heart. We forgot the ancient stories and folk wisdom that was handed down from from seers and wise men of antiquity who lived in harmony with the universe.

4. We forgot our path and our dreams:

By stirring away from our inner path we forgot to dream the dream of life. More importantly we forgot how to awake in that dream and see our true nature as co-creators of life – as the dreamers. We forgot that we have the power to weave dreams and use our power of intention to direct those dreams into manifestation.

5. We forgot our purpose:

With too much chatter, noise and distraction in this dense reality we forgot what we came here to do. We forgot our purpose. We are caught in the mass trance of fabricated consensual reality. We lost sight of our authenticity, that inner spark that drives us towards our happiness and self-realisation. We forgot that we are here to be realised as spiritual beings embodied in a physical form and embedded in a congenial universe.

6. We forgot that everything is Love:

This is perhaps the deepest mystery of all that only some seers came to understand it as an all-embracing truth. That truth however is hidden somewhere deep inside of us. We knew it at some point but have lost touch with it. We forgot that everything is ultimately energy and consciousness and that love is the fundamental fabric of existence that runs through all energy and consciousness.

7. We forgot to Forgive:

By being made to believe that we are separate and disconnected from the others and from everything else, we forgot to forgive. In its deepest sense forgiveness is the act of reminding ourselves that we are one with everyone and everything and that there is no victim or perpetrator. It’s just all of us together moving together in a dynamic web we call life.

8. We forgot to be Free:

Remind yourself one thing everyday: You were made to be free.

We were born and raised in a ‘reality’ where freedom is only a concept. We were bound to the shackles of fear, misconceptions, false ideologies, material reward and held ransom to rules and laws laid down to safeguard the interest of the few. We were made to forget that we are free agents of change. We are free to be who we are without fear or guilt.

9. We forgot our real power:

Living in fear has made us forget how powerful we are. We forgot the massive power of our will and intention to change our reality. We have been tranced into sleepwalking and following the ready made signs like automatons.

10. We forgot our lessons from history:

If there is something that history has taught us is how fast we are at forgetting our lessons. Time and time again we keep on repeating the same mistakes, stuck in the same patterns of greed and self-destruction. We cannot be blamed individually for the mistakes done by humanity in the past but we are responsible as individuals to to remind ourselves of the past mistakes and pass it on to the collective psyche.

11. We forgot to be simple:

Human life got more complex and complicated. We are seduced by the glitter of more and not by the power of less. We forgot to be simple and the meaning of simplicity. Life is simple really. Simplicity means discarding all the inessential stuff and ideas that clutter the view to our life purpose and the other truths we have forgotten.

12. We forgot to trust, believe and wonder:

We lost our enchantment with the world. We forgot to be wondered by the miracle of life. We do not stand in awe at the majesty of it all anymore. Our skepticism and cynical view of the world has made us lose trust in ourselves and the magic of the universe. We forgot how to believe. This is perhaps the biggest tragedy of all. It weakened our spirit and impoverished our soul.

Thanks to Disclose for this article

9 Signs You’ve Found Your Calling

How can you tell if you’ve found your calling? As a doctor who was called to medicine at a young age but then wound up disillusioned by the system, questioning my calling, I’ve asked myself this question a lot. It’s been a long strange trip—first leaving medicine, then feeling called back, then leaving again only to find my role in healing our broken health care system as a writer, speaker, revolutionary, and teacher of physicians.
Along the way, I’ve learned a few things about how to know whether you’re on the right track.

1. You’ll realize you’ve been training for your calling since the moment you were born.

Even the gritty things, the disappointments, the regrets, and the screw ups, they were all prepping you for what you’re now being called to do. You’ll realize that the divorce, the bankruptcy, the death of your loved one, the failure, the rejection—it was just school, teaching you the lessons your soul needed to learn in order to be who you’re being called to be.

2. Mystical things will start happening.

You might be tempted to write them off as coincidences, only they’re too perfect, too exactly-what-you-need in that particular moment, too much like miracles to call them accidents. The synchronicities will fill you with a sense of wonder, because they’re proof positive that you’re being guided, that you’re not in this alone, that Someone is moving mountains to ensure that your mission is a success.

3. When you get off course, you’ll get redirected.

Doors you longed to walk through will slam shut. If you take the wrong fork in the road, your path will be littered with barbed wire and mustard gas and dragons and sharp knives lining the path. You’ll get the hint that you’ve made a wrong turn, steering yourself off course from your date with destiny, when the journey becomes a relentless struggle. The deal will fall through. The money will run out. The mentor who’s been providing the magical gifts won’t follow you onto the wrong path. People won’t sign up. You’ll be rerouted just as magically as you were steered to your calling in the first place.

4. You’ll be guided by ease, even in the face of obstacles.

When you find yourself struggling to get through an obstacle-ridden forest, it can be hard to tell: is your commitment just being tested, or have you veered off course? Obstacles can be part of the growth process, the cultivation of your inner hero, a necessary part of your hero’s journey. But they can also be signs that you’ve made a wrong turn. How can you tell the difference? The guidepost you can trust is a sense of movement towards ease. If the challenges are mounting, things are getting worse, one hard struggle is piling upon the other, you’ve probably gotten seduced off-course from your true calling, and the Universe is just waiting patiently, twiddling Divine thumbs because you have free will, but never giving up faith that you’ll find your way back to your calling, which will always lead you to your own holy grail. When you’re back on track, things start to flow again.

5. Magical mentors will appear just in the nick of time.

Just when you need it most, the right people will show up, with just the tools you’ll need to support you and your journey in an almost mystical way.

6. Your health is likely to improve.

A strange but welcome side effect of finding your calling is that your health is likely to improve. You may notice fewer cravings for unhealthy foods, you’ll have more energy for moving your body, aches and pains that used to plague you might disappear, you’ll feel less tired, and chronic illnesses you may be battling may start to get better.
Take Andy Mackie, for example. At 59 years old, Andy Mackie had undergone nine heart surgeries and was taking 15 medications to try to keep him alive, but the medicines left him feeling horrible, so one day, he told his doctors he wanted to stop the drugs. They told him if he did, he’d die within a year, so Andy decided if he was dying, he wanted to do something he’d always wanted to do.
So he took the money he would’ve spent on his medications and used it to buy 300 harmonicas, and he gave them away to children, complete with harmonica lessons. The following month, he was still alive, so he bought another 300 harmonicas. Thirteen years and 20,000 harmonicas later, Andy Mackie finally passed away.

7.You may feel strangely peaceful, even when you have every reason to be anxious.

Everyone around you will likely think you’re crazy. A part of you will agree with them. But a wise inner knowing, that part of you I call your Inner Pilot Light, will be so comforted by the fact that you’re finally on the path to your purpose that you may feel unusually calm—until your rational mind kicks in.
Our souls long to express what we’re here on this earth to express, and when you finally fall into alignment with your calling, your soul does a little happy dance.  It may appear as if everything else in your life is falling apart, but you’ll have this sense of peace, a huge relief, that at least- finally—you know what you’re called to do.

8. The Universe will roll out the red carpet.

When what you’re being called to do is what is needed for the highest good of all beings, the Universe will bend over backwards to hand you whatever you need on a silver platter. No request is too small. A copywriter may volunteer to help you just when you were thinking you needed to write a sales page. Someone will donate a printer when it’s time print a flyer. You’ll feel so supported, so lucky, that you’ll know you’re on track, even if you’re not quite clear what you’re on track to do.

9. Your people will find you.

Few can fulfill a calling alone. Most of us need a tribe to lift us up as we do brave, scary, world-changing things. But don’t worry. When you’re really on purpose, your people will find you, if only you’re courageous enough to be vulnerable about what you’re being called to do.

Do Any Of These Sound Familiar?
Have you found your calling? Or are you still looking for it? If you’ve found your calling, YEAH! The world needs you! Blessings to you on your hero’s journey.

Source: “10 Signs You’ve Found Your Calling,” from mindbodygreen.com, by Lissa Rankin
Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com

Buddhist Antidotes to Anger

Below is a summary of various approaches to anger. They obviously will be most efficient when used with a calm and concentrated mind, either during meditation or at the moment you realize that something needs to be done about your anger. Obviously, the problem during an actual difficult situation is to have a calm and concentrated mind – a regular meditation practice can be of great help then! One of the best ways to really make progress with understanding and changing the functioning of our own mind is to try out analytical meditation, combined with these clues.

ANTIDOTE 1 – Patience.

Patience is the main antidote to anger. As common wisdom says: just count to 100… During this time, any of the below methods can be effective. The most effective method will depend on the actual situation. Especially in our age of rush and intense change, patience may not be seen as a positive quality, but take a minute to think impatience can easily give rise to a general feeling of anger.

ANTIDOTE 2 – Realisation of the Noble Truth of Suffering.

Once one understands that problems and frustration is a basic fact of life, it can reduce our impatience with our own unrealistic expectations. In other words: nothing is perfect, so don’t expect it. If I believe that things should be perfect, it is almost unavoidable to feel disappointed and hurt.

ANTIDOTE 3 – Understanding Karma.

The real reasons for our problems are our own actions, which are in turn caused by our own negative states of mind. If someone makes us angry, it can have a sobering effect if we dare to think that the real reasons for this situation are our own past actions, and the person is just a circumstance for our own karma to ripen.

ANTIDOTE 4 – Changing or Accepting.

Basically, we can find ourselves in two types of unpleasant situations: ones we can change and ones we cannot change.

- If I can change the situation, I should do something about it instead of getting all worked-up and angry. Not acting in such a situation will cause frustration in the end.

- If I cannot change the situation, I will have to accept it. If I don’t, it will only lead to frustration and a negative and unpleasant state of mind, which will make the situation only worse.

For some reasons unclear to me, Westerners (including myself) appear to have big problems with accepting unpleasant situations which we cannot change. Could this be a result of impatience (a form of anger) with imperfection (an unrealistic expectation)?
Do consider the wisdom in the following remarks (from an online discussion – forgot the writer.):

“How does this effect my Buddhist practice?
It doesn’t.
These reported events are like an arrow shot at my heart but it lands at my feet.
I choose not to bend over, pick it up, and stab myself with it.”

ANTIDOTE 5 – Realistic Analysis.

For example: someone accuses me of something.

- If it is true, I apparently made a mistake, so I should listen and learn.

- If it is untrue, the other person makes a mistake. So what? Nobody is perfect. I also make mistakes, and it is all too easy to label the other as “enemy”, in which case a helpful discussion or forgiving becomes difficult.

It may also be worthwhile searching for the real underlying reason of the problem. Of special importance is to evaluate one’s own role in the situation: my own fears, insecurity, being very unfriendly, or not being blameless (like leaving home much too late for an appointment and blaming the 5 minutes delay of the train).

ANTIDOTE 6- Realisation of Emptiness.

To summarise it briefly, if one deeply realises the emptiness of inherent existence or interdependence of the other person, the situation and oneself, there is nothing to be angry about. The realisation of emptiness is therefore the ultimate means of ridding oneself of unrealistic negative emotions like anger.

ANTIDOTE 7 – Equanimity.

Equanimity means that one realises the basic equality of all sentient beings; others want happiness, just like I do. Others make mistakes just like I do. Others are confused, angry, attached just like I often am. Is the other person happy in this situation, or just struggling like I am?

ANTIDOTE 8 – Openness

Be prepared to be open for the motivation of others to do what causes you problems. Talking it over and being prepared to listen can suddenly make a problem acceptable.

Did you ever notice the difference when a plane or train has much delay and nobody gives any reasons for it? People very quickly become irritated and hostile. Then when the driver or pilot explains there is a technical defect or an accident, suddenly waiting becomes easier.

ANTIDOTE 9 – Relativity.

Ask yourself if this situation is actually important enough to spoil your own and other people’s mood. Is this problem worth getting upset in a life where death can hit me at any moment?

ANTIDOTE 10 – Change Your Motivation.

In case a situation is really unacceptable, and another person needs to convinced that something is to be done or changed, there is no need to become upset and angry. It is likely much more efficient if you show of understanding and try to make the other understand the need for change. If one needs to appear angry for some reason to convince the other person of the seriousness of the situation, one can think like a parent acting wrathful to prevent the child from harming itself.

In general, to be really effective one needs to reflect on quite a number of aspects in one’s own mind like; forgiveness, peace of mind, fears, self-acceptance (no acceptance of others is really possible without self-acceptance), habits, prejudices etc. A list of aspects to start with is given in the page about the mind, under the 26 non-virtuous mental factors.

ANTIDOTE 11 – Watch Your Hands.

An interesting suggestion from Jon Kabat-Zinn, from ‘Wherever You Go, There You Are':

“All our hand postures are mudras in that they are associated with subtle or not-so-subtle energies. Take the energy of the fist, for instance. When we get angry, our hands tend to close into fists. Some people unknowingly practice this mudra a lot in their lives. It waters the seeds of anger and violence within you ever time you do it, and they respond by sprouting and growing stronger.
The next time you find yourself making fists out of anger, try to bring mindfulness to the inner attitude embodied in a fist. Feel the tension, the hatred, the anger, the aggression, and the fear which it contains. Then, in the midst of your anger, as an experiment, if the person you are angry at is present, try opening your fists and placing the palms together over your heart in the prayer position right in front of him. (Of course, he won’t have the slightest idea what you are doing.) Notice what happens to the anger and hurt as you hold this position for even a few moments.”

ANTIDOTE 12 – Meditation.

Last, but certainly not least, meditation can be the ultimate cure to completely eliminating anger from your mind. In the beginning, one can do analytical meditations, but also meditation on compassion, love and forgiving reduce anger as well. Ultimately, the realization of emptiness eradicates all delusions like anger.

Source: viewonbuddhism.org

Diagnostic Signs That You’re Suffering From “Soul Loss”

Our entire culture suffers from what the shamans call “soul loss,” a loss of meaning, direction, vitality, mission, purpose, identity, and genuine connection; a deep unhappiness that most of us have come to consider as simply ordinary. The soul is our source of absolute uniqueness, a place within that connects you not only to your own value and essence, but to the value and essence of every other living being. What makes soul loss so subtle and dangerous is that very few people have realized that it has happened. Most of us do not know that we have disconnected from our soul and have come to accept as normal a numbness and lack of meaning in our lives.
Because we all belong to this culture, we all suffer from soul loss. Soul loss is epidemic and blinds us from seeing the potential for joy and wholeness in ordinary life. When you heal from soul loss, you see familiar things in new ways so you can increase your joy in what you already have.

NOT SURE IF YOU’RE SUFFERING FROM SOUL LOSS?

Here are 20 diagnostic signs that signal soul loss:
1. You feel like you’re not as good as other people.
2. You yearn to be of service, but you have no idea what you have to contribute and why it matters.
3. You find yourself striving in vain for an impossible-to-achieve standard of perfection.
4. Your fears keep you from living large.
5. You’re frequently worried that you’re not good enough, smart enough, thin enough, young enough, [fill in the blank] enough.
6. You feel like a victim of circumstances that are beyond your control.
7. You feel like your daily life is meaningless and task-driven.
8. You often feel helpless, hopeless, or pessimistic.
9. You protect your heart with steel walls.
10. You often feel you don’t really matter and your love doesn’t make a difference.
11. You’re always trying to fit in and belong, but you rarely feel like you do.
12. You feel beaten down by the challenges you face in your life.
13. You suffer from a variety of vague, hard to treat physical symptoms, such as fatigue, chronic pain, weight gain or loss, insomnia, skin disorders, or gastrointestinal symptoms.
14. You struggle with being able to accept love and nurturing.
15. You feel depressed, anxious, or chronically worried.
16. You feel like you’re not appreciated enough.
17. You find yourself often judging others.
18. You frequently numb yourself with alcohol, drugs, sex, television, or excessive busyness.
19. You feel disappointed with life.
20. You’ve forgotten how to dream.

HOW SOUL LOSS SHOWS UP AT THE DOCTOR’S OFFICE

As a physician, I’ve had years of experience diagnosing soul loss in my patients, but Western medicine has no framework for this kind of diagnosis, and as doctors, we’re not taught to treat this kind of suffering, so we wind up mistreating it. What people suffering from soul loss need is the deep medicine of reconnection with the soul, but in our culture, we tend to treat soul loss too superficially.
We treat the chronic pain with pain medication. We treat the insomnia with sleeping pills. We treat the weight issues with diet and exercise. And most damagingly, we may label soul loss as mental illness, such as depression, and cover up the symptoms with psychiatric medications that may make things worse by slapping a Band-aid on a wound that’s not healing underneath the bandage.

THE TREATMENT YOU REALLY NEED

Sometimes the soul needs space in order to heal, and this may require the courage to make some external changes in your life. Perhaps you need to switch careers in order to give the soul more room to breathe. Perhaps an unhealthy relationship is constricting the soul, and it’s time to get into therapy, set boundaries, or even end things. Perhaps you need to find more people to love or relocate to a place that helps your soul come alive.  Perhaps you need to give your soul permission to engage in more creative activities. Such eternal changes may be part of the prescription the inner doctor of your soul writes.
But very often, those kinds of major life overhauls are NOT NECESSARY!  Reconnecting to the soul allows you to find peace and happiness right where you are in ways that are much simpler and more profound than you might think. It can be astounding to discover that you’ve had what you needed all along and have been looking in all the wrong places. Perhaps all that is needed is to see the life you’re already living in a different way.

Source: “20 Diagnostic Signs That You’re Suffering From ‘Soul Loss’,” from lissarankin.com, by Lissa Rankin

Important Life Lessons Everyone Learns the Hard Way

By Marc and Angel

Today marks the five-year anniversary of a close friend’s unexpected passing.  This morning I caught myself reflecting on that dreary morning when I received the news, and how several colleagues and acquaintances whom I barely knew came up to me over the subsequent hours and gave me a pat on the back, a hug, or a genuine “I’m sorry.”

In the midst of my sorrow I now realize this tragic loss taught me three important things.  First, the worst things can happen to the best people for no obvious reason at all.  Second, most people, even the ones you don’t think care, are genuinely good people who do care.  And finally, just as it is difficult to see all the opportunities life gives you until you’re looking back, it is virtually impossible to fully understand certain life circumstances until they actually happen to you.

It’s a variation of this final point that I want to explore further today – seven important life lessons almost everyone learns the hard way, eventually.

1.  The people you lose remain a part of you.

Someday you will be faced with the reality of loss.  And as life goes on, days rolling into nights, it will become clear that you never really stop missing someone special who’s gone, you just learn to live around the gaping hole of their absence.

When you lose someone you can’t imagine living without, your heart breaks wide open, and the bad news is you never completely get over the loss.  You will never forget them.  However, in a backwards way, this is also the good news.  They willlive on in the warmth of your broken heart that doesn’t fully heal back up, and you will continue to grow and experience life, even with your wound.  It’s like badly breaking an ankle that never heals perfectly, and that still hurts when you dance, but you dance anyway with a slight limp, and this limp just adds to the depth of your performance and the authenticity of your character.

2.  The pursuit of happiness is about finding meaning.

Pursuing happiness is not at all the same as being happy, which is a fleeting feeling dependent on momentary circumstances.  If the sun is shining, by all means bask in it.  Happy times are great and often fun-filled, but happy times pass, because time passes.  This is something we rarely grasp at first.

The lifelong pursuit of happiness, on the other hand, is more elusive; it’s not based on a particular outcome.  What you are really pursuing is meaning – living a meaningful life.  It starts with your “why.”  (Why are you doing what you’re doing with your life?)  When your “why” is meaningful, you are pursuing happiness.  There will be times when things go so wrong that you barely feel alive.  And there will also be times when you realize that being barely alive, on your own terms, is better than living a lifeless existence for eighty years on someone else’s terms.  The pursuit isn’t all or nothing; it’s all AND nothing, with ups and downs and worthwhile lessons along the way.

In other words, happiness comes most easily when you know what you’re doing, believe in what you’re doing, and love what you’re doing (and who you’re doing it with), regardless of how things turn out.

3.  Seeking validation from others invalidates YOU.

Has the fear of rejection held you back?  Have you ever been so fearful of what others might think or say about you that it kept you from taking positive action?  I bet you’re shaking your head, “yes.”

It’s time to change your mindset…

Today, the only person you should try to be better than is the person you were yesterday.  Prove yourself to yourself, not others.  You are GOOD enough, SMART enough, FINE enough, and STRONG enough.  You don’t need other people to validate you; you are already valuable.

If someone says “no” to you, or if someone says something negative about you, that doesn’t change anything about YOU.  The words and opinions of others have no real bearing on your worth.  Certainly it can be helpful and desirable to make a good impression in certain situations, yet it’s not the end of the world when you are faced with rejection.

It’s great to receive positive feedback, but it simply doesn’t always happen.  That’s OK though, because you know where you’re headed and you know your true worth does not depend on the judgment of others.  When you set out to make a true difference in life, there will be those who disagree with you, those who ignore you, and those who flat out reject your ideas and efforts.  Look beyond them, step confidently forward, do what must be done, and let them think what they will.

4.  Regret hurts far worse than fear.

When we give in to our fears, we have a harder time looking at ourselves in the mirror.  Sadly, very few of us escape learning this lesson firsthand.  If you have already experienced this a time or two, you know what you need to do.

It is only when we risk losing that we truly open the possibility to win.  Whether it is quitting your job to build a business, running a marathon, or traveling to unknown parts of the world, any worthy endeavor requires risk, struggle and sacrifice.  Some of these things may even terrify you, but ask yourself if these fears are stronger than the most powerful of fears, the fear of a wasted life?

If you’ve never lost your mind, you’ve never followed your heart.  It’s better to look back on life and say, “I can’t believe I did that,” than to look back and say, “I wish I did that.”  Don’t let time pass you by like a hand waving from a train you desperately want to be on.  Don’t spend the rest of your life thinking about why you didn’t do what you can do right now.  Live your life.  Take risks.  Feel passion.  Discover love.  Run free.

5.  Life is too unpredictable for rigid expectations.

When you stop predicting and expecting things to be a certain way, you can appreciate them for what they are.  Ultimately you will realize that life’s greatest gifts are rarely wrapped the way you expected.

With a positive attitude and an open mind, you will find that life isn’t necessarily any easier or harder than you thought it was going to be; it’s just that “the easy” and “the hard” aren’t exactly the way you had anticipated, and don’t always occur when you expect them to.  This isn’t a bad thing; it makes life interesting.

Ninety-nine percent of the time life delivers the experiences that are most helpful for your personal growth.  How do you know it’s the experience you need?  Because it’s the experience you’re having.  The only question is:  Will you embrace it and grow, or fight it and fade?

The key, of course, is to accept that not everything is meant to be.  When things don’t turn out how you expected, you have to seriously sit down with yourself and come to grips with the fact that you were wrong about it all along.  It was just an illusion that never really was what you thought it was.  It’s one of the most difficult realizations to accept, to realize that you feel a sense of loss, even though you never really had what you thought you had in the first place.

6.  When you try to run away, you end up running in place.

“Don’t think about eating that chocolate donut!”  What are you thinking about now?  Eating that chocolate donut, right?  When you focus on not thinking about something, you end up thinking about it.

The same philosophy holds true when it comes to freeing your mind from a negative past experience.  By persistently trying to move away from what you didn’t like and don’t want, you are forced to think about it so much that you end up carrying it’s weight along with you.  But if you instead choose to focus your energy on moving toward something you do like and do want, you naturally leave the negative weight behind as you progress forward.

Bottom line:  Running away from your problems is a race you’ll never win.  Move TOWARDS something instead of AWAY.  Rather than trying to eliminate the negative, focus on creating something positive that just happens to replace the negative.

7.  Unanticipated hardships are inevitable and helpful.

Nobody in this world is going to blindside you and hit you as hard as life will.  Sometimes life will beat you to the ground and try to keep you there if you let it.  But it’s not about how hard life can hit you, it’s about how hard you can be hit while continuing to move forward.  That’s what true strength is, and that’s what winning the game of life is all about.

When you have a lot to cry and complain about, but you prefer to smile and take a step forward instead, you are growing stronger.  Work through your struggles and hardships.  Even when it feels like things are falling apart, they’re not.  Take control of your emotions before they take control of you.  Everything will fall into place eventually.  Until then, learn what you can, laugh often, live for the moments, and know that it’s all worthwhile in the end.

Afterthoughts

Gandhi once said, “Live as if you were to die tomorrow.  Learn as if you were to live forever.”  I love this quote.  There’s no doubt that every day is a gift, and the gift is an opportunity to live, to learn, and to grow.

Be a student of life.  Indulge in it and absorb all the knowledge you can, while you can.  You may have to loose some things to gain some things, and you may have to learn some things the hard way.  That’s OK.  All experiences are necessary.  The purpose of your life is to live it in full, to partake in it to the utmost, to reach out with an open mind and an honest heart for the newest and richest experience being offered.

This post was written by Marc and Angel. If you enjoyed it, make sure you check out their site and sign up to their amazing newsletter.