Tag Archives: Deepak Chopra

November’s Dawn-ing Reflections – Challenge Check-In

Posted on November 6, 2012 by | 2 Comments

As a number of you might have noticed, I was forced to take a mini-hiatus from writing this past month of October as demands of the real world seemed to have caught up with me again.

By contrast, I have hit the November pretty hard as far as what I seek to accomplish. It appears that my muse and my mind crave the pressure generated from extreme challenge and equally appreciate a break at the end of a long sprint. Perhaps, that is my cadence. Regardless though, I am happy and grateful that I am back to writing.

Determination Defined
Photo Credit: Meena Rose

I felt like I should share with you what is on my plate this November prior to giving a couple of quick updates. In no particular order, here are November 2012′s challenges:

  • NaNoWriMo 2012: For those unfamiliar with the acronym, it is National Novel Writing Month. 50,000 words in 30 nights.
  • 2012 Writer’s Digest November PAD Chapbook Challenge: PAD stands for Poem-A-Day.
  • Transformational Fitness Plan: A grueling 6 day-a-week fitness plan targeting core strength, major muscle groups in the upper and lower body and cardio. Did I say cardio? I meant loads of cardio.
  • 21 Day Meditation Challenge: A 21 day meditation challenge hosted by Deepak Chopra focusing on abundance. It started on November 5.

I have also decided that on 6th of November and every Sunday after that to do a quick challenge check in.

  • NaNoWriMo 2012: So far so good. I am really enjoying the writing process along with the absolute minimum lack of planning. My novel “Wynter’s Fury” so far is structured in 12 parts which use a character driven plot to move the story from A to B. Along with the sections that I have identified, I also allocated a percentage of the words towards each section in the hopes of moving the story at a decent pace. The idea is for me to write a steady 1667 words per day. Of course, that has not always happened. For each day that I miss my target or do not contribute anything at all, the number of words per day would climb. Currently, I am sitting at 1826 words per day to reach my goal. To read an excerpt and follow my progress to date, you can click here.
  • 2012 Writer’s Digest November PAD Chapbook Challenge: So far, I have managed to stay on top of this challenge. All my contributions have been posted to this site. November PAD will forever remain special to me. I cut my poetic teeth on the 2009 November PAD challenge. Prior to that, I did not write any poetry. To read along,  you can click here. For April’s PAD and NaPoWriMo contributions, you can click there accordingly.
  • Transformational Fitness Plan: Technically this plan started on October 27. I can only share that I am blissfully sore. When the intensity for cardio goes up and I start to feel that burn in my muscles, I simply escape to Wynter’s Fury and imagine what sort of things would work well for the story. During strength training, as I drip sweat from all the hard effort and come close to throwing in the towel, I chide myself “How do you expect to write an EPIC hero if you give in so easily?” So far, I am blissfully sore yet very content.
  • 21 Day Meditation Challenge: The meditation challenge kicked off yesterday. It is hosted by the Chopra Center. Even though, I performed this meditation late at night (11 pm), I was able to really relate and respond to the audio meditation prompts. This has culminated in a brilliant re-affirmation that “Yes, I can do all that I have set out to do in November. I have an abundance of creativity, spirit and determination to see it through.”

All in all, this has been the first month where I have challenged Mind, Body and Soul all in one go. So far, I am loving the synergies of how the challenges are supporting each other as opposed to competing for my attention.

Signing off for now to get the Day 6 PAD Challenge under way.

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Posted in Garden, Kitchen, NaNoWriMo 2012, Poetry Challenges, Random Musings, Through the Eyes of Meena Rose, WD November PAD Challenge

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Thought Ripples: A Question of Dreams

Posted on July 20, 2012 by | Leave a comment

 

On the first day of this website I posted a Thought Ripple that concluded with this poem.

Conversation with Muse

Do you whisper ideas

My ears cannot hear,

Or have you given up

Trying for my attention?

 

If I strain to hear your voice,

Will you shout to bridge the

Gap between your lightning,

And my thunder-seeking ears?

 

Will you leave me a note

In my dreams for a poem,

Which tells of my journey

Through my blinded dreams?

 

I can believe if you’ll help me

To know of your inner presence,

To know that I have the power

To release magic into the world.

 

I can be a magic seeker within,

Stirring, rendering a potent potion

That will capture someone’s

Imagination for all time.

 

I do now recognize myself as writer,

Forever a prisoner of words’ striker.

“At any given time the universe is giving you the best result possible.” ― Deepak Chopra

Throughout these stanzas I referred to the art of writing, whether poetry or prose. Much of my life centers around that (a)vocation. Today brought with it other thoughts surrounding dreams, the likes of which we’ve been discussing this week.

When the news broke this morning about the mass shooting in Colorado last night, my focus shifted for the next several hours. I’m sure I wasn’t alone in that regard. I may have looked at the situation from a different standpoint, nevertheless.

While I sympathize with and send up prayers for the victims and their families, another was the focus of my thoughts: the shooter.

And these were my thoughts.

  • What were this young man’s motives?
  • What had his life centered on that brought him to that theater?
  • Had the shooter always intended to do this type of act?
  • Had this location/type of venue always been a target for him?
  • What had he been dreaming, and for how long, that lead him to this act?

“When you make a choice, you change the future.” ― Deepak Chopra

Most, if not all, of these questions may never find answers. Speculation will run rampant about those answers, with the exception of the last one. The only reason I thought of it at all was because it has been our theme this week. That and the fact that I’m been working my way through the Chopra and Dyer seminars for the past two weeks.

According to the Tao philosophy and its interpretations, plus the neuroscience research done by Deepak Chopra and others, one’s dreams (read that as both unconscious and conscious dreams) help determine our aspirations, goals, and actions. If we assume that these conclusions are accurate, the answer to that last question comes into serious play.

“We make our fortunes, and we call them fate.” ~ Earl of Beaconsfield

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Your Take, My Take: Dream, Purpose, Interpretation

Posted on July 16, 2012 by | 10 Comments

According to G. William Domhoff: “‘Meaning‘ has to do with coherence and with systematic relations to other variables, and in that regard dreams do have meaning. Furthermore, they are very “revealing” of what is on our minds. We have shown that 75 to 100 dreams from a person give us a very good psychological portrait of that individual. Give us 1000 dreams over a couple of decades and we can give you a profile of the person’s mind that is almost as individualized and accurate as her or his fingerprints.”

Claudette Young’s Take:

Speculation about dreams has fueled deep conversations for countless decades. What is their purpose and what do they mean? Does anyone know?

Freud, of course, was all about interpretation and symbolism within one’s dreams. Jung felt that humans live within a framework of archetypes, which act as symbols representing attitudes repressed by our conscious minds. He felt that the great collective unconscious helps to create these archetypes.

Calvin Hall thought dreams a part of cognitive processing, which is interesting considering that his counterpart, Domhoff used that as part of his theory on dreams as well. Domhoff went so far as to suggest that dreams have no purpose whatsoever.

Down the line he refined his theory, suggesting “a neurocognitive model of dreams in which the process of dreaming results from neurological processes and a system of schemas. Dream content, he suggests, results from these cognitive processes.”

This seems suspiciously like circular logic to me. It’s the same type of logic that says that the flavor, texture, and brand of your favorite ice cream results from the process of milking the cow.

I’m all for theory, but I can’t swallow this. I keep asking myself, what if researchers such as Deepak Chopra, who is a neuroscientist, are correct in his thinking and philosophy.

What if, along with processing and integrating our daily experiences, our dreams can be a release from our physical prisons of body, a release that allows us to join countless others in distant places to learn limitless bits of information, or to experience other worlds?

Could it be that we find ourselves elsewhere, peeking into the lives of our doppelgängers, wherever they might be? Is such a theory any more outlandish than others put forth?

Considering some of the movies I’ve participated in during my dreamtime, I’m voting for Chopra’s explanation/theory of dream. Think of the myriad possibilities that await such a dreamer. What a marvelous opportunity that would be.

I could learn about space exploration and possibly absorb other knowledge there among neighboring stars, by riding along with those who ply the star lanes for trade and exploration. I could go back in time to learn what really happened at whatever event occurred within that spark of dream. Endless possibilities are available in the big dream box.

If you’ve studied Deepak Chopra, Dr. Wayne Dyer, or any of the other modern thinkers, you’ll know that for them all things are possible. Time doesn’t actually exist, except as a manmade construct. If time doesn’t exist, what other truths might lie just out of sight?

Meena Rose’s Take:

I have consistently questioned what constitutes a dream. I seem to be endlessly baffled by what one considers to be dream. In part, I blame it on the English language and how we as people have used the word in our conversations. Below are a few examples of how the word “dream” is used.

“Susanne, you won’t believe what I dreamed of last night! It was the two of us on a cruise in the Mediterranean!”

“Gosh, Dan, I do not think I ever left the office. I was staring at the forecasts in my sleep.”

“Please share with us your dreams so we can help them come true.”

“I never get nightmares, I control my dreams.”

“You are lucky you dream, when I sleep nothing happens.”

“This car is a dream to operate.”

“The food was so good. It was a gourmet’s dream.”

According to Merriam-Webster, “dream” is defined as follows:

  1. a series of thoughts, images, or emotions occurring during sleep — compare rem sleep
  2. an experience of waking life having the characteristics of a dream: as
    • a visionary creation of the imagination : daydream
    • a state of mind marked by abstraction or release from reality : reverie
    • an object seen in a dreamlike state : vision
  3. something notable for its beauty, excellence, or enjoyable quality
  4. a strongly desired goal or purpose
  5. something that fully satisfies a wish : ideal
For purposes of this response, I will limit the use of the word “dream” to definition 1. As Claudette Young pointed out, there are plenty of dream interpretation theories ranging from dreams are random insignificant manifestations of life to with sufficient dream data, a personal can be completely profiled.

My personal interpretation of the domain is as follows: While we sleep and cut off the external stimuli, the subconscious mind is left to its own devices sifting through our learnings of the day and reintegrating the experiences within the framework of our knowledge base and beliefs. Dreams are an imprint of that process upon our conscious mind.

The degree with which the conscious mind is involved varies by individual. Here, it ranges from complete detachment to extreme involvement. This extreme involvement is referred to as Lucid Dreaming. I can relay that I am a lucid dreamer. I was tested at a couple of times in my life.

For a while, I was even confused whether the activity I was involved in should be called a dream: I defined it from start to finish – I would dial in the topic, whether I wanted to dream in black and white, and the language of my dream. If it got too boring or disinteresting or frightening, I would switch channels and define another dream and  repeat the process all over again.

I had to train myself over time to surrender dream control to my subconscious mind. I figured that if there were any messages from the subconscious mind that needed to come forth, I had to give it a fighting chance to communicate back to my conscious mind.

So now on to dream interpretation. Sometimes I keep a dream journal while at other times  I simply replay the dream sequence. The first thing I do is to discern is the dream a “fiction” piece or a “non-fiction” one. Imagine that I am so occupied with my work and I begin obsessing over it. This in turn bleeds into my dreams. I refer to those dreams as “non-fiction” and take them at face value.

If, on the other hand, I find myself in a scene that does not constitute day to day life, then I consider that to be a “fiction” dream. In that case, I analyze the dream as though I am reading though a work of literature and I need to prepare a full analysis on the choice of scenery, language, clothing , symbolism and the remaining connotations of the spoken words of the dream.

So in the end, what are dreams? I say dreams are what you make them out to be. They will only be relevant to your person. If you and I were to magically have the same dream, our takes on it would be completely different. It might terrify me but for you it would be no different that your favorite roller coaster ride at the amusement park.

Some people say that dreams are gateways to alternate realities. I say sure, why not? I believe not all dreams were meant to be equal and some may indeed by a gateway to alternate reality while others are a simply rehash of an overworked conscious mind.

How about you? What sort of dreamer are you? How do you decipher your dreams?

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Sleep Permutations

Posted on July 13, 2012 by | 3 Comments
" Time Slips "

” Time Slips ” (Photo credit: gmayster01 on & off …)

You have to sleep. It’s a biological fact. But what is it, really?

Sleep has been defined as a natural periodic state of rest for the mind and body, in which the eyes usually close and consciousness is completely or partially lost, so that there is a decrease in bodily movement and responsiveness to external stimuli. During sleep the brain in humans and other mammals undergoes a characteristic cycle of brain-wave activity that includes intervals of dreaming.

That’s clear enough. From an experiential perspective it might almost suffice as a definition. I have one friend, for instance, who suffers from clinical insomnia. For him, sleep is the carrot dangled at the end of a waking thread, drawing him into a Hell of attempted somnolence, which seems to forever elude him.

I knew a physics grad student years ago who rested in quasi-sleep for ninety minutes daily and worked/studied the other 22.5 hours. I know others who “rest” rather than sleep. They take twenty minute power naps a few times a day, or they go into a type of trance state where both body and mind recharge safely, even as they are still conscious. I was told by one fellow that he learned the technique as a child.

All of which brings me to additional altered states of awareness. During university I did an independent experimental study involving hypnosis. The hypothesis was that an individual could be hypnotized and returned to a particularly vivid dream. The subject could then relive the dream and figure out what it really meant in order to prevent recurrence.

The experiment worked beautifully and gave me a bonus. I got back inside the dream. I relived it, and I learned more than I ever imagined.

While under hypnosis, I wrote down all that was said, done, or learned. The dialogue was more interesting than the rest. I chose that dream because I was speaking gibberish in it.

When I took the dialogue transcript to linguistics, the translator had a field day. She couldn’t imagine anyone smashing together English, Spanish, German, French, with a smattering of Japanese and Latin, in such a consistent way, within grammatically correct sentences, and have them be understandable. She professed amazement at the feat and asked how long it had taken me to do it.

When I explained the situation, she was speechless. Her response got me to thinking. Where does the mind go when it shuts down for sleep?

Does it take trips to other worlds? Personally, I wouldn’t be surprised. I tend to time-slip occasionally, which means I dream of living in another time. I take trips to other places on this world. I came back from a dream to rural Italy one time with a recipe for a great little Christmas time treat.

I ask again. What is sleep? Could it be that sleep, as we know it, is merely a doorway, separating our waking world from our spirit’s life. It’s an interesting question, isn’t it? Listening to Deepak Chopra and others, the answer might take us almost anywhere.

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Walking the Line of Health

Posted on June 29, 2012 by | 4 Comments

 

Community rating is most often found as part o...

Community rating is most often found as part of health insurance systems in various countries (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

During the past week my mind has been much on thoughts of healing and health. Some ruminations center on my own health and the aging process, while others concern the problems/lack of problems encountered by friends and family of all ages. Throughout these ripples are images created by the media foretelling the ills of healthcare in this country.

The one aspect of health that has always fascinated me is the observation that when I’ve been happy, content, energized by my activities, and generally interacting with the world in a non-worried manner, I have no illnesses. When I’m worried about issues in my life, those of family and friends, and the state of the world, I get ill more often and for longer duration. Along the way, I’ve considered the meaning behind that experience.

Spiritual motivators, such as Dr. Wayne Dyer, Deepak Chopra, and Eckhart Tolle, emphasize that relationship as well. Each of these spiritual leaders talks of meditation for self-healing, in one form or another. Each refers to happiness and contentment manifesting from within a person rather than coming to the person from outside of the spirit. And each speaks of knowing one’s spirit and purpose, while eliminating the ego.

I’ve listened to many of the seminars and workshops presented by these men. There are points within each which resonate with my personal experience or insights. Understanding and appreciation develop from the wisdom of their teachings.

Looking back to my happiest times of life, they’ve all occurred when I owned little, had limited access to media sources, and lived very simply. During each of those times, I also earned little money, had no debts for I purchased only necessities, and never got ill. I laughed often and saw beauty wherever I went.

Each time my life has been disrupted, disorganized, and frazzled, I’m very plugged into media sources, hear little positive news, and constantly bombarded by claims as to what I must own, buy, or do. The demands on my time come from outside, which leads me to concentrate on those issues rather than on the ones that make me feel good. Why is that?

These episodes of frazzled life come with hazards; accidents, infections, and generally not feeling physically perky. Amazing that I call them episodes, for they do feel like something from a TV show; an embarrassingly boring TV show. The only melodrama comes from within during these periods. Could it be that this melodrama is also what manifests as medical ailments?

If so, the urge that keeps pushing from the back of my skull, the one that demands I simplify my life, may be trying to keep me healthy. This urge, which wants me to reduce possessions, reduce work demands, increase meditative and exercise activities, could be shouting for me to refocus on health above all else.

It could be in my best interest to listen and to obey that little inner voice. Walking the line of health is difficult for anyone like me who usually focuses on others’ wants before my own. This time, however, I may have to reconsider my priorities.

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