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Personal growth: Wisdom perfection and the world of illusion February 21, 2018

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Personal Development Potential.
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Our earnest efforts at achieving self-realization notwithstanding, most of us can tend to get wound pretty tight with the daily stress quotient the world doles out, and when this happens, , we might want to remember that keeping things in perspective should be a part of our personal development programs.

Advice which is easier to give than to take.

Some philosophical and/or spiritual systems such as Buddhism use comparisons to help show us how fleeting the external world and its stressors are.

Consider the Eight Similes of Illusion from the Prajnaparamita Sutras , as cited in Awakening the Buddha Within: Tibetan Wisdom for the Western World, written by Lama Surya Das (1)

The Radiant Buddha said:
Regard the fleeting world like this:
Like stars fading and vanishing at dawn,
like bubbles on a fast-moving stream,
like morning dewdrops evaporating on blades
of grass,
like a candle flickering in a strong wind,
echoes, mirages, and phantoms, hallucinations,
and like a dream

A note from Wikipedia
“The word prajnaparamita combines the Sanskrit words prajna “wisdom” with paramita” perfection”. Prajnaparamita is a central concept in Mahāyāna Buddhism and is generally associated with the doctrine of emptiness (Shunyata) or ‘lack of Svabhava’ (essence) and the works of Nagarjuna. Its practice and understanding are taken to be indispensable elements of the Bodhisattva path.”

(1) Published by Broadway Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, New York, 1997

—Dennis Mellersh

Problem: When our personal growth program doesn’t work for us February 18, 2018

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Personal Development Potential.
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One of the problems we may face at some point in our self-actualization efforts is finding ourselves struggling with a system or program that just doesn’t seem to work for us, but we feel we’ve invested so much time in it that we’re reluctant to give up on it.

The first thing we need to realize is that, if we have genuinely worked at the system, the fault is not likely ours.

Remember, the reason there are so many different approaches to personal development and self-improvement is because no one system is suitable for everybody.

Each of us has a unique world view and value system and we should not expect these programs to enable cookie-cutter solutions to the problems and challenges in our lives.

Putting more and more effort into a self-help program that simply isn’t suitable for our personality is a bad investment of our time, energy, and ultimately our life.

And, we’ve all probably learned more than we realize — even from a growth program that doesn’t work well for us.

We should then consider cutting our time-investment losses, regard our past efforts as a good learning experience, and move on to new experiences in our self-awareness discovery journey.

— Dennis Mellersh