Personal development: The power of accepting our mortality October 1, 2017
Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Personal Development Potential.Tags: achieving goals, Carlos Castaneda, inspiration, life, personal growth, philosophy, self-actualization, writing
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It may be possible that we could fall short of reaching our full potential because we often act as if we are going to live forever; and because of that tendency we do not make a concerted effort to change.
This is one of the life lessons that Carlos Castaneda tries to convey through the following reported “conversation” with the shaman Don Juan Matus, who admonishes Castaneda:
“You think your life is going to last forever.”
“No, I don’t”
“Then, if you don’t think your life is going to last forever, what are you waiting for? Why the hesitation to change?”
This is a tough message.
For most of us, accepting our mortality and the very real brevity of our lives is something we put beneath the surface of our active thinking as we go about our everyday lives.
But we are going to die, and as Don Juan reminds us, “There is no power which could guarantee that you are going to live one more minute.”
What then, should we do?
“Trust your personal power. That’s all one has in this whole mysterious world,” Don Juan advises.
This verbal exchange* takes place in Carlos Castaneda’s book, Journey to Ixtlan: The Lessons of Don Juan. It is one of a series Castaneda wrote on “the teachings of Don Juan.”
They are intriguing and challenging books, featuring a lot of provocative advice on personal behaviour patterns and ways to develop our personal power.
* There is some discussion/debate as to whether this series of books by Castaneda should be considered as anthropology, as literature, or as a combination of both. It is a remarkable series, which some people have found transformative.
— Dennis Mellersh
Personal growth: Do we really control our thoughts? September 30, 2017
Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Concept of personal growth.Tags: A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle, inspiration, life, philosophy, psychology, self-actualization, writing
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Can we control our thoughts, or is thinking an automatic process like digesting our food, as Eckhart Tolle suggests.
In his book A New Earth, Tolle writes:
“The voice in the head [thinking]* has a life of its own. Most people are at the mercy of that voice; they are possessed by thought, by the mind. And since the mind is conditioned by the past, you are then forced to re-enact the past again and again.”
This can have a cumulative effect, which Tolle compares to an emotional energy field:
“This energy field of old but still very-much-alive emotion that lives in almost every human being is the pain-body.”
This phenomenon can be highly damaging to our emotional development.
Fortunately, Tolle spends a lot of time in the book providing advice on how we can limit the negative outcomes that might result from our personal pain-bodies.
A New Earth is not an easy book to thoroughly understand and implement, but it is well worth making the effort to do so.
* My parentheses
– Dennis Mellersh
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