The Power of Self in a Powerful Mind
Self-control
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Self control)
This article is about controlling one's self. For other uses, see Self control (disambiguation).
Self-control is the ability to control one's emotions, behavior, and desires in the face of external demands in order to function in society. In psychology it is sometimes called self-regulation. Self-control is essential in behavior to achieve goals and to avoid impulses and/or emotions that could prove to be negative. In behavior analysis self-control represents the locus of two conflicting contingencies of reinforcement, which then make a controlling response reinforcing when it causes changes in the controlled response.
Motivation
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Motivation
Motivation is a theoretical construct used to explain behavior. It represents the reasons for people's actions, desires, and needs. Motivation can also be defined as one's direction to behavior or what causes a person to want to repeat a behavior and vice versa. A motive is what prompts the person to act in a certain way or at least develop an inclination for specific behavior. For example, when someone eats food to satisfy the need of hunger, or when a student does his/her work in school because they want a good grade. Both show a similar connection between what we do and why we do it. According to Maehr and Meyer, "Motivation is a word that is part of the popular culture as few other psychological concepts are". Wikipedia readers will have a motive (or motives) for reading an article, even if such motives are complex and difficult to pinpoint. At the other end of the range of complexity, hunger is frequently the motive for seeking out and consuming food.
Self-confidence
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The socio-psychological concept of self-confidence relates to self-assurance in one's personal judgment, ability, power, etc. Self-belief has been directly connected to an individual's social network, the activities they participate in, and what they hear about themselves from others. Positive self-esteem has been linked to factors such as psychological health, mattering to others, and both body image and physical health. On the contrary, low self-esteem in adolescents has been shown to be an important predictor of unhealthy behaviors and psychological problems such as suicidal ideation later in life.During adolescence, self-esteem is affected by age, race, ethnicity, puberty, health, body height, body weight, body image, involvement in physical activities, gender presentation, gender identity, and awakening or discovery of sexuality. Self-confidence can vary and be observed in a variety of dimensions. Components of one's social and academic life affect self-esteem. An individual's self-confidence can vary in different environments, such as at home or in school.
Why Self-Belief Is Essential and How to Develop It
Do you have self-belief?
By Eduard Ezeanu
How do you actually come to believe in yourself?
And how does this work exactly to help you get what you want?
These are the questions that I’d like to answer, drawing from my experience as a confidence coach. I want to help you move from wanting to believe in yourself to genuinely believing in yourself and leveraging the amazing power of self-belief.
Let’s start by taking a look at the mechanisms of self-belief.
How Self-Belief Works Self-belief has a very interesting way of functioning. There are several positive things that it does, which in turn facilitate getting the results you want.
1. Self-belief helps you see opportunities. It is said that having clear goals helps you to notice those elements around you that can assist you in reaching them. Because the clarity of your goals gives meaning to those elements. And then if you make use of those elements, you will reach your goals.
That is true, but clear goals by themselves are often not enough to help you spot opportunities. Many times if you have a clear goal but you don’t actually believe that you can achieve it, your mind will still fail to identify the opportunities around you. Lack of belief blinds you.
Conversely, if you have clear goals and you believe you can reach them, then your mind has the highest possible amount of receptivity to elements that can help you reach your goals. Thus you’ll detect them quickly, even the subtle ones, and you’ll be able to employ them.
2. Self-belief facilitates finding creative solutions. When you approach a goal from with disbelief, you feel anxiety and your thinking gets clogged by it, which makes finding good solutions to reach that goal less probable.
On the other hand, self-belief makes you relax and think clearly. It stimulates reasoning, memory and, above all, creativity. This makes it more likely that you’ll find good solutions to reach your goals. In particular, you’ll be able to think outside the box and come up with creative solutions that work really well.
3. Self-belief stimulates action and persistence. It’s hard to take action towards a goal if deep down you don’t truly believe you can achieve it. And it’s even harder to put in the consistent work that you need to put in, in order to reach any worthwhile goal. And when you fail to accomplish your goals, this way unfortunately confirm your lack of belief.
However, if you believe in yourself, you’ll feel motivated to take action, you’ll stay motivated over long periods of time, and you won’t be discouraged by mistakes or setbacks. You’ll be inclined to simply see them as a part of the process, and you’ll keep going despite them, until you get what you want. This, of course, will reinforce your self-belief.
4. Self-belief makes others more responsive. Other people frequently play an important role in achieving your goals. In fact, many of your goals may refer to other people. And in general, others tend to react to you the way you believe they will.
If you ask a person for something and you believe they’ll give it to you, they will sense the conviction in your voice and they’ll be more inclined to respond your request. Conversely, if you lack belief, your request will be hesitant, which will make it more likely to become rejected.
If you talk to someone and you believe they will like you as you are, you’ll have a positive vibe, which will likely make them like you. But if you lack belief, you’ll act shy or you’ll try too hard to impress them, which will make them not like you.
So that’s how self-belief works. In my view, it’s not sufficient by itself in order to get what you want. You still need to take action, persevere, and learn from your mistakes. Nevertheless, it opens up a wide path towards getting what you want.
This leads me to my next point.
Developing Self-BeliefThere are four ways to develop self-belief that work especially well.
1. Set bold but realistic goals. Sometimes when we set unrealistically high goals and we try to achieve them, we fail and our self-belief plummets. We demand too much, too fast, and it backfires. So from very high goals, we end up at having no goals whatsoever because we’ve lost faith in ourselves.
The key for building self-belief is to set bold but realistic goals, and seek to achieve them. You will succeed in achieving most of these goals, which will build your self-belief. When you reach a goal, it’s okay to set an even higher one and push yourself even more. But the whole process is incremental. You gradually aim higher, and with each step forward you build self-belief.
2. Learn to see your accomplishments. In my experience most people who lack self-belief have a strong inclination to filter out the positive aspects about themselves.
What about you?
Do you see or acknowledge your achievements, or do you obsess about all your failures? If you do that, then when you look at yourself, all you see is failure, which means that you don’t believe in yourself.
You need to reverse this process.
Consciously work on identifying and acknowledging your results and strengths. Spend some time each day thinking about them, even if you’re not used to it and it feels unfamiliar.
This will help incorporate your strengths and successes in your self-image and thus you’ll gradually begin to believe in yourself more and more.
3. Cut down on comparing yourself. Comparing yourself to others is like losing a battle. Because no matter how good you are at something, in this vast world, you will always find somebody who is better than you. Thus a lot of comparing yourself to others will make you feel as if you’re not really good at anything, which will sabotage your self-belief.
That’s why it’s best to reduce comparing yourself.
You will never eliminate it completely since it’s part of human nature, and you don’t need to either, but you can reduce it significantly. And you do so by giving your mind better things to do than to contrast you with others.
Keep it busy with meaningful tasks and challenges, and it won’t have time for making futile comparisons.
4. Develop yourself. Last but not least, be a life-long learner and continually aim to better yourself. After all, self-belief is a reflection of how good you are at handling the various aspects of life. And the more you grow as a person, the more of a reason you have to believe in yourself.
A word of caution, though…
Developing yourself will not necessarily make you believe in yourself more. Because, as I said previously, your mind can filter out your achievements. So you have to combine developing yourself with consciously recognizing the ways you grow as a person.
It is this combination of developing yourself, challenging yourself and deliberately thinking about yourself in more constructive ways that represents the ideal recipe for building self-belief.
Put into practice these ideas and you’ll see your belief in yourself steadily improve. With more self-belief, you’ll be more confident and more motivated to go for what you want, and you’ll make better use of the resources existing all around you the get what you want in life.
The world is your oyster and self-belief is the key that opens it.
What Is the Self?
The Buddhist Teachings of Self and No-Self
Among all the Buddha's teachings, those on the nature of the self are the hardest to understand, yet they are central to the religion. In fact, "fully perceiving the nature of the self" is one way to define enlightenment.
The Five SkandhasThe Buddha taught that an individual is a combination of five aggregates of existence, also called the Five Skandhas or the five heaps. These are:
The Self Is No-Self
What's most important to understand about the skandhas is that they are empty. They are not qualities that an individual possesses, because there is no-self possessing them. This doctrine of no-self is calledanatman or anatta.
Very basically, the Buddha taught that "you" are not an integral, autonomous entity. The individual self, or what we might call the ego, is more correctly thought of as a by-product of the skandhas.
On the surface, this appears to be a nihilistic teaching. But the Buddha taught that if we can see through the delusion of the small, individual self, we experience that which is not subject to birth and death.
Two Views
Beyond this point, Theravada Buddhism and Mahayana Buddhism differ on how anatman is understood. In fact, more than anything else it is the different understanding of self that defines and separates the two schools.
Very basically, Theravada considers anatman to mean that an individual's ego or personality is a fetter and delusion. Once freed of this delusion, the individual may enjoy the bliss of Nirvana.
Mahayana, on the other hand, considers all physical forms to be void of intrinsic self (a teaching calledshunyata, which means "emptiness"). The ideal in Mahayana is to enable all beings to be enlightened together, not only out of a sense of compassion, but because we are not really separate, autonomous beings.
Self
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The self is the subject of one's own experience of phenomena: perception, emotions, thoughts. In phenomenology, it is conceived as what experiences, and there isn't any experiencing without an experiencer, the self. The self is therefore an "immediate given", an intrinsic dimension of the fact of experiencing phenomena. In some other trends of philosophy, the self is instead seen as requiring a reflexive perception of oneself, the individual person, meaning the self in such a view is an object of consciousness.
The self has been studied extensively by philosophers and psychologists and is central to many world religions. With the recent rise in technology, the self has been discussed under various new emerging fields, such as Technoself Studies.
Contents
Philosophy
Main article: Philosophy of self
The philosophy of self seeks to describe essential qualities that constitute a person's uniqueness or essential being. There have been various approaches to defining these qualities. The self can be considered that being which is the source of consciousness; the agent responsible for an individual's thoughts and actions; and/or the substantial nature of a person which endures and unifies consciousness over time.
Psychology
Main article: Psychology of self
The psychology of self is the study of either the cognitive and affective representation of one's identity or the subject of experience. The earliest formulation of the self in modern psychology forms the distinction between the self as I, the subjective knower, and the self as Me, the object that is known. Current views of the self in psychology position the self as playing an integral part in human motivation, cognition, affect, and social identity. Self following from John Locke has been seen as a product of episodic memory but research upon those with amnesia find they have a coherent sense of self based upon preserved conceptual autobiographical knowledge. It is increasingly possible to correlate cognitive and affective experience of self with neural processes. A goal of this ongoing research is to provide grounding and insight into the elements of which the complex multiply situated selves of human identity are composed. The 'Disorders of the Self' have also been extensively studied by psychiatrists.
For example, facial and pattern recognition take large amounts of brain processing capacity but pareidolia cannot explain many constructs of self for cases of disorder, such as schizophrenia or schizo-affective disorder.
One’s sense of self can be changed if they become part of a group that they consider stigmatized. According to Cox, Abramson, Devine, and Hollon (2012), if an individual has prejudice against a certain group, like the elderly and then later becomes part of this group this prejudice can be turned inward causing depression (i.e. deprejudice).[
The philosophy of a disordered self, such as in schizophrenia, is described in terms of what the psychiatrist understands are actual events in terms of neuron excitation but are delusions nonetheless, and the schizo-affective or schizophrenic person also believes are actual events in terms of essential being. PET scans have shown that auditory stimulation is processed in certain areas of the brain, and imagined similar events are processed in adjacent areas, but hallucinations are processed in the same areas as actual stimulation. In such cases, external influences may be the source of consciousness and the person may or may not be responsible for "sharing" in the mind's process; and/or the events which occur, such as visions and auditory stimuli, may endure and be repeated often over hours, days, months or years—and the afflicted person may believe themselves to be in a state of rapture and/or possession.
Religion
Main article: Religious views on the self
Religious views on the self vary widely. The self is a complex and core subject in many forms of spirituality. Two types of self are commonly considered - the self that is the ego, also called the learned, superficial self of mind and body, an egoic creation, and the Self which is sometimes called the "True Self", the "Observing Self", or the "Witness".
Human beings have a self—that is, they are able to look back on themselves as both subjects and objects in the universe. Ultimately, this brings questions about who we are and the nature of our own importance. Traditions such as Buddhism see the attachment to self is an illusion that serves as the main cause of suffering and unhappiness. Christianity makes a distinction between the true self and the false self, and sees the false self negatively, distorted through sin: 'The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?' (Jeremiah 17:9)
According to Marcia Cavell, identity comes from both political and religious views. He also identified exploration and commitment as interactive parts of identity formation, which includes religious identity. Erik Erikson compared faith with doubt and found that healthy adults take heed to their spiritual side.[10]
One description of spirituality is the self's search for "ultimate meaning" through an independent comprehension of the sacred. Spiritual identity appears when the symbolic religious and spiritual value of a culture is found by individuals in the setting of their own life. There can be different types of spiritual self because it is determined on one's life and experiences. Another definition of spiritual identity is " a persistent sense of self that addresses ultimate questions about the nature, purpose, and meaning of life, resulting in behaviors that are consonant with the individual’s core values."
words with the prefix self:
‘what is the self in hinduism’
To avoid misunderstanding the teachings and concepts of Hinduism, it’s important to correctly understand what is meant by “the Self” in Hinduism, when “Self” is written with a capital S.
Hinduism differentiates between “self” (with a small ‘s’) and “Self” (with a capital ‘S’). The capitalised Self does not refer to our personal or individual self, nor even to our soul which incarnates and reincarnates…the Self is the Spirit and in Sanskrit it is called the Atman.
Our personal individual self is not the true eternal reality of Who and What we really are and thus this lower self is sometimes termed the “not-Self” because it is not thereal Self, which is the Higher Self, the Divine Self.
The Self…the Spirit…the Atman…this is not the individual possession of anyone. There is no such thing as my Atman or your Atman; there is only THE Atman, which is the ONE Universal Self of all. It is pure eternal Spirit and is the One Reality.
The Self (Atman) is literally one and the same thing as the Supreme Self (Paramatman) which is called by the term Brahman. This is why Ramana Maharshi said, “Knowing the Self, God is known. In fact God is none other than the Self.” You do not know God until you know yourself – your Self – as God. And you also do not know yourself until you know your real Self to be God, to be Brahman.
Brahman is not the same as Brahma. Brahman is not a Being, not some sort of Divine Person, but IT is the ONE Absolute Infinite Omnipresent Divine PRINCIPLE. We can think of Brahman as being the Supreme Pure Divine Consciousness which iseverything and in everything. The Hindu scriptures state over and over again that the Atman is Brahman, that our Spirit is the Supreme Spirit, that the Self is the Supreme Self.
The manifested universe and everything material and objective is ultimately illusion (“Maya” in Sanskrit) when viewed from the higher perspective and the Self is the one Reality. The universe and everything in it comes forth from the Self and returns to the Self at the end of each cycle of universal manifestation.
All is illusion (because it is impermanent, temporary, finite, and subject to change) apart from the Self, the Atman which is Brahman. Only that which is permanent, infinite, absolute, immutable, unconditioned, changeless and unchangeable, can be considered truly real and this is what is meant in Hinduism by the Self, which is the Divine Allness, the Infinite Abstract EXISTENCE.
Yoga is to re-become This in consciousness, for This is Who and What you really are. You are not the body, you are not the emotions, you are not even the mind! You are pure eternal Spirit…you are the Atman…you are Brahman…you are the Self. This is the message of non-duality and universal oneness (“Advaita” in Sanskrit) and it is this that is the great message of the Hindu religion.
The Self never does anything, nor is anything ever done to the Self. There is nothing for It to do, except to BE, and It “be”…for It alone IS.
The Upanishads are the Hindu scriptures which focus and expound on this primary and foundational teaching and I highly recommend the translation by Eknath Easwaran, which is readily available from Amazon and many other places. One of the most famous statements in the Upanishads is “Tat tvam asi” which means “Thou art That”…you are the Self, you are the Atman, you are Brahman. Yes, you are God and this very concept – which would be considered the vilest heresy and blasphemy in the Abrahamic religions of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam – has been the foundation of Indian spiritual thought for well over 5,000 years. You are God and God is you and this is the truth of everyone, for God is ALL. This is the same as saying that Brahman is ALL, the Atman is ALL, the Self is ALL.
The ONLY One breathed breathless by Itself;
Other than It there nothing since has been.
— from the Hymn of Creation in the Rig Veda, the oldest scripture in the world
Om
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Om/Aum (ॐ; in Devanagari as ओं oṁ [õː], औं auṃ [ə̃ũ], or ओ३म् om [õːːm]) is a mantra and mystical sound of Hindu origin (geographically India and Nepal), sacred and important in various Dharmic religions such as Hinduism,Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism. The syllable is also referred to as omkara (ओंकार oṃkāra) or aumkara (औंकार auṃkāra), literally "om syllable", and in Sanskrit it is sometimes referred to as praṇava, literally "that which is sounded out loudly".
Om or Aum is also written ओ३म् (o̿m [õːːm]), where ३ is pluta ("three times as long"), indicating a length of three morae (that is, the time it takes to say three syllables) — an overlong nasalised close-mid back rounded vowel —, though there are other enunciations adhered to in received traditions. It is placed at the beginning of most Hindu texts as a sacred incantation to be intoned at the beginning and end of a reading of the Vedas or prior to any prayer or mantra. It is used at the end of the invocation to the god being sacrificed to (anuvakya) as an invitation to and for the latter to partake of.
Hinduism
Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva within an OM
Many Hindus use Religious symbols on their vehicles, this image shows the Om on a motorbike.
The syllable "om" is first described as all-encompassing mystical entity in the Upanishads. Today, in all Hindu art and all over Nepal and India, 'om' can be seen virtually everywhere, a common sign for Hinduism and its philosophy and theology. Hindus believe that as creation began, the divine, all-encompassing consciousness took the form of the first and original vibration manifesting as sound "OM". Before creation began it was "Shunyākāsha", the emptiness or the void. Shunyākāsha, meaning literally "no sky", is more than nothingness, because everything then existed in a latent state of potentiality. The vibration of "OM" symbolises the manifestation of God in form ("sāguna brahman"). "OM" is the reflection of the absolute reality, it is said to be "Adi Anadi", without beginning or the end and embracing all that exists. The mantra "OM" is the name of God, the vibration of the Supreme. When taken letter by letter, A-U-M represents the divine energy (Shakti) united in its three elementary aspects: Bhrahma Shakti (creation), Vishnu Shakti (preservation) and Shiva Shakti (liberation, and/or destruction).
I Am that I Am
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh (often contracted in English as "I AM") is one of the Seven Names of God accorded special care by medieval Jewish tradition. The phrase is also found in other world religious literature, used to describe the Supreme Being, generally referring back to its use in Exodus. The word Ehyeh is considered by many rabbinical scholars to be a first-person derivation of the Tetragrammaton, see for example Yahweh.
God, who reveals his name as "I AM", reveals himself as the God who is always there, present to his people in order to save them.
The divine name, "I Am" or "He Is", expresses God's faithfulness: despite the faithlessness of men's sin and the punishment it deserves, he keeps "steadfast love for thousands"... By giving his life to free us from sin, Jesus reveals that he himself bears the divine name: "When you have lifted up the Son of man, then you will realize that 'I AM'."
Some religious groups and theologians believe that this phrase or at least the "I am" part of the phrase is an actual name of God, or to lesser degree the sole name of God. It can be found in many lists where other common names of God are shown.
As discussed above, depending on how it is rendered (a subject of much debate amongst historians), the Hebrew name for God YHWH bears some similarity to an archaic form of "he is". In Biblical Hebrew, ehyeh is the first person singular imperfect "to be". In other world religions also the "I AM" part is the actual name of God.
The conceptualization of the omnipresence of the divine being has led to the consideration of simplicity. The unified perspectival concept of I combined with the supposition of omnipresence creates an atmosphere in which the unity of divine being and self can be easily understood.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge predicates much of the theoretical frame of his Biographia Literaria on what he calls 'the great I AM' (that is, God the Father) and 'the filial WORD that re-affirmeth it ...' (Christ, reaffirming his father's statement') '...from Eternity to Eternity, whose choral Echo is the Universe.' Coleridge's argument is that these two things together work to create the ground for all meaning, especially poetic and artistic meaning.
In the Hindu Advaita Vedanta, the South Indian sage Ramana Maharshi mentions that of all the definitions of God, "none is indeed so well put as the biblical statement “I am that I am”". He maintained that although Hindu scripture contains similar statements, the Mahavakyas, these are not as direct as given in Exodus. Further the "I am" is explained by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj as an abstraction in the mind of the Stateless State, of the Absolute, or the Supreme Reality, called Parabrahman: it is pure awareness, prior to thoughts, free from perceptions, associations, memories. Parabrahman is often considered to be a cognate term for the Supreme Being in Hinduism.
The Sense of "I am" (Consciousness)
When I met my Guru, he told me: "You are not what you take yourself
to be. Find out what you are. Watch the sense 'I am', find your real
Self." I obeyed him, because I trusted him. I did as he told me. All
my spare time I would spend looking at myself in silence. And what a
difference it made, and how soon!
My teacher told me to hold on to the sense 'I am' tenaciously and not
to swerve from it even for a moment. I did my best to follow his
advice and in a comparatively short time I realized within myself the
truth of his teaching. All I did was to remember his teaching, his
face, his words constantly. This brought an end to the mind; in the
stillness of the mind I saw myself as I am -- unbound.
I simply followed (my teacher's) instruction which was to focus the
mind on pure being 'I am', and stay in it. I used to sit for hours
together, with nothing but the 'I am' in my mind and soon peace and
joy and a deep all-embracing love became my normal state. In it all
disappeared -- myself, my Guru, the life I lived, the world around
me. Only peace remained and unfathomable silence.
Nisargadatta Maharaj
ASMI - Excerpts from Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj's I AM THAT
compiled and edited by Miguel-Angel Carrasco
Read this online or download the entire text in Word format. It is 114 pages. Left click to download. Right click to save. Download now.
CONTENTS
1. I am not this person, this body-mind, or any thing.
As I can't be what I perceive, I am not this body-mind or any thing that I am conscious of.
As there must be something unchanging to register discontinuity, I am not this body-mind, which is neither continuous nor permanent.
As the person is a changing stream of mental objects that I as the subject take to be my body-mind, I cannot be a person. I am, but I can't be this or that.
As it is my presence, which is always here and now, that gives the quality of actual to any event, I must be beyond time and space. I was never born, nor will ever die.
2. I am the Self, the Witness of Consciousness, pure Awareness.
I am only the Self , which is universal and imagines itself to be the outer self, a person.
I am not an object in Consciousness but its source, its Witness, pure shapeless Awareness.
Only the feeling "I am", though in the World, is not of the World nor can be denied.
3. The World exists only as a dream in my Consciousness: Part One
As I only know the contents of my consciousness, and as an outside world is unprovable, all perceivables are only in my mind.
Transient things only appear and have no substance.
What changes has no reality. Time and space are imagined, ways of thinking, modes of perception. Only timeless reality is, and it is here and now.
The World exists only as a dream in my Consciousness: Part Two
Whatever has a form is only limitations imagined in my consciousness.
The World is but a show, a make-belief.
The World I perceive is entirely private, a dream.
Desire and fear come from seeing the World as separate from my-Self.
While I see the dream as real, I'll suffer being its slave.
Nothing in the dream is done by me.
4. There is only one dreamer, the one Self, dreaming many dreams.
In every body there is a dream, but the dreamer is the same, the one Self, which reflects itself in each body as "I am".
All the dreams are of a common imaginary World and influence each other.
Love is seeing the unity under the imaginary diversity.
5. I alone am, the One, the Supreme.
Not only the multiplicity of selves is false: even the duality of I/World, Subject/Object, is a transient appearance in my
Consciousness.
There is only my-Self, Consciousness.
I am not even Consciousness, which is dual and perceivable: I am the unknown Reality beyond.
Though unknown and unknowable, my real being is concrete and solid like a rock.
I am the light that makes Consciousness possible, pure Awareness, the non-dualSelf, the Supreme Reality, the Absolute, the Beingness of being, the Awareness of consciousness.
6. The big cycle: part one
The alternation of manifested (existence, becoming) - unmanifested
(pure being).
The manifestation of the Absolute.
The big cycle: part two
The return to the Absolute.
There are no real differences. Only the One is.
7. The goal: Liberation through Self-Realization
The gospel of self-realization
The enlightened one (gnani)
8. The way to Self-Realization: Part One
Not through activity. No effort is necessary, but there is a precondition: earnestness now
The way to Self-Realization: Part Two
Not through knowledge of things or experiences, but through self-knowledge.
The way to Self-Realization: Part Three
Not through the mind.
See everything as a dream, a show, a film.
The way to Self-Realization: Part Four
See that happiness is not pleasure; see that desires and fears create bondage; and be free and happy through detachment.
The way to Self-Realization: Part Five
As self-identification with the body-mind is the poison that causes bondage, seek liberation by seeing that oneself is not any thing personal or perceivable.
The way to Self-Realization: Part Six
Meditation, Witness attitude, Awareness.
No thought but "I am".
9. Miscellaneous
Why the ignorance and the illusion? What is the purpose of it all?
Violence, Evil, Sin.
Progress.
Karma.
Death, Suicide, Reincarnation.
Religions, God.
The real Guru.
Yoga.
Love.
Numbers after quotations refer to pages of the edition by Chetana (P) Ltd, Bombay, 1992.
I AM THAT
"That in whom reside all beings and who resides in all beings, who is the giver of grace to all, the Supreme Soul of the universe, the limitless being -- I am that." -Amritbindu Upanishad
"That which permeates all, which nothing transcends and which, like the universal space around us, fills everything completely from within and without, that Supreme non-dual Brahman -- that thou art." - Sankaracharya
"The seeker is he who is in search of himself. Give up all questions except one: "Who am I?" After all, the only fact you are sure of is that you are. The "I am" is certain. The "I am this" is not. Struggle to find out what you are in reality. To know what you are, you must first investigate and know what you are not. Discover all that you are not -- body, feelings thoughts, time, space, this or that -- nothing, concrete or abstract, which you perceive can be you. The very act of perceiving shows that you are not what you perceive. The clearer you understand on the level of mind you can be described in negative terms only, the quicker will you come to the end of your search and realise that you are the limitless being". - Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
the kena upanishad
The Self
The student inquires: “Who makes my mind think?
Who fills my body with vitality?
Who causes my tongue to speak? Who is that
Invisible One who sees through my eyes
And hears through my ears?”
The teacher replies: “The Self is the ear of the ear,
The eye of the eye, the mind of the mind,
The word of words, and the life of life.
Rising above the senses and the mind
And renouncing separate existence,
The wise realize the deathless Self.
“Him our eyes cannot see, nor words express;
He cannot be grasped even by our mind.
We do not know, we cannot understand,
Because he is different from the known
And he is different from the unknown.
Thus have we heard from the illumined ones.
“That which makes the tongue speak, but cannot be
Spoken by the tongue, know that as the Self.
This Self is not someone other than you.
“That which makes the mind think, but cannot be
Thought by the mind, that is the Self indeed.
This Self is not someone other than you.
“That which makes the eye see, but cannot be
Seen by the eye, that is the Self indeed.
This Self is not someone other than you.
“That which makes the ear hear, but cannot be
Heard by the ear, that is the Self indeed.
This Self is not someone other than you.
“That which makes you draw breath, but cannot be
Drawn by your breath, that is the Self indeed.
This Self is not someone other than you.”
Introduction to Isa Upanishad
Om. All this, whatever moves on the earth, should be covered by the Lord. Protect your Self through that detachment. Do not covet anybody's wealth. Or - Do not covet, for whose is wealth? |1|
Everything in this universe is transitory and therefore, can be labeled as relatively real, or temporarily real, or illusory. This is the meaning of 'whatever moves on the earth'. Then all these things -everything one sees, feels, thinks, or imagines - in short the whole universe 'should be covered with the Lord'. Who is this Lord? The Lord is none other than our indwelling Self. Know this and try to see the same Self manifest in all 'things in motion' on this earth. In other words, renounce everything that is not your Self; or know that the essence of universe is your true self. In either case, there are no two; the only reality or truth is one Self. Knowing this the realized soul renounces this illusory world of name and form and becomes free from threefold desire, viz, of son, wealth, and worlds. Thus, 'protect your Self' through such detachment and realize your true nature through the knowledge obtained through discrimination and renunciation.
Self-control
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Self control)
This article is about controlling one's self. For other uses, see Self control (disambiguation).
Self-control is the ability to control one's emotions, behavior, and desires in the face of external demands in order to function in society. In psychology it is sometimes called self-regulation. Self-control is essential in behavior to achieve goals and to avoid impulses and/or emotions that could prove to be negative. In behavior analysis self-control represents the locus of two conflicting contingencies of reinforcement, which then make a controlling response reinforcing when it causes changes in the controlled response.
Motivation
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Motivation
Motivation is a theoretical construct used to explain behavior. It represents the reasons for people's actions, desires, and needs. Motivation can also be defined as one's direction to behavior or what causes a person to want to repeat a behavior and vice versa. A motive is what prompts the person to act in a certain way or at least develop an inclination for specific behavior. For example, when someone eats food to satisfy the need of hunger, or when a student does his/her work in school because they want a good grade. Both show a similar connection between what we do and why we do it. According to Maehr and Meyer, "Motivation is a word that is part of the popular culture as few other psychological concepts are". Wikipedia readers will have a motive (or motives) for reading an article, even if such motives are complex and difficult to pinpoint. At the other end of the range of complexity, hunger is frequently the motive for seeking out and consuming food.
Self-confidence
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The socio-psychological concept of self-confidence relates to self-assurance in one's personal judgment, ability, power, etc. Self-belief has been directly connected to an individual's social network, the activities they participate in, and what they hear about themselves from others. Positive self-esteem has been linked to factors such as psychological health, mattering to others, and both body image and physical health. On the contrary, low self-esteem in adolescents has been shown to be an important predictor of unhealthy behaviors and psychological problems such as suicidal ideation later in life.During adolescence, self-esteem is affected by age, race, ethnicity, puberty, health, body height, body weight, body image, involvement in physical activities, gender presentation, gender identity, and awakening or discovery of sexuality. Self-confidence can vary and be observed in a variety of dimensions. Components of one's social and academic life affect self-esteem. An individual's self-confidence can vary in different environments, such as at home or in school.
Why Self-Belief Is Essential and How to Develop It
Do you have self-belief?
By Eduard Ezeanu
How do you actually come to believe in yourself?
And how does this work exactly to help you get what you want?
These are the questions that I’d like to answer, drawing from my experience as a confidence coach. I want to help you move from wanting to believe in yourself to genuinely believing in yourself and leveraging the amazing power of self-belief.
Let’s start by taking a look at the mechanisms of self-belief.
How Self-Belief Works Self-belief has a very interesting way of functioning. There are several positive things that it does, which in turn facilitate getting the results you want.
1. Self-belief helps you see opportunities. It is said that having clear goals helps you to notice those elements around you that can assist you in reaching them. Because the clarity of your goals gives meaning to those elements. And then if you make use of those elements, you will reach your goals.
That is true, but clear goals by themselves are often not enough to help you spot opportunities. Many times if you have a clear goal but you don’t actually believe that you can achieve it, your mind will still fail to identify the opportunities around you. Lack of belief blinds you.
Conversely, if you have clear goals and you believe you can reach them, then your mind has the highest possible amount of receptivity to elements that can help you reach your goals. Thus you’ll detect them quickly, even the subtle ones, and you’ll be able to employ them.
2. Self-belief facilitates finding creative solutions. When you approach a goal from with disbelief, you feel anxiety and your thinking gets clogged by it, which makes finding good solutions to reach that goal less probable.
On the other hand, self-belief makes you relax and think clearly. It stimulates reasoning, memory and, above all, creativity. This makes it more likely that you’ll find good solutions to reach your goals. In particular, you’ll be able to think outside the box and come up with creative solutions that work really well.
3. Self-belief stimulates action and persistence. It’s hard to take action towards a goal if deep down you don’t truly believe you can achieve it. And it’s even harder to put in the consistent work that you need to put in, in order to reach any worthwhile goal. And when you fail to accomplish your goals, this way unfortunately confirm your lack of belief.
However, if you believe in yourself, you’ll feel motivated to take action, you’ll stay motivated over long periods of time, and you won’t be discouraged by mistakes or setbacks. You’ll be inclined to simply see them as a part of the process, and you’ll keep going despite them, until you get what you want. This, of course, will reinforce your self-belief.
4. Self-belief makes others more responsive. Other people frequently play an important role in achieving your goals. In fact, many of your goals may refer to other people. And in general, others tend to react to you the way you believe they will.
If you ask a person for something and you believe they’ll give it to you, they will sense the conviction in your voice and they’ll be more inclined to respond your request. Conversely, if you lack belief, your request will be hesitant, which will make it more likely to become rejected.
If you talk to someone and you believe they will like you as you are, you’ll have a positive vibe, which will likely make them like you. But if you lack belief, you’ll act shy or you’ll try too hard to impress them, which will make them not like you.
So that’s how self-belief works. In my view, it’s not sufficient by itself in order to get what you want. You still need to take action, persevere, and learn from your mistakes. Nevertheless, it opens up a wide path towards getting what you want.
This leads me to my next point.
Developing Self-BeliefThere are four ways to develop self-belief that work especially well.
1. Set bold but realistic goals. Sometimes when we set unrealistically high goals and we try to achieve them, we fail and our self-belief plummets. We demand too much, too fast, and it backfires. So from very high goals, we end up at having no goals whatsoever because we’ve lost faith in ourselves.
The key for building self-belief is to set bold but realistic goals, and seek to achieve them. You will succeed in achieving most of these goals, which will build your self-belief. When you reach a goal, it’s okay to set an even higher one and push yourself even more. But the whole process is incremental. You gradually aim higher, and with each step forward you build self-belief.
2. Learn to see your accomplishments. In my experience most people who lack self-belief have a strong inclination to filter out the positive aspects about themselves.
What about you?
Do you see or acknowledge your achievements, or do you obsess about all your failures? If you do that, then when you look at yourself, all you see is failure, which means that you don’t believe in yourself.
You need to reverse this process.
Consciously work on identifying and acknowledging your results and strengths. Spend some time each day thinking about them, even if you’re not used to it and it feels unfamiliar.
This will help incorporate your strengths and successes in your self-image and thus you’ll gradually begin to believe in yourself more and more.
3. Cut down on comparing yourself. Comparing yourself to others is like losing a battle. Because no matter how good you are at something, in this vast world, you will always find somebody who is better than you. Thus a lot of comparing yourself to others will make you feel as if you’re not really good at anything, which will sabotage your self-belief.
That’s why it’s best to reduce comparing yourself.
You will never eliminate it completely since it’s part of human nature, and you don’t need to either, but you can reduce it significantly. And you do so by giving your mind better things to do than to contrast you with others.
Keep it busy with meaningful tasks and challenges, and it won’t have time for making futile comparisons.
4. Develop yourself. Last but not least, be a life-long learner and continually aim to better yourself. After all, self-belief is a reflection of how good you are at handling the various aspects of life. And the more you grow as a person, the more of a reason you have to believe in yourself.
A word of caution, though…
Developing yourself will not necessarily make you believe in yourself more. Because, as I said previously, your mind can filter out your achievements. So you have to combine developing yourself with consciously recognizing the ways you grow as a person.
It is this combination of developing yourself, challenging yourself and deliberately thinking about yourself in more constructive ways that represents the ideal recipe for building self-belief.
Put into practice these ideas and you’ll see your belief in yourself steadily improve. With more self-belief, you’ll be more confident and more motivated to go for what you want, and you’ll make better use of the resources existing all around you the get what you want in life.
The world is your oyster and self-belief is the key that opens it.
What Is the Self?
The Buddhist Teachings of Self and No-Self
Among all the Buddha's teachings, those on the nature of the self are the hardest to understand, yet they are central to the religion. In fact, "fully perceiving the nature of the self" is one way to define enlightenment.
The Five SkandhasThe Buddha taught that an individual is a combination of five aggregates of existence, also called the Five Skandhas or the five heaps. These are:
- Form
- Sensation
- Mental formations
- Consciousness Various schools of Buddhism interpret the skandhas in somewhat different ways. Generally, the first skandha is our physical form. The second is made up of our feelings, emotional and physical, and our senses -- seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, smelling.
The third skandha, perception, takes in most of what we call thinking -- conceptualization, cognition, reasoning. This also includes the recognition that occurs when an organ comes into contact with an object. Perception can be thought of as "that which identifies." The object perceived may be a physical object or a mental one, such as an idea.
- The fourth skandha, mental formations, includes habits, prejudices and predispositions. Our volition, or willfulness, also is part of the fourth skandha, as are attention, faith, conscientiousness, pride, desire, vindictiveness, and many other mental states both virtuous and not virtuous. The causes and effects of karma are especially important to the fourth skandha. The fifth skandha, consciousness, is awareness of or sensitivity to an object, but without conceptualization. Once there is awareness, the third skandha might recognize the object and assign a concept-value to it, and the fourth skandha might react with desire or revulsion or some other mental formation. The fifth skandha is explained in some schools as base that ties the experience of life together.
The Self Is No-Self
What's most important to understand about the skandhas is that they are empty. They are not qualities that an individual possesses, because there is no-self possessing them. This doctrine of no-self is calledanatman or anatta.
Very basically, the Buddha taught that "you" are not an integral, autonomous entity. The individual self, or what we might call the ego, is more correctly thought of as a by-product of the skandhas.
On the surface, this appears to be a nihilistic teaching. But the Buddha taught that if we can see through the delusion of the small, individual self, we experience that which is not subject to birth and death.
Two Views
Beyond this point, Theravada Buddhism and Mahayana Buddhism differ on how anatman is understood. In fact, more than anything else it is the different understanding of self that defines and separates the two schools.
Very basically, Theravada considers anatman to mean that an individual's ego or personality is a fetter and delusion. Once freed of this delusion, the individual may enjoy the bliss of Nirvana.
Mahayana, on the other hand, considers all physical forms to be void of intrinsic self (a teaching calledshunyata, which means "emptiness"). The ideal in Mahayana is to enable all beings to be enlightened together, not only out of a sense of compassion, but because we are not really separate, autonomous beings.
Self
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The self is the subject of one's own experience of phenomena: perception, emotions, thoughts. In phenomenology, it is conceived as what experiences, and there isn't any experiencing without an experiencer, the self. The self is therefore an "immediate given", an intrinsic dimension of the fact of experiencing phenomena. In some other trends of philosophy, the self is instead seen as requiring a reflexive perception of oneself, the individual person, meaning the self in such a view is an object of consciousness.
The self has been studied extensively by philosophers and psychologists and is central to many world religions. With the recent rise in technology, the self has been discussed under various new emerging fields, such as Technoself Studies.
Contents
Philosophy
Main article: Philosophy of self
The philosophy of self seeks to describe essential qualities that constitute a person's uniqueness or essential being. There have been various approaches to defining these qualities. The self can be considered that being which is the source of consciousness; the agent responsible for an individual's thoughts and actions; and/or the substantial nature of a person which endures and unifies consciousness over time.
Psychology
Main article: Psychology of self
The psychology of self is the study of either the cognitive and affective representation of one's identity or the subject of experience. The earliest formulation of the self in modern psychology forms the distinction between the self as I, the subjective knower, and the self as Me, the object that is known. Current views of the self in psychology position the self as playing an integral part in human motivation, cognition, affect, and social identity. Self following from John Locke has been seen as a product of episodic memory but research upon those with amnesia find they have a coherent sense of self based upon preserved conceptual autobiographical knowledge. It is increasingly possible to correlate cognitive and affective experience of self with neural processes. A goal of this ongoing research is to provide grounding and insight into the elements of which the complex multiply situated selves of human identity are composed. The 'Disorders of the Self' have also been extensively studied by psychiatrists.
For example, facial and pattern recognition take large amounts of brain processing capacity but pareidolia cannot explain many constructs of self for cases of disorder, such as schizophrenia or schizo-affective disorder.
One’s sense of self can be changed if they become part of a group that they consider stigmatized. According to Cox, Abramson, Devine, and Hollon (2012), if an individual has prejudice against a certain group, like the elderly and then later becomes part of this group this prejudice can be turned inward causing depression (i.e. deprejudice).[
The philosophy of a disordered self, such as in schizophrenia, is described in terms of what the psychiatrist understands are actual events in terms of neuron excitation but are delusions nonetheless, and the schizo-affective or schizophrenic person also believes are actual events in terms of essential being. PET scans have shown that auditory stimulation is processed in certain areas of the brain, and imagined similar events are processed in adjacent areas, but hallucinations are processed in the same areas as actual stimulation. In such cases, external influences may be the source of consciousness and the person may or may not be responsible for "sharing" in the mind's process; and/or the events which occur, such as visions and auditory stimuli, may endure and be repeated often over hours, days, months or years—and the afflicted person may believe themselves to be in a state of rapture and/or possession.
Religion
Main article: Religious views on the self
Religious views on the self vary widely. The self is a complex and core subject in many forms of spirituality. Two types of self are commonly considered - the self that is the ego, also called the learned, superficial self of mind and body, an egoic creation, and the Self which is sometimes called the "True Self", the "Observing Self", or the "Witness".
Human beings have a self—that is, they are able to look back on themselves as both subjects and objects in the universe. Ultimately, this brings questions about who we are and the nature of our own importance. Traditions such as Buddhism see the attachment to self is an illusion that serves as the main cause of suffering and unhappiness. Christianity makes a distinction between the true self and the false self, and sees the false self negatively, distorted through sin: 'The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?' (Jeremiah 17:9)
According to Marcia Cavell, identity comes from both political and religious views. He also identified exploration and commitment as interactive parts of identity formation, which includes religious identity. Erik Erikson compared faith with doubt and found that healthy adults take heed to their spiritual side.[10]
One description of spirituality is the self's search for "ultimate meaning" through an independent comprehension of the sacred. Spiritual identity appears when the symbolic religious and spiritual value of a culture is found by individuals in the setting of their own life. There can be different types of spiritual self because it is determined on one's life and experiences. Another definition of spiritual identity is " a persistent sense of self that addresses ultimate questions about the nature, purpose, and meaning of life, resulting in behaviors that are consonant with the individual’s core values."
words with the prefix self:
- self-abnegation
- self-absorbed
- self-actualization
- self-addressed
- self-adhesive
- self-aggrrandizement
- self-appointed
- self-assurance
- self-assured
- self-awareness
- self-belief
- self-centered
- self-confidence
- self-congratulatory
- self-conscious
- self-control
- self-deception
- self-defense
- self-denial
- self-deprecating
- self-described
- self-destruct
- self-destruction
- self-destructive
- self-determination
- self-development
- self-discipline
- self-doubt
- self-educated
- self-effacing
- self-esteem
- self-evident
- self-explanatary
- self-expression
- self-fulfilling prophecy
- self-government
- self-help
- selfhood
- self-image
- self-important
- self-imposed
- self-improvement
- self-indulgent
- self-inflicted
- self-interest
- selfish
- selfless
- self-made
- self-monitoring
- self-motivation
- self-pity
- self-portrait
- self-possessed
- self-preservation
- self-proclaimed
- self-regulatory
- self-reliant
- self-respect
- self-restraint
- self-righteous
- self-rule
- self-sacrifice
- self-service
- self-serving
- self-styled
- self-sustaining
- self-taught
- self-titled
- self-willed
- self-winding
- self-worth
‘what is the self in hinduism’
To avoid misunderstanding the teachings and concepts of Hinduism, it’s important to correctly understand what is meant by “the Self” in Hinduism, when “Self” is written with a capital S.
Hinduism differentiates between “self” (with a small ‘s’) and “Self” (with a capital ‘S’). The capitalised Self does not refer to our personal or individual self, nor even to our soul which incarnates and reincarnates…the Self is the Spirit and in Sanskrit it is called the Atman.
Our personal individual self is not the true eternal reality of Who and What we really are and thus this lower self is sometimes termed the “not-Self” because it is not thereal Self, which is the Higher Self, the Divine Self.
The Self…the Spirit…the Atman…this is not the individual possession of anyone. There is no such thing as my Atman or your Atman; there is only THE Atman, which is the ONE Universal Self of all. It is pure eternal Spirit and is the One Reality.
The Self (Atman) is literally one and the same thing as the Supreme Self (Paramatman) which is called by the term Brahman. This is why Ramana Maharshi said, “Knowing the Self, God is known. In fact God is none other than the Self.” You do not know God until you know yourself – your Self – as God. And you also do not know yourself until you know your real Self to be God, to be Brahman.
Brahman is not the same as Brahma. Brahman is not a Being, not some sort of Divine Person, but IT is the ONE Absolute Infinite Omnipresent Divine PRINCIPLE. We can think of Brahman as being the Supreme Pure Divine Consciousness which iseverything and in everything. The Hindu scriptures state over and over again that the Atman is Brahman, that our Spirit is the Supreme Spirit, that the Self is the Supreme Self.
The manifested universe and everything material and objective is ultimately illusion (“Maya” in Sanskrit) when viewed from the higher perspective and the Self is the one Reality. The universe and everything in it comes forth from the Self and returns to the Self at the end of each cycle of universal manifestation.
All is illusion (because it is impermanent, temporary, finite, and subject to change) apart from the Self, the Atman which is Brahman. Only that which is permanent, infinite, absolute, immutable, unconditioned, changeless and unchangeable, can be considered truly real and this is what is meant in Hinduism by the Self, which is the Divine Allness, the Infinite Abstract EXISTENCE.
Yoga is to re-become This in consciousness, for This is Who and What you really are. You are not the body, you are not the emotions, you are not even the mind! You are pure eternal Spirit…you are the Atman…you are Brahman…you are the Self. This is the message of non-duality and universal oneness (“Advaita” in Sanskrit) and it is this that is the great message of the Hindu religion.
The Self never does anything, nor is anything ever done to the Self. There is nothing for It to do, except to BE, and It “be”…for It alone IS.
The Upanishads are the Hindu scriptures which focus and expound on this primary and foundational teaching and I highly recommend the translation by Eknath Easwaran, which is readily available from Amazon and many other places. One of the most famous statements in the Upanishads is “Tat tvam asi” which means “Thou art That”…you are the Self, you are the Atman, you are Brahman. Yes, you are God and this very concept – which would be considered the vilest heresy and blasphemy in the Abrahamic religions of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam – has been the foundation of Indian spiritual thought for well over 5,000 years. You are God and God is you and this is the truth of everyone, for God is ALL. This is the same as saying that Brahman is ALL, the Atman is ALL, the Self is ALL.
The ONLY One breathed breathless by Itself;
Other than It there nothing since has been.
— from the Hymn of Creation in the Rig Veda, the oldest scripture in the world
Om
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Om/Aum (ॐ; in Devanagari as ओं oṁ [õː], औं auṃ [ə̃ũ], or ओ३म् om [õːːm]) is a mantra and mystical sound of Hindu origin (geographically India and Nepal), sacred and important in various Dharmic religions such as Hinduism,Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism. The syllable is also referred to as omkara (ओंकार oṃkāra) or aumkara (औंकार auṃkāra), literally "om syllable", and in Sanskrit it is sometimes referred to as praṇava, literally "that which is sounded out loudly".
Om or Aum is also written ओ३म् (o̿m [õːːm]), where ३ is pluta ("three times as long"), indicating a length of three morae (that is, the time it takes to say three syllables) — an overlong nasalised close-mid back rounded vowel —, though there are other enunciations adhered to in received traditions. It is placed at the beginning of most Hindu texts as a sacred incantation to be intoned at the beginning and end of a reading of the Vedas or prior to any prayer or mantra. It is used at the end of the invocation to the god being sacrificed to (anuvakya) as an invitation to and for the latter to partake of.
Hinduism
Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva within an OM
Many Hindus use Religious symbols on their vehicles, this image shows the Om on a motorbike.
The syllable "om" is first described as all-encompassing mystical entity in the Upanishads. Today, in all Hindu art and all over Nepal and India, 'om' can be seen virtually everywhere, a common sign for Hinduism and its philosophy and theology. Hindus believe that as creation began, the divine, all-encompassing consciousness took the form of the first and original vibration manifesting as sound "OM". Before creation began it was "Shunyākāsha", the emptiness or the void. Shunyākāsha, meaning literally "no sky", is more than nothingness, because everything then existed in a latent state of potentiality. The vibration of "OM" symbolises the manifestation of God in form ("sāguna brahman"). "OM" is the reflection of the absolute reality, it is said to be "Adi Anadi", without beginning or the end and embracing all that exists. The mantra "OM" is the name of God, the vibration of the Supreme. When taken letter by letter, A-U-M represents the divine energy (Shakti) united in its three elementary aspects: Bhrahma Shakti (creation), Vishnu Shakti (preservation) and Shiva Shakti (liberation, and/or destruction).
I Am that I Am
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh (often contracted in English as "I AM") is one of the Seven Names of God accorded special care by medieval Jewish tradition. The phrase is also found in other world religious literature, used to describe the Supreme Being, generally referring back to its use in Exodus. The word Ehyeh is considered by many rabbinical scholars to be a first-person derivation of the Tetragrammaton, see for example Yahweh.
God, who reveals his name as "I AM", reveals himself as the God who is always there, present to his people in order to save them.
The divine name, "I Am" or "He Is", expresses God's faithfulness: despite the faithlessness of men's sin and the punishment it deserves, he keeps "steadfast love for thousands"... By giving his life to free us from sin, Jesus reveals that he himself bears the divine name: "When you have lifted up the Son of man, then you will realize that 'I AM'."
Some religious groups and theologians believe that this phrase or at least the "I am" part of the phrase is an actual name of God, or to lesser degree the sole name of God. It can be found in many lists where other common names of God are shown.
As discussed above, depending on how it is rendered (a subject of much debate amongst historians), the Hebrew name for God YHWH bears some similarity to an archaic form of "he is". In Biblical Hebrew, ehyeh is the first person singular imperfect "to be". In other world religions also the "I AM" part is the actual name of God.
The conceptualization of the omnipresence of the divine being has led to the consideration of simplicity. The unified perspectival concept of I combined with the supposition of omnipresence creates an atmosphere in which the unity of divine being and self can be easily understood.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge predicates much of the theoretical frame of his Biographia Literaria on what he calls 'the great I AM' (that is, God the Father) and 'the filial WORD that re-affirmeth it ...' (Christ, reaffirming his father's statement') '...from Eternity to Eternity, whose choral Echo is the Universe.' Coleridge's argument is that these two things together work to create the ground for all meaning, especially poetic and artistic meaning.
In the Hindu Advaita Vedanta, the South Indian sage Ramana Maharshi mentions that of all the definitions of God, "none is indeed so well put as the biblical statement “I am that I am”". He maintained that although Hindu scripture contains similar statements, the Mahavakyas, these are not as direct as given in Exodus. Further the "I am" is explained by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj as an abstraction in the mind of the Stateless State, of the Absolute, or the Supreme Reality, called Parabrahman: it is pure awareness, prior to thoughts, free from perceptions, associations, memories. Parabrahman is often considered to be a cognate term for the Supreme Being in Hinduism.
The Sense of "I am" (Consciousness)
When I met my Guru, he told me: "You are not what you take yourself
to be. Find out what you are. Watch the sense 'I am', find your real
Self." I obeyed him, because I trusted him. I did as he told me. All
my spare time I would spend looking at myself in silence. And what a
difference it made, and how soon!
My teacher told me to hold on to the sense 'I am' tenaciously and not
to swerve from it even for a moment. I did my best to follow his
advice and in a comparatively short time I realized within myself the
truth of his teaching. All I did was to remember his teaching, his
face, his words constantly. This brought an end to the mind; in the
stillness of the mind I saw myself as I am -- unbound.
I simply followed (my teacher's) instruction which was to focus the
mind on pure being 'I am', and stay in it. I used to sit for hours
together, with nothing but the 'I am' in my mind and soon peace and
joy and a deep all-embracing love became my normal state. In it all
disappeared -- myself, my Guru, the life I lived, the world around
me. Only peace remained and unfathomable silence.
Nisargadatta Maharaj
ASMI - Excerpts from Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj's I AM THAT
compiled and edited by Miguel-Angel Carrasco
Read this online or download the entire text in Word format. It is 114 pages. Left click to download. Right click to save. Download now.
CONTENTS
1. I am not this person, this body-mind, or any thing.
As I can't be what I perceive, I am not this body-mind or any thing that I am conscious of.
As there must be something unchanging to register discontinuity, I am not this body-mind, which is neither continuous nor permanent.
As the person is a changing stream of mental objects that I as the subject take to be my body-mind, I cannot be a person. I am, but I can't be this or that.
As it is my presence, which is always here and now, that gives the quality of actual to any event, I must be beyond time and space. I was never born, nor will ever die.
2. I am the Self, the Witness of Consciousness, pure Awareness.
I am only the Self , which is universal and imagines itself to be the outer self, a person.
I am not an object in Consciousness but its source, its Witness, pure shapeless Awareness.
Only the feeling "I am", though in the World, is not of the World nor can be denied.
3. The World exists only as a dream in my Consciousness: Part One
As I only know the contents of my consciousness, and as an outside world is unprovable, all perceivables are only in my mind.
Transient things only appear and have no substance.
What changes has no reality. Time and space are imagined, ways of thinking, modes of perception. Only timeless reality is, and it is here and now.
The World exists only as a dream in my Consciousness: Part Two
Whatever has a form is only limitations imagined in my consciousness.
The World is but a show, a make-belief.
The World I perceive is entirely private, a dream.
Desire and fear come from seeing the World as separate from my-Self.
While I see the dream as real, I'll suffer being its slave.
Nothing in the dream is done by me.
4. There is only one dreamer, the one Self, dreaming many dreams.
In every body there is a dream, but the dreamer is the same, the one Self, which reflects itself in each body as "I am".
All the dreams are of a common imaginary World and influence each other.
Love is seeing the unity under the imaginary diversity.
5. I alone am, the One, the Supreme.
Not only the multiplicity of selves is false: even the duality of I/World, Subject/Object, is a transient appearance in my
Consciousness.
There is only my-Self, Consciousness.
I am not even Consciousness, which is dual and perceivable: I am the unknown Reality beyond.
Though unknown and unknowable, my real being is concrete and solid like a rock.
I am the light that makes Consciousness possible, pure Awareness, the non-dualSelf, the Supreme Reality, the Absolute, the Beingness of being, the Awareness of consciousness.
6. The big cycle: part one
The alternation of manifested (existence, becoming) - unmanifested
(pure being).
The manifestation of the Absolute.
The big cycle: part two
The return to the Absolute.
There are no real differences. Only the One is.
7. The goal: Liberation through Self-Realization
The gospel of self-realization
The enlightened one (gnani)
8. The way to Self-Realization: Part One
Not through activity. No effort is necessary, but there is a precondition: earnestness now
The way to Self-Realization: Part Two
Not through knowledge of things or experiences, but through self-knowledge.
The way to Self-Realization: Part Three
Not through the mind.
See everything as a dream, a show, a film.
The way to Self-Realization: Part Four
See that happiness is not pleasure; see that desires and fears create bondage; and be free and happy through detachment.
The way to Self-Realization: Part Five
As self-identification with the body-mind is the poison that causes bondage, seek liberation by seeing that oneself is not any thing personal or perceivable.
The way to Self-Realization: Part Six
Meditation, Witness attitude, Awareness.
No thought but "I am".
9. Miscellaneous
Why the ignorance and the illusion? What is the purpose of it all?
Violence, Evil, Sin.
Progress.
Karma.
Death, Suicide, Reincarnation.
Religions, God.
The real Guru.
Yoga.
Love.
Numbers after quotations refer to pages of the edition by Chetana (P) Ltd, Bombay, 1992.
I AM THAT
"That in whom reside all beings and who resides in all beings, who is the giver of grace to all, the Supreme Soul of the universe, the limitless being -- I am that." -Amritbindu Upanishad
"That which permeates all, which nothing transcends and which, like the universal space around us, fills everything completely from within and without, that Supreme non-dual Brahman -- that thou art." - Sankaracharya
"The seeker is he who is in search of himself. Give up all questions except one: "Who am I?" After all, the only fact you are sure of is that you are. The "I am" is certain. The "I am this" is not. Struggle to find out what you are in reality. To know what you are, you must first investigate and know what you are not. Discover all that you are not -- body, feelings thoughts, time, space, this or that -- nothing, concrete or abstract, which you perceive can be you. The very act of perceiving shows that you are not what you perceive. The clearer you understand on the level of mind you can be described in negative terms only, the quicker will you come to the end of your search and realise that you are the limitless being". - Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
the kena upanishad
The Self
The student inquires: “Who makes my mind think?
Who fills my body with vitality?
Who causes my tongue to speak? Who is that
Invisible One who sees through my eyes
And hears through my ears?”
The teacher replies: “The Self is the ear of the ear,
The eye of the eye, the mind of the mind,
The word of words, and the life of life.
Rising above the senses and the mind
And renouncing separate existence,
The wise realize the deathless Self.
“Him our eyes cannot see, nor words express;
He cannot be grasped even by our mind.
We do not know, we cannot understand,
Because he is different from the known
And he is different from the unknown.
Thus have we heard from the illumined ones.
“That which makes the tongue speak, but cannot be
Spoken by the tongue, know that as the Self.
This Self is not someone other than you.
“That which makes the mind think, but cannot be
Thought by the mind, that is the Self indeed.
This Self is not someone other than you.
“That which makes the eye see, but cannot be
Seen by the eye, that is the Self indeed.
This Self is not someone other than you.
“That which makes the ear hear, but cannot be
Heard by the ear, that is the Self indeed.
This Self is not someone other than you.
“That which makes you draw breath, but cannot be
Drawn by your breath, that is the Self indeed.
This Self is not someone other than you.”
Introduction to Isa Upanishad
Om. All this, whatever moves on the earth, should be covered by the Lord. Protect your Self through that detachment. Do not covet anybody's wealth. Or - Do not covet, for whose is wealth? |1|
Everything in this universe is transitory and therefore, can be labeled as relatively real, or temporarily real, or illusory. This is the meaning of 'whatever moves on the earth'. Then all these things -everything one sees, feels, thinks, or imagines - in short the whole universe 'should be covered with the Lord'. Who is this Lord? The Lord is none other than our indwelling Self. Know this and try to see the same Self manifest in all 'things in motion' on this earth. In other words, renounce everything that is not your Self; or know that the essence of universe is your true self. In either case, there are no two; the only reality or truth is one Self. Knowing this the realized soul renounces this illusory world of name and form and becomes free from threefold desire, viz, of son, wealth, and worlds. Thus, 'protect your Self' through such detachment and realize your true nature through the knowledge obtained through discrimination and renunciation.