Anger Management: How to Control Your Emotions and Stay Calm

Anger is a natural human emotion that can range from mild irritation to intense rage. It is a response to perceived threats or injustices, and can often be a healthy and necessary emotion. However, when anger is not managed properly, it can lead to negative outcomes such as physical violence, damaged relationships, and health problems.

To manage anger effectively, it is important to first recognize the signs of anger in yourself and others. These can include physical symptoms such as increased heart rate, tense muscles, and clenched fists, as well as behavioral changes such as yelling, blaming, or withdrawing from others.

Once you have identified the signs of anger, there are several strategies you can use to manage it effectively. These include:

1. Taking a break from the situation to calm down
2. Engaging in relaxation techniques such as deep breathing or progressive muscle relaxation
3. Using cognitive reframing to challenge and change negative thoughts and beliefs
4. Communicating assertively to express your needs and boundaries without being aggressive
5. Seeking professional help if anger is causing significant problems in your life.

By learning and practicing anger management techniques, you can better control your emotions and prevent anger from causing harm to yourself and others.

How To Practice Buddhist Breathing Meditation

In Buddhism, meditation serves to calm and control the mind and is essential to break the cycle of suffering and attain Enlightenment. Follow these steps…more »In Buddhism, meditation serves to calm and control the mind and is essential to break the cycle of suffering and attain Enlightenment. Follow these steps for mindfulness of breathing meditation, one of the two simplest meditations.

Balm for a troubled world

An MIT-trained biologist has won a wide following counseling "mindful meditation" to heal body and soul.

It could have been a rock concert for the laid-back set. On stage at the Annenberg Center's Zellerbach Theater Feb. 6, Jon Kabat-Zinn played to a rapturous sellout crowd, there to absorb, even be transformed by, his prescription of hope for a troubled world.

Kabat-Zinn, 64, is the country's meditator-in-chief, the molecular biologist who introduced mindful meditation to traditional medicine back in 1979 and who, through the next three decades, ushered it into the medical mainstream. His five books, including Wherever You Go, There You Are, have been printed in 30 languages, and sold nearly 1.5 million copies in the United States.

The people in this audience, however, were academic types - teachers, principals and administrators who came to learn about the role of mindful meditation in education. It is only one of myriad disciplines to which Kabat-Zinn has begun to stretch his teachings. In a world that he says is spinning out of control, he considers meditation training essential for anyone seeking clarity and compassion in their lives and relationships.

Mindful meditation, simply, is attending to, being exquisitely aware of the present moment. Its practice, rooted in Buddhism, was meant to relieve suffering and cultivate compassion. It is compatible, proponents say, with any or no religion.

It begins with the willingness to set aside a half hour or so a day to practice formal meditation - sitting, standing or walking - at first just focusing on your breath. When thoughts of the past or the future intrude, as they inevitably will, subjects are told to return to their breath.

"The present moment, the only moment we have to feel or to think, is a hidden dimension for most of us," says Kabat-Zinn. "We are so absorbed with planning for the future or blaming people for what is over and done with that we lose the lives we are living. We die a thousand deaths wasting our energy on what was or what will be."

Kabat-Zinn, with his craggy, handsome face, high cheekbones and graying hair, has the audience mesmerized. He recites poetry by Emily Dickinson, quotes from Henry David Thoreau and injects shtick reminiscent of Jackie Mason: Do you know what I'm talking about? Anyone here have that experience? Those in the audience, laugh, grow silent or nod their heads collectively.

The key, he says, is that people who meditate handle emotions differently. They are not so judgmental and they learn how to let go of the past, to put aside how "somebody did them in. Stress comes from the way people react to things, and if you're not cultivating mindfulness, you're cultivating reactivity."

The real meditation practice is in how we live our lives. "It isn't sitting in a lotus position and pretending you're a statue in the British Museum," says Kabat-Zinn. "There are a thousand doors to mindfulness. You can cook mindfully, dance mindfully, walk on the beach mindfully, make love mindfully. It's all about being fully present in what you are doing. Formal meditation practice is merely the launching platform."

When Kabat-Zinn founded his clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical School 30 years ago, his goal was to catch people falling between the cracks in the health system. After all, he reasoned, heart disease, diabetes, cancer and other chronic illnesses are often caused or exacerbated by lifestyle factors that can be altered. He believed he knew how to make that happen.

His first group included those with stress-related chronic illnesses for whom their doctors had exhausted their bags of tricks. He knew if he could restore their well-being, he'd be onto something big.

The results were extraordinary. People with headaches didn't have them anymore. Those with backaches learned to work around their pain. Those with high blood pressure saw the numbers drop. Mindfulness, which swings the body into balance, had led to symptom relief.

"Patients told me I had done more for them in eight weeks than their doctors had in eight years," says Kabat-Zinn.

Kabat-Zinn had been meditating for more than a decade, ever since he was a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1965. He remembers seeing a sign inviting students to a talk by Roshi Philip Kapleau, author of The Three Pillars of Zen. He knew nothing about Zen and was one of only four students who showed up. But he says, "it took the top off my head. It filled a niche in my assessment of what was missing in our culture, an authentic experience of being rather than doing. I realized you could learn how to be in a relationship with your thoughts and emotions. It satisfied something deep in me and I've been in love with it ever since."

Marrying medicine and meditation (despite their shared etymological origin in the Latin word mederi, which means "to heal") was not easy. Kabat-Zinn encountered what he calls "medical politics," yet experienced no insurmountable roadblocks. His molecular biology doctorate from MIT helped. "People figured that with that kind of pedigree, I must know something," he conjectures.

In today's world, where multitasking is a must, where technology, with its tantalizing smorgasbord of instant messaging, insistent e-mails, and vibrating cell phones, intrudes into each moment, Kabat-Zinn is not sure how people survive without something to ground them.

Without meditation, he says, he couldn't have gotten through eight years of watching his father, a brilliant biomedical scientist, lose his mind to Alzheimer's disease or tend to his mother, an accomplished artist, who had a stroke from the stress. "There is not a single aspect of my life where I'm not calling on meditation to keep me balanced," he says.

More than 18,000 patients have participated in stress reduction programs at his medical clinic, often with startling, clinically proven results.

Two studies of patients with psoriasis, a painful, often unsightly skin condition, revealed that those getting audiotaped meditation instructions while receiving ultraviolet treatments saw their skin clear up four times as fast as those who did not participate. In another study, in which influenza vaccine was given to volunteers, those who meditated had more antibodies than those in the control group.

But the focus of the two-day conference that followed Kabat-Zinn's address was applying meditation to learning. Kabat-Zinn believes that there are dimensions of our being that schools ignore. We are taught thinking and analysis, but we are never schooled in awareness. Learning, after all, has to do with perception, those eureka moments that can ignite passion.

If mindfulness were more a part of education, more young people would benefit, Kabat-Zinn believes. Parents are the first and most powerful teachers. They can be mindful by nurturing their children and themselves, by seeing things, as the young do, as if for the first time. President Obama is setting the tone by, amid his daunting responsibilities, choosing to eat breakfast with his children and take them to school.

A good teacher will take mindfulness to class. "Imagine the potential for teaching young children that they can inhabit the 'being' part of their lives, ask deep questions and maybe love learning," Kabat-Zinn says. "That's how kids become emotionally intelligent. They learn that life is the curriculum."

More than 200 medical centers in the world, 100 in this country, have integrated mindfulness in their curriculums. School districts from Oakland, Calif., to New York City's Harlem are inviting it into the classroom.

"We need to wake up a little more and liberate ourselves from our self-destructive habits - greed, hatred, racism and selfishness - what the Buddhists call ignorance, ignoring what is fundamental," Kabat-Zinn muses. "If we learn that when we are young, it can enhance joy and relationships throughout life. There is no reason to starve for well-being."

By Gloria Hochman

Meditation Service Aims to Lift the Mood of the Lonely

Lurking behind the merriment of the holidays is a bad case of the blues.

Holiday gatherings can put pressure on people to be upbeat and the life of the party.

Dysfunctional families can feel like they'll never get it together. And those without family can experience deep feelings of loneliness.

The Community for Spiritual Living church in Colorado Springs is reaching out to these people and others with a Christmas Taize service on Sunday that relies partly on meditation to lift their mood.

"Christmas time can be the loneliest, saddest time for people," said church Senior Pastor Jody Stevenson. "People need community at this time, and we want to offer that."

A Taize (Tah-ZAY) service offers song, prayer and a method of meditation similar to that of Zen Buddhism.But its roots are firmly planted in Christianity.

The service was developed in the 1940s in an ecumenical Christian community in Taize, France, and quickly became popular because it filled a void within Protestant Christianity.

While Catholicism has the Centering Prayer and the so-called Christian Meditation, both developed by Benedictine monks in the 1970s, and Greek Orthodoxy has a tradition of silent meditation dating back to the Desert Fathers in the fourth century, Protestant churches had no such practice.

Today, hundreds of nonevangelical Protestant churches in America, including a handful in Colorado Springs, hold evening Taize services as a complement to their more traditional Sunday services.

Taize meditation is about emptying the mind to experience the presence of God, said Linda Gleeson, a Taize facilitator at the Community for Spiritual Living.

"In the silence, God has an opportunity to speak to us," Gleeson said.

Sunday's event will be the second annual Taize Christmas service at the nondenominational church, which holds three Taize services each year. Hundreds of white candles will flicker in the dark sanctuary as people pray, sing and listen to Stevenson's brief talk about the holiday blues.

Three five-minute silent meditations will be part of the one-hour service.

Kay Sanders, a 75-year-old church member who has been attending Taize services for three years, said she has deepened her spirituality through Taize.

"We need to take time for meditation," Sanders said, "and be open to whatever the Spirit might share."

Mark Barna

Don’t Hesitate to Meditate

For the past several years, an organization called The Mind and Life Institute has been coordinating a yearly dialogue between the Dalai Lama and Western scientists. Increasingly, these scientists are neurologists and psychologists interested in such things as how emotions can be controlled and how attention can be marshaled to perform tasks more efficiently than before. They believe that meditators throughout the long history of Buddhism have uncovered some insights into such topics.

For his part, the Dalai Lama has put aside the religious aspects of Buddhism for the moment and considers Buddhism as a psychology of human behavior, behavior which can be trained and improved.

The cooperation between scientists and Buddhist practitioners has spawned several scientific studies. One of these studies found that long-term practitioners of meditation can sustain feelings of compassion much longer and more intensely than those untrained. Their brains generate significant changes as seen in brain scans. Also, when subjected to loud and irritating sounds, long-term practitioners can recover their composure more quickly than untrained participants. This ability to regain equilibrium demonstrates that meditation helps to control stress.

Samples of meditation that produce such results are as follows:

« A form of sitting meditation could involve the breath. The practitioner sits straight up in a chair with his or her feet flat on the floor, eyes closed. The meditator then notices the breath coming in and out, focusing on where the breath touches the lip. He or she keeps the focus on that spot in so far as possible, returning attention back to the spot when the mind wanders.

« Another form of meditation can be accomplished while walking. One walks slowly with the shoes off, without looking at the feet. This meditation is designed to teach you how to keep your balance. As one gets older, the sense of balance found in the inner ear starts to decline. As a result, older people tend to watch their feet as they walk, but if someone physically disturbs their walking, they are more likely to fall. Hence they should not depend upon sight to maintain their balance. Instead, they should practice walking in bare feet to regain the sensitivity between the feet and the ground that has been lost because of the intervening hard surface of the shoes.

Meditate

These and other forms of meditation can be practiced every Friday morning at the Fort Collins Senior Center, 1200 Raintree Drive, from 10-11 a.m. in a group led by Bob McCartney, who has taught Buddhism for several years and has had extensive training in a temple in Denver led by Thai monks.

By Bob McCartney

Basic Attitudes of Yoga and Meditation

Spiritual progress should be natural, not forced- like a growing tree, not like the frenetic struggle of minor actors to achieve fame.

Think of how many things you do in the hope of resting after you’ve finished them. Let me buy that racy sports car,” you think, “or that handsome station wagon for the whole family. Then I’ll be able to relax and really enjoy life.”

Or you may think, “Once I get that new house, with the shaded porch and the large master bedroom; that sunny dining room so we won’t have to eat any longer in the kitchen with the cucumbers; that sunken living room-ah, then I’ll find peace and be able to enjoy life at last!”

Thus you acquire the habit of looking for more and more things, more and more ways of resting better and enjoying life more fully after the acquisition of and after the accomplishment. The irony is that in the very seeking you lost the capacity to rest at all. Thus you never really get to enjoy life. Experiencing more and more stress in the seeking, you lose the ability to relax even after you’ve “arrived”.

An important rule in life is: Don’t be impatient. This rule is doubly important for meditation, for whereas the general stricture against impatience gives hope of finding inner peace in meditation, that hope is demolished if one applies to meditation itself attitudes that we’ve developed in the “rat race.” To find God, it is better to be a long-distance runner than a sprinter. Today’s meditative efforts will have to be renewed tomorrow, and again the day after tomorrow, and the day after that, and so on for as long as it takes to achieve the consciousness of the eternal now.

Paramhansa Yogananda was asked once, “Does the spiritual path have any end? “No end,” he replied. “You go on until you achieve endlessness.”

Don’t let your approach to meditation be so achievement-oriented that you end up mentally tense. Yogananda, noting my own tendency toward impatience, once said to me, “The principle of karma yoga applies to meditative action also. Meditate to please God. Don’t meditate with desire for the fruits of your meditations. It is best, in the beginning, to emphasize relaxation.”

Of course what he meant was, don’t desire fruits that accrue to your ego. For it is the ego, not the soul, that experiences impatience. Patience is the fastest path to God, because it develops soul-consciousness.

From The Promise of Immortality
by Swami Kriyananda
Photo: Jose Fares

Laugh, but if you cannot, watch how do laugh other people!!!

Are you depressed?
Just smile and your bad mood will leave you without a trace!!!



Do not feel shy to laugh and you will be surprised at how your life and health change. Good and kind laughter is useful and healthy not because it elevates your spirits.



People who like to laugh – less feel sick, less become annoyed and do not know what it means this thing depression.



Laughter calms your nerves

During laughter your organism releases endorphins (they occur naturally in your brain) – “hormones of happiness”, exactly they help you to get rid of irritation and sadness.



Even if you recall the minutes you were laughing – your mood would get better at once.



Laughter conquers your stress

British scientists investigated the influence of laughter on people’s health. Two groups of people, volunteers, took part in this experiment. During one hour one group was watching comic videos, the second group was asked just sitting in silence. After this experimentation all participants did blood tests. This research revealed that people were watching funny records, had a low level of “stress” hormones like cortisol, dopamine and adrenalin than the second group.



The fact is that when we laugh- all our body and all organs experience more physical work. When we stop laughing our body relaxes, rests and slows down.

Conclusion

Thus means, that laughter helps to get out of physical and emotional tension. Scientists insist on one minute of laughing, as one minute of frank laughter is equal to 45 minutes of deep relaxation.

Scientists probe meditation secrets

Scientists are beginning to uncover evidence that meditation has a tangible effect on the brain.

Sceptics argue that it is not a practical way to try to deal with the stresses of modern life.

But the long years when adherents were unable to point to hard science to support their belief in the technique may finally be coming to an end.
When Carol Cattley's husband died it triggered a relapse of the depression which had not plagued her since she was a teenager.
"I instantly felt as if I wanted to die," she said. "I couldn't think of what else to do."

Carol sought medical help and managed to control her depression with a combination of medication and a psychological treatment called Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.
However, she believes that a new, increasingly popular course called Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) - which primarily consists of meditation - brought about her full recovery.
It is currently available in every county across the UK, and can be prescribed on the NHS.
One of the pioneers of MBCT is Professor Mark Williams, from the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Oxford.
He helps to lead group courses which take place over a period of eight weeks. He describes the approach as 80% meditation, 20% cognitive therapy.


New perspective

He said: "It teaches a way of looking at problems, observing them clearly but not necessarily trying to fix them or solve them.
"It suggests to people that they begin to see all their thoughts as just thoughts, whether they are positive, negative or neutral."
MBCT is recommended for people who are not currently depressed, but who have had three or more bouts of depression in their lives.
Trials suggest that the course reduces the likelihood of another attack of depression by over 50%.
Professor Williams believes that more research is still needed.
He said: "It is becoming enormously popular quite quickly and in many ways we now need to collect the evidence to check that it really is being effective."
However, in the meantime, meditation is being taken seriously as a means of tackling difficult and very modern challenges.
Scientists are beginning to investigate how else meditation could be used, particularly for those at risk of suicide and people struggling with the effects of substance abuse.

What is meditation?

Meditation is difficult to define because it has so many different forms.
By meditating, you can become happier, you can concentrate more effectively and you can change your brain in ways that support that Dr Richard Davidson
Broadly, it can be described as a mental practice in which you focus your attention on a particular subject or object.
It has historically been associated with religion, but it can also be secular, and exactly what you focus your attention on is largely a matter of personal choice.
It may be a mantra (repeated word or phrase), breathing patterns, or simply an awareness of being alive.
Some of the more common forms of meditative practices include Buddhist Meditation, Mindfulness Meditation, Transcendental Meditation, and Zen Meditation.
The claims made for meditation range from increasing immunity, improving asthma and increasing fertility through to reducing the effects of aging.

Limited research

Research into the health claims made for meditation has limitations and few conclusions can be reached, partly because meditation is rarely isolated - it is often practised alongside other lifestyle changes such as diet, or exercise, or as part of group therapy.
So should we dismiss it as quackery? Studies from the field of neuroscience suggest not.
It is a new area of research, but indications are intriguing and suggest that meditation may have a measurable impact on the brain.
In Boston, Massachusetts, Dr Sara Lazar has used a technique called MRI scanning to analyse the brains of people who have been meditating for several years.
She compared the brains of these experienced practitioners with people who had never meditated and found that there were differences in the thickness of certain areas of the brain's cortex, including areas involved in the processing of emotion.
She is continuing research, but she believes that meditation had caused the brain to change physical shape.

Buddhist monks

In Madison, Wisconsin, Dr Richard Davidson has been carrying out studies on Buddhist monks for several years.
His personal belief is that "by meditating, you can become happier, you can concentrate more effectively and you can change your brain in ways that support that."
In one study he observed the brains of a group of office workers before and after they undertook a course of meditation combined with stress reduction techniques.
At the end of the course the participants' brains seemed to have altered in the way they functioned.
They showed greater activity in the left-hand side - a characteristic which Davidson has previously linked to happiness and enthusiasm.
This idea that meditation could improve the wellbeing of everyone, even those not struggling with mental illness, is something that is exciting researchers.
Professor Williams believes it has huge potential.
"It involves dealing with expectations, with constantly judging ourselves - feeling we're not good enough," he said.
"And, that is something which is so widespread in our communities.
"All of these things are just thoughts. And, they will come up in meditation and learning to recognize what they are as thoughts, and let them go, can be enormously empowering for anybody."
There is, of course, a distinct possibility that this research will come to nothing and that interest in meditation will turn out to be a passing fad, but for now this ancient discipline is being taken seriously by scientists as a tool with potential to make each one of us happier and more content.

BBC NEWS

3 Steps To Reclaiming Your Power and Happiness

Reclaiming your power and happiness can be accomplished easily, bringing joy, excitement and energy back to your body and life. Our power is gained when we speak the truth. To really be free and happy, we are called to speak the truth. Words are more important than we realize. In Jesus' original teachings, the word is creation itself. Just think how we create with the words we speak. What are we saying all day long, and how are these words creating in our life.

Speaking the truth can be challenging at times. Often, we are afraid of being rejected if we really let others know how we feel. Fear of hurting someone's feelings is often what stops us from speaking the truth. We may also be afraid of starting an argument if we speak the truth.

Unfortunately, when we don't speak the truth, we unconsciously create manipulative ways of dealing with our unexpressed emotions. We find ourselves saying or doing things that are not really our truth. In this way, we betray ourselves. Then, we will notice that depression is often the result of not speaking what we feel and think. Withholding our feelings leads to separation or distancing from others. We cannot experience the closeness and warmness that we truly desire. Often, we blame ourselves or the others for the lack of communication and guilt may be the result. We may find ourselves being angry and becoming agitated. All of this can be corrected easily when we are willing to step forward and speak the truth.

3 Steps to Regain Your Power and Happiness

First Step: Begin to notice where in your life you are holding back from expressing your feelings and thoughts. Where are you holding back from asking for what you want? Now, get a notebook and begin to write your thoughts and feelings in great detail. In your journal, ask for what you want and then write why you think you deserve to have what you want. During this process you will get to know yourself very deeply and discover why you feel scared, frustrated, powerless and unhappy. In this process you begin to untangle all the built up emotions that get us bogged down and suddenly you have lost your joy.

Second Step: The next step will open your voice and your heart up. It will empower you. Your happiness will begin to rise up the scale as well as your self worth, which is directly related to your sense of power. When you are ready, go to a very private place; maybe this is your car with the windows rolled up. In your safe, private place begin to speak your thoughts and feelings to the universe, to the person who you have been withholding your feelings from. Speak as much of your true feelings out loud. This will get you in touch with the deep self. Next, surrender any hurt, anger, fear or resentment. Once you are clear of these emotions, your communications will be filled with a new energy.

Third Step: You are now ready to speak the truth and reclaim your power. There is no blaming in this communication because you are clear and have taken responsibility for your feelings and surrendered them to your Sacred Energy. You have been purified and now you will be empowering yourself by speaking the truth about your feelings and needs in a deep and profound way. The power you gain is the power of love. Remember the truth will set your free.

For more exciting tips on how to live from the center of your being using your Sacred Energy to create a life of joy, peace and love go to http://www.VirginiaEllen.net Virginia Ellen is an author and mystical teacher and healer.

Meditation open day

An Open Day will be held at the Maitreya Centre on Saturday March 22 from 10-5.00pm for those wanting to know more about meditation.

Andrew Durling of the Maitreya Centre, which is in Sea Road, said: "We will welcome allcomers throughout the day with free refreshments and a variety of free activities which they can enjoy and which will raise awareness of what the Centre can offer.

"For example, there wil be taster meditation sessions, little talks about the Centre and its classes and facilities, and videos replayed at regular intervals explaining about meditation and Buddhism in more detail."

From http://www.ryeandbattleobserver.co.uk/

Spirituality is a Long Marathon

Many people want spiritual life to be very easy. They want to be with a guru for few years and then start their own dabba of spiritual life. I know a person who grows long hair, walk with out slippers, wear khaddi clothes, will drink milk and think he is spiritual. There is nothing wrong in doing it. But in the office he is like a politician who screw’s up people’s life. The moment his work is finished there is no sense of gratitude in him. He will sleep with available women. He wants to start an ashram and be the next modern guru.

Most of the modern guru do not stress on practice or conduct. The reason is these two will put many people in lot of difficulties. Suppose some one were to sit for 3 hours every day for meditation, will he /she have time for any thing else in life. Definitely no. It will become boring after a point. Most people use meditation as a stress buster, which helps them to relax. It is also an escape from the dark realities of life.

When rishis and munis took years and years of tapasaya to attain god how come with just so called understanding and with just listening to discourse one can reach god? For example Olympic champions take minimum 8 – 10 years of practice to win a medal. How come attaining god is much easier than drinking coffee.

Spirituality is a marathon and few only survive the whimps of time. Many people shifted their job or place and with that spiritual life got over. Many people changed the so called practice it was over. The change of conduct and reflection will make us aware how we can screw up our own happiness.

Any way if you can meditate for 3 hours for next 108 days in one way or the other then you can say that you are in spiritual line. Other wise just do not waste time in calling your self spiritual. People compare themselves their guru with yogananda or yukeswar giri etc. These people had very less disciples. Hardly 10 –12. Even in their best time it was less than 100.

Real spiritual life is like doing PhD. very few people can go up to the level and very few people will get a good guide and in that very few get a noble prize.

Many of the so called siddhas have meditated in the caves for more 12 years 30 years etc. there fore to think realization with out practice only few spiritual genius can attain. For ordinary people it is path of hard work and persistence.

By Chennai Based K.B.Golpalakrishnan

Buddhism - The Noble Truths and The Eight-Fold Path

Buddhism has been the dominant religion of the Eastern world for centuries, including China, Japan, Korea, and most of Southeast Asia.

In addition, the growth of the Asian population in the U.S., has served to increase the interest in Buddhism in the United States. Statistics have shown that currently, there are well over 300,000 Buddhists in the U.S.

Founder of Buddhism, Siddhartha Gautama, went on a spiritual quest to determine the cause of pain and suffering, holding to the Hindu belief in reincarnation, in that one returns to earthly life in a higher or lower form, according to one's good or bad deeds.

The above belief prompted the question of how to break the rebirth cycle. Basic teachings of Buddhism focus on what Siddhartha believed to be the answer to those questions.

The basic tenants of Buddhism are found in the Four Noble Truths and the Eight-Fold Path.

The Noble Truths

1. The First Noble Truth: is the acknowledgment that pain and suffering exists in the world in all of nature and human life, as realized and taught by Siddhartha. It is inevitable that sickness and old age generally becomes painful, and all living things experience suffering.
2. The Second Noble Truth: concerns the cause of suffering, with Siddhartha believing that the root cause of suffering is desire. Through his meditations, he realized that suffering is ultimately caused by wealth and selfish enjoyment, the cravings of which are rooted in ignorance, and can therefore, never be satisfied.
3. The Third Noble Truth: pertains to the cessation of all suffering, which occurs when a person is able to rid him or herself of all desires.
4. The Fourth Noble Truth: relates to the extinguishing of all desire by following the eight-fold path, a system designed to develop habits that will release people from the restrictions caused by ignorance and craving.

The Eight-Fold Path

There are eight steps to following the eight-fold path:

1. Right Views. accepting the four noble truths.
2. Right Resolve: renouncing all desires and any thoughts related to lust, bitterness, and cruelty. No living creatures may be harmed.
3. Right Speech: speaking only the truth. There may be no lying, slander, or vain speech.
4. Right Behavior: abstaining from sexual immorality, stealing, and all killing.
5. Right Occupation: benefiting others and harm no one with the work chosen.
6. Right Effort: seeking to eliminate any evil qualities within and prevent any new ones from arising. One should seek to attain good and moral qualities and develop those already possessed. Seek to grow in maturity and perfection until universal love is attained.
7. Right Contemplation. being observant, contemplative, and free of desire and sorrow.
8. Right Meditation: once freed from all desires and evil, a person must concentrate on meditation to overcome any sensation of pleasure or pain and enter a state of transcending consciousness to attain a state of perfection.

Buddhists believe that it is through the above self-effort, one can attain the state of peace and eternal bliss, known as "Nirvana."

Anna Barbosa is an avid sudent of Buddhism and owner of http://www.mettabuddha.com

Spirituality and Meditation

What we eventually experience as dis-ease and later as illness actually begins in the "spiritual dominion" and becomes a by-product or mirror of our relationship with our soul, our mind, body, and emotions. The body is merely a reflecting mirror of any dis-ease or illness that starts as a spiritual deficiency and later impacts the mind, body, and emotions. To reach the root causes of any dis-ease or illness we are challenged to first concentrate on how to balance the health between our spirit, our mind, body, and emotions. This is where the investigation should begin, in my opinion, because it's also here that many cycles of dis-ease and illness begin to repeat themselves. To ignore this situation is to ignore the cure.

In Part I of this Article, we'll focus on Spirituality and touch briefly on Meditation. In Part II, we'll come back and talk more in detail about the power of Meditation and why it's an essential practice for anyone who desires to grow spiritually. I hope these two Articles will give you a good foundation upon which to later understand the intricate relationship between dis-ease, illness, and spirituality.

Part I - Spirituality

Understanding "Spirituality" is really very simple. It's our relationship between our soul and God. We can call God by any name we want: Source, Creator, God, Allah, or Sat Purush, it really doesn't matter. The name doesn't change the eternal attributes of God. The fact of the matter is that we can call God by any name, but the most important question is what kind of relationship do we each have with whatever we call that power?

Since we're all spiritual beings living a human existence, we're already engaged in a very robust and powerful relationship with God. We may not be receptive to having our very existence in God, but that doesn't cancel that relationship. Unfortunately, we do not live in an enlightened society, community, or nation, so many of us have been cut-off from the "Esoteric" teachings that detail our relationship with God and lack the knowledge necessary to have a conscious contact of our soul with God. God is an unlimited being of conscious and there's no difference between God and our soul. We're the same as God and that's where "Spirituality and Meditation" begin to converge and complement each other.

The question becomes, how can we experience our soul and experience God while we're still alive in this physical body? There's two parts to this answer. But, first, I'd like to say that we can definitely experience God long before the death of our physical body. The soul never dies! Never!! It's only the physical body that dies, but none of us need wait until death to have a conscious contact with God. God has designed each and every human being to realize our soul and verify God's true existence.

The first answer is we must take clear steps to realize ourselves as the soul. That means establishing a regular meditative practice that will enable us to separate our soul from the physical body (voluntarily) and become as subtle as God then we can experience ourselves as the soul. During that experience, we're voluntarily out of the physical body. That's when we're in our subtle form and behold ourselves as the soul in its' full radiance. Moreover, we clearly and accurately experience the non-physical realities of God's existence. This meditative technique that allows us to voluntarily leave the physical body has also been called: "Dying While Living."

The second answer deals with learning to remove the heavy coverings and layers of density (mind, matter, and illusion) that surround our soul and prevent us from having this fully conscious contact of our soul with God. These layers block our ability to grow and accelerate spiritually and thus hinder our experience with God's true existence, but once these layers are removed, we soar far beyond the limitations of the physical body and have a really high super-conscious awareness of our soul with God. Removing these layers is the work we all have to do on a daily basis to grow spiritually.

All of us are fully capable of having a conscious contact of our soul with God. We just lack the "Esoteric" knowledge of how to meditate correctly and accurately in order to leave an out-of -the-physical body experience at will. We can definitely experience our soul with God long before the physical body dies. God designed us that way and someone who considers themselves to be really smart and intelligent would, I imagine, take advantage of their own inherent spiritual abilities. That's it!

Spirituality is very simple. It deals with having a conscious experience of our soul with God. That experience happens when our soul is released from the physical body and we travel through the higher spiritual regions too where God resides in its' ultimate state of subtle beauty. Since our soul is of that same essence as God, we only have to remove the layers that surround our soul and block us from growing spiritually.

In the second Article, I'll explain the different meditative levels and related techniques and explain which techniques are essential for experiencing our soul with God.

This article was written by Raymond Holmes for Breakout Betty. Breakout Betty is an interactive online magazine created specifically for Women, ages 18 and over, with acne-prone skin that discusses a holistic approach to healing acne and is psychological affects. To find out all that Breakout Betty has to offer, visit us at http://www.breakoutbetty.com

To know or not to know. The awakening.

Neale Donald Walsch given some tips.

Quotes from the Awakened One.

Quotes and meditations from the Buddha.