To encourage the exchange of thoughts about Deepak Chopra and his work, we will post your comments, inquiries, and opinions. Please feel free to respond to someone else's comments or questions, or simply post your own. Post a Message | Read the Forum | Sign the Guestbook Please Post Your Comments Name: Email Address: Comments:

This latest thread about hermits and seclusion made me think about what I see as the big paradox of Life...it matters what we do and choose...and it doesn't! There are so many ways to go---withdrawing from the world, being involved; having intimate relationships, being celibate; the list goes on forever....I get confused quite often about what part I want to play in "creating" the world, how best to participate :-) Anyway, I think that probably the world needs all kinds...just as some people retreat for the "wrong" reasons, so too some people don't retreat for the "wrong" reasons that maybe should have....I like to think that it is all going as planned by us at our deeper levels, though not necessarily as we might think we wish ;-) Someone also posted about attraction and how if we loved people unconditionally, we would not really choose one "special" person...I have thought this myself, and figured it was why none of the big names--Jesus, Buddha etc..--are ever connected with a lover/a special someone. I have thought that our attractions are often a tangible replacement for the oneness with God that most of us don't recognize truly....but, I am also at a loss for how things would work if we didn't have these attractions--they add such spice to life! Enjoying the ideas...back to lurking! Cathy

I have many unrecognised talents,
But my faults have somehow succeeded in securing wide recognition.

Try if you can to believe that,
even when you’re not thinking about me,
I’m still here.

It’s well known that men and women are different,
But it keeps being rediscovered with great excitement.

I want to be closer to God
but I want him to make the first move.

One of my greatest talents is the ability to be misunderstood by large numbers of people.

After I’ve made myself perfect,
I’m going to work on you.

It’s hard enough for me to cope with failure ~
How could I ever handle success?

Courtesy of ASHLEY BRILLIANT.

Slow day.

The curvature of space-time is called gravity.
It is part of the dance, the process of creation.

The friction within space-time is electromagnetism,
which is heat, light, electricity, and energy.
It is also part of the dance ~~~
the process of creation.

Deepak Chopra
Everyday Imortality
www.chopra.com

~Friday, June 9, 2000 ~

Q: I have been told that this year would be a year of stagnation for me. Is it possible that even though I meditate and follow spiritual teachings it may be in life's plan to delay my growth for a year?

A: Always look for the opportunity in any situation no matter what. Sometimes, if there is a large blockage in our path, it is necessary to go sideways before we can go forward again. It's never that nothing is happening, things may just be happening in ways we didn't expect. Sometimes things seem to be going slow and at other times fast. Have patience, stay regular with your spiritual path and the growth will be there.

www.chopra.com

Scorpion When one identifies oneself with the scorpion, one is essentially saying "It is my nature to sting. This is how I am. I can qualify and often excuse my stinging because I was born this way." Those who come across the scorpion must always be "aware" and handle her with "kid gloves", lest she might harm them. They must approach with fear and caution. A human "being" will always forgive a scorpion her nature, and will take precautions not to disturb or threaten her. For this reason he cannot make his bed beside the scorpion’s nest, lest he should fall asleep and in his sleep, forget, and roll with unconscious familiarity into the nest. The stung is not unaccountable for the sting received.

And you are not a scorpion…

Hi there, Frank! Did you make it to the Far East?

Kereyra Enjoyed your thoughtful post. It sounds like the experience of someone who shrinks their "personal world". Feeling lonely in a crowd is, I think, a sign that one is standing amongst the wrong crowd. It can also be that one's consciousness is displaced, focused as it were on events and people who are far from the present moment or experience.

Dear Dr. Chopra, I have in my hands the translantion into portuguese of yr How To Know God, for publishing in Portugal. Please be kind enough and let me know in case I need some help in order to clarify something if I can contact yourgoodself thru this address or I sshould use another one. Kind regards Antonio Belo

Hi all! I have very sporadic web access now. I have moved and didn't rehook my cable modem as my new digs cost me more since I am without a room mate. I decided to go completely wireless so I currently have no means to modem from home. I will have to figure out a better arrangement in the next couple of months. Just wanted to say hello to the good people of the forum!

NAMASTE

Hey, kitty .. sorry it took a while to get back. Yes, I'm making Hawaii an annual trek. There is a jazz festival there every May and I do think it will become an annual trip for me. ;-) Let your dreams take flight for life is meant to be an adventure .. ;-) Big hug, Namaste. debi

Have been thinking about solitude, about those who go through devastating experiences and are unable to run off, or "unqualified" to be whisked away to a place of silence. I've known people, and on occasion been one, who go on living in the crowd by building a protective bubble...words come in like Jodie Foster's hand did in Contact, through thick liquid; words go out the same way, in slow motion. I think they sometimes lack life, that everything the person does lacks something in this mode. Even though he speaks and walks and hears, there's no connection with these things. It is a period of internal silence, of weird communion with one's self, a period of learning or of letting go of whatever it is that got him there in the first place. I think it is the most profound kind of solitude, or is it just overwhelming loneliness.

"Re-membering".

"Us" "ordinary" folk are just reading along, ..................learning.

You cannot be patronized by something so removed from the truth. "Ordinary" is probably an old would-be nemesis of no consequence.

Richard & Hadi, thanks for your points-of-view. Much to think about. I may write more when I next log on. Interesting that this discussion should turn to solitude-hermits-recluses as I have just been listening to an interview with a Tibetan nun who spent 12 years in a cave and there is a book about her experiences called Cave in the Snow.

You can read some excerpts of this book here

I agree, we don't all need to go off and become hermits to awaken. Some of us have awoken in the most unusual of settings. Like a psychiatric ward for example. :)

Will write more on this next time.

Namaste all. And no sleeping on the job.

...a simple question,was Deepak in Stevens Point, Wisconsin on Saturday June 10th?

i HAVE READ SOME OF YOUR QOUTES I HAVE READ SOME OF THE BOOK I HAVE REALLY ENJOYED AND REALIZED A FEW THINGS IN MY LIFE THAT I COULD UNDERSTAND BEFORE BUT DO IT THE RIGHT WAY AND IF YOU BELIEVE YOU CAN MAKE IT THANKS A GIRLFRIEND OF MINE HAD SENT A HOME PAGE OF YOUR BOOK AND I DO THINGS DIFFERENTLY KNOW . PEACE

Richard: Isolation. Hmmm. I don't know. Spending time alone and being isolated are probably distinctions in my mind. I do agree that there is value to it, but the Spiritual Motive would help a great deal. As you have witnessed, it is often lacking.
I think that the Mystics in a sense did us a disservice, because their language caused not only paradoxical problems for the listener or reader, but also slighted Ego as if to tell it that The Mystic knows something Ego cannot know. You tell someone face to face that their problem is that they are "asleep", they will probably tell you that you are a "crap spewing turd". Their own experience of reality will tell them that such a statement is crap. It is in fact "patronising". So, perhaps we should look at a new defenition for the state of consciousness that humanity experiences at present on the wider scale which has previously been referred to as "sleep", and create also its counterpart which has been known as "wakefullness", "Christ consciousness", "The Fourth Way" "Self Actualised" and so on. For me, I like to think that it's not so much that humanity is "ordinary", more that humanity has not realised its grander potential yet. That a greater Kingdom awaits it. Thank you "masked one", I needed that pointed out to me.

Let him who would lash the offender look onto the spirit of the offended. Kahlil Gibran.

Ordinary, sorry you have such low self-esteem that you consider yourself a "crap spewing turd." Just remember, as one of God's children, we are all special.

Peace, love, and fuzzy bunnies to you.

©

where's the forum for us ordinary folk?

crap spewing turd

Hadi, in reference to your comment about psychology being linked to mental illness and reactivity...Here on the US West coast, the definition (accepted by mental health authorities) of mental health, is "staying out of the Hospital (psychiatric)"...our standards appear to be base at best...isolation may be a spiritual step up (unfortunately).

Favourite colour = blue or turquoise.

The trouble with that article, Geoff, is that it seems to imply some kind of conscious volition or conscious "choice" in the matter of the way we "deny" our Self. The Mystics, on the other hand, tend to think of humanity as "asleep". Therefore what they are doing is unconscious and mechanical. From the point of view of the Mystic this is a sensible interpretation because he sees humanity as if it is in a trance. Sleepwalking in an environment where the "pattern" is created by the designs of society and culture, while the "behaviour" and activity within those patterns is motivated by the simple mechanisms of "action & reaction". The principle mechanism of the human machine, the "driver" appears to be the Ego. The Ego keeps going on and on, chattering to itself, distracting its many fragmented personalities (the Ivans and Nicholas’s of the mystic Gurdjieff) one minute thinking about sex, the next about cars, the next money, back to sex again, then work, onto food, then fantasy and finally chocolate. ; ) A chain of thought that continually entertains the Ego-Mind and supplies a regimen of "pleasures". There are plenty of recluses and hermits in the world, but most of these are neither "happier" or more Spiritually fulfilled. If you take all the noise and distractions away from people they will often find baser ways to fill it. Their Egos will create greater separation and they will become anti-social, or bomb makers, join other similar people forming new groups or turn to savage lower chakra instincts.

That is not to say I don’t think there is any benefit in solitude. Far from it. I wish people would go on "retreats" more often. However, what needs to be encouraged most is the "Spiritual Motive". If we do not have this motive in the first place we cannot expand our spiritual consciousness. Some people go away to get away. Some people find in solitude only the fulfilment of Ivan’s hobbies, or Babylon’s pleasures. The spiritual motive must be present in the first place.

In addition to the Spiritual motive there must exist a unified philosophy or discipline which educates one about such things as the Ego. For the true noise of our world is not so much out there as "in here". But alas, such unity does not exist. True Spiritual thoughts and even Psychology are outside of our common educational systems. Most ordinary folk link spirituality with religion and psychology with mental illness and disfunction. They turn to a fragmented church for Spiritual guidance. That would be like someone turning to mediaeval science to make sense of the modern world they live in. For any spiritual progress to take place, it is not so much the noise of the t.v and stereo, or of traffic and barking dogs that needs to be addressed. The real distraction, surely, is the noise and false beliefs of the mind.

good article, Geoff, thanks for posting it.

Hello all! please note my new address!!
beautiful name gerimessina. i hope you'll answer geoff's question.
melanie, please contact me at the address above for links on what you are seeking!
namaste'

Also, Hi Geoff, Carol, to, Richard, and everyone else!!! J

Hi Hadi!!

Hi Carol:

Here's a section of that article I mentioned -

Happiness, as John Stuart Mill said, is not something you can patent or buy. There are no chemical shortcuts. We seem to have lost the art of drawing from that deep well within us ... "We in the West have everything, except what we need to survive. That's why there is such a reliance on chemicals and on filling up each moment of our spare time with chatter, loud music and television. We don't want to confront the quiet truth that we do not really know how to survive."

The great monk, Thomas Merton, who was concerned with the spiritual yearning of every human heart, thought that drug, alcohol and sex addictions arose form the fear of living with emptiness. He said we could distract ourselves forever and never really understand our true self. Merton called for more solitude - solitude that could lead to touching an inner part of the soul separate from all except the Creator.

Poet Carl Sandburg said "I go out and walk and look at the birds and trees and sky. I listen. I sit on a rock and say to myself 'Who are you, Sandburg? Where have you been and where are you going?'"

The process can be difficult because some of the answers you hear in solitude's self-evaluation can be confronting. But it can also be the place for encouraging the "soft voice of inspiration" Thomas Merton reported sometimes hearing.

"The depths of God and ourselves meet in the abyss of solitude"

Gerimessina

Carol may be right. Deepak sure gets around -

Click here for the Community section of howtoknowgod.com

There is a section called Deepak's Board where he answers questions. I just went there and liked his answer about "Living without structure". I've been doing that for years! :)

hello gerimessina - the site you wish to go to is howtoknowgod.com. maybe Geoff will set a link here for you. Namasté

Crown/Harmony Books

Comments by users are not endorsed by Random House. The Deepak Chopra Forum is intended to provide a place for the exchange of information, opinions, and comments. Random House does not necessarily endorse, support, sanction, encourage, verify, or agree with the comments, opinions, or statements posted in the Forum. Any information or material placed online, including advice and opinions, are the views of those who post the statements, and does not necessarily represent the views of Random House. Privacy Policy