Why Some People Seem To Have All The Luck

T.O.I Patna, 27-12-2008

Why Some People Seem To Have All The Luck

Why do some people have all the luck while others never get the breaks they deserve? I set out to examine luck, 10 years ago. Why are some people always in the right place at the right time, while others consistently experience ill fortune? I placed advertisements in national newspapers asking for people who felt consistently lucky or unlucky to contact me.
Hundreds of extraordinary men and women volunteered for my research and over the years, have been interviewed by me. I have monitored their lives and had them take part in experiments. The results reveal that although these people have almost no insight into the causes of their luck, their thoughts and behaviour are responsible for much of their good and bad fortune. Take the case of seemingly chance opportunities. Lucky people consistently encounter such opportunities, whereas unlucky people do not.
I carried out a simple experiment to discover whether this was due to differences in their ability to spot such opportunities. I gave both lucky and unlucky people a newspaper, and asked them to look through it and tell me how many photographs were inside. I had secretly placed a large message halfway through the newspaper saying: "Tell the experimenter you have seen this and win $50’.
This message took up half of the page and was written in type that was more than two inches high. It was string everyone straight in the face, but the unlucky people tended to miss it and the lucky people tended to spot it.
Unlucky people are generally more tense than lucky people, and this anxiety disrupts their ability to notice the unexpected.
As a result, they miss opportunities because they are too focused on looking for something else. They go to parties intent on finding their perfect partner and so miss opportunities to make good friends. They look through newspapers determined to find certain types of job advertisements and miss other types of jobs.
Lucky people are more relaxed and open, and therefore see what is there rather than just what they are looking for. My research eventually revealed that lucky people generate good fortune via four principles. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations, and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good.
I wondered towards the end of the work, whether these principles could be used to create good luck. I asked a group of volunteers to spend a month carrying out exercises designed to help them think and behave like a lucky person. Dramatic results! These exercises helped them spot chance opportunities, listen to their intuition, expect to be lucky, and be more resilient to bad luck. One month later, the volunteers returned and described what had happened. The results were dramatic: 80 percent of people were now happier, more satisfied with their lives and, perhaps most important of all, luckier.
The lucky people had become even luckier and the unlucky had become lucky. Finally, I had found the elusive ‘luck factor’.
Listen to your gut instincts – they are normally right.
Be open to new experiences and breaking your normal routine.
Spend a few moments each day remembering things that went well.
Visualise yourself being lucky before an important meeting or telephone call.
Have a Lucky day and work for it.

True Compassion As A Universal Ideal

TOI, Patna 26.12.08

True Compassion As A Universal Ideal

Compassion, from the Latin cum-patior, means ‘suffering-with’. Although grammatically passive in construction, the word suggests an active involvement in the sufferings of others. The Greek call it a "churning of the insides" that leads to effective response.
"Loving-kindness and compassion are the two cornerstones on which the whole edific of Buddhism stands," says the Dalai Lama. Compassion is among the core teachings of Mahayana Buddhism wherein you sacrifice yourself in order to attain salvation for the sake of others. The Buddha said that you must, however, never neglect your own welfare or attha, which you must understand to now what the other’s welfare means. One must then progress from the limited love of family to the larger love of all creatures. In Buddhism, compassion or anukampa is a universal ideal without boundaries.
The words karuna and daya, in Sanskrit, are used as synonyms for compassion. The Brhaspati Smrti says: "Complete love belongs to one who always delights in behaving towards all beings as equal to the self, for their good and for their welfare." Other texts like the Raghuvamsa and the Hitopadesa remind us that true daya does not depend on the virtues of the being to which it is addressed: but is defined as the desire welling up in the heart to remove the hardships of others, even if it implies effort on one’s part. Its semantic field is therefore not that of sentiment but of an active desire to help others.
Jainism stresses compassion for every living being, even microscopic life. It is the intention to harm, the absence of compassion, which makes an action violent, for without violent thought there can be no violent action. When violence enters your mind, you are exhorted to remember Mahavir’s words: "You are that which you intend to hit, injure, insult, torment, persecute, torture, enslave or kill." If you step into the other’s shoes, you will desist from harming others. Moreover, you will positively strive to cultivate amity or maitri towards all forms of life.
Compassion in the Bible is personified as Yahweh, God, who is worshipped as a loving father-Mother with special care for the poor, the weak and the suffering. Christianity considers Jesus the finest reflection of God’s love and compassion. His compassion climaxes in a crucifixion that is the outcome of a life lived in solidarity with those who suffer. Christ is proclaimed not only as one who ‘suffers with’ but as the one who takes upon Himself the sufferings of others.
In Islam, Allah is The Compassionate One. Among the 99 names of Allah that are commonly invoked, the names Al-Rahman and Al-Rahim suggest tenderness, gentleness, forgiveness, mercifulness and benevolence. "He encompasses everything in compassion or rahma," says the Quran.
Ahimsa holds that the life of every creature is sacred and can not be destroyed by violence. Nonetheless, in the struggle for truth, satyagraha, one must be ready to suffer oneself. The compassionate one readily "chooses to die himself rather than cause others to die," says Guru Nanak. Daya cognitively observes the other’s pain; and gets touched by it. Daya then moves with affectionate responses for the sufferer; and cognitively it moves one to act mercifully. Compassion inevitably engenders fruitful action.
World religions teach that compassion connects one to all creatures and fructifies in The Absolute. Since compassion is not founded upon beliefs but upon the universal experience of suffering, we could, perhaps, connect with others and construct global community through the cords of compassion.

TOI, Patna 22.12.08

Embrace Your Challenges And Get Transformed

A commercial ends with a compelling base line, "Enjoy Your Challenges". The back-up snatch is by my favourite band, the Pakistani duo, Strings. "Khud hi se aage jaana hai", which can be roughly translated as "I have to outreach myself".
How does one enjoy one’s challenges? Robert Browning wrote, "Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?" One interpretation is that human aspiration must transcend limitations of current circumstances. There is no aim then, including heaven, which can escape our reach. Everything seems eminently attainable.
Life brings situations all the time which we label as challenges. The trouble in facing them begins with the labeling: We tend to see challenge as a problem, impediment, set-back, obstacle. The label takes over and before you know it a perfectly doable situation has become a labour.
There are three ways or margas, to enjoy challenges, You can call them It, Spirit and Share It. The first marga: Enjoy a challenge "because it is there". Those were the words of George Mallory, the mountaineer, who, when asked why he wanted to climb Mount Everest, replied thus. He did not survive to tell the tale but those words have become a mantra of encouragement for mountaineers the world over. The Zen of such thought, without the investment of emotion and superlatives, can make light the passage from ill-health to healing, loss to plenty, impediment to fulfillment, and from discord to lovingness. This is the light of acceptance. We climb several Mount Everests in our life, but resist and curse them all the time. Approaching a challenge "because it is there" is also the attitude of a witness, so hallowed in Zen.
Every challenge is an invitation for us to plumb the depths of our spirit, our talent, our ability. Every challenge surprises us with what we get to know about our inner reserves, about how vast and inexhaustible they are. Rendered deaf and blind in childhood by a mystery fever, Helen Keller went on to be highly educated and flowered as a writer of repute, inspiring similarly challenged individuals.
Closer home, when Azim Premji returned prematurely from his engineering course in Stanford to take over Wipro after his father’s sudden death, he was 21 years old. Shareholders advised him to sell his company. They were sure that managing it was beyond this youngster. He didn’t take the advice. He proved them wrong. Khud hi se aage jaana hai. But, the beyond is also within you. That is the realization challenges bring. Can it be anything but enjoyable? This is the second marga, of spirit.
There is a third marga. Facing a challenge successfully is a gift, so share it. Helen Keller worked tirelessly for others who were physically challenged through endowments and advocacy. When Baba Amte took up the cause of leprosy patients the challenge was daunting.
Swami Vivekananda had a wonderful definition of sin. He said it is "…to say that you are weak or that others are weak". The margas are intertwined. They are not really distinct. Embrace any of the margas and you will find yourself on the other two sooner or later.
Marketers consider every consumer complaint a gift. A challenge is a gift to us as individuals. They come with a lot of heartbreak, but with the power to transform us. Embrace your challenges; watch them turn into your best friends. Climb the mountain, don’t avoid it. You might not reach the top, but the effort will bring new meaning to your life and possibly to that of others.

TOI, Patna 08.01.09

See yourself accurately

Instead of living with a false image of our self that is forced by external factors, we should create the conscious image based on our inner nature, says Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev.
All of us, either consciously or unconsciously, through the process of what we call life, create a certain image of ourselves. This image that we create within ourselves has nothing to do with the reality. It has nothing to do with the self, our inner nature.
Very few of us have built a conscious image of ourselves. Usually external situations decide the kind of images that we create of ourselves. Now, why don’t we create a new self-image consciously, or how we really want to be? If we are intelligent and aware, we can recast our image into a totally new image.
While this is possible, we should be willing to leave the old one. This is not pretension. Instead of acting unconsciously, we will now act consciously. We can create the kind of image which supports us best; the kind of image which creates maximum harmony around us; the kind of image which has least friction.
We can create an image which is closest to our inner nature. The inner nature is very silent, but very forceful. Now what we need to do is to eliminate the grosser elements within us, our anger and limitations. We need to create a new self-image, which is subtle but tremendously forceful. We should sit and think about it for the next one or two days and create a proper image for ourselves; what should be the fundamental nature of our thought and emotion. However, before we create something, we should examine if what we are creating now is better than what we have.
To create a new image we should: Avoid disturbances and distractions and sit comfortably. Close eyes and visualize how other people should experience us. Examine it in details and see if it is more human, more efficient, more loving.
Then visualize this new image as powerfully as possible. Make it alive within ourselves. If the thought and visualization is powerful enough, it can even break the bonds of karma. This is the opportunity to transcend all our limitations of thought, emotion and action.

TOI, Patna 08.01.09

See yourself accurately

Instead of living with a false image of our self that is forced by external factors, we should create the conscious image based on our inner nature, says Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev.
All of us, either consciously or unconsciously, through the process of what we call life, create a certain image of ourselves. This image that we create within ourselves has nothing to do with the reality. It has nothing to do with the self, our inner nature.
Very few of us have built a conscious image of ourselves. Usually external situations decide the kind of images that we create of ourselves. Now, why don’t we create a new self-image consciously, or how we really want to be? If we are intelligent and aware, we can recast our image into a totally new image.
While this is possible, we should be willing to leave the old one. This is not pretension. Instead of acting unconsciously, we will now act consciously. We can create the kind of image which supports us best; the kind of image which creates maximum harmony around us; the kind of image which has least friction.
We can create an image which is closest to our inner nature. The inner nature is very silent, but very forceful. Now what we need to do is to eliminate the grosser elements within us, our anger and limitations. We need to create a new self-image, which is subtle but tremendously forceful. We should sit and think about it for the next one or two days and create a proper image for ourselves; what should be the fundamental nature of our thought and emotion. However, before we create something, we should examine if what we are creating now is better than what we have.
To create a new image we should: Avoid disturbances and distractions and sit comfortably. Close eyes and visualize how other people should experience us. Examine it in details and see if it is more human, more efficient, more loving.
Then visualize this new image as powerfully as possible. Make it alive within ourselves. If the thought and visualization is powerful enough, it can even break the bonds of karma. This is the opportunity to transcend all our limitations of thought, emotion and action.

Divine Intervention is From You and Me

TOI Patna, 08.01.09

Divine Intervention Is From You And Me

Andrew Cohen
If we want to change the world in a significant way. If we’re serious about creating a better future, then we have to face the fact that the only way it’s going to happen is through the evolution of consciousness itself. And for the universe to evolve at the level of consciousness, you and I have to be the ones to make sure it happens.
We have to create the future for there’s no one else who is going to save us. Some of us cling to the hope that there is someone "up there" or "out there", a kind of higher power, that is directing the process, will intervene and make sure that everything will turn out all right in the end. Many have long since outgrown such beliefs, and it may seem utterly obvious to us that we need to save ourselves from self-annihilation. How much have we considered the deepest and most profound implications of accepting ultimate responsibility for the future?
To accept responsibility for the future means we know without doubt that it is up to us to create that future right now. Those of us at the leading edge have to stop waiting, hiding and pretending. We have to be the ones to take this leap because there isn’t anyone else to do it. It needs divine intervention, but we have to be the divine interveners. We have to choose to be God, the creative or evolutionary impulse itself.
Billions of years ago, something exploded out of nothing. And who but God could have made the choice – to create an entire universe? That powerful urge to become is now beginning to wake up, through the unique capacity we have for self-reflective awareness.
Through us, God, or the energy and intelligence that is driving this whole process, is just beginning to awaken to itself. So becoming God in an evolving universe means we have to be the ones to carry this process forward to consciously evolve for our collective salvation and transformation.
Spiritually, the enormous challenge for each and every one of us is to look directly into what it means to be the one who is going to do this. From the absolute or non-dual perspective, there is only One without a second.
We can only consciously evolve to the degree that we have actually realized at the deepest level of our being that we are that One without a second. Facing the truth of non-duality that the many is the one and that the one is ultimately who we always are in an evolutionary context forces a confrontation with any relationship to the life process that is less than whole, complete and fully committed.
To consciously evolve is to surrender unconditionally to the truth that there is no other and at the same time to accept responsibility for what that means in an evolving universe – a cosmos that is slowly but surely becoming aware of itself through you and me.
That one without a second is simultaneously awakening to itself as it develops, as it evolves, and it is that One, as you and me, alone, that can now begin to take responsibility for endeavouring to consciously create its own future.
That is the profound recognition that God is that singular energy and intelligence that initiated the creative process and is just now awakening to itself as we awaken to it. In that revelation, there is no other.

Sacred Space

TOI, Patna 01-09-08

Sacred Space

The Secret
Whatever is going on in your mind is what you are attracting. We are like magnets – like attract like. You become AND attract what you think.
Every thought has a frequency. Thoughts send out a magnetic energy. People think about what they don’t want and attract more of the same.
Your thoughts cause your feelings. Thoughts that bring about good feelings mean you are on the right track. Thoughts that bring about bad feelings means you are not on the right track.
An affirmative thought is 100 times more powerful than a negative one. Decide what you want… believe you can have it, believe you deserve it, believe it’s possible for you.
Close your eyes and visualize having what you already want – and the feeling of having it already.
Focus on being grateful for what you have already…enjoy it!! Then release into the universe. The universe will manifest it.
We are mass energy. Everything is energy. EVERYTHING. Don’t define yourself by your body…it’s the infinite being that’s connected to everything in the universe.
Rhonda Byrne