Current Programs, Problems and Pursuits

Take one of these questions per day or per week and reflect upon them. Remember, don't try to work with all of them at one time.

Write out a couple of sentences or paragraphs answering the questions that speaks to where you are right now..

These questions may also be used as a foundation for a discussion group.

Checking In

• Is there any situation or relationship in which you feel unresolved or anxious ?


We know that if we owe someone an explanation, phone-call, letter or an apology, we feel sapped until that is resolved. The same thing is true when you have made a decision to do something but it doesn't feel right. Burying your feelings and delaying with issues only increases the pressure of this energy drain. Bringing these circumstances in to conscious or cosmic awareness will help you resolve it. Follow through on your intuitions and it will help you to the next level.


• What is your most important question for the moment

After defining and writing down the question, define the outcome that underlies this question. In other words, if your question was "Should you marry John Doe", your underlying desire for this question would be a happy marriage with the perfect partner [whether or not it is John Doe]. Therefore rewrite your question as a positive statement of the outcome you desire. That is to say that you are happily married to the perfect person for you

Next week, we could explore this a lot deeper

Thought For The Day

Intuition gives us that idea of something behind and beyond all that we know.

The path towards creativity is to enlarge the mind and let it grow and encompass the higher layers and spheres above the mind. In fact, this is the start to a spiritual seeking.

The journey is long and tough.

It will need a great deal of sincerity, tenacity and relentless pursuit; to keep the mind silent and passive.

One will need to curb one's ego and to acknowledge that what we know is far less than what we can know.

One needs to leave behind all that one knows; the courage to travel towards the unknown by breaking all the shackles.....

The Celestine Prophecy - A Review By Aurodas

There are some striking similarities in the author’s work and the vision of The Mother who founded Sri Aurobindo Ashram and Auroville in Southern India. She had undertaken body transformation by inner means and made, according to her own reports, great progress. Self evolution by opening to the new consciousness - which she said had descended in 1956 and had been growing on earth - was the method she advocated. Receiving universal energy, in similar lines to what the book has described, by contacting nature, was described by her as a preliminary step in the transformation of one of the parts of human being, the vital part – the other parts being the mental and the physical.

She had visualized an economy without money circulation for Auroville and the community was to meet every one’s basic material needs. According to her, the ultimate aim of evolution is transformation of the physical. It is an extremely painful and difficult work that would require prolongation of life and might take centuries to realise. But there is also a theory advanced by at least one notable author that she conquered death and crossed over to the invisible subtle body leaving behind her physical which was a un- transformable residue.

Though The Celestine Prophecy is too simplistic and fantastic in details to her own experiences in the path of transformation, the Mother would have been happy to note the popularity of a book published in the U.S with the idea of self evolution as its chief thrust. For, she had said, in 1971, at the instance of publishing in the U.S. of On the Way to Supermanhood a book written by her confidante that described the essence and contours of the future world: “I personally have the feeling there is a close and invisible connection between America’s aspiration, as it is now, and the book. I have the feeling that’s where the center of transformation will be.” Cleary The Celestine Prophecy is a significant book.

Any questions ?

Anybody who could turn Lot's wife into a pillar of salt, incinerate Sodom and Gomorrah and make it rain for forty days and forty nights has got to be a fun guy.

Thought for the day

The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not.
Eric Hoffer

Persuasion principles

Much of persuasion and other forms of changing minds is based on a relatively small number of principles. If you can understand the principles, then you can invent your own techniques. It thus makes sense to spend time to understand these principles (persuaded yet?).

Alignment: When everything lines up, there are no contradictions to cause disagreement.
Amplification: Make the important bits bigger and other bits smaller.
Appeal: If asked nicely, we will follow the rules we have made for ourselves.
Arousal: When I am aroused I am full engaged and hence more likely to pay attention.
Association: Our thoughts are connected. Think one thing and the next is automatic.
Assumption: Acting as if something is true often makes it true.
Attention: Make sure they are listening before you try to sell them something.
Authority: Use your authority and others will obey.
Bonding: I will usually do what my friends ask of me, without negotiation.
Closure: Close the door of thinking and the deal is done.
Completion: We need to complete that which is started.
Confidence: If I am confident, then you can be confident.
Confusion: A drowning person will clutch at a straw. So will a confused one.
Consistency: We like to maintain consistency between what we think, say and do.
Contrast: We notice and decide by difference between two things, not absolute measures.
Daring: If you dare me to do something, I daren't not do it.
Deception: Convincing by trickery.
Dependence: If you are dependent on me, I can use this as a lever to persuade you.
Distraction: If I distract your attention, I can then slip around your guard.
Evidence: I cannot deny what I see with my own eyes.
Exchange: if I do something for you, then you are obliged to do something for me.
Experience: I cannot deny what I experience for myself.
Fragmentation: Break up the problem into agreeable parts.
Framing: Meaning depends on context. So control the context.
Harmony: Go with the flow to build trust and create subtle shifts.
Hurt and Rescue: Make them uncomfortable then throw them a rope.
Interest: If I am interested then I will pay attention.
Investment: If I have invested in something, I do not want to waste that investment.
Logic: What makes sense must be true.
Objectivity: Standing back decreases emotion and increases logic.
Obligation: Creating a duty that must be discharged.
Passion: Enthusiasm is catching.
Perception: Perception is reality. So manage it.
Pull: Create attraction that pulls people in.
Push: I give you no option but to obey.
Repetition: If something happens often enough, I will eventually be persuaded.
Scarcity: I want now what I may not be able to get in the future.
Similarity: We trust people who are like us or who are similar to people we like.
Specificity: People fill in the gaps in vague statements.
Substitution: Put them into the story.
Surprise: When what happens is not what I expect, I must rethink my understanding.
Tension: I will act to reduce the tension gaps I feel.
Threat: If my deep needs are threatened, I will act to protect them.
Trust: If I trust you, I will accept your truth and expose my vulnerabilities.
Understanding: If I understand you, then I can interact more accurately with you.