Todd Perelmuter's Blog, page 21

Feeling of Inadequacy When Dating?

Don’t all the best humans have a feeling of inadequacy when going out on a date? Ain’t that a thing? The most thoughtful people are so often too introspective and self-critical. It’s easy to get fixated on insecurities, especially because of the ubiquitous media’s idealization of what the ‘perfect’ life looks like, but it’s important to remember you are absolutely perfect as you are.

Whenever you are overthinking about yourself, try shifting your mindset towards asking yourself if the other person is good enough for you. And when you are out on a date, you can use anything that’s happening around you to become present instead of being in your head. Just focus intently on whatever’s around you without labeling, opinionating on, or judging.

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Path to Peace Dealing with a Negative Experience

What is the root causes of experiencing negative situations in our lives? How can we remove those causes? What can we do when the inevitable unfortunate circumstances of our life do happen? How can we face those most challenging times? And what can we do to prevent them altogether? I answer these questions and more in today's podcast.

Please enjoy other episodes where I share meditation techniques, tips and spiritual lessons from around the world for peaceful and stress-free living. Remember to subscribe to stay up-to-date.

*****
If you ever feel like my words brought a change in your life, and want to show your SUPPORT for what I am doing, click here.

Find all of my BOOKS for wherever you are on your spiritual journey: https://www.eastwesticism.org/spiritual-meditation-books/

Want to gift a book to a prisoner? Go here.

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How to Make Decisions You Won’t Regret Later

The seeds of this moment were planted in the past. What we do now will blossom in the future. If we are always attentive to the present moment, we will always tend our garden well. Whether we make mistakes or not, with presence we will always remain confident that we can correct course, make a change, adapt to new circumstances, and learn from our experience.

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19 Best Spiritual Quotes From Aloneness to Oneness Book

1. The key to becoming spiritual isn’t that we do anything, it’s the opposite — we have to undo everything.

2. We are not merely a tiny, insignificant part of this universe, not just some mistake, or random chance, we are the universe.

3. When you’re blessed, you pass it on to someone else because you know you are only blessed because someone helped show you the way. This is the circle of life.

4. It’s impossible to think your way out of thinking.

5. There is good and bad in everything, but where we put our focus is everything.

6. We fall for the illusion that things have beginnings and ends. But in every movie, something happened before the movie started and after the movie ended, we just don’t see it.

7. When we realize that there’s no single moment we’re born, there’s no single moment we die, we become free from the binary delusion of duality.

8. We are not separate people with separate thoughts. We are one life.

9. Like a tree, we humans aren’t meant to reach the sun. The point is simply to grow.

10. I am god, but so are you, and so is everyone else.

11. Permanence is an illusion. Attachment is a delusion.

12. Being materially wealthy but spiritually poor is worth nothing.

13. You become wealthy when you desire nothing. You become poor when your greed is insatiable.

14. We cling so hard to our possessions that we become possessed. We become a possession.

15. We are always fearful of losing what we have, ungrateful for what we do have, and afraid of change. That is the essence of attachment when you get right down to it — misidentifying temporary phenomena as permanent.

16. Happy people don’t think, “If only I had this or that, my life would be complete.” They feel complete already.

17. When a tree becomes the word “tree,” we reduce it down to four little letters and we forget to admire it.

18. When you realize that everywhere you look is you looking back at yourself, that all there is is one, we realize we are alone.

19. All answers appear when the questions disappear, but we have to quiet our mind to hear them.

When I was living in monasteries across Asia, I was struck not just by what the monks believed and practiced, but by how they lived. I realized that we learn so much more from people’s actions than we do their words. I learned more lessons from their generosity, hospitality, kindness and patience than I ever did from a lecture.

The people we know and the media we consume influences us far beyond anything else. When we grow up in a dysfunctional family, we may not even know anything is out of the ordinary until we grow up and see how other families live. When we live in a sick society, we may have no idea until we travel and live among other cultures.

In my book, Aloneness to Oneness, I share what I have learned from cultures around the world, from the mystics of the Far East to the shamans of the south, and from the wisdom of our ancestors. I share how we can rise above our conditioned mind and see the world from a new perspective, not based on today’s false notions of separateness, but on the oneness that connects us all.

We can step out of our habits and mental patterns. We can see beyond the superficial illusions and discover a higher state of consciousness. And we can step into a world of freedom, love and peace. We just have to be willing to take that first step from aloneness to oneness.

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Do Video Games Count For Being in the Present Moment?

Unfortunately they are neither in the here nor in the now. But, they do simulate presence because it’s so captivating of our attention. However, the key is to feel that presence without needing hyperstimulation.

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A Day With Maori People

There is really no other way to say it, I was protected in that forest. About a dozen or so miracles happened during my 50 days in the forest that completely saved my life. I only learned later that the forest I was in was one of the most sacred forests to the indigenous Maori people, and I also later learned that they knew about my presence in the forest and they were praying for me.

One day when I had gotten lost and was wandering around for a few hours trying to find a trail to no avail, I just decided to head due west in hopes I would find the river that my campsite was alongside. Well, I found the river, but it was straight down 100 meters below me. I thought maybe I could climb down to an area where it was a little wider and see if there was a ledge to walk along the river. I started going down, holding onto bushes or trees, until one snapped and I tumbled about 20 feet. Thankfully the thick brush at the edge of the ledge stopped me from going over.

Now I was really trapped. There was no ledge, no path, and I had no way of going up or down. Then the miracle. I noticed there was a family of deer just over to my left. I knew there were deer in the forest, but I hadn’t been able to see them because they had become nocturnal due to the presence of hunters in this forest. Well that day, they showed up for me and they let me follow them right along the edge. It was just about 6 inches wide, but I followed their footsteps and managed to follow the deer to lower ground.

On my last day in the forest during my hike out, I met the Maori people who lived in the forest. Those kind souls welcomed me in a beautiful welcoming ceremony, invited me to stay the night in their morai (the grand meeting hall for all the neighboring tribes), and treated me to my first warm and fresh meal in a long time, not to mention a hot shower. They told me they were praying for me every night and making sure the spirits were watching over me. I know science will say it was all a coincidence and luck, and maybe it was, but at a certain point, with so many miracles, the science just felt too nonsensical to believe.

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Path to Peace How to Survive a Dysfunctional Family

We live in a dysfunctional society.  We have big problems that seem intractable. The well being of every person is not the priority of our global governments. So it is no wonder that many of us come from dysfunctional families.

How can we survive the trauma that was normalized as children? How can we heal from the anxiety and PTSD we've developed? How can we unlearn the negative, critical voice in our head that we inherited from our family? And how can we mend the wounds of broken relationships? I answer these questions and more in today's podcast.

Please enjoy other episodes where I share meditation techniques, tips and spiritual lessons from around the world for peaceful and stress-free living. Remember to subscribe to stay up-to-date.

*****
If you ever feel like my words brought a change in your life, and want to show your SUPPORT for what I am doing, click here.

Find all of my BOOKS for wherever you are on your spiritual journey: https://www.eastwesticism.org/spiritual-meditation-books/

Want to gift a book to a prisoner? Go here.

The post Path to Peace How to Survive a Dysfunctional Family appeared first on EastWesticism.

Is Pure Consciousness Aware of Change or Suffering?

Is Pure Consciousness aware of change, suffering, etc., and if so, how is it that It does not change, and/or suffer?

Phenomenal question. If a camera is shaking, stillness cannot be perceived. If a camera is still, both stillness and change can be perceived. So our consciousness must be changeless because we are able to perceive stillness. Consciousness is the witness of suffering, not the suffering. It is the witness of love and joy, but it is not love and joy.

It is simply the pure peace, the blank canvas, from which the perception of all phenomena is perceived. It is this changeless nonmaterial dimension that is the reason we have a sense of a continuing existence. Our bodies and minds constantly change, and yet we all sense a persisting presence throughout our entire lives.

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Getting Rid of Bad Habits Permanently (A Complete Guide)

How to Get Rid of Bad Habits When There is Unprocessed Trauma

All addiction stems from unprocessed trauma. We feel some kind of pain, lack, discomfort or discontent in our body, and we seek out pleasures to provide relief. When we rely on that relief as a crutch to end those negative thoughts, it becomes an addiction.
Every time we repeat a bad habit we strengthen those neural pathways in our brain, making the behavior more automatic. But, every time we don’t act on that habit, we create new neural pathways that strengthen our new better habit of not acting on that impulsive behavior.
The best way to both heal from trauma and create new habits is to bring conscious awareness to our unconscious actions. That means we really sit with and observe our trauma-response — the cravings — and we make peace with them. Instead of letting a substance or pleasurable activity change our mindset, we take back control of our mind and create a mindset of peace.
First, you must be patient and kind with yourself. Try to let go of expectations and allow yourself to be fully in this moment, and just sit with and accept fully whatever arises. Here’s how to do that.

How Do I Permanently Get Rid of Bad Habits

You are more powerful than your thoughts and impulses. In your mind, any number of random and chaotic, impulsive and destructive thoughts can pop into our head. But our higher wisdom gets to choose which thoughts we act on and which we can let go of.

We all have an infinite wisdom within us that far exceeds the number of facts we can remember or how clever we can be with words (which all thoughts are just words). We are all very good at giving advice, but rarely are we able to apply that wisdom and advice to ourselves. It’s much easier to solve other people’s problems than our own, but that’s only because our ego and desires cloud our personal judgment.

In order to tap into our higher wisdom, we must make a habit of witnessing our thoughts. When we witness thoughts, there is space between our highest self and the cravings. As that space grows and witnessing becomes second nature, we will automatically do what is in our best interest. Simply witnessing thoughts instead of thinking thoughts makes us more peaceful, like how watching a tragic movie doesn’t impact us the same way as if we are going through a tragedy.

When we make peace with uncomfortable thoughts and feelings, when we can accept our traumatic past, we naturally create a safe space for those thoughts and feelings. When we sit with what’s painful, we strengthen our capacity to face our fears, overcome challenges, and we will no longer need substances or pleasures to escape them.

Practice Happiness and Gratitude

All addiction stems from an effort to bring us relief from our own negative, pessimistic, chaotic mind. While we can’t control what thoughts pop into our mind, we can control where we put our focus and awareness.

The more mindful we become of our mind, the more we will notice its standard mode of operation. We’ll be able to notice when it is stressed, anxious or depressed, and instead of turning our attention to our cravings for relief, we can turn our attention to the things that bring us lasting joy and fulfillment: working towards our goals, getting healthy, friends and family, achieving success, and a brighter future free from addiction.

For every one of us, there is some idea, memory, person, place or goal that makes us happy. There is something that we are all grateful for. When we turn our attention to that, we can use our mind to become joyful and we won’t need anything externally to rely on. That is the power of spirituality.

How Long Does It Take to Get Rid of a Bad Habit

The day we quit a habit is the day it is gone. Depending on how long we had the habit will determine how long it will take to become fully free from cravings. But we can rest assured that the moment we make a choice to stop something, that habit is broken.

If we have done something for decades, those neural pathways will be deeply ingrained in us. There is an inertia that develops from every action we take. The more times we take an action, the greater the inertia.

But the good news is that if we have a deeply ingrained habit, like smoking, and we used to smoke 20 times a day, we will actually be able to quit easily because we will probably get a craving 200 times the first day. That’s 200 times we don’t smoke. So the reverse inertia can happen rather quickly.

Most of the difficulty of any addiction drops off quite fast. It’s like sledding down a hill. At first it’s a big drop, but then the rest of the way is more flat. Making it through those first couple days and weeks gets the physical withdrawal symptoms out of our body. But they are nothing we can’t handle.

Those withdrawal symptoms may be uncomfortable, but they aren’t actually bad. They are usually just a feeling like shaking combined with a mental fixation. We can watch both the physical sensations and the thoughts with peace and calm. They pass rather quickly, as that is the nature of all things.

Something to Remember

If you have tried quitting many times and failed, which most of us have, it’s easy to fall into despair or low self confidence in our ability to quit. But the science is very clear, the more times you have failed at quitting, the better you become at quitting and the more likely you are to succeed.

Someone who has quit and failed 30 times knows very well what triggers them and what trips them up. So if you have failed 100 times, you are an expert by now and this time, with the spiritual method, you will surely succeed. And if you do fail, try again right away.

You’ve got this. Remember, most of all that quitting is easier than maintaining a life of addiction. Addiction is very hard. It takes a lot of money, effort and time.

Quitting is free, it frees up your mental space for peace and joy, and it is much easier on the body and mind. It is like stepping off of a rickety roller coaster. When we become free from addiction, the highs and lows give way to lasting peace and contentment.

No substance or pleasure can compare to true and lasting peace. It’s just that most of us were not taught how to create that. Through presence and mindfulness, positivity and gratitude, and by practicing meditation, we can develop the priceless skill of using our mind to change our mindset, and we won’t need to rely on anything else.

We are so much stronger and wiser than our mindless impulses. We can sit with our cravings without acting on them. We can endure any hardship. And those skills will improve every aspect of our lives. We’ll become more patient, more disciplined, and we will be unstoppable.

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Everyone is Judging Me

Q: Dear Todd, I feel like everyone is judging me and hating me. It’s making it difficult to have a peaceful life. What should I do?

People are usually too busy thinking about themselves than other people. We just have to do our best to make sure that other people’s karma doesn’t bring us down.

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