Living an Authentic Life

Do you know the difference between honesty and authenticity?

This is my understanding. First of all, honesty is definitely a better quality than dishonesty as we all know dishonesty only leads to more mess and suffering in life.

Many people claim that they are honest, for example, they pay their taxes regularly to their country, they would admit their mistakes, they express anger with someone if it is not right, they tell you off if they are offended, they would even come clean with their spouse if they cheat in the marriage etc. Basically, if we look deeply, honesty is a social quality which is essential for living together in a community. But honesty is built on ego because honesty demands and sometimes tries to torture others. Fundamentally, honesty is a poor substitute for authenticity.

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In a Mood For Poetry

  Here are some of my favourite poems by Gerry Hillier which I collected over the past 5 years after attending the annual yoga retreat in Australia. Enjoy. Gerry will be visiting Singapore in mid May, if you are keen to attend her workshops, check out www.theowlcompany.com.  

“I AM AND THEN I AM SOME MORE”

I am

said the leaf

in stillness and then

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Let’s Get Back to Stable Family

We are aware that a family unit provides the early conditioning of a person’s personality. How we behave and what we become later in life is deeply connected to our family life. Psychologist like Erik Erikson talks about the psychosocial development in 8 stages through which a healthily developing human should pass from infancy to late adulthood. Each stage builds a successful completion of earlier stages.

In the Vedic tradition, the first 14 years of a child’s life is crucial in his or her development.  Till the age of seven, a child is like a sponge. Anything that the child is exposed to, the child absorbs. His/her mind and body grows at an amazing rate. In this phase, the child is in the visualization phase. Whatever the child sees is imprinted and embedded into his or her unconscious. The embedded memories start replaying as the child grows into an adult. These embedded memories drive many of the adult decisions. Between the age of eight and 14, the growing child is in the verbalization mode. The child starts learning languages and verbal imprints, not merely visual images, start getting embedded. Using words like happiness, suffering, etc., instantly evoke appropriate pictures and therefore emotions. During this entire period, the child is controlled by its parents or parent substitutes like grandparents or nannies. Most of what is embedded in their unconscious comes from the elders close to them. Hence the parents from which a soul takes birth from play a major role in a child’s upbringing. Fundamentally, as parents we have a huge responsibility in creating a loving and stable family for our children so that it brings less suffering and depression to them.

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