by Michael Mamas | Friday, December 2, 2011 | Spirituality |
Sigmund Freud said, “The more the fruits of knowledge become accessible to men, the more widespread is the decline of religious belief.”
It would be better said, “The more the fruits of knowledge become accessible to men, the more purified our understanding of spirituality becomes.”
Only if religious tenets are blindly held does the gain of knowledge become threatening.
New knowledge, when held properly, deepens our understanding of spirituality, it does not undermine it.
© Michael Mamas. All rights reserved.
by Michael Mamas | Tuesday, November 29, 2011 | Favorites, Personal Growth, Spirituality |
First use your heart to determine what you want to say. Then use your mind to determine the best way of saying it.
Doing the opposite is a terrible betrayal, tying both your heart and your mind into self-compromising knots.
Before you speak, first feel into what your soul really would like to share. Then take enough time to find the way to say it.
© Michael Mamas. All rights reserved.
by Michael Mamas | Sunday, November 27, 2011 | Spirituality |
So many people let their life revolve around their money. Your money should revolve around your life.
Otherwise, regardless of what you would like to admit, your money is your God.
Not a good way to live.
© Michael Mamas. All rights reserved.
by Michael Mamas | Saturday, November 26, 2011 | Personal Growth |
There was a solar eclipse on November 24. There will be a lunar eclipse during the full moon in December. It is said that it is best to not look at a lunar eclipse or eat during that night.
What do you believe, and why?
Most are so identified with whatever they have been conditioned and indoctrinated to believe that it is difficult for them to learn anything truly new. Instead they look at life only to extract whatever will reinforce their current belief system and reject the rest.
An open mind is not enough. It must also be a reasonable/logical mind. If you can integrate an open mind with the ability to think reasonably, logically, then there is no limit to what you can attain.
I say again, the world is not as you have been lead to believe. There is good reason why the Sun and Moon appear the same size in the sky.
For there to be life, fire and water, Agni and Soma, must be in balance.
© Michael Mamas. All rights reserved.
by Michael Mamas | Thursday, November 24, 2011 | Favorites, Spirituality |
“Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.” Einstein
I am thankful for the freedom that is my nature and your nature.
I am thankful for a universe so graceful, that we can live in infinite freedom yet, at the same time, in harmony with the laws of nature.
I am thankful for the love, friendship, and support I feel from the Divine.
I am thankful for the beauty that surrounds me and permeates my life, my heart, and my being.
I am thankful for the Divinity I see in everyone.
I am thankful to know the path home and to be given the greatest gift of all… the ability to share it with you.
© Michael Mamas. All rights reserved.
by Michael Mamas | Thursday, November 24, 2011 | Personal Growth, Spirituality |
Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were.
But without it we go nowhere. – Carl Sagan
I love this quote. To become free, you must learn to think freely. Do not be afraid to imagine. Massage your thoughts. Do not demand that they be exact, right out of the box.
Cultivate relationships that support you in this regard. Thoughts are not meant to be etched in stone. They are meant to evolve as you explore them. I do not plan canned lectures. I share my thoughts, my process, with others. That is a far greater gift than a set of stagnant facts.
The end point of exploration is not the fruit, not the essence. There, in fact, is no end point. Life is alive. It continues to grow. It is an evolutionary process, as essential to life as breathing. If canned, it withers and dies. Trying to hold still in the name of growth is a contradiction. Rigidity is for wood boards, not people.
Evolution is life. You are free to evolve. Don’t fight it.
Neti, Neti, Neti – not that, not that, not that – is the nature of life. Waiting for. or demanding the perfect ‘that’ is a death trip. Evolution is an ongoing process toward ‘that’ while every step along the way is ‘not that.’
Playfully expressed, life is a series of failures. When you delight at that thought, you are on your way.
I do love the quote.
© Michael Mamas. All rights reserved.
by Michael Mamas | Sunday, November 20, 2011 | Spirituality |
Your worldview is an amalgam of facts. Facts are like points (dots) in space. If and how you connect those dots makes all the difference. That is determined by what lies within you. If your head is in the clouds, you connect them in a naive manner. If your nose is in the gutter, still another… commonly referred to as ‘street wise.’
What is the condition of your internal climate? In other words, how do you connect the dots of your life?
Your greatness lies within you, as you, untainted by conditioning, free of distortion and bias.
What is Grace? It is the inherent nature of existence. It is how the universe really works. It is the omnipresence of the Divine. It is how the dots are ultimately connected. It is the elegance of existence. It is dignity with which you see when your vision is clear.
Truth is supremely Graceful. Truth lies in the gap between all the dots. It is you. It is who you truly are.
When you live that, not as a concept, but as self evident from the depth of your being, you are wise. Grace is truth.
What a Graceful universe!
© Michael Mamas. All rights reserved.
by Michael Mamas | Saturday, November 19, 2011 | Personal Growth, Spirituality |
Believe in what is. Anything else is denial.
Even if you want to change things, to be most effective you must start with what is.
Strive to discover what is. Even feeling what is really in your heart and going with it can be most challenging and elusive. It is often not so easy to do. Go whereever it leads.
Believing what you choose to believe (what you are afraid to not believe, what you are told to believe, what you feel you should believe, or even simply what is familiar to believe) and projecting it on to the world is common.
Seeing what is actually there within you and before you for what it truly is… that is rare.
This applies to everything from the most mundane to the most profound. Believing what you want to believe instead of what is… that is the stuff magic tricks are made of.
It is what prevents you from inheriting your birthright… liberation. It is what shrouds your true nature. It is what keeps the world spinning ’round. It is Maya.
© Michael Mamas. All rights reserved.
by Michael Mamas | Thursday, November 17, 2011 | Spirituality, World View |
I have not written about this for a while so in case you are wondering, my economic perspective on things has not changed. Current events over the past year or two have only reconfirmed everything. Global debt, particularly in Europe and the US, will continue to mandate the printing of more money. Gold will continue to march upward. Housing will remain very depressed. Global unrest will continue. This dynamic will remain for the next decade at least. However, if you plan wisely, you will be fine and can even prosper.
Let me make it clear that I am NOT a financial advisor and this is only my opinion. You must make your own decisions. Yet those of you who have been listening to me know that I have been correct so far.
Gold will become the new money backing (at least in part) the new world currency. Current currencies will fall. Trying to keep your wealth in the right currency now is like trying to buy the nicest house in a bad neighborhood. Gold and other commodities will go up in price significantly, while housing prices stagnate or go down. If you can, buy gold, take delivery, and put it in a safe deposit box in an institution that you trust. Still, keep an eye on the institution to be certain it is safe. Be prepared to withdraw the gold if need be.
Decide where you want to live long-term and move there now. Do not even think about what your current house WAS worth. It is not worth that much now. Why wait for it to go back up when other investments are far more promising? Take the cash for the house, invest it, and move on. It is remarkable to me how so many cry over spilled milk and just cannot let it go! Even if housing prices did rebound a bit, other investments will go up much more. In the mean time, you are living somewhere you do not want to be while the cost of housing where you would like to be move with the market anyway. Also, construction costs will continue to rise. For example, local dealers here have announced that drywall will go up 30% as of January 1.
There will be local pockets of prosperity even in the US (which is and will continue to be on an economic decline). Needless to say, I am confident Mount Soma will be on an economic upturn throughout this period that will, in general, be most difficult for most regions.
Because of the emotion involved due to people’s intense identity with their money, wise financial decisions remain elusive for most. It is not rocket science. It is common sense. The expression, “Wake up and smell the coffee” comes to mind. The major global economic trends are clearly visible to all who are willing and able to look. You must become free of the limited thinking that your conditioned identity dictates.
There is no greater blessing than to know from deep within your being that Vedic science is valid. My hours of lecturing is only of value if it inspires you to take the necessary steps to experience that directly for yourself. So many hear my lectures and are inspired by them. Yet, who has the courage to move forward and discover it within themselves? More than anywhere else, I see that happening in the people of the ashram program here at Mount Soma. I find the process of that awakening most fascinating. They begin to feel it, to experience it, long before they mentally understand what it is they are experiencing.
Old thoughts associated with previous conditioning linger, even after your being has begun to awaken. This leaves you in a transitional state between what you were and what you are becoming. A torential tug-of-war ensues… i.e. the churning process. Return to the old and familiar, or move forward into the currently unknown… the new… a new level of being. This is the crossroads of your eternal existence. The decision is yours. Transition is always a bit disconcerting, isn’t it?
It’s the nature of change.
© Michael Mamas. All rights reserved.
by Michael Mamas | Wednesday, November 16, 2011 | Spirituality
“Happiness is your nature. It is not wrong to desire it.
What is wrong is seeking it outside when it is inside.”
– Sri Ramana Maharshi
© Michael Mamas. All rights reserved.
