NEWS LETTER SPRING
2010
A
Newsletter for those interested in TRANSCENDENTAL MEDITATION by
Roger
Gurr 020 8224 7676 - www.TMLondonSouth.org –
THANKS FOR ALL THE
CONTRIBUTIONS
emotional well
being. The two-year study was conducted in Chicago, Illinois
at St. Joseph’s Hospital and involved 130 women with breast cancer,
55 years and older. The women were randomly assigned either to learn
Transcendental Meditation or to a usual care control group. Patients
were administered quality of life measures, including the Functional
Assessment of Cancer Therapy-Breast (FACT-B), every six months for two
years. The average intervention period was 18 months.
Vital statistics were obtained from the
National Death Index. The study found that compared to combined
controls, the TRANSCENDENTAL MEDIATION group showed: ·
23% reduction in the rate of death from all
causes ·
30% reduction in the rate of death from
cardiovascular disease ·cancer Previous controlled studies had associated TM
with decreasing stress and lower blood pressure. The object of this study was to evaluate long
term all cause and cause specific mortality in older subjects who had
high blood pressure and participated in a range of stress reduction
interventions.
Reported in the
American Journal of Cardiology May
2, 2005, issue. ****** The
first-of-its-kind, long-term, randomized trial evaluated 202 men and women, all over 55 years
of age and with an average age 71, who had mildly elevated blood
pressure. Subjects in the study learnt Transcendental
Meditation; behavioural techniques, such as mindfulness or progressive muscle
relaxation; or health education. The study tracked subjects for up to
18 years. ********************* THE CHINA STUDY by Dr. T. Colin Campbell.
Fourteen
authorities praise this book and its author. One of them, the top nutrition
expert Dean Ornish MD., says; “Everyone in the field of nutrition stands on the
shoulders of Dr. Campbell, who is one of the giants in the field of Nutrition.
This is one of the most important books about nutrition ever written – reading
it may save your life.”
The book is a giant step for western nutrition science.
It confirms the basic knowledge of the ancient science of Ayur Veda. Knowledge
everyone should have.
“He
who does not know food, how can he understand the disease of man?” - Hippocrates, the father of western medicine (400 –
357BC).
“The
author exposes the research that the establishment tried to withhold.”
“It is a story every one should know
as it could change our future. It is about the history of a struggle; still
going on, to understand the vital connection between our health and what we
eat”. It
is a message we should all know and pass on to our children and a message that
we can not trust doctors, the government and the food industry to tell us. He
tells us why.”
WAYS TO IMPROVE ONE’S
HEALTH by Dr. Frank Lipman –the same school
as Dr Campbell
1.
Eat
real food i.e. fresh, whole,
unrefined / unprocessed food.
Food is more than a delivery system for nutrients. Real food is more than
the sum of its parts; it’s about how it all works together, the total
message.
Although
you should know how to read food labels, most real foods don’t come with a
label — vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds.
2.
Try to eat as close to nature as possible.
Know that there is no one right diet for everyone, we are all different.
3.
Select
fruits and vegetables in a wide variety of colours.
4.
Buy
fresh foods whenever you can, preferably organic and locally grown if
possible. Fresh foods are better than frozen foods, which are
better than canned foods.
5.
Stop
eating when you are 80 percent full.
6.
Be
sceptical of foods that come individually labelled with a health claim.
Most healthy foods don’t need a health claim. Ever seen a health claim on a
bunch of broccoli or on a box of blueberries?
7.
Be
wary of foods you’ve seen advertised, as the vast majority
of these are processed foods.
8.
Be
careful of obsessive calorie counting. Counting calories
or even percentages of protein, fat and carbohydrate, can inadvertently
deprive your body of the “complete” message that real, whole foods
provide.
9.
Enjoy
your food; preferably eat in the company of good friends and
people you love.
WAKING UP
“Is
there really any difference
between you and me?”
The disciple demanded. “I look at us, and I just see two old men sitting in
a room waiting for their lunch.”
The
guru replied, “Your level of awareness forces you to see yourself as an old
man sitting in a room. But to me, this room and everything in it occupy the
smallest speck on the horizon of my awareness.”
For
thousands of years, the metaphor of waking up has been applied to describe
coming from a state of ignorance to a state of enlightenment. When a person
wakes up, he opens his eyes and sees, which he couldn’t do while asleep; he
moves from a completely inert state of consciousness to one that is alert and
responsive; he regains the sense of identity that was lost in sleep.
The
contrast delivered when a person becomes enlightened is said to be just as
stark. But there is a subtle point to grasp: waking up also implies a natural
process that does not have to be forced. You do not choose to wake up in the
morning – it dawns on you – and despite the sleepy resistance you may put
up, eventually you are awake. The ancient Rishis believed that spiritual
awakening was just as natural and inevitable. After
Deepock.
Forty
four fifth grade students were randomised into two groups. One group received
instruction in TRANSCENDENTAL MEDIATION. These students practiced TM twice a
day for 10 min as a group in the school gym. Control group students had
unstructured time in their classrooms during these daily time-periods. All
students completed highly reliable Likert scale instruments that assessed the
following variables: affect, emotional intelligence, anxiety, aggression and
teacher caring at the start and after three months.
Meditating
students showed significantly higher positive affect and lower negative affect
(P
< 0.02) in contrast to controls. Meditators also had
significantly higher elevated mood (P
< 0.05) and adaptability scores (p < 0.02). Meditators
tended to report less worrying and less overall anxiety (P
< 0.10). Neither perceptions of aggression nor teacher caring
differentiated groups over time.
BLISSFUL SILENCE by Maharishi
"Silence vibrating is
Creation.
Silence flowing is Love.
Silence shared is Friendship.
Silence seen is Infinity.
Silence heard is Adoration.
Silence expressed is Beauty.
Silence maintained is
Strength.
Silence omitted is Suffering.
Silence allowed is Rest.
Silence recorded is Scripture.
Silence preserved is Our
Tradition.
Silence given is Initiating.
Silence perceived is
Knowledge.
Silence stabilized is
Fulfilment.
Silence alone is." From Viktoria via CC
Maharishi Ayurveda Products Limited (MAPL),
of
Noida in India
On September 15th 2004 Maharishi Ayurveda Products Limited (MAPL), of
Noida in India was awarded World Health Organisation certification of GMP
(Good Manufacturing Practice)
for the "design, production and export of
herbal products including food supplements, cosmetic toiletries and
formulations".
This is part of MAPL's plan to meet the highest standards of quality
required anywhere in the world.
In 1997 MAP was the first Ayurvedic company in the world to get ISO 9001
certification. This was later upgraded to ISO 9001:2001 certification and
earlier this year Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration GMP
certification was also achieved.
MAPL is not resting on its laurels and has now set its sights on gaining
GMP certification from the Pharmaceutical Inspection Cooperation Scheme (PICS).
PICS have a membership of 27 countries including most European states and UK.
Jai
Guru Dev David Whitley
MAP UK
Worth Checking out, Ethical Giving
was set
up by an independent financial advice company,
Since 1989, Ethical
Investors has donated at least 50% of its net trading profits to
good causes each year without any fuss or fanfares; the beneficiaries of the
donations have always been selected by the firm’s clients, not by the firm
itself. Over recent years, however, we have seen the steady creep of big
business into many areas of philanthropy, which has contrasted starkly with
our own low key approach. The Trustees of Ethical Giving can be contacted at
the following address: - 49 Rodney Road, Cheltenham, GL50 1HX
SILENCE IN MEDITATION
Meditating,
I feel like a person isolated in time and space. I have thoughts, each of
which takes a tiny amount of time, but every once in a while my mantra fades
away and I experience silence. Sometimes this silence grows deep, and I am
left in it for moments at a stretch.
Awareness
is simply seeing itself in pure form. Imagine a genius resting on a couch. He
could be thinking any number of brilliant thoughts, but he is not having one
right now. He remains a genius nevertheless, because his ability lies in his
potential for being brilliant. Similarly, the Self is a state of potentiality,
of untold possibilities that unfold one at a time in the manifest world.
The
mind has gaps between thoughts. Each gap is like a tiny window into silence,
and through that window, one actually contacts the source of the mind. When
you meditate, you take a vertical dive into that gap.
When
you don’t have thoughts, there is silence. Silence does not occupy time, and
in order to contact the Self, one has to go into the field of the timeless. After Deepock.
SPIRITUAL GROWTH
At every stage of spiritual growth,
the greatest friend you have is your body. Most of us assume that body and
spirit are opposites. When we feel hunger and thirst, pain and
pleasure, we do not regard them as spiritual experiences.
In our
society people suffer from the sense that spirit is basically separate from
their feelings.
Sensuousness,
which encompasses the whole range of physical delight, is often considered low
compared to the heights the soul can reach. But spirituality must also be
sensuous, because a spiritual person is one who lives fully in the present
moment, which means living fully in the body.
Spirituality
is not meant to be separate from the body. Deepak
.
PROTECT
NATURE was the
Conclusions of an inter-governmental workshop held in London in preparation
for October's UN biodiversity summit in Nagoya, Japan. Delegates agreed that
protecting nature would bring economic benefits to all nations and their
citizens. Representatives of 54 countries attended the UK-hosted meeting.
BBC 27-1-10
INFINITE
INTELLIGENCE. To navigate the field of infinite intelligence,
we probe the very depths of the mind, where that inner intelligence, that
silent witness awaits. After
Maharishi.
THE
REASON THAT PEOPLE CANNOT FORGIVE is
that
their anger has worn a deep groove in the mind. Thoughts, like water seek a
downward slope. They flow into the groove like water gravitates. The groove
becomes carved in stone. It is
hard to think and feel in new ways.
We can’t let go. Suffering results as repetitive thoughts
deepen the groove.
There
are two techniques for remedying this situation. First,
Transcendental Meditation will turn the stone to sand and eventually to
water. Of course, if one has already been meditating regularly for a while the
hurt is more like a groove in water. The groove simply collapses right after
the groove forms! It never gets to form in stone.
Second, learn to fill the groove
with new feelings. That
is forgiving, thinking and feeling in new ways. First, choose the intent to
forgive, even though your feelings are still hurt. Have the intention to let
new feelings come in. Encourage even the slightest hints of a new feeling.
Experience the old hurt and anger, but always say, this isn’t me, this is
not what I want anymore. Keep challenging the old hurt with reasons why it
should be replaced. Be patients and let yourself experience both the old and
the new feelings until the old one fades.
Both
techniques together speed progress.
Both ways, one is working with
one’s self, privately but not alone.
Unhappiness and suffering is lonely even if we deny it or suppress it; healing
is not. Healing is bigger than personality. It comes from a deeper inner
intelligence that wants us to be happy and to be our best. It works for us and
with us if we let it. When we get a cut, the skin heals independently.
Something inside is working for us. Healing the mind works from, basically,
the same place.
The
big difference between healing the skin and healing the mind is that we need
to facilitate healing of the mind. However,
this difference is not a stumbling block once the healing gets under way. Deep
in the mind at the most basic level,
there is a healing system as effective, or more effective than the body’s
immune system. Whether one
transcends or chooses to think in different ways, have
the intention to heal, you allow new intelligence and energy to come in
and clear away all obstacles. After Maharishi &
Deepak.
PHASE TRANSITION
"In order to establish order, disorder has to be shaken; and for
shaking to remain under control, we who are at the basis, at the level of
Para, have to be Para—that is, unreachable by the surface turmoil. In that
integrated state, the fast moving chaos and change will pass away in a steady
manner. So we have to be very steady. We have to be very careful not to get
upset by little or big things. If we lose our basis, our dignity, the phase
transition will take much longer. Don’t give importance to things which may
upset us.
This is a very precious time for the world. Everything depends on how
our awareness is; just don't let it be shaken. Our awareness is the basis of
all these transformations. More than ever before, time demands we remain
completely ourselves. It is a very tender, delicate time for us—we should
not become angry, indifferent, or sad; we should just be like an ocean. The
evolutionary power is waking up. We shake it, then leave it; then after some
time shake it again. Each time a new level of purity, awakening is
added." Maharishi 1992 Dev CC
LOTUS
– OXFORD- circa 1800
The wife
depends on the husband and the husband depends upon the wife.
This
dependence swells the enrichment of the heart………
Married life
is an innocent opportunity to improve spiritual life.
What a
brahmarcharya gains by celibacy, a married man gains by devotion.
This is
practical devotion.
They live for
one another.
It is a
complete sacrifice- more than a sannyasi.
The
householder has a much greater quality of life.
Both will
grow in fulfilment with the help of each other.
The purpose
of marriage is to help each other grow and evolve together.
We help each
other grow to Cosmic Consciousness.
And then that
love expresses itself into the structure of the children, growing, enfolded in
concrete waves of love.
This is how
the intention of creation rejoices- what appears to be bondage proves to be
the path to liberation.’ Maharishi/ RC