Thursday, December 16
Off to MathridA thought for today:
"A person who is crooked can never enjoy real peace of mind. his tricks tie him into knots"
Few more hours and I would be leaving to Madrid for Xmass and NYE. So I guess this is my last post for now. I will not stop commenting though; I will check on you guys whenever possible, can't leave you for long, addicted? Heheheeeeee you bet
BTW; my NLP course ended today and with it I marked the last day of my working career as an engineer. I guess by now I should change my occupation on my profile to: Retired Consultant Engineer and a Blossoming Yoga Instructor :)
And as it is this last post I decided to have a variety, and here it goes:
A joke for the road:
A lady goes to her priest one day and tells him, "Father, I have a problem. I have two female parrots, but they only know how to say one thing." "What do they say?" the priest inquired. They say, "Hi, we're hookers! Do you want to have some fun?"
"That's obscene!" the priest exclaimed; then he thought for a moment. You know," he said, "I may have a solution to your problem. I have two male talking parrots, which I have taught to pray and read the Bible. "Bring your two parrots over to my house, and we'll put them in the cage with Frank and Jacob. My parrots can teach your parrots to pray and worship, and your parrots are sure to stop saying that phrase in no time."
"Thank you," the woman responded, "this may very well be the solution." The next day, she brought her female parrots to the priest's house. As he ushered her in, she saw that his two male parrots were inside their cage, holding rosary beads and praying.
Impressed, she walked over and placed her parrots in with them. After a few minutes, the female parrots cried out in unison: "Hi, we're hookers! Do you want to have some fun?" There was stunned silence.
Shocked, one male parrot looked over at the other male parrot and exclaimed, "Put the beads away, Frank, our prayers have been answered!
Heheheeeeeeee males are males
Never Ending Wait
Copyright: Ruby Khaja
NLP " Neuro-Linguistics Programming" Course Review:
A thought for today:
" no one tortures you except your own nature, make your nature sweet and loveable; then win the love of all"
Today I finished a 5 day course in "Introduction to NLP".
NLP is a science that was developed in the mid 70's by Dr. John Grinder and Richard Bandler and was defined as a study of human thinking and behavior pattern.
The study started by a question: what made highly successful people so successful; i. e. what these people have in common?
And after years of research, they found out that these people have a different pattern of thinking than others. This was not genetic, rather an acquired pattern.
Therefore they invented different techniques to get as close as they can get to those patterns of thinking. The list of techniques expanded to different aspects of life.
To understand this more let's define each word:
Neuro: all your inner feelings, ambitions, fears, and hopes, as well as all what is created in your mind by the effect of your five senses (hearing, sight, smell, taste and touch). Therefore it's a research into your inner building.
Linguistics: how do you communicate with yourself and others? It's the language you use to convince yourself of some matter, and in this case is related to listening to your subconscious mind and ordering it to be controlled by your conscious mind. In addition to that; it researches your talking pattern and communication skills with others.
Programming: developing a systematic mind techniques and a thorough language to reach specific goals.
From the definition above, we see that the science is not new when we defined the first two words; you can find all that in all psychology books. They key factor here is the definition of the third word which NLP science stands for. So if you want to study all the behaviors of humans and its interconnections through communication and develop a technique for each pattern, you can imagine how lengthy this course could get.
That's why NLP is divided to an introductory course, then different other advanced courses as your personal interest.
What I had last week was the introduction of the NLPcourse in which the main subjects included:
-Mind assumptions
-Form of communication in NLP
-Mind process
-Specifying goals
-Specifying your VAK pattern i.e. are you a visual person, an auditory person, or a kinesthetic person (dependant on your feelings)
- Eye communication
- Building personal relations.
- Acting systems.
- Minor specifications of self expression.
- Expression links and how does it work
- Stages of learning
The above was an index of the syllabus of the course to give you an idea of what NLP is about. In general the course was very interesting; the techniques were practiced as games in the classroom that made it really lively. Which BTW is also an objective in the process of learning. The instructor (Dr. Anwar AlSaba7) was highly capable of conducting the course. I do recommend it for every one. And do intend to take more advanced courses in NLP. But the thing is that the courses given in Q8 are highly expensive. For example; an advanced course is around 650 KD. And that's why I have decided to have an advance course with a reputable NLP licensed instructor abroad in the near future, more research I'm planning to do on that. So if any of the readers can help me with this, I would really appreciate it.
ChingChing
Monday, December 13
Self HypnosisA thought for today:
"A smile can make short work of any difficulty"
Years back a friend of mine gave me a book about Self Hypnosis. I read it out of curiosity to know if I can do supernatural things; like floating in the air, flying in space and the like. None of what I imagined I would find in this book was as per my expectations. It was simply a set of mind deception techniques to acquire good habits and discard bad ones; Like getting into sports, overcoming sleeping disorder, quit smoking, getting over phobias, etc,etc
On one of my attempts to test this newly acquired knowledge, I tried to self hypnotize myself on the dentist's chair, undergoing root canal without anesthesia. The dentist was hesitant at first, but he finally gave in to my wishes after convincing him. And if you know me well, you would know that I never dreaded anything in my life as much as I did sitting on the dentists chair and listening to the squeaking sound of the drill with mouth wide open, let alone the nerves pain, and the funny aftermath taste and feeling in the mouth, yuk.
But it did work, the experiment was highly successful. The dentist not only did one tooth, he got encouraged to do another one that was set for a next appointment, but he never stopped blabbering; "amazing, how can you do that, this is not possible, bla,bla,bla". Of course, I was in my own sphere and totally ignored him. When he finally finished, he asked me: "how did it really feel", my answer was: "orgasmic" and he blushed. heheheeeeee
Self hypnosis was my first entry into yoga world; it is actually some type of meditation
Years after, my dad was suffering from a severe case of insomnia. So I lent him my book to try. At first, he took it as a joke. But when he overcame his sleeping disorder, he never gave me back my book, you know why?
He said:" a fool would lend a valuable book, but an idiot would return it" :(
If you are interested to know more about self hypnosis click on this link:
http://www.bcx.net/hypnosis/induct.htm
ChingChing
Sunday, December 12
RumorA thought for today:
"The price of freedom is always responsibility"
Back in college, in one of my psychology courses, the subject study was "Rumor". Our TA handed a piece of paper to the first student sitting in the first raw of a large classroom that was occupied by around 70 students.
He asked this student to silent-read what's written on the paper, and then whisper clearly the content of the paper in the ears of the student sitting next to him, only he had to do it one time and no discussions were allowed. The next student was supposed to transfer this information to the other one next to him, and so on until the information reaches the last student in the class. The last student then would write the information down on a piece of paper and hand it to the TA.
Then the TA divided the board into two parts; he wrote the content of the original paper on one part, and the content of the second paper on the other part of the board.
This is what was written on the first part of the board:
One of the A-students in the class did very good in the previous test especially in the question that involved a personal experience.
And this is what was written on the other part:
One of the girls in the class had sex with the instructor.
heheheeeeeeeeee
What did these two sentences have in common that all related to?
1-A personal experience and sex.
2-Our last exam was in Sex Education, and not to mention that the teacher was awesomely handsome.
Conclusion:
A rumor starts with the way we transfer the information, and the way the receiver's mind understands this information.
None of us meant any harm.
So, next time you hear some news, don't spread it, coz you might be spreading a rumor and you can never imagine how much harm you participate in doing unto others.
ChingChing
The Angel of Nekyia
By:A. Andrew Gonzalez
Saturday, December 11
NLP " Neuro-Linguistic Programming"A thought for today:
"To use punctuation marks on paper is easy, but can you put a full stop to waste thoughts?"
Today I started my NLP, five day's course. And of course it is too soon to judge the course or the instructor, which is not my intention with this post.
In summary NLP started in the early 70's, as a science that deals with mind power; why do some people excel in their lives while others don't? And what makes these people special although their brains are physically identical to others? And the answer is; all these people have developed certain techniques that enable them to use and utilize their brain power.
For more information on NLP you can visit this site " http://www.neurosemantics.com/NLPDefined.htm"
One subject that grabbed my attention today was how do we perceive and develop our emotions towards things, people, or situations that we like or dislike. And how can we change those feelings if we wanted to. For example: I love ice cream especially in the cold weather, but I know I should not have ice cream coz it is fattening, but I am conditioned to think of ice cream every time the weather gets colder, so how can I change this habit?
One of the exercises in the course I found very beneficial; it actually worked instantly for me, this is how it goes:
- close your eyes and draw an image of something, someone, or a situation which you really like, let's say for the sake of argument an ice cream cone.
- Notice the size of this image, i.e. how big or how small is the image you see.
- Notice its closeness to you, i.e. is it too far, too close, or just somewhere in the middle, calculate that distant in your mind.
- Notice how clear or unclear that image is in your mind.
- notice the colors of that image, or notice if it is just black and white.
- notice the feeling you develop by keeping this image in your mind for a while.
It's a nice feeling, sometimes overwhelming, right?
Now
- close your eyes again and picture an image of something you really hate, let's say for example chicken (which indecently I hate).
- and now notice this new image as you did with the ice cream cone; i.e. notice the size, closeness, clarity, and color.
Now you can see how the specifications of this new image and your associated feelings have changed from the previous one.
Now imagine that you have a remote control in your hand, and with this device you can change the specification of any picture in your mind as you do with TV.
Slowly, change the specifications of the ice cream cone to fit that of the chicken with your remote control.
Well did it work?
I tried this with many things today and guess what? It did not fail me once, not even once.
You can apply this to things, people, or any sad memories that you want to change your feelings toward. It is simply amazing.
ChingChing
By: Mary Atkinson
Friday, December 10
Time to take a breakA thought for today:
"when jealousy rises it's ugly head even the ones we love become our enemies"
Separation at Will
Copyright : Ruby K haja
Wednesday, December 8
SolitudeThough of the day:
"when all your attachments are with the one God, then your achievements are many"
It's been a while now since I've been outing and partying or gathering with friends. Don't know why but my mood is for just staying home by myself. I'm enjoying my own company; with my books, my poems and my PC. I'm not complaining, on the contrary, I love it this way, I feel the ease and the breeze. But others are complaining. My friends think I'm unto something, my family is pissed off. I thought at first that this is a phase I'm going through, but this phase is taking a long time. It's been over three months now, sometimes I wonder if this is normal. I hardly leave home; only to take care of the very necessary errands. But as I said; I'm happy this way.
A smile to brighten your day:
An Asian man walked into the currency exchange in New York with 2000 yen and walked out with $72. The following week, he walked in with 2000 yen and was handed $66. He asked the teller why he got less money than he had gotten the previous week. The lady answers, "Fluctuations." The Asian man stormed out, and just before slamming the door, he turned around and said,
"Fluc you Amelicans too!" :D
Monday, December 6
What Goes Around Comes Around"If you keep your vision elevated, your chin will automatically keep up"
His name was Fleming, and he was a poor Scottish farmer. One day, while trying to make a living for his family, he heard a cry for help coming from a nearby bog. He dropped his tools and ran to the bog. There, mired to his waist in black muck, was a terrified boy, screaming and struggling to free himself. Farmer Fleming saved the lad from what could have been a slow and terrifying death.
The next day, a fancy carriage pulled up to the Scotsman's sparse surroundings. An elegantly dressed nobleman stepped out and introduced himself as the father of the boy Farmer Fleming had saved.
"I want to repay you," said the nobleman. "You saved my son's life."
"No, I can't accept payment for what I did," the Scottish farmer replied waving off the offer.
At that moment, the farmer's own son came to the door of the family hovel.
"Is that your son?" the nobleman asked.
"Yes," the farmer replied proudly.
"I'll make you a deal. Let me provide him with the level of education my own son will enjoy. If the lad is anything like his father, he'll no doubt grow to be a man we both will be proud of."
And that he did. Farmer Fleming's son attended the very best schools and in time, graduated from St. Mary's Hospital Medical School in London, and went on to become known throughout the world as the noted
Sir Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of Penicillin.
Years afterward, the same nobleman's son who was saved from the bog was stricken with pneumonia. What saved his life this time? Penicillin.
The name of the nobleman?
Lord Randolph Churchill.
His son's name?
Sir Winston Churchill.
Someone once said: What goes around comes around.
Work like you don't need the money.
Love like you've never been hurt.
Dance like nobody's watching.
Sing like nobody's listening.
Live like it's Heaven on Earth.
The above story was an E-mail from a friend that I thought was well worth sharing.
Sunday, December 5
How Much does a Smile CostThought of today:
"If you miss an opportunity, do not cloud your eyes with tears. Keep your vision clear so that you will not miss the next one"
Have you ever walked down a path and greeted a perfect stranger with a smile? If you did, then how did that feel? Personally; this always made my day, and I'm sure it did the same to the recipients of my greetings.
But why is it hard for most of us in this society to do that. Why do we always pass each other with a distant, arrogant, searching looks on our faces? I have noticed this specifically in Q8es more than any other nationalities I encountered. Expatriates also have adapted this from our society.
How much does it cost to offer a smile to a perfect stranger? To the laborer on site? to a wayfarer in a park? To a janitor on the street?
Now I'm not talking about the kind of smile that might indicate something and get you into trouble, I'm assuming that you can differentiate and tell who are the people that might harass you, and avoid them.
Are we Q8es cursed with arrogance?
Does this assure us more respect from others?
Or;
Are we all so busy, stressed with our chaotic life that this simple gesture became totally foreign to us?
Well in that case here is my recipe; take the pill and offer a smile:
Friday, December 3
Passion PoetryA thought for today:
"Love is a great power, but it takes power to have pure love"
My passion for poetry started at a very young age. I listened to my dad recite Farsi poems before even knowing my ABC's. The flow was natural to his tong since his grandfather from his mom's side was a renowned Persian poet by the name of Dr. Anwari, and his aunt from his father's side was a discreet poet, in a closed circle Q8i woman society.
A question might pop to mind is why a Q8i woman, with an Arabic/Farsi upbringing writes her poetry in English?
Arabic language is very rich indeed, yet it is very difficult to comprehend when your first tong is not Arabic.
It seems to me that all languages in the world have certain rules to follow except Arabic; anything can do, and yet nothing can do.
Now back to the reasons behind my writing poetry in English language; I guess my English education afterwards surmounted the little Arabic I have learned.
But I always retain this passion for the Arabic poetry, although it is very hard for me to fully understand and appreciate it, I almost always need an interpreter. Same goes to the Farsi poetry; I love to read Farsi poems, yet can't easily grasp the meaning.
I guess Eastern poetry holds a mysterious air; an air of a multiple meaning in each and every word alone, let alone strange adjectives used and expertly put together, then what do you get at the end when you do digest it? ..... A RHYMING MASTERPIECE.
Ok may be you have guessed it; my education is English, but my poems are very much Eastern; affected by it, molded in it, and therefore styled unconsciously through it.
A reader needs to ponder, reflect, relate, and deeply analyze to get the true meaning and that's the beauty of the Eastern poetry..
To me poetry has to rhyme, if it didn't, then in my terms it is not poetry. And although I find free style poetry very appealing, it hardly grabs my attention.
I need to hear the tempo, to dance with the music, to soar with the flow, and finally to be smashed with feelings.
You say I'm from the old school? …. damn right I am
Let me Discover You
Let me sail in thy chest
I'm fetching eternal rest
In your folds forget the rest
Count the goose bumps as they bud
With my lips I'll row through
My hands can be a help too
My cheeks would hear the tempo
Rising with your boiling blood
Let me dive in thy eyes
For black pearls to analyze
As they glow and crystallize
The perfect gem ever caught the eye
Let me taste thy lip's flavor
A blend of sweet and sour
Discharging electrical power,
And mesmerizing you and I
Let me examine thy passion
when you wrap me in such a fashion
That past, present, and future mix
And death becomes the ultimate bless
Copywright: Ruby Khaja 2004
Thursday, December 2
Meditation or Mind Relaxation "whichever term you prefer to use"
Thought of Today:
"THE LESS YOU SPEAK, THE MORE YOU ARE LISTENED TO"
Although many would link the term meditation to religion, meditation is far from that. It could be used when practicing any religious ritual, but it remains to be a mind technique. I personally like to call it meditation because mind relaxation gives the wrong impression of the whole idea of the exercise. When you meditate you are releasing your body, soul and mind from all the tensions of your daily chores. But during meditation, your mind is actually very active. Active in a sense of transforming all the negative energies in your body and mind, by using the surrounding environmental energy (the universal energies), into positive ones.
When you start your vacation, you take a tour to release your mind from your daily chores. And once you are away, people you deal with on a daily bases would understand that this time is for you to enjoy yourself, therefore they will leave you alone especially if you do INSIST on being left alone.
Meditation is a mind tour, and "people you deal with" are your thoughts. And if you're serious about being left alone, then they" the thoughts" will leave you alone to enjoy your journey, but remember you have to be INSISTENT.
There are so many meditation techniques that are used in yoga classes. The most common one takes the form of The Corpse pose(Savsana or Shava-asana in Sanskrit). This is the technique I usually use in my yoga sessions, and I am going to demonstrate it hereafter:
Preparation for the Corpse pose:
- prepare a room for your meditation, using incense, and light it with three unscented candles. Different incense is mentioned in my last post, and I personally prefer the use of lavender oil or patchouli.
-If you have a mat, spread it on the floor, if you don't have a mat, a small blanket will do.
-make sure you have some comfortable clothes on, and put on warm socks.
- lie down on your mat in a corpse pose as shown in the picture above, and make sure you are comfortable in this pose , if not, you can tilt yourself a bit to one side keeping in mind that your spinal cord (the home of five energy centers) is touching the ground..
- Your palms should be facing upwards toward the ceiling in a comfortable lazy style, and the soles of your feet should not touch the ground because both your palms and the soles of your feet contain minor energy centers and you don't need to loose your energies to the ground (earth is a very good absorbent of energy; see the post" Your Body is Your Pharmacy and you are the Doctor").
- Cover yourself with a light blanket, because during meditation your body looses temperature, and you might even shiver.
Relaxing the body:
Although it doesn't sound so, but this is a mind exercise. In this exercise you will learn how to create a link between your mind and every muscle in your body. This exercise is very important because a relaxed mind can not reside in a tense body and vise versa. Therefore throughout the whole meditation session the mind has to be set on ALERT and should provide a prompt control to each muscle group in your body. ANY PHYSICAL TENSION DURING THE MIND RELAXATION SESSION WILL READILY DISTRACT THE RESTED MIND AND THE WHOLE MEDITATION SESSION WOULD LOOSE ITS EFFECTIVENESS. Just bare this in mind throughout all your meditation session.
Points to remember while you are practicing this exercise:
- We will start this exercise by tensing then relaxing each muscle group, and since tension is the natural state of our muscles, and relaxation is foreign to them, we will need to take our time in relaxing each muscle group; it usually takes 10 times the time to relax a muscle as opposed to the time needed for tensing it. When you relax any muscle group think of it as a hair braid, which you are trying to loosen up each hair strand ; one by one, all in your mind.
- While practicing this exercise; every time you are asked to tense or relax a certain muscle group, you will notice that other connected muscles will be affected as well. Don't worry about that, just concentrate on the pointed areas.
Body exercise:
1- Move your toes vigorously, then slowly, taking your time, bring each toe back to the relaxed stage (remember the points mentioned above). Calculate, observe, and feel each toe with your mind as you do that.
2- Then move up to your calved and tense them, then relax them as you did in exercise (1)
3- Move up to your thighs and repeat exercise (2) on your thighs.
4- Move up to your abdomen and repeat exercise (2) on your abdomen.
5- Move up to your stomach and again repeat exercise (2) on your stomach.
6- Move up to your chest and repeat exercise (2) on your chest, and if you can't tense your chest, raise it slightly up and again relax it slowly on the mat, calculating with your mind each and every muscle touching the mat.
7- Move your fingers then again relax them by letting each finger slowly abide to gravity.
8- Move up to your forearms and repeat exercise (2) on your forearms.
9- Move up to your shoulders and repeat exercise (2) on your shoulders.
At this stage your whole body is relaxed now, except the head. And you will start feeling some tingling sensations in your palms and toes, and your body temperature would start to drop.
Head exercise:
11-respectively; relax your chin, then let your mouth drop on the sides, relax your cheeks, nose, and finally your eyes, observing each move with your mind.
22- Slowly; take a deep breath in ( inhale using your entire lung's capacity), then pose for a while, and then exhale slowly until you vacuum your lungs completely.
33- Repeat exercise (22) two more times.
44- Return to your natural breathing process.
55- Now tense your eyebrows, making a very narrow forehead, then slowly relax the eyebrows, making a very wide forehead, and at the same time observing the tingling sensation you will feel between your eyes, a bit above your eyebrows, in a place sometimes called the Third Eye. This is your main energy center through which your body is absorbing the surrounding energy and therefore, harmonizing the flow of energy in other energy centers of your body.
Relaxing the mind:
To bring positive energy in, you would have to tune your mind with your relaxed body. This is done through positive thinking, and a lot of yoga classes( when practiced in gyms) use meditation music and let the practitioner's thought drift, or may be ask them to just concentrate on some nice objects in their mind's eye, or just imagine a point of light and divert all thoughts toward that light.
And since the mind is very naughty, and can easily be distracted with the slightest stimuli; I do recommend the use of Mantra (explained in the last post) for the powerful impact they posses. So if you have your mantra ready, play the tape with a remote control (make sure you bring your moved hand back to the relaxed state slowly as you learned before), listen to the words, feel them, connect with them.
When the mantra is over and your music starts, go over the words in your mind until the music stops. And remember what I have said in the beginning of the post; be INSISTANT.
REMEMBER TO HAVE A PART OF YOUR MIND CONSTANTLY CHECKING EACH MUSCLE IN YOUR BODY. AND WHEN ANY MUSCLE IS TENSED, BRING IT BACK TO THE RELAXED STAGE VERY SLOWLY AND PATIENTLY. This is very important to remember so that your session can be a success.
If you do fall asleep, do not resist, you will wake up in due time.
When the music stops, turn and lie down on your right shoulder for sometime before you help yourself up, pushing your body away from the mat with the help of your hands to the seating position.
Sit down for a while before leaving your mat to make sure that your head is not spinning.
Do not touch water or any electric appliances with your palms for about 10-15 min so that you give enough time for the energy to work on your body (you can drink water if you want so long that your palms are not touching water)
You can go back to your daily routine; work, errands, even workout if you want.
meditation does not make you lazy. In contrary; it will recharge your batteries.
Enjoy the bliss, and.....
ChingChing
Name::AyyA
From::Kuwait
I AM WHO I AM AS I ARRIVE AT YOUR DOOR WHETHER I COME OR I GO IS NOT UP TO ME FOR I HAVE LOST SIGHT OF ALL DESIRE "Walled Garden of Truth",Hakim Sanai
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