Spiritual Growth | SuccessConsciousness.com Blog on Self Improvement and Spiritual Growth

Are You Awake?

By Remez Sasson

Are you awake? I don’t mean awake in the usual sense of not sleeping. I am asking if you are really awake.

What does being awake mean?

Are you aware of opportunities that knock on your door?

Are you aware of how the people around you feel? Are you tactful enough in your relations with them?

Are you attentive when conversing people? Are you a good listener, or are you centered within your ego, not listening to the person talking to you?

Are you aware of your habits, and work on overcoming the negative ones and developing positive habits, instead?

Are you aware of the negative or useless thoughts that pass through your mind?

Are you aware of the sense of peace and happiness that is covered and hidden by your thoughts feelings and desires?

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Filed Under: Spiritual Growth Tagged With: awake, Inner Peace, thoughts

Quotes on Kindness

Kindness means being considerate, tolerant, nice to others, saying please and thank you, and helping others. When you treat other people with kindness, you and the other people feel good.

Here are a few quotes on kindness:

Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness Kindness in giving creates love.
- Lao-Tzu -

Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate.
- Albert Schweitzer -

Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.
- Martin Luther -

Giving connects two people, the giver and the receiver, and this connection gives birth to a new sense of belonging.
- Deepak Chopra -

It’s so easy to laugh. It’s so easy to hate. It takes strength to be gentle and kind.
– Stephen Morrissey -

Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.
- Mother Teresa -

Read more quotes at:
www.successconsciousness.com/quotes/kindness.htm

Filed Under: Spiritual Growth

Is the World Just an Illusion or Real?

By Remez Sasson

Is the world just an illusion or real? This is a question that some of the people who visit this website and blog ask.

The world is not real in the sense that:

Nothing is permanent in the world.
The reality or lack or reality of the world largely depends on our five senses.
Everything is vibration in various wavelengths.
Everything is made from the same tiny particles, so the same particles can take different forms.
Everything that we call truth depends on our prior mental programming and education. What someone deems as truth, someone else deems as untrue.
The world is an illusion not in the sense that it is non-existent, but in the sense that we create this illusion with our attitude, upbringing and ignorance. We often create with our feelings and thoughts an illusory world that does not exist. We create a veil that hides reality.

One can understand clearly the illusion only when he or she can free himself or herself from this illusion, and this does not come from just denying the reality of the world and becoming apathetic. This come from the ability to switch off the mind and look inside, and requires a lot of inner work.

We project our thoughts and feelings on the world around us, like a cinema screen on which pictures and light and projected. The screen is real, but the pictures are not. Yet, we respond and react to these moving pictures. They look real when we watch a movie. So it is with our thoughts, feelings and beliefs, when we project them outside. They look real us, and we do not see the reality that is beyond them.

Many things are made from clay, which we call by deferent names, such as vases, statues, plates etc, but nevertheless, they are made of clay, only temporarily turned into various objects.

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Filed Under: Spiritual Growth Tagged With: illusion, real, world

Guide to Spiritual Communities

The Essential Guide To Spiritual Communities
By Axel Gjertsen

Let’s take a close look at the benefits and challenges associated with staying long term in a spiritual community.

It’s useful to know that there are many types of spiritual communities. Some follow old traditions such as Buddhist monasteries while others are new-age centers, where the community members often follow their own spiritual paths.

Most seekers find it really inspiring to stay in a community. There may be a number of experienced meditators living at the center and the group energy is most conducive to spiritual practice.

The size of the community can make a lot of difference. At a large community with 50-100 residents it may take awhile to get to know all the members while the smaller centers are more personal.

Some communities practice a lot of meditation while others don’t. For example, there are Buddhist monasteries in Thailand where they only meditate for 20 minutes per day.

Of course, if you have the discipline you can always practice on your own. It’s much easier to motivate yourself though if the community has at least 2-5 hours of meditation practice on the schedule.

If you get the chance, join a meditation retreat while staying in the community, even if it’s only a 2-5 day retreat. The mind calms down so much by just living in a spiritual community, that you get more out of short retreats than anyone leading a stressful life outside the community.

Read the Complete Article:
The Essential Guide To Spiritual Communities

Filed Under: Spiritual Growth Tagged With: Meditation, mindfulness, spiritual communities

Mouni Sadhu Quotes

Quotes From Mouni Sadhu Writings

When the mind is transcended, the supermental consciousness steps in of itself.

Saints and mystics have developed considerable degrees of concentration and ability to exclude the mind’s activities from the field of awareness.

Although all kinds of mental and emotional vibrations are present around us at all times, men usually respond to those most familiar to them, just as different radio receivers have varying ranges of reception.

To the Master the physical world of phenomena is unreal.

This Self-Consciousness of the Spirit, Atman, God, or Self is the only reality and the only goal that has to be reached.

An omnipotent but unknown power lies latent in every one of us.

The mind is a power, and when controlled and directed, its force and subtlety are apparently unlimited.

Whoever has made peace in himself thereby possess power.

The mind, devoid of its passions, becomes like a well-tamed animal, obedient, useful, more productive and more exact.