Dr. Field is professor in the Departments of Pediatrics, Psychology, and Psychiatry at the University of Miami School of Medicine and Director of the Touch Research Institute. She specializes in infant development and the efficacy of massage and touch therapy in promoting growth and emotional well-being in premature and low birth weight infants. Field is the author of The Amazing Infant, Infancy, Touch, Touch Therapy, Complementary and Alternative Therapies Research, and Massage Therapy Research, as well as edited volumes.


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Tiffany Field, Ph.D.

Touch in the time of social distancing

Tiziana is a 19-year-old environmental activist. Born in Argentina, she moved to Spain in October 2021 to further her studies, develop her language skills, and fulfill her objective of studying International Relations. Tiziana has continued her environmental activities in Spain, joining the Alicante group of the Fridays for Future climate movement. 



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Tiziana Martin

<h4>TIZIANA MARTIN is a 19-year-old environmental activist, who began in her hometown of Mar del Plata, Argentina, 3 years ago and moved to Spain to develop her language skills and study International Relations as part of her legal studies. Tiziana joined the Alicante group of the Fridays For Future climate movement, and maintains strong links with Argentina, highlighting climate and environmental issues, and speaking regularly with journalists. Here she speaks with RACHEL NELSON of the Heartfulness Institute.</h4><hr>Q: Hello Tiziana, it’s great to speak with you and thanks for joining me. Is there anything in particular that started your activism, and why is it important to you?TM: It happened over time. I didn’t wake up saying, “I want to be a climate activist.” Shortly before entering that world, I represented Argentina in the Model United Nations (MUN). We discussed the role of our country with respect to the Paris Agreement, which binds participating countries to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and to limit global warming to well below 2 (preferably to 1.5) degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels.In the MUN, we had to negotiate and deepen international cooperation and that understanding and knowledge of other countries increased my interest in the climate crisis. Moving to Europe last year reaffirmed how much I like international relations.The important thing is to be able to do more and more work, to have the freedom to express my ideas and opinions, to promote work on an international level, and to travel and get to know countries and people that contribute as much as Argentina did for me.My current goal is to study international relations related to environmental activism here in Spain.Q: Climate change is a global problem, but are there specific issues in Argentina or Spain you’re involved in or want to change?”TM: Yes, my home city’s government was recently in favor of letting companies carry out seismic exploration in search of oil and gas, but it is a coastal city, and its main economic activities are tourism and fishing, so they would be affected by oil spills.Although I disagree with the need to continue using fossil fuels, I also understand that we can’t transition to clean energy overnight, and we can’t be an environmental movement that is limited to opposing the productive projects of our country. I believe we have to devise projects that create the best possible environmental conditions, that rely on strong environmental impact studies, and promote development guidelines to enable us to generate the foreign exchange that our countries need.As citizens, we can’t be left out of decision making. It is why we try to have a political influence. This issue of the oil companies touches me very deeply, as it’s happening in my city. Knowing that thousands of people have demonstrated against this project gives me hope.The other day I was talking with my parents who attended the protest, and I understood that not only activists but average citizens are protesting, people who want a healthy future for their children, who don’t want to drink contaminated water, who want to enjoy the coast, and much more.<hr><img src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/Tiziana2_b168b35cc4.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-11T11:24:39.450Z" alt="">&nbsp;<hr>Q: I live in Scotland, and we have a similar situation. A lot of our money comes from tourism and fishing, but we also have oil in the North Sea. We are asking similar questions, and we’re lucky that Scotland is very windy, so wind power is very good here. We just had the COP 26 in Scotland, so there’s been a lot of thought about it recently, but maybe fewer demonstrations here.It’s interesting to look at other countries like Argentina and see what other people are doing. We are lucky in Scotland that we’re not going to be hit badly by climate change until later. But that doesn’t mean we can sit back and do nothing, because it’s other countries we need to think about.How do you think human rights and social justice relate to the climate crisis? Is there a link?TM: Yes. The climate crisis especially affects the sector that contributes the least to it. The social and environmental crisis is an intersectional problem, encompassing many other struggles. I have been in talks with people from Ecuador, Mexico, Colombia, Peru, and Chile, and many of them are native peoples, the main protagonists in the fight for the defense of land. When we talk about intersectionality, we not only talk about them, but we also talk about the fact that the gender inequalities that existed before the climate crisis are going to be a central issue. This is how the climate crisis relates to rights.In Argentina, with the installation of offshore platforms, Article 41 of the National Constitution is being delayed. It establishes that all inhabitants have the right to enjoy a healthy environment. It also establishes access to health, to clean water, and to security, among other things. So, this is a matter of human rights and social justice.Q: Yes, these problems are all interlinked. It’s not just “we’ll deal with the climate crisis then we’ll deal with social injustice,” as they’re often coming from the same issues.&nbsp;Can you tell me about the groups you’re involved in? You mentioned Fridays For Future. Are there other groups? What do you do in those groups to try and help?TM: Three years ago, I joined Jóvenes por el Clima (Youth for Climate), which is affiliated with Fridays for Future, the movement led by Greta Thunberg, the Swedish activist. We grew together in Latin America with the perspective that the climate crisis is a matter of human rights and social justice. Now, in Spain, I am with Fridays For Future.Q: The groups you’re involved in are aimed at people your own age. How do you think young people can positively affect the environment and climate change? Do young people have something that older generations don’t, or do you think it’s just a kind of push because the older generations have let things go for too long?TM: I believe in the power of young people. We are the present, and we have to guarantee the future for future generations. There is a phrase we use a lot at Youth for Climate, “Si el presente es de lucha, el futuro es nuestro!” which means, “If the present is a struggle, the future is ours.”We know what is happening, and we have to do something about it. We need a systemic change. While there are many issues that can’t be changed overnight, if we have the intention to do things well, they will become reality.Sometimes we are afraid to talk about politics, but I feel that politics are fundamental to transforming the present into the future we want. We need an involved and politicized youth.Q: Definitely. You can’t get away from the fact that the power to enact change comes from people and from government. The people in charge have to be willing to change and move things forward. Some governments do more than others, but we need a global consensus. Are governments doing enough?TM: The government projects don’t match the objectives set in the international agreements, for example, at COP 26 in Glasgow. It’s necessary to influence the areas of greatest social transformation, for example, politics and in the streets. Demonstrating and environmental discussion must be open to everyone. It is very important that there is intersectionality influencing the people in power, as they are the decision-makers.For our part, one concrete action is to police politics in relation to the climate and ecological crisis; to change people’s minds and encourage them to participate in their country’s development.Protests are a main tool to express our claims and achieve the transformation for which we fight. A clear example of this happened recently in a province in Argentina, in response to a mining bill. Thanks to demonstrations in different parts of the country, the bill was repealed.<hr><img src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/Tiziana3_245dcec056.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-11T11:26:00.993Z" alt="">&nbsp;<hr>Q: COP 26 saw people getting together for change, but I know a lot of activists felt that while a lot was said, not a lot was decided, and not a lot changed. You’re right that sometimes we need more than a conference. We need people to get out there and make changes themselves. With your example, we can see that it worked.Do you have a message for young activists and people in general?TM: Something I always highlight is for people to really get involved, if not as activists, at least as citizens, as people. Many young people don’t realize the power we have; our voice, our ability to understand the need and be part of the projects and solutions.If you are thinking about getting involved in an environmental movement or organization, take heart, understand what is happening, and think of environmentally sound solutions that go hand in hand with development. Obtain new experiences and tools.For me, activism is a way of life. Once you’re committed, and advance in that process, there is no turning back. For every decision you make, you will find an intersectionality in what you think and do, and the impact your actions will have in the present and the future. I always liked international relations and politics, languages, and cultures, but five years ago I never imagined being in a social environmental movement, giving interviews on TV, etc. During the years of activism in Argentina, I made friends and colleagues, and involved myself in other struggles that have given me knowledge and values.Since I was young, I dreamed of being in Europe to continue my education. My activities here in Spain are wonderful, and I have met activists from all over the world. I learn so much from them. I have gained new tools, encountered new cultures, and practiced English, and I will take more values and knowledge with me.I am very passionate about what I do, and hope that everything I do from now on will improve things.Q: This has clearly become your life. It’s not just “Oh, I’ll do some activism today.” Everything you do lends itself toward that.With these interviews, we want to make sure that young people are being heard. Many of them are stepping out and putting themselves forward when it comes to climate. When people are doing so much work, we want to be able to hear their voices and amplify their voices.What do your family and friends think of you being an activist? Are they supportive?TM: My friends in Argentina are activists, and my family supports me and my friends, too. During the last demonstration in Argentina against the oil companies, my family attended the protest and sent me pictures and videos, because I miss them so much.Q: I can understand that. Do you have any plans for the near future?TM: My dream is to continue to grow in Europe and in Argentina too; to grow as an activist, to be able to study, to work toward environmental issues, and more and more rights for young people, for my country, for Spain. I also love meeting people from other parts of the world. I love learning about other cultures and other languages. They really teach me so much.Q: Europe’s quite good for that. There are so many countries in such a small area, so it’s easy to meet lots of different people.TM: Since I was eight years old, I dreamed of living in Europe. I told my parents I would travel to England for the Beatles, my favorite band, and for the history, too. It’s incredible to be here.Q: Do you have an idea of what career you want to pursue?TM: As a child, my dream was to work with the UN or in a United Europe. I want to be a better person with good values, to work for climate change, for human rights and social justice in Argentina, Latin America, Spain, and the rest of the world, with my friends who are activists. That is my dream. I work for that and study for that. It’s my dream to continue growing as an activist and a person.Q: Thanks, Tiziana. Maybe we should interview you again in five years to see how far you’ve gone. That would be fun!<hr><hr><h4>Interview by RACHEL NELSON&nbsp;</h4><hr>

Creating the best environmental conditions

Tobin is a professor in the University of West Georgia’s Humanistic, Transpersonal and Critical Psychology program, and co-founder of the ChildSpirit Institute, a non-profit educational and research hub exploring and nurturing the spirituality of children and adults. His work explores human consciousness at the nexus of spirituality, psychology, and education. His recent books include: The Four Virtues, The Integrative Mind: Transformative Education for a World on Fire, Spiritual Knowing, From Information to Transformation: Education for the Evolution of Consciousness, Transpersonal Knowing: Exploring the Horizon of Consciousness, and The Secret Spiritual World of Children.



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Tobin Hart

How we know - part 1

<h4></h4>
 TOBIN HART is a
 humanistic transpersonal psychologist, professor in the University of West
 Georgia’s Humanistic, Transpersonal and Critical Psychology program, and
 co-founder of the ChildSpirit Institute. In this three-part
 series, he is interviewed by
 VICTOR KANNAN,
 Director of the Heartfulness Institute USA, and in part 2 they focus on
 Tobin’s book, The Four Virtues, and especially presence, wisdom and
 the heart.
</h4>


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 Q: So, Tobin, in your book you basically talk about presence, heart, wisdom
 and creation as four virtues. In each of these, you also add and talk about
 other things. For example, in presence, you talk about the beautiful, the
 sensing, the focusing, the witnessing, and the opening.



 Can we dig a little bit deeper into this one particular virtue of presence?
 And then see how that is perhaps the most important starting point in one’s
 life?



 TH: Presence, for
 example, really tracks with beauty. So the extent to which we’re present to
 another or present to the world, is the extent to which the world opens to us.
 And in that opening, we find and hear things (and people) as beautiful. To
 really sit with and see somebody beyond their persona and beyond their
 actions, we find that they have this incredible quality of luminosity. We get
 the sense of feeling a soul. What comes out of that is often a sense of love
 and a sense of beauty.



 Sure. In the West, the most enduring depiction of the good life is captured
 with the words “the good, the true and the beautiful.” So, for me, I was
 surprised to see those tracked with each of these things that you mentioned,
 and we’ll add another one, too.



 I have a friend who was on a mission to be with people on death row, years
 ago. Those people had committed horrific crimes, there was really little doubt
 of that. At some point my friend stopped trying to preach anything, convert
 anyone, or change anything. Instead, he simply was present to these inmates,
 listening to them to see who they were. What really surprised him was that
 when he really allowed himself to lose his own agenda and just be with each
 person, their soul poured out and their beauty was revealed. It shocked him
 how much he felt love for them, despite what they had done. In his being
 present for them, they were able to be present for themselves and begin to
 feel a glimpse of their own divinity. This is how he described it. It’s magic
 in some way.



 It’s so simple, yet we come in with an agenda that we’re trying to get
 something from this encounter rather than being there, and we lose something.
 While an agenda can be a good motivator, a good starting point, it can also
 cover deeper experience – whether that is to get my walk in today, my 10,000
 steps, or whatever else it is. It’s a good motivator but we can lose the
 opportunity of presence if we don’t leave the goal behind and be present in
 what we’re doing. If we can’t suspend the surface goal or agenda, whether it’s
 meeting a death row inmate or going for a walk, beauty stays in the
 background. It’s not there in the same way.


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 Q: So presence is to be present to the extent that we can appreciate the
 other.



 TH: I think that
 appreciation is both an outcome and also a portal – to lead with curiosity and
 to move into contact with the other to see who they are. It’s what Martin
 Buber would call an “I–thou” relationship, and through it appreciation emerges
 organically.



 Q: So the quality of time spent in the encounter is one way to look at
 presence, right?



 TH: Yes, I think
 quality is the right word for this. I remember one time when my wife had to go
 out of the country. I had our two little kids and my work, and I was also
 filling in for some of her work. I was overwhelmed. I remember the first night
 putting the kids to bed and sort of shouting with frustration, “Okay, just go
 to sleep now!”



 I was overwhelmed, and after realizing the energy I was giving out, I
 basically said to myself, “Oh, this is awful. I love my kids. I love chance,
 but The extent to which we’re present to another or present to the world, is
 the extent to which the world opens to us. And in that opening, we find and
 hear things (and people) as beautiful. INNERVIEWI’m hating this. So what can I
 drop away? What’s really the priority here?” I hadn’t let go of my
 self-imposed agenda of “I want to get this done this week. I want to finish
 that.” I finally calculated what I absolutely had to take care of during that
 week, and just let everything else go. I ended up having the most glorious
 week with my kids. I fell more deeply in love with them than ever before. As
 you said, it was the quality of time spent and a change in commitment and
 priority.



 Q: So how do you recognize that you are not present, even though you’re
 physically there? What are the tools and techniques that we can use to
 recognize and remedy the patterns of non-engaging presence?



 TH: I think one of
 the most powerful ways is through the body. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, for
 example, says that if you change how you think about something, it will change
 how you feel. Other folks have gone a different way, for example, Eugene
 Gendlin created something called Focusing. He discovered that in psychotherapy
 it wasn’t simply insight, but also a felt sense that helps make change and
 growth happen. We know insight is helpful, but it’s not the same thing as when
 you have a felt sense, that is, a bodily sense of meaning. That’s when change
 actually happens in therapy, for example. It becomes embodied.



 One of the trailheads toward presence is to increase embodiment; increase
 awareness of subtle cues in our heart, in our mouth, and in our gut. For
 example, we know that the enteric nervous system (the gut brain) is full of
 neuropeptides and their receptor sites. We used to think they were only in the
 brain. We understand that they’re involved with thinking. We discovered in the
 ’80s that they’re also in the gut and throughout the body. So the whole body
 is this thinking, feeling being. Even to make a distinction between thought
 and feeling is very difficult. This felt sense is our constant available
 touchstone to check in to see how present we are, and what we’re present to.



 For example, if I say, “Wow, something isn’t right,” and “I feel a little
 tension in my abdomen, what’s that about?”, that’s the trailhead to follow so
 that I can be present to myself in order to be present to something else.


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<h5 class="has-text-align-center">
 The extent to which we’re present to 
 another or present to the world, is the extent to which the world opens to us. And in that opening, we find and hear things (and people) as beautiful.
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 Other times, things come from the outside; we’re grabbed by beauty, or by
 something unexpected. Toward the end of his life, after he had had a couple of
 heart attacks, Maslow had what he called plateau experiences, instead of peak
 experience. He began to talk about presence. He said that in that state you
 get stabbed by things, by babies, by flowers, by beautiful things, and just
 the very act of living. It’s this idea that the outside creates this real
 resonance if we’re open to it in some way.



 Q: So, that’s where he probably says that beauty kills, right?



 TH: Kills the
 separate Self. Yes.



 Q: You also talk about the heart. You assigned the beautiful to presence,
 the good to the heart, and the true to wisdom. The heart is also a place of
 enormous duality and emotion, right?


TH: Yes.

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 Q: So both pain and suffering as well as good and kindness are all in the
 heart. How do you feel the heart through the duality of emotion? I ask this
 because most of us are trying to avoid pain and seek pleasure. How do we
 make sure that the heart – either as an instrument or as an organ of feeling
 – can navigate through these dualities and also become either a tool or an
 indicator for how we are leading our lives?



 When you mentioned connecting as part of the heart, if I take “the good”
 with the connection, how do we connect to the good, while also recognizing
 the connection to the bad and the impact of that?



 TH: That’s a big
 question, isn’t it?



 What I see is that the heart is not discriminant. It’s here just to feel and
 to love. It’s about compassion, it’s about empathy. It’s about connecting.
 This may be a more limited notion than your use of the word “heart” or
 “heartfulness.” But for me, to be in the world, and to feel it in some way,
 are essential to bringing wisdom into this life. We can only do that by first
 really encountering the heart as fully as we can. Then we have a chance not to
 be consumed by feelings, but to be able to be with them in a way that is
 transformative.



 In the United States, we have this thing called “life, liberty and the pursuit
 of happiness.” It’s a mixed bag, right? These days we have an expectation that
 if we’re not happy, if we’re not doing something that we’re happy about,
 something’s wrong with us. So it becomes a value. That’s an imposition. It can
 really throw us off course. People indulge in moments of pleasure, for
 example, to find happiness, or they try to make a lot of money to find
 happiness. I would say that, instead of that pursuit of happiness, the goal is
 the pursuit of fullness in some way. We all want to feel good rather than
 jealous; we want to feel playful rather than overly serious. But putting
 feelings into Remarkable people have an undercurrent of joy, even an
 undercurrent of equanimity, even when they’re in the midst of darkness and
 despair. They may be desperately sad, but still there’s something else that
 they tap into or stand in. It’s a place of rest. It’s a place of
 steadiness.categories of good versus bad, which is a fashion these days in
 psychology, really sets us up for an oppositional adversarial relationship to
 ourselves. I would argue that we’ve created an opponent, and the opponent is
 us. So, instead, the question might be, “How can I have a sense of welcoming
 them all?”



 Rumi has a wonderful poem that many people know as “The Guest House.”
 Essentially he says to welcome all feelings, “a joy, a depression, a
 meanness,” and then, “The dark thought, the shame, the malice”… invite them
 in. Be grateful for whoever comes, for each has been sent as a guide from
 beyond.” They’re just feelings. They’re just here, leading us somewhere, to
 pay attention, inviting us to be present with them, welcoming them all, rather
 than having prejudice for one or another. There’s a s sense of, “Ah, okay,
 what do you have to show me? Can I be with that?”



 What this implies is that there’s another order of awareness and capacity to
 be with this and have equanimity, balance and even joy in this. Usually the
 way we define happiness is that we feel happy when something good happens,
 whereas the etymological meaning of the word “joy” is an exaltation of spirit.
 Joy means an exaltation of spirit.


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<hr />

<h5 class="has-text-align-center">
 Remarkable people have an undercurrent of joy, even an undercurrent
 of equanimity, even when they’re in the midst of darkness and despair.
 They may be desperately sad, but still there’s something else
 that they tap into or stand in. It’s a place of rest. It’s
 a place of steadiness.
</h5>

<hr />

<hr class="vertical-space1" />


 So remarkable people have an undercurrent of joy, even an undercurrent of
 equanimity, even when they’re in the midst of darkness and despair. They may
 be desperately sad, but still there’s something else that they tap into or
 stand in. It’s a place of rest. It’s a place of steadiness. It’s a place of
 clarity that says, “Yes, yes, this human world is indeed about all these ups
 and downs, this roller coaster ride, and it’s so easy to fall down any one of
 these holes, pleasure or pain. But from this other position, we can see that
 it’s bigger than that.” We see that fundamentally there’s the possibility of
 equanimity and joy.



 Q: Nice. So, this is wisdom, right? Is it something we can cultivate or are
 we born with it?



 TH: Well in Zen,
 they tell us to have a beginner’s mind. In the Book of Matthew in the Bible,
 the instructions are to turn and become like a little child; only then shall
 you enter the Kingdom of Heaven. So there’s something about this presence of
 being that seems to be tied to wisdom.



 Wisdom doesn’t come through calculation. It doesn’t come through shrewdness.
 Those things may be intelligence and they may be really useful for life, but I
 would argue that wisdom comes from something else. It comes from being in
 rapport with the mystery of reality.



 We can recognize that it involves a couple of different things. For example,
 Aquinas, who’s influential in Western spiritual thought, said that wisdom
 involves what he called “the virtue of gnome,” which means higher discernment
 or seeing into the heart of something. There is some way that the mind of a
 child sometimes sees into the heart of something, or can instantly grasp the
 emotional reality. If somebody is in pain, even though they are denying it,
 the child gets it; they see something present. Rather than shrewdness or
 calculation, it involves a capacity, a willingness and an ability to enter in
 with wonder, with radical openness, seeing from a greater height, seeing into
 the heart of something.



 Can we cultivate it? Well, cultivating heart and cultivating presence lead to
 this. One of my favorite things about wisdom is the capacity for possibility.
 Often, our minds construct things in a certain way, because our family and our
 culture construct things in a certain way. We believe that this is the way it
 is. But wisdom really believes in the possibility of all things. It’s this
 radical ability to step beyond the frame we’re in to see it from a greater
 height from within the heart.



 Sometimes great spiritual guides, great discoverers, inventors, and others
 have these moments. We’re so conditioned by our surroundings, by our
 worldview, by our family, and by our experience, that it’s hard to leave the
 gravitational pull of that conditioning in order to get another point of view.
 And yet wisdom engenders and enables another possibility; always another
 possibility.


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How we know - part 2

<h4>TOBIN HART is a humanistic transpersonal psychologist, professor in the University of West Georgia’s Humanistic, Transpersonal and Critical Psychology program, and co-founder of the ChildSpirit Institute. In the final part of this series, in which he is interviewed by VICTOR KANNAN, Director of the Heartfulness Institute USA, Tobin speaks about the intersection of western psychology and spirituality, in particular the importance of presence, imagination, wisdom, love, compassion, purity, and overcoming spiritual bypassing.</h4><hr>Q: When you talk about possibility, would faith be part of wisdom?TH: Yes, in this sense my favorite definition of faith is a suspension of disbelief. So, rather than believe in something, there is another important quality or capacity we call imagination. One of the powerful allies for wisdom and possibility is imagination. Can we conceive of another way? And can we act “as if ” for a bit? Can we hold open possibility for long enough? Imagination is a bridge between the known and the unknown. From psychology, we know our minds are so powerfully conditioned to see things, to perceive in a way, and to believe in a way. If we can imagine another way, suddenly we can free ourselves. That’s also part of what I think wisdom is about – to free ourselves.Q: So faith is also a bridge between the known and the unknown.&nbsp;TH: Exactly. Yes.Q: So imagination is the bridge between the known and the unknown.&nbsp;TH: Yes.Q: Wisdom is also a bridge between perhaps the known and the unknown at this point in time, in a way that they seem to share in the quality of each other.&nbsp;TH: Yes, absolutely. Really, I think with all the things we are talking about, if you go deep enough into any one of them it opens to all the others. Wisdom involves some other things too. It involves cultivating clarity and seeking guidance. Different capacities serve us. For example, how do we find wise guides? From our interiority, from our inspiration, from a dialogue with a good book, with our children, with our loved ones in general, and, ultimately, with any circumstance, we’re looking for signs.The indigenous cultures often read signs, such as the flight of a bird or something that crosses our path. It’s fascinating to say, “Wow, okay, what does that do for me? Why does it resonate?” Rather than making any ontological claims about somebody sending this bird to me, it’s instead, “What is that about? What does it trigger or open? How can I dialogue with this? What does it make me think of ?” So we’re always available for guidance, and it’s always available to us.<hr><img src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/how_we_know_part3_2_335e423034.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-11T15:33:53.688Z" alt=""><hr>Q: And that is not possible if we are not present. In the wisdom category, you talk about discernment, and also about the child’s ability to directly perceive things.TH: Exactly.Q: In your book, you mention a tool called SAM, the Spirituality Assessment Matrix. So, if I were to say to myself, “Hey, I want to become wiser, I want to be able to perceive things better,” then what type of assessment should I give myself?TH: You’re referring to the instrument we made. It’s just a series of questions to ask yourself. It’s for self-reflection when folks look for help, direction and guidance to develop their psycho-spiritual potential. I think it’s very difficult to do the spiritual life without simultaneously doing the psychological, and the psychological without the spiritual. SAM was designed to give a self-assessment about what your strengths are already, and what might be some specific trailheads for growth.<hr><h4 style="text-align:center;">How do we find wise guides?&nbsp; From our interiority, from our inspiration,&nbsp; from a dialogue with a good book,&nbsp; with our children, with our loved ones in general,&nbsp; and, ultimately, with any circumstance,&nbsp; we’re looking for signs.</h4><hr>For example, you might discover that you have this incredibly big heart, compassion and empathy, but you may not have a strong capacity for, say, discernment. Another person might have a lot of presence, being really aware and awake, and yet not have what is the fourth direction – they have not found their voice. They haven’t yet found their creative expression in the world.Maybe your capacity for love and compassion overrides any discernment. So anytime you see something or someone in need, you give to them automatically but end up feeling drained, sometimes even like a doormat. You might justify it further by saying, “Well, what I’ve given hasn’t helped, but at least I’ve given it to them.” You may even feel like a martyr in some way, suffering as you give. Yet, I would argue that to give without a very organic joy is problematic. It misses the point really. I think when folks give freely from their hearts, there is this incredible expansion, and the whole world is enriched by it. So, in this particular case, it might be that one needs to practice or develop the capacity for discernment, maybe even more particularly, self-assertion. Practicing when to say no, and when to say yes, and when to be particular in what and how to give. For example, rather than giving cash to someone who has trouble with drugs, you give meals instead. That’s where the heart really joins with wisdom so that we can serve one another.Q: You’re talking about a different dimension of all this working together, right? For example, we can be compassionate, but if we don’t have joy, we reach empathy-fatigue. If we are compassionate but don’t have wisdom, then we don’t know when to stop, or how much to give, or what to give?I feel it all works together, and that leads me to the idea of evolution of consciousness. At the end of the day, all these elements of love, wisdom etc., are in the consciousness of a person. The joy you speak about is when the evolution of consciousness, expansion of consciousness, and purity of consciousness reach a level where joy is possible.TH: When I think about purity of consciousness, I think that this is the notion of oneness; ultimately, things are all one. The notion of maya alludes to this. At this level of perception or awareness, things are illusory in relation to the ultimate, where there is oneness of all things. That’s what I think of when I think of purity of consciousness.The evolution of consciousness is tricky, because one could argue that consciousness doesn’t evolve. It’s just what it is, always. It’s pure. So, in my mind, the idea of evolution of consciousness is about how each of us, as individuals, and as a community of humanity, can really develop our presence, our love, our wisdom, and our creativity, in order to come closer to that greater mystery.I think that’s what we’re about in our own very, very particular ways. Sometimes it can be tricky, because it’s easy for folks who are very earnest and very advanced to do spiritual by passing. That is, they take that ultimate perspective of oneness and dismiss the reality of their personhood, the need for differentiation and discernment.The sentiment might be, “If all is oneness, then I need to love everything. So let me treat everything accordingly.” Yet the reality is that there’s some things that you don’t love. So there’s denial, there’s repression. What we know is this: What we resist will persist, and it will come back to haunt us. It’s what Carl Jung talked about as the shadow. Jung talked about the whole process of individuation. The process of evolution of individual consciousness is about “shadow work.”It’s about owning those parts of ourselves that we don’t want to see.William James says that the things we value most are at the mercy of the things we value least. That’s particularly true about ourselves, right? So, that’s where this trick is. I think we’re limited, but let’s accept that, and see how we engage with and move through it rather than deny and bypass. This is our work towards expanding consciousness.<hr><h4 style="text-align:center;">When I think about purity of consciousness,&nbsp; I think that this is the notion of&nbsp; oneness; ultimately, things are all one.&nbsp; The notion of maya alludes to this.&nbsp; At this level of perception or awareness,&nbsp; things are illusory in relation to the ultimate,&nbsp; where there is oneness of all things.</h4><hr>Spiritual bypassing is a real problem with earnest and honest spiritual seekers. That’s why the psychological and the spiritual have to go together every step of the way. To move spiritually, you have to work through, or in some way disentangle, the psychological structures that have kept you at a certain level. For example, we see great spiritual guides, people who really are remarkable in many respects, who are also abusing people. They haven’t done sufficient psychological work. On the other hand, we know lots of people who are brilliant intellectually and great personalities, but in some way don’t have the spiritual capacity or vision to really have the fullness of potential.Q: I want to go a little bit deeper into spiritual bypassing. I think this has been introduced through different terminologies. For example, in Heartfulness, the first Guide says that we have not even taken the first step in spirituality until we have improved our character. He makes a big distinction between character formation and spiritual achievement. To me, it is spiritual bypassing if you are not focusing on improving your character.Can you talk a little bit more about this, maybe giving one or two examples? That way, people can really understand that the very spiritual practice they are doing can be counterproductive if they do not increase their level of awareness of some of those shadows or blind spots.TH: Yes, sure. There is a simple everyday one, and that is practicing to be fully loving. Imagine you go to pick up your car from a repair shop. You’re having a muffler replaced, and they quoted you $60 but it turns out to be $600.You decide, “Boy, this person must need the money more than I do. From a heartful place I’m just going to give it to them.” And yet, there’s another part of you that says, “I think I’ve just been swindled. I think I’ve just been cheated,” but you make a decision not to address that. You swallow it. Rather than being assertive (not aggressive) and saying, “Look, you told me this. We had a contract, and you didn’t call me to tell me that something changed with the contract.”That’s human life. If you’re conflict avoidant, which a lot of us are, particularly if we’re trying to be in our heart, this will just rile you up. You may wake up at night with it, but rationalize to yourself that, “No, I did the right thing.” This is a very simple example, but it’s at that level that the tension of the spiritual and the psychological is manifested day in and day out.<hr><img src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/how_we_know_part3_3_a698f7976d.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-11T16:59:32.636Z" alt=""><hr><h4 style="text-align:center;">In my mind, the idea of evolution of consciousness&nbsp; is about how each of us, as individuals,&nbsp; and as a community of humanity,&nbsp; can really develop our presence, our love, our wisdom,&nbsp; and our creativity, in order&nbsp; to come closer to that greater mystery.</h4><hr>Another category of spiritual bypassing comes when we might have had some experience, some powerful awakening of sorts. So, we’ve had some ecstasy, some vision, or some profound sense of love, and we really seek to be with that, to live with that. Yet spiritual experiences can also be a trap. We become so attached to them that everything else falls to the wayside. People then pursue the experience, seeking another high, essentially, and it becomes an addiction. Rather than the profound event being a source of development and growth, it now actually becomes an anchor that holds us back. We may become fixated rather than curious, and this is keeping us from being present in any situation. Also, the ego may assume that this special moment means that we’re special and fuel ego-inflation, which works against spiritual growth.There are other sorts of issues when we have experiences. I think there are three general steps we might go through:In terms of overarching questions, the first step is, “What happened? What does this mean?” whether it’s a near death experience, or a great moment in meditation, or whatever. So, we’re trying to figure it out, to ground it in understanding and meaning so that we can get our bearings.The next stage, as a question, is: “What am I to do?” That might mean, “How do I need to readjust my life and redirect my efforts in light of what I now know?”The last step takes the integration still further: “How am I to be? What is the life that flows from and through this?” We could say this has more to do with being than doing.Q: So what’s the end goal of all this? What’s the ultimate purpose of life and living, walking and exercising? Another way to put it is: How do we derive meaning from all these activities and aspirations?TH: Well, I think the point of life is to live it. Pretty simple. And I do like that it’s a mystery. How do we engage the mystery in a way that feels fulfilling? I think that we basically have some internal felt sense, a barometer or an invisible hand on our shoulder, and it’s directing us in some way. I don’t know how it works. I think we’ll leave that as a mystery. But I do think that we have this opportunity of our life in the Earth school. The job is to do a couple things, that is, to see what it is that is ours to give and what it is ours to learn. In some ways, I would say that’s the definition of a calling.<hr><img src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/how_we_know_part3_4_779fe76d73.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-11T17:02:16.281Z" alt=""><hr>Q: In Heartfulness we say that we are connected with the Source. It’s even a logical hypothesis, because we all have come from some place, so there is a source for everything – not only the source of creation, but also the source of sustenance, and so on. So, if we are part of that which is created and is being sustained, then there is a connection to the Source.So the hypothesis is about how I establish a connection with the Source and what does it mean? How does it feel, and what does the journey look like? One idea in terms of the purpose of life, or meaning of life, is basically to be cognizant of this connection and the nature of our journey towards the Source. What are the benefits of that journey, the progressive, feel-good aspect, in a very tangible way, in a real way, not in an assumed way? In a way where you’re marching the trail of reality, where whatever you see is real and authentic. Then you become more and more one with it.I’m going to send you a book called The Heartfulness Way, written by Daaji, our Guide, where he tries to explain everything as rationally as possible. But at the same time, there is only so much that the rational mind can grasp. It is in keeping with the wonder, the curiosity and the observation out there that we extend our knowledge from what we can know logically to what we can know with wonder.TH: I’ve recently read some of Daaji’s writings and really appreciate them. His writings are beautifully coherent and down-to-earth. It is very contemporary, not as in trends, not even as a translation, but as a very sane and spiritual depiction relevant for today. I feel the kinship.Q: You want to share anything else, Tobin?TH: I’ve appreciated your incisive and big questions. It’s been nice to talk with somebody who’s really knowledgeable and smart about it.Q: Thank you, Tobin. I hope this conversation further adds to our understanding of psychology and spirituality as a whole study of humanity. Thank you so very much.&nbsp;&nbsp;

How we know - part 3

Tony Fadell

Problems

Maharaja Dr. Nader has a degree in Internal Medicine, a Ph.D. in Neuroscience, and is a researcher, university president, author, and Vedic scholar. He is the leader of the Transcendental Meditation Movement.

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Tony Nader

<h3 style="text-align:center;">BEING AND BECOMING</h3><h4 style="text-align:justify;">DR. TONY NADER, neuroscientist, author, and leader of the Transcendental Meditation® movement, shares some insights on consciousness, and the research findings of TM that highlight the Maharishi Effect as a way of raising the consciousness of humanity.</h4>&nbsp;All spiritual leaders emphasize the importance of attending to an aspect of life that is beyond matter and physical energy, a reality transcendental to surface sensory perception.The relationship between the physical and this non-physical reality has inspired great debates in philosophy and religion for millennia, and those debates continue among today’s scientists.On one extreme are the physicalists, who propose that there is nothing spiritual, that consciousness and awareness are not real but only illusory byproducts—epiphenomena of the physical activity of the human nervous system. At best, physicalists see consciousness as a conundrum and call the mind-body relationship a “hard problem” because they cannot see how mechanical objective reality leads to subjective personal experience.Then there are the dualists, who propose two different and separate fundamental realities, one objective and material and the other subjective and non-material. This begs the same question: how can two fundamentally different entities, one natural and obeying strict laws and the other seemingly supernatural, possibly interact and influence each other?Scientists look at explanations asserting anything supernatural with skepticism. They shy away from explanations that do not conform to objective laws. Anything supernatural poses a problem for science, not only in the unexplainable mechanisms by which the non-physical interacts with the physical, but also in the potential “apparent moodiness” and “unreasonable decisions” of such supernatural actors.&nbsp;<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:75%;"><img src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/being_becoming2_9367fdfbb8.webp" alt="being-becoming2.webp" srcset="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/thumbnail_being_becoming2_9367fdfbb8.webp 145w,https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/large_being_becoming2_9367fdfbb8.webp 941w,https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/being_becoming2_9367fdfbb8.webp 941w," sizes="100vw"></figure>&nbsp;The Advaita Vedanta perspective, brought to light by Adi Shankara, proclaimed by Swami Vivekananda, and more recently emphasized by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, presents consciousness as primary and all there is. Consciousness is all there is!We propose that this Vedic perspective solves all the problems and conundrums of philosophy and science. There is no hard problem of consciousness because consciousness is all there is; it is both natural and fundamental, both immanent and transcendental.To exist is to be conscious. To be is to be conscious. Pure existence is pure consciousness. Becoming is the process by which consciousness knows itself, appearing as many but remaining one. In the upcoming book, entitled, Consciousness Is All There Is, both logic and empirical evidence provide support for how the one unbounded ocean of consciousness manifests as multiplicity. There is only one ocean of pure Being appearing on the surface to become an endless number of waves.The latest discoveries of modern physics in supergravity and M-theory point to a similar, unified reality at the basis of all diversity. Instantaneous infinite correlation appearing as action at a distance much faster than the speed of light has been shown scientifically, a phenomenon called entanglement. The phenomenon of being in many places at the same time is now understood as natural and described by wave functions on the quantum levels. Uncertainty and randomness in the behavior of elementary particles open the possibility of freedom even within the constraints of very strict, deterministic laws. These and other discoveries of modern science baffle scientists, who often describe them as weird. Most significantly, these phenomena beg for explanations that can only come with a fundamental paradigm shift from the materialist and physicalist perspective to a consciousness-based worldview.<hr><h4 style="text-align:center;">Just as the coherence of an individual’s consciousness determines their behavior, so the coherence of the collective consciousness&nbsp; of many individuals influences social behavior.&nbsp;</h4><hr>What appears as supernatural or magical is simply due to a limited understanding of the fundamental laws of nature. The Vedic tradition has technologies that utilize such fundamental aspects of consciousness to create effects that might seem supernatural to those who are ignorant of ultimate reality. But these technologies and phenomena are nonetheless natural, obeying strict laws. If, two hundred years ago, someone had said that it is possible for two people to talk to each other and even to see each other across vast distances, this would have been considered magical and supernatural. Today, video conferencing is an entirely natural way to communicate aurally and visually across the globe and beyond.The supportive evidence for a consciousness-based Vedantic worldview is not just theoretical; there are reliable empirical findings and considerations. We live in a realm of constantly changing physical manifestations, and when we examine this carefully, we find that consciousness is the one aspect we can be one hundred percent sure about.Most importantly, hundreds of scientific research studies on the technologies of consciousness, as demonstrated by Maharishi’s Transcendental Meditation® (TM) program, have shown profound benefits in individual and social life. These improvements come on many levels of mental and physical health, behavior, and social, national, and international well-being. Applying these consciousness-based Vedic technologies has clearly demonstrated how achieving inner peace can create world peace.Just as the coherence of an individual’s consciousness determines their behavior, so the coherence of the collective consciousness of many individuals influences social behavior. Practice of the advanced Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi® programs, as brought to light by Maharishi from the Vedic tradition, produces a powerful coherence in both individual and collective consciousness, reducing both individual and social stress.Most significantly, to achieve world peace, it is not necessary for all individuals everywhere to be developing their inner peace. There is a shortcut: it is called the Maharishi Effect.The Maharishi Effect is the positive result when one percent of a population practices the Transcendental Meditation technique or the square root of one percent of a population practices the TM and TM-Sidhi programs together in one place. It is characterized by significant improvements in societal trends, decreasing negative factors such as crime, accidents, hospital admissions, and indicators of conflict and violence, including war deaths, and increasing positive economic and social tendencies.&nbsp;<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:75%;"><img src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/being_becoming3_e650102a91.webp" alt="being-becoming3.webp" srcset="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/thumbnail_being_becoming3_e650102a91.webp 145w,https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/large_being_becoming3_e650102a91.webp 547w,https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/being_becoming3_e650102a91.webp 547w," sizes="100vw"></figure>&nbsp;The usual methods of crime prevention, such as policing and corrections, and of conflict resolution, such as military presence and diplomacy, have shown minimal and temporary results. They rely on coercion or negotiation, while the underlying problems of high stress levels with limited consciousness and narrow awareness remain. Reduced vision and creativity manifest as economic and social turmoil. These problems cannot be resolved by force and compromise.A worldview that considers physicality and material possession as primary, even all there is, will always lead to conflict and opportunism with short term, narrow, and limited perspectives.Today, leaders turn to science for guidance, and science is finally embracing consciousness. Artificial intelligence and genetic engineering promise great benefits but also pose tremendous risks and dangers, and this has made raising human consciousness to its highest potential absolutely necessary.Besides the hundreds of research studies on the benefits of Transcendental Meditation for individuals, there have been 116 scientific papers documenting the improvements that the Maharishi Effect brings to social life. Of these, 54 empirical studies were published in peer-reviewed scholarly journals or professional conference proceedings. Another 38 papers were published in research anthologies. Many studies had project review boards of independent scientists. Statistical analysis of the results yielded very small probabilities (p-values), indicating to a near certainty that the results were not due to chance or other factors. The studies routinely used publicly available statistics anyone could confirm. Nearly all studies first appeared in publications independent of the Maharishi Foundation and its affiliates. There was no “cherry-picking” of data to support the hypothesis.&nbsp;<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:75%;"><img src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/being_becoming4_35cc1c074b.webp" alt="being-becoming4.webp" srcset="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/thumbnail_being_becoming4_35cc1c074b.webp 145w,https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/large_being_becoming4_35cc1c074b.webp 572w,https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/being_becoming4_35cc1c074b.webp 572w," sizes="100vw"></figure>&nbsp;The Maharishi Effect was found to be causal, not merely correlational: during periods when it was predicted, trends in diverse social indicators that previously were moving randomly with respect to each other all began to move in the same positive directions. Moreover, the Maharishi Effect scales: Eighteen studies found improvements in small towns, five in entire states, thirty-two in culturally and ethnically diverse nations, and five worldwide. Twenty theoretical papers have closely examined how the Maharishi Effect works. And today, ongoing genetic investigations and brain-to-brain synchrony research are probing the details of how a meditating TM group affects the behavior of people at a distance who are not meditating.In short, the Maharishi Effect is a phenomenon operating in the consciousness field, at the unified field level of natural law. For a world population surpassing eight billion, 10,000 people applying these technologies together in one place would be enough to create the Maharishi Effect and accelerate progress toward world peace.We look forward to seeing this great assembly lead to important decisions and actions from this land of the Vedas, offering and implementing the Vedic technologies of consciousness as a perfect science for happiness, health, prosperity, and world peace.From a talk given at the Global Spirituality Mahotsav, March 14 to 17, 2024.<hr><h4 style="text-align:center;">Illustrations by ANANYA PATEL &nbsp;</h4><hr>

The Maharishi effect

Maharaja Dr. Nader has a degree in Internal Medicine, a Ph.D. in Neuroscience, and is a researcher, university president, author, and Vedic scholar. He is the leader of the Transcendental Meditation Movement.

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Tori Amos

Be your own person

Tracie is a LCSW, who has been working in the social service field since 1991. Her work has included Peace Corps in West Africa and trauma recovery with survivors in Chicago. Tracie offers culturally sensitive treatment focusing on individual strengths, self-love and connection.



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Tracie Pape

<h4>
 TRACIE PAPE is a clinical social worker,
 therapist, and longtime Heartfulness Meditation trainer, who works in the crisis area of mental health. Tracie
 questions how she is showing up for herself, and encourages all of us to ask ourselves the same
 questions.
</h4>



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<h5 class="has-text-align-center">“Loneliness does not come from having no people around you, but from being unable
 to communicate the things that seem important to you.” – Carl Jung</h5>



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As all of us emerge from the global pandemic, we are experiencing challenges unlike anything we have ever encountered
 before. I work in the mental health field in the area of crisis, and have witnessed first-hand the impact the
 pandemic has had on mental health. Many who struggled with depression or anxiety prior to the pandemic found the
 symptoms exacerbated by the stress of isolation and fear. One thing I noticed, even with myself, was an increased
 sense of loneliness. This observation has been a catalyst for me to consider what helps me connect to others and
 what gets in the way.



Systemic racism and intergenerational trauma have been at the forefront of mental health issues for social workers
 during this time. The impact of oppression, inequity of resources and support, parents with untreated mental health
 concerns, and lack of education or stigma about mental health can keep many of us in the dark.



Anxiety can keep our nervous system on high alert and sensitive to perceived rejection or judgment. Depression can
 keep us hidden away to protect ourselves from rejection or judgment. During the past two years, most of us have felt
 these emotions to varying degrees. When these states are chronical, we are disconnected from ourselves and others.




Personally, the importance of connecting to myself has been reinforced as I prepare to send my youngest son off to
 college. I have spent many years focusing on being a mother, while also helping others professionally. One of the
 most enjoyable parts about being a parent has been watching my children grow into their own persons, and identify
 their values and unique gifts. Through conversations with my boys, I have realized that a lot of what I try to
 instill and teach others are things I am still struggling to incorporate into my life.



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<figure><img decoding="async" width="700" height="769" alt="" class="lazyload has-img-center"
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<h4 class="has-text-align-center">When I am kind to myself in
 the same way I am often kind to others, I feel the connection with them more deeply. This has been
 the key for me to feel included and loved.</h4>



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While giving feedback to others at work, I often think to myself, “Am I doing this in my own life?” The idea that we
 teach what we need to learn has been popping up a lot for me lately.



As I encourage others to practice self-compassion and take care of themselves, how often am I putting that into
 practice?



Self-compassion is essential if I am to step aside from negative or fearful thoughts about myself and the world, and
 attend to myself with love and kindness. The Chicago South Side Irish mindset I have inherited can often tell me,
 “keep this to yourself,” and “if you worked harder, you wouldn’t feel this way.” The awareness that some of my core
 beliefs are a result of upbringing rather than inadequacies has been liberating. Resmaa Menakem’s book My
 Grandmother’s Hand resonated with me on a very profound level by showing me how much of what I feel in my
 body is inherited or contextual, and it is up to me to respond differently.



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<figure><img decoding="async" width="700" height="650" alt="" class="lazyload has-img-center"
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The assumption that we are all doing the best we can has helped free me from self-judgment. When I am kind to myself
 in the same way I am often kind to others, I feel the connection with them more deeply. This has been the key for me
 to feel included and loved. By loving myself, I am able to see, feel, and respond to the kindness and love of
 others. Sometimes, loneliness can set in when we are not looking out for it, or allowing ourselves to feel the bids
 for connection and offerings of support from others.



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<h4 class="has-text-align-center">Illustrations by LAKSHMI GADDAM</h4>



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Are you showing up for yourself?

Self-care in the midst of crisis

<h4>This is an invitation from TRACIE PAPE to practice Peacefulness and see what the simple and powerful intentions can create within you and in others.</h4>“Let there be Peace on Earth and let it begin with me.”&nbsp; —Vince GillGrowing up in the Catholic Church, singing this song was my favorite part of the mass. With everyone singing in unison, a sense of connectedness would arise each Sunday when we sang the chorus. For those who meditate, Peacefulness feels like this hymn. Many traditions focus on the importance of love for all and working for a more peaceful world.&nbsp;As a longtime Heartfulness practitioner and a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, my understanding of the role spirituality plays in our well-being has evolved. Suffering is an inevitable part of human existence. A common reaction to suffering is to withdraw and isolate in an attempt to protect others from experiencing our distress. Loneliness is one of the most significant factors in contributing to human suffering. One of the greatest gifts we can receive and offer is presence and bearing witness to pain. This is support in its purest form and offers balm for the soul. Presence is manifested in Peacefulness and allowing all to exist as they are, sending out the intention that we can live in harmony with ourselves and each other.I can practice this even when not physically connected to others. I often think of Peacefulness as a pregnant pause. It is a pause and an intention full of potential, unknown and unseen. Before I meditate, before I work, before I interact with others, I pause and enter a state of Peacefulness, allowing me to connect with my values and highest intentions. Peacefulness makes space for stillness, reflection, and intent.Peacefulness allows me to feel connected with others and all beings in that pause, reflection, and intent. I experience Peacefulness as self-compassion turned outward. When I send out an intention for peace, kindness, compassion, and love, I am connecting with that place within me that experiences that condition and hopes for others to experience it. When I practice self-compassion, I tap into the idea that I am already enough as I am, which supports self-love and self-acceptance. Peacefulness helps me tap into this idea that we are all enough as we are, with the intention of spreading this awareness and insight.<hr><h4 style="text-align:center;">Peacefulness helps me tap into this idea&nbsp; that we are all enough as we are, with the intention of spreading this awareness and insight.</h4><hr>As we invite others to practice Peacefulness, it is a collective intent to see where this can take us together. Practice pausing and using the Peacefulness intentions to stay in touch with what is really important. This simple act can reduce reactivity, resistance, and conflict when engaging with others. It is possible to set an intention to focus on connection and well-being above all else. This is an opportunity to see what our collective intentions can create for us, our families, friends, and communities.Peacefulness creates an avenue to connect with that place in us that longs for connection, love, and peace. It also connects with that place in others. We have all experienced pain and hardship that have created barriers to peace and acceptance. This allows us to have compassion for the suffering in others. Peacefulness increases our capacity to understand others’ pain and have compassion for suffering humanity.<figure class="image"><img src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/My_Fellow_Travelers2_8e9faf9b7d.jpg"></figure>We may never know the impact our thoughts and intentions have, so engaging in Peacefulness can be an act of hope. Join me in practicing Peacefulness to channel hope for humanity, to remember that we are all connected, and that we all long for self-love and a sense of belonging.<a href="https://www.peacefulness.org/our-intentions">https://www.peacefulness.org/our-intentions</a>For those of you feeling a calling to practice Peacefulness, we will create the path and future of this approach, and we will see where it takes us together. Cheers to my fellow travelers and I look forward to this journey together.“Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.”&nbsp; —Albert Einstein<figure class="image"><img src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/My_Fellow_Travelers3_739b388061.jpg"></figure>

My fellow travelers

Trevor Weltman is a business leader and writer who currently lives with his wife and two daughters in the US. Daily, he reads books of all flavours, from self-help to sci-fi, management theory to graphic novels, and actively applies everything he learns to his attempt at cracking further the code of this thing we call life.

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Trevor Weltman

<h4>TREVOR WELTMAN’s honest appraisal of life in lockdown, with his wife and two young daughters in busy Bangkok, is a refreshing look at how to navigate and transcend the expectations and tensions that surface when we are thrown together for months on end in close quarters without all our normal support structures. Best of all, the outcome is positive and inspirational!</h4>Anything we ever said, ‘I’ll deal with that later. I will feel that later. I will think about that later,’ will come up in meditation, because by meditating you are saying to life, ‘OK, later is NOW. Bring it on.’”—Dr. Lorin RocheOftentimes we use metaphors from our daily life to elucidate concepts in meditation or spirituality that are ineffable or abstract – from the term “enlightened” itself to “summiting the mountain,” “walking the path” to “accruing inner wealth.” Even the great saint Kabir is able to distil the enormously important but difficult concept of cosmic mergence into the ever-accessible “drop of water joining the ocean.”In this way, metaphors are the lighthouses of understanding and the security blankets of language: when faced with what we don’t know or cannot fully comprehend, they balm our intellect and guide our consciousness safely back through the abstraction to more familiar harbors.But what happens when what we’re experiencing is truly novel? What if it is without comparison? How to make sense of something that virtually no one alive today or in the recent past has credibly experienced?What happens when we are without metaphor?I believe this has been one of the most difficult parts of COVID for me, and I would venture for many others as well. As the second wave of the virus intensifies around the world, and as its health, economic, and social impacts all deepen, we are truly in uncharted territory.Certainly there are lessons we can learn from the 1918 Spanish Flu, the 2008 Great Financial Crisis, and the Ebola and SARS crises respectively, to help us better manage the current pandemic. However, I find these past examples don’t do much to help us understand how to feel about what’s happening, and that’s problematic. For none of these previous crises has unilaterally disrupted the lives of most of the seven billion people on planet Earth at the same scale as COVID, nor led to what will in time be looked back upon as the impetus behind the great rethinking and reorganizing of our international politics and national economies.This time period will also be remembered as the great reorganizer of our homes, our families, our priorities, and – as I’ve come to see – our expectations for ourselves and our loved ones.<img src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/choosing_growth2_img_2b4a1d24e5.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-06T06:13:18.743Z" alt="choosing-growth2">So, without any external event to help me make better sense of COVID in a holistic way, my theory at the outset of lockdown was simple: begin actively seeking parallels between my spiritual life and what I have experienced in meditation, to help me better understand my experience of the pandemic.Before I get much further, though, I must admit that this “lofty” idea was born of much less glamorous and enlightened circumstances. In fact, it was an essential coping mechanism. The rigors of isolating in place with two children under four in a country that neither my wife nor I call home was taking a tremendous toll on our marriage.I’m not suggesting that the emergent term “COVID-divorce” was a foregone conclusion; far from it. Rather, we were not in sync as the newness and stresses of lockdown, and the greater uncertainties surrounding COVID, had created and exacerbated new tensions between us.Or had it?It was then I began to realize that lockdown – like Dr. Roche’s quote about how meditation tells life to “Bring it on” – wasn’t actually the cause of the issues we were experiencing. Instead, it was a focusing event, like meditation, that was forcing us to confront the myriad issues we already had, all at the same time.On the surface, these issues seemed interpersonal. She was angry that I was on back-to-back Zoom calls all day long, while I was incredulous at her saying she didn’t have time for herself when she was managing to watch a few hours of Korean dramas and choosing to bake complicated recipes every day.Couldn’t I see she was under water managing the kids?Couldn’t she see I was doing all I could to ensure our continued livelihood and that of all the staff who depend on me?Yet, as the comparison of meditation and lockdown crystallized further in my mind, the truth I came to realize was that these issues were actually just personal to each of us. Deeply so.In other words, deep inside me and deep inside her resided two very different sets of ideals and expectations of what it meant to live well, as well as a raft of expectations for the other person to change and fit these ideals.Thing is, these expectations and ideals, such as support, time management, balance, and even home tidiness, were all based on normal operating circumstances pre-COVID: kids at day care 5+ hours a day, me at the office, access to yoga, the gym, days out, days off, and a weekend that actually felt like a weekend etc.But even then, we still managed to fight and disagree about these differing expectations every single day! In fact, in retrospect, these unspoken and unasked expectations for daily things were the largest source of pain in our marriage.<img src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/choosing_growth3_img_dec7311541.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-06T06:13:18.719Z" alt="choosing-growth3">&nbsp;<hr>Meditation is in no way separate from anything you do during the day, all your relationships, and your whole purpose on Earth.<hr>Many of these expectations couldn’t have been more incongruent with our situation during lockdown. And yet, we were both muddling through a kind of passive despair over what was happening to us, instead of embracing one of the most profound lessons taught by meditation, namely, that our experience of lockdown, as does every experience, was in fact happening through us.Dr. Roche builds on this idea in the same essay when he writes:“Meditation is in no way separate from anything you do during the day, all your relationships, and your whole purpose on Earth. In every meditation, you will have to sort through all the stuff in your mind and heart, and if anything is out of balance, you will feel it intensely. If you have wronged someone, or left an important conversation unfinished, you will find your attention going to it again and again. If you want to go any deeper in meditation, you will have to bring some resolution to your outer situations, otherwise your meditation will start to feel stalemated. So you’ll find yourself adjusting your behavior in daily life to be more ethical, to minimize the amount of your meditation time that is taken up by processing the residue of the day. In other words, in <a href="https://heartfulness.org/magazine/music-is-a-spiritual-experience" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">meditation every day</a> you will have a small degree of the insight people have on their deathbed, where they wish they had lived their lives.”In the same way meditation isn’t separate from the rest of our life, lockdown isn’t a separation from our pre-COVID life either. It is an intensified continuation of it. Akin to “marriage” or “parenting” or simply “life” on “hard mode,” we found ourselves without our ritual distractions of the gym, or yoga, or work, or whatever to hide behind when tensions flared.Thus it drew our expectations out into the open. As we began openly asking each other for the kind of support we needed, lest we kept suffering in silence or exploding in anger, we were able to work through the “residue” of our marriage that existed pre-COVID and ultimately go deeper into our relationship as a result.But, like meditation, it isn’t easy. Speaking so plainly with your spouse about what you need or don’t need as support is difficult. You may get that support, or a multi-day argument, or you may need to give up an expectation to preserve equanimity, or realize you are being unrealistic, which also hurts in and of itself. But, by doing so there is at least a more honest foundation to grow into and through (there are also fewer desires floating about, which is healthy in its own right, and could be the subject for another article).So, no, we didn’t choose to go into lockdown and cut ourselves off from our families and social and professional networks for months on end, but – like how we choose to meditate to work on ourselves – we have improved our relationship during lockdown by choosing to hit pause, accept the situation, reorient our expectations, and take responsibility for how we feel.<img src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/choosing_growth4_img_60a5f8644d.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-06T06:13:18.737Z">As hard as it is to write about a shared global experience, I am attempting to do so, because I find many strong, resilient people I know are now at their wits end. Lockdown was manageable for them when it seemed it would be just a few months. But faced with the prospect of another six months, or more, of severely limited movement, and mounting worries about income and jobs, they are starting to cave in to the loneliness, the feeling of being cooped up, and the feeling that life is fully beyond their control.Make no mistake about it, I believe this is all going to get worse before it gets better. So, to gird our sanity as this intensifies, we need to help each other find those metaphors from our life before COVID, wherein we succeeded, excelled, grew, and proactively took charge of our lives.For those with experience in meditation, lean into it as I have. Make it your metaphor. It is the perfect training for dealing with the challenges of uncertainty and isolation posed by lockdown, because it teaches us to address how we feel without brooding, so we can take responsibility for our feelings without succumbing to them. In these troubled times, this is a precious experience to have, and, as my wife and I found out, a critical skill to navigating the uncertainties.<hr><h4 style="text-align:center;">Article by TREVOR WELTMAN Illustrations by GAYATRI PACHPANDE</h4><hr>

Choosing Growth

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<h3 style="text-align: center">
 ON CROSSING THE BRIDGE OF YOUNG ADULTHOOD
</h3>
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<h4>
 TREVOR WELTMAN describes the rite of
 passage he has experienced moving from youth to adulthood, how he
 navigated this crossing, and how meditation and yogic Transmission
 supported him along the way.
</h4>
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 “When I was young, there were very
 few elders willing to talk about the darkness; 
 most of them pretended that success was all they had ever known. 
 As the darkness began to descend on me in my early twenties, 
 I thought I had developed a unique and terminal case of failure. 
 I did not realize that I had merely embarked on a journey toward joining
 the human race.” 


 Parker J. Palmer&nbsp;

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 <img
 class="w-100 lazyload"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/invisible_ropes_love2_ef99a5e906.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-10T06:10:34.981Z"
 alt="invisible_ropes_love2"
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 Traversing young adulthood in modern times is like hiking with a group of
 close friends and coming upon an unavoidable rope bridge covered in fog:
 the only way forward is through, but of suspicious carrying capacity and
 wide enough for only one person, you’re suddenly forced to go it alone,
 yet can’t see more than an arm’s length in any direction, say nothing of
 the other side.
 


 You intend to walk slowly and deliberately, but are beset by primal fear
 pushing from behind, uncertain if the failure and therefore danger of your
 next step will send you down simply a half meter into shallow water, or a
 thousand to a point of no return, or instead just reward you with another
 opportunity to continue inching your way forward into further
 unknowns.


 So you pick up your foot, place it down, and …


 Do you decide to give up and try your best to return back to the places
 and people you just came from, or do you feel the ropes underhand and
 choose to trust they are leading you toward the where and the who you’re
 supposed to become?


 This idea, while pitifully telegraphic, is the best articulation I have
 for how I oftentimes felt during my twenties.


 And whether you’re still out there standing on the bridge right now, or
 you’ve already passed on through, you know precisely the feeling I am
 referring to: the desperation, the shock at finding yourself so suddenly
 alone, the feeling that no one really understands or cares, the pressure
 that it’s all on you to make these important life decisions with little to
 no confidence or experience to back them up, and the overall lack of
 clarity over where you’re headed.


 This was exhausting, and as I reflect now on my experience
 “crossing the bridge” over the last ten years, the single thing above all
 that stands out to me as the root cause of pain on my journey was the
 extreme pressure I constantly felt to have had my life more figured out
 than it actually was at any given moment.
 

<h4>
 Meditation helped, but not entirely
</h4>

 I’ll be the first person to tell you how beneficial it was to have a
 sustained and disciplined meditation practice during my twenties. In fact,
 I would even go as far as saying that my meditation practice is why I –
 unlike so many others – didn’t wind up with anxiety, depression, panic, or
 drug or alcohol abuse. While meditation cannot cure these things, as a
 preventative it gave me the inner tools and resources I needed to cope
 with young adulthood that many of my peers didn’t develop.

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 class="w-100 lazyload"
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 And yet, I may be the first person to tell you that meditation in and of
 itself wasn’t the decisive factor. As a purely mental or emotional
 training I did for about 90 minutes every day, I benefited from
 Heartfulness in all the ways you’d expect to benefit from virtually any
 other sustained meditation practice: greater focus, greater concentration,
 greater relaxation, greater empathy, greater sense of purpose, and a
 greater ability to center myself during particularly trying times.


 But what about the chronic, unrelenting pressure? What about the
 loneliness? What about the devastating lack of confidence I felt almost
 every day about the important life decisions I had to make or was putting
 off ?


 Thus, meditation helped, but not entirely. While it no doubt helped
 ground me where I was, while I was still there, there was another force at
 play that gave me general confidence in the direction I was headed.

<h4>
 Yogic Transmission was my source of solace and confidence
</h4>

 The fact of the matter is this: I have been meditating in Heartfulness
 for nearly 13 years now and a trainer for over 10. In addition to my own
 practice, I have conducted literally thousands of introductory meditation
 sessions and given hundreds of talks and lectures around the world about
 this practice since 2007.
 


 And you know what? The absolute last thing I want to talk about or write
 about publicly or privately is pranahuti or yogic Transmission.
 It’s the key aspect of Heartfulness, the “secret sauce” if you will, and I
 have no words or desire to describe it.

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<h4 style="text-align: center">
 If I had to credit one thing above all 
 else that helped me navigate the darkest of times 
 during my passage through young adulthood into full adulthood, 
 it would undoubtedly be the surge of confidence 
 I felt every day in meditation, 
 feeling the yogic Transmission.
</h4>
<hr />
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 This is mainly because I feel like I sound crazy talking about something
 that by definition is undefinable. In the books it says “pranahuti
 is the life of life,” an “energy that is not an energy,” and – most
 unhelpfully – a “forceless force.” Furthermore, yogic Transmission is a
 deeply personal experience. It is precisely its undefinable yet
 experiential nature that renders it so intimate and therefore unspeakable
 to me. But, in the hope that my experience with yogic Transmission can
 similarly benefit another person so hopelessly caught “on the bridge,”
 here I am doing my best to share one of my deepest, yet-unspoken truths,
 and it’s this:
 


 If I had to credit one thing above all else that helped me navigate the
 darkest of times during my passage through young adulthood into full
 adulthood, it would undoubtedly be the surge of confidence I felt every
 day in meditation, feeling the yogic Transmission.
 

<h4>
 Following the feeling
</h4>

 Yogic Transmission helped for two key reasons: first, it feels good.
 


 Like a warm inner hug, or a comforting vibration, yogic Transmission
 cannot be quantified but can absolutely be felt. This is no different than
 love, joy, kindness, and other abstract concepts we are more casually
 comfortable with describing, as yogic Transmission is also “unseen but
 real.”


 To quote one meditator, a mathematician by training and computer
 programmer by profession who used to sit with me many years ago: “This is
 not logical or illogical. The fact that I experience it but can’t quantify
 it means this yogic Transmission thing is actually a-logical, as in, it
 exists outside of any framework for logic I have ever learned, studied, or
 known.”
 


 Thus, at times when I was really feeling anxious or worried about my
 future, this comforting feeling would wash over me and act as a welcome
 counterbalance.

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 <img
 class="w-100 lazyload"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/invisible_ropes_love3_8850f414ff.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-10T06:11:57.207Z"
 alt="invisible_ropes_love3"
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<h4>
 From constancy to confidence
</h4>

 Second, though, and more important to young people: yogic Transmission
 gave me confidence. It was always there, waiting, ever accessible. No
 matter what was happening around me, I could sit down virtually anywhere
 and feel it in the same quality and volume I could feel it anywhere
 else.


 Such a dependable constant is disproportionally profound for a young
 adult, as this stage of life is defined by its transience – the literal
 passage between youth and adulthood. Thus nothing is constant, and nor is
 it supposed to be!
 


 Everything external is in a constant state of change, from schools to
 jobs, new cities to new people.
 


 We are also changing internally – from new ideas to new identities, new
 dreams to new regrets, new habits to new fears, and also new confidences
 to new insecurities.
 


 But no matter how overwhelmed I felt, I’d sit down. I’d start to
 meditate. And after a few moments …&nbsp;I’d feel the tug on my heart. I’d exhale. I’d smile. And many, many
 times, I’d find my shoulders would untense and lower for the first time
 that day.


 Keep in mind, nothing had actually changed – the pressure still existed
 and was mounting. The job still needed to be found or quit. The girl still
 loved me or didn’t. The move either needed to be made soon or was already
 under way.


 But the feeling overcoming me was the same one I’d felt on all the good
 days, too. It literally connected me in a powerful way to all the amazing
 moments I’d experienced after A+ exams and long nights with friends and
 epic road trips and even my transformational journeys to the far ends of
 Earth, meditating in beautiful places with beautiful people from all over
 the world.


 In essence, then, yogic Transmission, by its constancy above all else,
 taught me that finding balance and sanity during the rapid transitions of
 young adulthood was less about seeing through the fog to know definitively
 where I was headed, than it was about learning to
 reach through each moment I found myself in to
 derive comfort and confidence in every other place I had already been
 and felt, both positive and negative.


 One year north of 30 now, and this “practice,” or “belief,” or
 “experience,” if you will, continues with me to this day. For when I find
 the fog has descended (because let’s be honest, it never really leaves), I
 find my hands are already reaching out, searching through the mist and
 grasping for those invisible ropes. And, as it always has, across all
 these years now, the yogic Transmission is still there waiting to continue
 guiding my way.
 

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 class="w-100 lazyload"
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<h4 style="text-align: center">
 Article by
 TREVOR WELTMAN Illustrations by JASMEE RATHOD
</h4>
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Invisible ropes of love

<h4>TREVOR WELTMAN and his wife take on the video addiction of their young daughters, as they find their way through the digital maze, and successfully create a lifestyle for the whole family that is happier and more balanced.</h4>After yet another tear-filled episode with my kids pleading for “just one more” video, my wife and I knew change was overdue. It was August 2021, and the digital realm of children’s videos had ensnared our household. Our then 5-year-old and 3-year-old daughters bore the brunt of it. Regrettably, they were clocking in over two hours of YouTube and movies daily.While it’s tempting to blame the endless lockdown hours in a bustling urban center, the reality is different. The country where we weathered the pandemic had a brief lockdown. It merely sped up our descent down a path we’d chosen years prior.Need the kids to eat? Cue a video. Want them to tackle chores, dress quickly, or make a promise? Another video. In search of a fleeting moment of tranquility? Yet another video. We might not have handed them a physical pacifier, but YouTube was our digital one. Cocomelon, Little Baby Bus, Masha and the Bear, PJ Masks, Elsa, Anna, Moana... the list goes on.These videos worked wonders. They also wreaked havoc on our children. Post-screen mood swings were intense. Denials led to explosive meltdowns. They were hooked, only semi-content when engrossed in a video. In this digital sugar high, we played the role of enablers. Declining their requests was a battle. Unlike TV schedules of yesteryears, our kids knew we held the reins. Every viewing request became a zero-sum tug-of-war between an addict and their supplier. Facing the sheer intensity of their reactions, we often capitulated.This dynamic left me uneasy. Witnessing their screen-induced trances, the subsequent mood crashes, and our role in it all was distressing and disheartening. I felt trapped, seemingly powerless to alter course.<figure class="image"><img src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/breaking_habit_screentime2_34a031744e.webp" alt="breaking-habit-screentime2.webp" srcset="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/thumbnail_breaking_habit_screentime2_34a031744e.webp 119w,https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/small_breaking_habit_screentime2_34a031744e.webp 382w," sizes="100vw"></figure><h4>The turning point: a screen-free intervention</h4>Recently, I saw a video of Daaji discussing his <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbNfM9PdrEE" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">grandson’s transformation after a screen detox</a> and it resonated deeply. Our experiences mirrored each other. I therefore feel compelled to share our journey – not as a model family, but as an imperfect one that has found its way through this digital maze.&nbsp;We are not paragons of parenting. We know those homeschooling parents whose commitment and intentionality are awe-inspiring. If I had to label our parenting style, it would be “well-intended lazy.” Thus, our aim isn’t to seek praise or induce guilt (there’s a surplus of parenting content for that). Instead, we hope to offer a practical blueprint.In the summer of 2021, we initiated our intervention. Unbeknownst to our kids, we embarked on a two-week trip to visit friends (the Montessori, homeschooling, highly engaged kind I deeply respect). Days were filled with outdoor adventures, puzzles, art, gardening, and games. The kids, previously screen-obsessed, barely remembered their digital cravings after the initial 48 hours.By the trip’s end, a transformation was evident. Our previously screen-addicted children reconnected with the world and were happier. And none of this was difficult. As my wife always says: children learn fast, but also adapt and forget fast.<hr><h4 style="text-align:center;">We ensure they have constant access to&nbsp; their own tools of entertainment:&nbsp; nature, crafts, music, puzzles, books, and&nbsp; most crucially our presence.&nbsp; Seasons dictate our activities: snowmen in winter seed planting in spring, lake splashes in summer and hiking in the fall.</h4><hr><h4>Sustainable change: our new rhythm</h4>Two years on, we’ve maintained this rhythm. We’re not 100% screen-free and don’t want to be. Saturdays are reserved for a movie treat. The girls anticipate it but aren’t consumed by the wait. We also watch some documentaries and other movies together on occasion.&nbsp;This lifestyle comes, however, with a significant caveat: we couldn’t merely eliminate their digital crutch and leave a void. We learned quickly that we have to substitute it with equally, if not more, captivating alternatives.This didn’t mean inundating them with extracurricular activities. Over-scheduling is another pitfall that undermines their well-being.Instead, we reclaimed what YouTube had replaced. We resumed full responsibility for their engagement. This doesn’t translate to non-stop entertaining them. Instead, we ensure they have constant access to their own tools of entertainment: nature, crafts, music, puzzles, books, and most crucially, our presence. Seasons dictate our activities: snowmen in winter, seed planting in spring, lake splashes in summer, and hiking in the fall.Admittedly, this approach is more demanding of our time and focus. But after initial efforts, we’re learning that their self-driven creativity takes over, allowing us some downtime.Now, aged 7 and 5, our children are flourishing. Their creativity, mood stability, and connection to their surroundings have deepened. The same holds true for my wife and me – we feel more in command of our home.In today’s screen-saturated world, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. But to parents everywhere, breaking the cycle is within reach. It wasn’t even hard once it got underway. Believe me, if we can do it so can you, and likely better.<figure class="image"><img src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/breaking_habit_screentime3_46a804de81.webp" alt="breaking-habit-screentime3.webp" srcset="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/thumbnail_breaking_habit_screentime3_46a804de81.webp 128w," sizes="100vw"></figure><hr><h4 style="text-align:center;">Illustrations by ANANYA PATEL</h4><hr>

Breaking the habit of screen time with our kids

Trevor Weltman (American) and Van Le (Vietnamese) are Heartfulness trainers who have been married for seven years. After living in Vietnam and Thailand, they currently live in the US with their two young daughters.

Trevor-Weltman-and-Van-Le.jpg

Trevor Weltman and Van Le

<h4>TREVOR WELTMAN (American) and VAN LE (Vietnamese) have been married for seven years. After living in Vietnam and Thailand, they currently live in the US with their two young daughters. We recently reached out to them for their perspective on intercultural marriage. Here is what they sent.</h4><hr>V: Hey, so Heartfulness Magazine asked if we would write an article about our experience of intercultural marriage.T:&nbsp; Yeah? Cool.V: Cool?T: Yeah. Cool.V: You Americans with your “cools” and “dudes” and “awesomes.” Everything is always great! Except you never answer the question.T: What question?V: Do you want to do it or not?T: Yeah, cool.V: Ahhh. Okay. So, we’ll do it.T: Yeah, awesome. [He doesn’t say anything more]V: And what do you want to write about?T: I’ve got, like, ten angles or concepts we could pursue.V: Ten! What? We just found out less than a minute ago. How do you already have ten concepts?T: I said “like” ten, you know, three. Maybe. Hear me out. I think we should start with a massive metaphor. We could go cosmic, like how the origin of the universe starts with an intense burst that eventually slows at the fringes. Or, agrarian, about the difficulties of grafting two trees together, but how they still manage to fruit. We could draw parallels.V: What are you talking about? The bang big? Fruit trees? They asked for insights about marriage! Why not just answer the question?T: I am answering the question. Are you mad?V: No, I’m not mad.T: But you raised your voice.V: I’m annoyed.T: So … you sound mad according to my culture, but you’re not. Instead, you’re annoyed per your culture? Do all Vietnamese people sound this way when annoyed?V: Yes. No.T: So, no big bang?V: Why not answer directly instead of a massive story?T: Because it’s complicated.V: What is? Writing the article? Or marriage?T: Marriage. I feel like any marriage is like roller skating on ice, where the husband is the left leg and the wife the right, both struggling to find their footing individually, and also move seamlessly in the same direction. But intercultural marriage? It’s the same, except we’re fighting gravity by being forced to do it upside down.V: Upside down roller ice skating? Fighting gravity? That’s what being married to me is like for you?T: No. But I think that’s what being married to me is like for you.<hr><img src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/Interracial_marriage2_81ef159d51.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-10T11:40:32.557Z" alt=""><hr>V: Ha! I guess you got that right. Sometimes you drive me totally nuts with the things you say, and because you have no idea you’re offending me.You act so casually about it that it makes me even angrier. And also, because I can’t express myself in my language in our marriage, it sometimes feels like I have a foot in my mouth.T: A what in where?V: See, that’s a Vietnamese expression. Anyway, when we discuss how I feel, and you literally have no idea, it makes my feelings feel invalidated. Like, did I not just experience this?T: Same. But I honestly think every marriage has this. Like, the whole oafish husband and nagging wife tropes, those have to come from somewhere.V: You think I nag? I don’t nag.T: [says nothing]V: But you’re right. After we spent more time with your family and in the US, you made way more sense to me. Meeting our children’s friend’s parents, making more American friends, it’s like there is this whole part of you that is not just you. It’s American and its Trevor.T: And both are cute.V: [Gagging sound] You always make that joke and it never works.T: That’s what you think.V: But seriously, how will we write this?T: Well, whatever we write, I want it to be funny. Honest. Not too philosophical. No grandiose advice. Show that marriage is a work in progress and we don’t have answers. Just experience.Like you said, the extended time we’ve spent with each other’s families and in each other’s countries has been a massive boon to understanding each other, and helps not to take the many differences in opinion personally. I also want to highlight the amazing expansion of food options.V: What expansion? From you, I learned about bread and butter. And candy.T: Those are three very important food groups. What do you want to convey?<hr><img src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/pancakes_9aff146521.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-10T11:36:09.030Z"><hr>V: Well, I want to share that it’s not easy. But, that a third culture emerges, a family culture. Between us we have all of these new habits and traditions that are not American or Vietnamese. Our kids get American, Vietnamese, and micro Weltman cultures that include so many experiences you and I never had. That’s pretty cool. And I love how intentional we’re able to be about it.<hr><img src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/thai_plate_aee27a1911.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-10T11:37:02.909Z" alt=""><hr>T: Yeah! Great point. And then there’s all of the playful language and mashups we make. To be honest, I’m a little worried our kids don’t realize how much of what we say in the house isn’t actually real, just WeltmanVietese.V: Yeah, it was so hard when we started. But it’s gotten better, hasn’t it?T: Sure has. I feel like our skill of being married is growing, to the point where our cultural differences aren’t a constant minefield of missteps. Rather, they are becoming more of what unites us. That intentionality you spoke of really resonates.V: Do you really think so? Or are you just putting honey on the ear?T: What on where?V: [Sighs] So let’s do it. Let’s sit down later and do it.&nbsp; But let’s eat first. You want fresh rolls or tacos?T: Yeah, cool.<hr>Editor’s note: Upon reading the final version, Van is on record as saying, “Uh, even reading this I am annoyed!”<hr><hr><h4>Illustrations by ARATI SHEDDE</h4><hr>

Intercultural marriage in action

Uday Kumar is an entrepreneur, writer, and Heartfulness practitioner passionate about integrating modern life with inner balance. He leads technology and AI initiatives at work while contributing essays on consciousness, discernment, and the heart’s role in everyday life. His work bridges science, spirit, and heartful living.

UDAY KUMAR

<h4>UDAY KUMAR explores how a simple word of respect reveals the deeper mysteries of spiritual authority and humility.</h4>During this morning’s Dil Se with Daaji online session, something profound unfolded within what seemed like a simple conversation. An MLA (Member of the Legislative Assembly) from Rajasthan addressed Daaji as hukum. Daaji, in his characteristic humility, addressed him back with the same word. The exchange was brief, yet its sound lingered. The syllables rolled out softly, like a bell tone that continues to vibrate long after the bell itself is still. The word hukum carried a reverence that resonated beyond language.This feeling compelled me to explore what hukum truly meant. I looked it up and found that in Rajasthan, saying “Tharo hukum” signifies deep respect, not a mere submission to power. It means “Your wish carries weight because I honor you.” As I would learn, the word “hukum” has traveled across lands and cultures, bearing the fragrance of authority blended with blessing.A few weeks ago, in his write-up <a href="https://heartfulness.org/magazine/the-urgency-of-our-time" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Guardians</a> of the Sacred, Daaji reminded us that the path to the Divine requires both authenticity and etiquette. The smallest gestures of reverence prepare the heart. How we sit, how we greet, and how we speak to one another all reveal the sincerity of our approach. This refinement of conduct, our akhlaaq, is not formality. It is the language of love, the way we create space for the sacred both outside and inside. Without akhlaaq, hukum can feel like a command imposed upon us. With akhlaaq, it becomes a blessing received with grace.In the spiritual sense, hukum has always carried this deeper resonance. In Sufi traditions, hukm-i-ilahi is the divine decree, the will of God that guides creation. In the <a href="https://heartfulness.org/magazine" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Heartfulness</a> tradition, the ajna chakra is known as the seat of power distribution, and above it begins the vast para-cosmic region, the first glimmer of the divine realm. In such higher realms, command is no longer an external order. It is a light that guides the soul toward higher regions, like a halo from within that shows us the way.When Daaji was addressed as “hukum” and he returned the word, I felt that something greater was revealed. It was not one submitting to another's authority. It was a circle of honor, an exchange where humility and dignity met in perfect balance and proportion. True authority is rooted in humility, and true humility carries an authority that needs no assertion.&nbsp;<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:75%;"><img src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/hukum2_1e3c2f423d.webp" alt="hukum2.webp"></figure>&nbsp;Guardians of the Sacred reminds us that every gesture in the Master’s presence, every act of self-restraint and courtesy, helps keep the inner shrine pure. Etiquette in sacred space is not an outer show but a way of guarding the atmosphere of the heart, where the true Master dwells. Hukum then is not fulfilled through blind obedience, but through conduct that honors this sacred atmosphere within and around us.It is a sound that holds both command and blessing, both authority and surrender—a word that reminds us that when wisdom speaks, the heart listens, and when the heart listens, life takes its proper course. In that listening, we discover not only the decree of the Divine, but also the deep assurance that we belong to Him.In the end, hukum is less about command and more about remembrance. It is a reminder that the heart opens most when it bows to wisdom and belongs to love. And when that bowing is clothed in akhlaaq, it becomes our way of guarding the sacred, keeping the heart as a holy place where the Beloved feels at home.&nbsp;<hr><h4 style="text-align:center;">It is a reminder that the heart opens most when it bows to wisdom and belongs to love.&nbsp;</h4><hr>

Hukum - A Word that Opens the Heart

Uma is a web and graphic designer by profession, serving clients world wide. She is our chief designer for Heartfulness Magazine since its inception in 2015. She has also designed many books for adults and children, and is responsible for the design of our magazine website at www.heartfulnessmagazine.com.

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UDAY KUMAR

Uma Maheswari G