Meditations On The Crisis And The Inevitable Solution
In order to stay calm and relaxed during these meditations, please be mindful and look beyond the words (see it as an exercise)... A global recession and a U.S. depression is coming. It's being postponed by the Bush administration, pushed onto Obama, you and me. But I want to show you the opportunity beneath it all. Consider these statistics gathered in a U.S. survey in October, 2008. 801 respondents participated, and these were the main findings:
And in the history of Reuter's surveys (since 1952), they've never recorded such a steep decline in consumer confidence as they did in October, 2008. Now let's exercise mindfulness and detach from the hideous face values of a global crisis and meltdown...
Let's look at the BIG picture: Depression has increased by over 1,000% since 1960 in all developed countries, and all developing countries are following suit. Fear, anger, distress, suicides on the rise... We're seeing the results of half a century's worth of stressful economic development, cultural change, and greed-driven individualism. Helped by Bush, we're crossing a threshold and the inevitable change is happening. But there's no need for fear, anger, or distress. Individualism and independence are matters of perception. They're not real. You depend on other people to manufacture your clothes, build your car, home, computer, grow and harvest your food etc. We are all interconnected like never before in human history. You and I are connected right now. There's tremendous strength in our worldwide connections. Brain cells that fire together wire together. The global community is now wired together. We fall or we rise together. We will rise because progress and adaptation is in our genes. Values will change. Meditation/awareness evolves. Independence is merely a perception, as well is a crisis. Let's change our perspective and scale down the picture now... Brain scan studies on meditators engaged in mindfulness and compassion techniques show unprecedented activity in brain regions linked to happiness. Brain cells wire together and fire together. Compassion unites!
Mindfulness and compassion are, together, the key to your happiness and success. Happiness is Compassion. Beneath it all, happiness is our highest aim. Why? How did natural selection blindly and accidentally sow this emotional seed in us? Or did marketers oversell us on the idea of happiness as a material state of mind? The next time you see an ad, look beyond the products. You will probably see images like the one on the left, but branded and associated with a product. Happiness sells, but it's not about buying - it's about being. And above every external issue beckons the biggest opportunity of all: Global warming. Perhaps Forrest Gump was right when he said: "I don't know if we each have a destiny, or if we're all just floating around accidental-like on a breeze, but I - I think maybe it's both." 8 years of meditations and studies, and I now see eye-to-eye with Forrest Gump. Why? Because of this... The first animal cell ancestors tried to kill each other a couple of billion years ago, but realizing they were now inside the same membrane - the same boat - they had to co-exist in order to survive. You are made up of 100 trillion cells. Compassion is the key to your peaceful, happy, and healthy existence. Compassion is the key for a nuclear family's happy existence, and the model can be applied to any population size.
It's about natural, evolved happiness.
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