Thursday 27 February 2020

EXERCISES TO IMPROVE CONCENTRATION

The following exercises is taken from my book SPIRITUALITY IN EDUCATION ( Redefine success as rising peace, optimism and happiness ) :

IMPROVING CONCENTATION _ PRACTICAL EXERCISE 


Using visualization and silent meditation is one of the easiest ways to increase concentration. The following meditation can be done anytime of the day and would take five minutes.

1.      Imagine exhaling all your problems out of your head like black smoke coming out of a kettle of boiling water.
2.     Imagine a ball of light above your head and feel rays of light entering your head. Feel your head filled with this light filling up the cells like bulbs glowing in your head.
3.     Be in silence inhaling the light and spreading it all over your body.
4.     Imagine concentrating on your books with complete silence around you. Even if there are noises around you, your total concentration remains on the books, and you absorb the subject you are studying with interest.
5.     Imagine yourself concentrating for an hour by imagining the clock dials after an hour. Feel good while studying.
6.     Feel yourself absorbing the lesson as energy going inside you. Imagine yourself writing the main points briefly and imagine yourself recalling the main points whenever needed. Then imagine closing the books and relaxing with closed eyes. Feel the silence for a minute and wake up.
7.      After this concentration exercise: ground yourself. Imagine yourself as a tree and your roots going deep into Earth.
8.     Also, practice being silent for one minute with a smile, every morning as soon as you get up and concentrating on your books easily during the day.
9.     Practice being silent in your mind for one minute before going to sleep and thank God imagining that you could concentrate well during the next day.


This exercise CREATES a thought wave in your mind which focuses on concentration. The repeated focus on this thought wave would strengthen the thought wave of concentration. Overtime, as this thought wave strengthens, it would attract more thoughts of matching frequencies and you would find yourself concentrating automatically more than you could ever before.


Practical exercise 27 (PE 9.2)

For a more detailed exercise, use the self- hypnosis script given below:

1.      Sit straight in a chair.
2.     Imagine black smoke exhaling out of the top of your head
3.     Imagine a Golden Sun above your head sending its rays into you and golden light filing in your head.

4.     Imagine the concentration area of your brain symbolically enlarging and absorbing more information.
5.     You may imagine the concentration area of your brain as a garden with weeds growing around it, initially.
6.     Now, imagine that the weeds are cleared by huge vacuum cleaners coming from the sky and clay is filled on that place, after which grass is sown. Now imagine flowers and plants growing in that garden in your mind in place of the weeds.
7.      Feel the space and cleanliness in your mind.  Imagine flowers growing all over your mind as bulbs glowing brightly in the garden. Feel the light of the bulbs and allow the light travelling down to your body.

8.     Feel a SUN like energy glowing in the center of your mind and spreading rays all around. Breathe into the SUN for five seconds. Feel the rays spreading all around your head.

9.     Send the light down to your neck, chest and stomach. Feel a SUN glowing in your stomach and spreading rays all over your body.

10.  Feel the light going down into your legs and feel it reaching your feet. Imagine black clouds of smoke leaving your feet and light filling up your whole body.

11.   Breathe in the light for one minute and smile.

12.   Now imagine yourself studying with complete concentration. Imagine how it would be to have complete concentration. Create the thought wave of feeling concentrated and enjoy the thought wave.


13.   Give the lesson a shape, a sound, a vision. A touch, a taste, a smell and a feel. When you use all your sensory organs, learning is more easily absorbed.
14.   Imagine yourself writing or practicing the exercises given for a few seconds. Feel that you can briefly summarize the main points for recall. Then, imagine yourself remembering the main points once the lesson is over. Next, imagine yourself remembering the lesson after a week and recalling it easily. Feel good that you have made the process of learning easier and more enjoyable.

15.   If you do not like studying, imagine yourself concentrating while watching a television film. Then, replace the film with your books and imagine concentrating on your books as you could on the film. Feel yourself enjoying your books as you enjoy the film and smile. If you can concentrate while watching a film, concentration isn’t the problem. The problem is motivation which can be addressed by replacing the film with books, subconsciously.


16.   Keep replacing the image of studying in your mind with an enjoyable film over a month. With consistent repetition, you will start liking your books as much as the film. This technique of replacing a bad image in the mind with a good image to convert a DISLIKE into A LIKE is called a TRANSPOSE technique (This technique is a part of neuro-linguistic programming of the subconscious mind). If this transposing technique does not work, the issue of motivation has to be addressed separately by using therapeutic methods of age regression and parts integration.

17.   Imagine yourself absorbing all that you are learning with interest. Give the imagination a film - sound, a visual, a touch, a taste and a feeling.

18.  Feel content while studying in your imagination. Focus for five seconds on the feeling of contentment. Make the picture big, bright and welcoming. Feel Yourself “I can do it”

19.   Then feel yourself like a tree and your roots going deep into Earth.
20.  Stay grounded for five seconds and open your eyes.



Do this every day for a month. Within a week, your concentration will start improving. With consistent practice, you will be concentrating automatically in about six months to a year.


 ( www.ahivaswati.com)


Monday 17 February 2020

EDUCATION NEEDS TO BE REDEFINED FOR MANIFESTING PEACE & HAPPINESS



All technology innovations which we are so proud of as human beings, have been made only in the direction of improving external display or comforts without sufficient attention being given to our internal emotional and spiritual needs.

Happiness comes from satisfying the needs of emotional satisfaction along with acquiring bodily comforts. Becoming successful without feeling happy is like painting the walls of the house without the people feeling brighter. Happiness and good health are co-related, as will be explained. ... Good health can never be maintained by focusing on just the needs of material success and using the body as a projected image with the inner mind in unrest.

Since science only focuses on the external, observable world, a purely scientific approach which aims at only focusing on improvements in scientific/technological development will never lead to evolution of peace and harmony within the soul or in society.

Due to neglect of soul needs in the education curriculum, human development has failed to realize feelings of peace and contentment. To be happier or more peaceful, a training in systematic understanding of emotional complexities, needs to be inculcated with the same zeal as mathematical skills are taught.


A focus on integration of soul needs along with material needs while teaching how to make choices in everyday life is essential to create peaceful adults. A training in integrated Emotional and Spiritual development is the only way to permanently increase peace and happiness in the world.

Though we blame everything else except our thinking patterns for the problems in our life ,  a regular focus on grades/marks/ performance ability, success and money has been the core negative thinking principle which has led to a lop-sided development of humanity wherein inner peace of the mind has been sacrificed for a need to perform due to external pressure.

 This lop-sided development has led to creation of imbalanced individuals who have no training on how to resolve complex emotional issues and resort to violence or addictions to vent out frustrations in an attempt to find inner peace.


Human happiness cannot be created as a side-effect of success. You cannot get balanced, peaceful and happy adults by pursuing mechanical/academic success as the goal of education.

Mind patterns are set in childhood and are affected by mass culture which is affected by education, predominantly.  Since, the focus of all education has been on becoming successful at the cost of neglecting training in development of peace and inner happiness, people are driven towards a rat race to earn success.

Training young minds to think that working mechanically for successful performance is all that is needed to be happy makes them feel comfortable about ignoring complex emotional development , which actually aids human mind towards evolving to be happy and healthy through the obstacles which adult life projects.


Children driven towards winning above being peaceful, start finding short-cuts to success which are manipulative and corrupt. A pattern of mass thinking has developed such that respect is measured by money.  If you are not aiming at happiness or inner peace, money for success can be earned by being manipulative and corrupt more than by being good and helpful.

However, happiness and satisfaction come from a job well done whether it is acknowledged as successful conventionally, or not. Winning always is not necessary to be happy. Trial and error are common processes involved in research and inventions. Through the process of overcoming failure, happiness and satisfaction continue to motivate the person towards achieving success with satisfaction. For example, Thomas Edison continued to fail for thirty years before he finally created an electric bulb. Like him, students need to be trained to be motivated from within by a system of education which rewards the process of achieving satisfaction and not just the result.

A balanced training between inner satisfaction and outcome/ happiness vs. success ensures internal and external satisfaction even if the money earned is less than conventionally well defined. But, a pure focus on results/money/success leads to neglect of effort on feeling satisfaction, peacefulness or freedom from anxiety


The need to never be peaceful is conditioned as a habit of thinking during schooling years, due to the stress on external good performance above inner peace. Children are judged as being good or bad by external measures of success like school grades which later are replaced in adults by external measures of success like cars, clothes or jewels.

However, getting good grades or performing well in sports or dance or music or art or earning good money in adult life does not lead to contentment in adult life. Children, always motivated to perform for pleasing society’s norms of success, cannot, naturally, focus on inner contentment.


To create contentment in adulthood, instead of just focusing on good external performance, mind patterns which focus on development of happiness and inner peace of mind have to be inculcated by redefining the education curriculum.


Negative thinking predominates mass thinking in today’s world because people are not taught how to be peaceful in schools. This repeated pattern of negative thinking can be solved only by adding spiritual awareness to the concept of success; wherein development of peacefulness and compassion in children is as much awarded as good performance.

Children trained into being peaceful would make peaceful adults and create a peaceful world whereas restless children who are constantly asked to perform for success,  make anxious adults and a restless world, which is prone to anger and violence.

A basic training in emotional management and the ability to create optimism with awareness ; are necessary to overcome all problems with a positive attitude and live a comfortable life; with the inner self being more in peace than being violent or angry.

 If a connection to the subconscious mind and training in being peaceful are cultivated from childhood, escapism into depression or anger would not be the most natural route available to adults if marriages break down or finances collapse. Peace and emotional satisfaction will automatically rise in society and replace conflicts, anxiety and unrest.

The need for maintaining good health, optimism and contentment would spread as being as important as needs of education once a spiritual understanding of happiness is integrated along with being monetarily and mechanically successful in the education system.

Negative Thinking leads to ANARCHY in creation . You create what you do not desire to experience. Positive Thinking leads to harmony in creation where you create what you desire to experience

 ----------------------------excerpt 

For further reading, please refer to my book SPIRITUALITY IN EDUCATION ( Preface)

Sunday 2 February 2020

The meaning of' I'

Your identity ,I, is not your ego ..the I is your soul essence .

The following is an excerpt from my book CREATION OF HAPPINESS- THE ENERGY WAR ,a soul's perspective :

Once in a body, the soul is the life force energy, which gives the person his or her essence, making her/him unique or different from other persons.

The soul can be called the I of the person.
The I, viz. the soul energy of a person, is there when she is new born, and has no conscious awareness. The person gets awareness that she is an I, a unique person, as she grows older, and when she starts referring to himself/herself as I or me.
The ‘I’ remains the same when the person grows up from a child, to become an adult, and later an old man/woman. To himself/herself, the person is an I, whether she is five years old or fifty years old, whether she is fat or thin, healthy or sick, rich or poor.

Thus, our body keeps changing but the I, our soul or life-force energy, remains the same.

The I, in us, viz. our soul continues to exist when the body dies, just as it existed before joining the physical body at the moment of birth. It is the body which dies. The soul, or the I, never dies.

Our soul lives before birth and after death. It is not dependent on the physical body for its life. It is the other way round.

The physical body is dependent on our soul, the I, for its life energy. Just as a torch is useless without a battery, the body is useless (or dead) without the soul. Yet, the battery is not useless without the torch, nor is our soul non- existent without the body.

Since, it is the soul which gives us our sense of identity, and not the body, understanding what the soul desires is necessary for achieving any kind of satisfaction at the physical or bodily level.

Soul Lessons for a life-time

The planet Earth is like a school for the soul .Each soul plans a life on Earth to learn the process of creation by mastering its consciousness, because creation happens when the soul focuses its mind or consciousness on certain aspects of reality over others.

Each life is like a class for the soul, where it has to master some soul lessons. Soul lessons are lessons of emotional maturity like developing patience, compassion, humility, sense of justice, detachment, forgiveness etc. Learning soul lessons creates positive energies for the soul and for the world it lives in .Soul lessons are such that they help the soul to live with other fellow souls in peace and harmony, so that the whole body can work in alignment.

 In this process of learning, the soul has to experience and overcome certain negative emotions like anger, fear, hurt etc..

An emotion or a feeling, is a moving electric impulse and hence energy in motion. Negative emotions are essentially negative energies in motion.

Negative emotions or negative energies block the process of creation by creating obstacles in the flow of positive energy. They prevent thought-flow directed towards creation of a positive reality, just as a doubt blocks manifestation of a belief.
www.shivaswati.com

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