Empathy

Bhakti Yoga is one of the branches of the Integral Yoga tradition. Bhakti is typically associated with a devotional aspect. The Bhakti Yoga at Lotus Blau Integral Yoga deals with themes such as empathy, compassion, care, faith, giving of oneself, surrendering, opening of the heart, and love.
These are topics that those who follow this spiritual path take into consideration throughout every day, but we must look at these concepts closely in order to understand them a little bit more and in this way we can little by little deepen and advance our personal development.

Empathy refers to having the capacity to share and understand the feelings of another person. Empathy does not debilitate us when we are in balance, but in the world of the ego imbalance is normal. We then isolate ourselves, so as not to suffer, when facing a situation where there is suffering involved, and we close our hearts. Empathy is an essential part of compassion, which we could define as profound awareness of the suffering of others together with the desire to alleviate that suffering. To be able to reach full compassion we must practice empathy. Empathy is hindered by selfishness or egoism, as well as the separation from our environment. To be able to have more empathy, we must open up and dare to live, thinking beyond one’s personal life project. Dare to look and learn from life from those who are around us. It’s about having the interest to enter other people’s world visions, putting aside our personal interests, prejudices, judgments, and our personal world-view. Then we can carry out the practice of empathy on a daily basis, which will help us to open our hearts to the world around us and connect with the deepest part of our being.

David Nagavajra Urgeles

The Crisis and Generosity

For some time now the media has been saying that the economic crisis is a reality. We all know someone or another who has lost their job, or whose work has slowed down tremendously, making it difficult to make ends meet.
Now we have the opportunity to be generous and give a hand to those who need help.

Faced with the demons of the economic crisis, people tend to tighten up, stop spending, save their resources, and ride it out until the economy turns. Our personal survival instinct all too often causes us to forget that there are other people out there in more difficult situations than ours. So why not give them a hand and help our neighbors in the best way we can. Maybe your neighbor is a painter and you had planned on painting your house this summer. Why not paint the house now and give your neighbor some work? It’s not about doing crazy things, but about letting go of fears that
we don’t have enough. Try to live without fear and look for a way to move closer to your community by giving and receiving. “What can we do to improve the situation?” we must ask ourselves. In doing so, maybe we can feel more human, and as always, if we want to see changes in the world, we must first begin with ourselves. Connecting with our generosity, we create the world that we want to see around us. We can cooperate with our neighbors, and find ways to give back to society. Coinciding with the anniversary of Martin Luther King, let’s remember some of his inspirational words: “Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of estructive selfishness. Faced with the current economic crisis, we can make a difference by taking advantage of the occasion to become closer and connect more with the rest of society.

David Naga Urgeles

Presence

With the New Year as a motivator for resolutions and intentions, one of the most common desires is a stress free life. In today’s world it can be difficult to have the space to find our own rhythm, our overloaded schedules may challenge our lives, or we may be plagued by our fears. These are all factors that contribute to a life of stress without presence. Presence is crucial if we want to trade stress for peace of mind.

David Naga Urgeles

Ahimsa; non-violence
Peace is within not without
Buddha

Ahimsa is a significant premise in the world of yoga as well as in most societies today. But what to do when we become aware that even though we understand that violence is not acceptable, we still see violence around us, whether it is in our immediate surroundings or in far and distant lands?
What we need to do is try and find the violence within us, become aware of it, and let it go. Violence can be of action, word, or thought. For many people violence of action is less frequent, but violence of word is more frequent, and violence of thought, rampant. A good path is to begin with ourselves. To rid the world of violence we have to first rid ourselves of our own violence, but for that we must first find the root of our violence.
Soon the holiday season will be upon us and we will all hear of the many efforts to promote peace in the world, especially before the end of the year in an attempt to manifest the peace that we did not achieve throughout the year. Let us use this opportunity then to start our own personal project of
non-violence. To go from violence to peace we need to stop, look inside, and seek to understand it in a personal and transpersonal way.
Peace is not a lack of conflict. Conflict is natural. Human beings have the intellectual capacity and the intuition to deal with conflict, so it doesn’t turn into an armed conflict, which is when violence makes its appearance.
Let’s use the spoken word as a way to communicate, and may this communication be with an open heart, with patience, empathy, and with the intention to try and understand, instead of trying to convince and force others to adopt a new vision. In short, peace depends on us. If we really want it, we can find it inside and outside. It is then a matter of choosing with consciousness the path of peace, to then face the path of self-awareness and social participation with all the consequences that that implies.

“We are what our thoughts have made us; so take care about what you think. Words are secondary. Thoughts live; they travel far.”
Swami Vivekananda

We have all heard so many times we are what we eat, in an effort to promote better diets, but we are also what we think, as Vivekananda reminds us. The external world appears to be less than perfect, and the tendency is to get negative about the things that do not fit into our own personal world. Then we get negative, we lose ourselves in the mud of negativism. Seeing a glass half empty is not seeing a realistic world but a negative realistic world. It is just as realistic to see and focus on the half full glass. If we aim at finding internal peace, positive thinking is a skill to be mastered.
We must be aware of our thoughts. The kinds of thoughts that we dwell on will be responsible for who we become. Thought patterns that are full of judgments, prejudices, and condemnations are likely to turn us into toxic human beings. On the other hand thought patterns that are full of acceptance, understanding, and care will make us more peaceful.
For this month of November then, lets put special attention on the quality of our thinking and our thoughts.

”Se los cambios que quieres ver en el mundo” dijo Mahatma Ghandi

Mahatma Gandhi nos habla de convertirnos en los manifestadores de nuestras visiones, de nuestras aspiraciones. Nos habla de asumir responsabilidades, de salir de la comodidad de ese que señala con el dedo todo aquello que cree indeseable, pero que a la vez sigue sentado sin pasar a la acción, sin llegar a practicarlo. Hay personas que dicen: - ¿tú te crees que tú solo puedes cambiar algo? Para empezar hay que tener claro que nosotros tenemos que hacer nuestro rol, nuestro deber según nuestra conciencia, y mediante esta ideación, intención y acción podemos ir caminando hacia una vida con más paz con nosotros mismos. Además, las ideas, juntándolas con las acciones de una persona, hacen un efecto domino con las personas que están alrededor. Es importante mostrar i no predicar, de esta forma se pueden manifestar los cambios en nuestro interior y en la sociedad. Tenemos que atrevernos a empezar por nosotros mismos, tenemos que atrevernos a participar para transformar aquello que queremos ver en el mundo. Durante este proceso es muy importante acceder a una forma de vida más contemplativa y más meditativa, haciendo lo cotidiano al mismo tiempo, lo que el día a día requiere. Es necesario buscar respuestas a “¿quién soy yo?” tanto a nivel personal como en el transpersonal.

CUIDARSE, QUERERSE

Aprovechando la charla y proyección del documental sobre los alimentos transgénicos del día 24 de Mayo, el foco del mes de Junio es CUIDARSE, QUERERSE. No se tiene que pretender cuidarse para vivir en el actual cuerpo físico para siempre, ni tampoco cuidarse para ser más bellos estéticamente. Este “cuidarse” es sinónimo de amor, es un cuidarse que beneficia también a la comunidad, pues si aprendemos a querernos más, también aprenderemos a querer a los demás. Que el cuidado que tenemos hacia nosotros mismos sea porque nos damos cuenta que hace falta quererse, porque de otra forma vamos creando sufrimiento y nos vamos auto-destruyendo.

Es importante tener conciencia que nuestro cuerpo tiene necesidades: hace falta respirar bien, beber bien, hacer un mínimo de ejercicio físico, pensar bien, y comer bien. ¿Qué alimentos compro en la tienda o supermercado? ¿Sé cuales son sus ingredientes? Es importante proporcionarse una educación en cuanto a aquello que nos es beneficioso y aquello que nos perjudica, para que podamos llevar una dieta limpia y equilibrada. Nos tenemos que procurar agua limpia para beber y beber suficiente cantidad de agua. Tomemos la iniciativa en lo que refiere a nuestra salud y no nos dejemos llevar por lo que dice la televisión, la publicidad o el producto que nos pueda vender el amo de la tienda de posibles conocimientos limitados y que depende de las ventas para subsistir. De nosotros depende que las tiendas nos ofrezcan alimentos de mayor calidad. Si dejamos de comprar aquello que sabemos que es tóxico, las tiendas dejarán de ofrecerlo. Hagamos nuestro rol y rehusemos aquello que sabemos que no es beneficioso para nuestro cuerpo.

Algunos dirán que quieren saborear el gustito que tiene uno u otro alimento sabiendo que les es perjudicial y venderán su salud por el gustito. Es una posibilidad. Pero esto llevará sufrimiento, y entonces se tiene que estar preparado para enfrentarse a las consecuencias. Degustar es fantástico, pero sin olvidar que cuidarnos va primero, si lo que queremos es un cuerpo físico que tenga máxima funcionalidad para poder llevar a cabo las actividades del día a día, para llevar a cabo nuestro proceso personal de auto-conocimiento, es necesario querernos, es necesario cuidarse.