In this issue
PROJECTS
If you are interested in supporting the projects mentioned in this months newsletter, go to the websites below and register your name. You can be an active participant or just use it as a way to stay in touch with movements dealing with global consciousness.
NEWS & ANNOUNCEMENTS
**For those of you who have enquired about our Retreats and waited patiently for a definitive answer, we now have a date and location confirmed which is:
Monday, July 27, through Saturday, August 1, 2009 in Minnesota. The Retreat will be held at the beautiful Radisson Hotel and Conference Center in Plymouth, Minnesota. It is located fifteen minutes west of downtown Minneapolis and about 35 minutes from the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport (MSP).
Please see the Learning Strategies website to book your place on the retreat:
http://www.learningstrategies.com/Seeds/Retreat.asp
*Pathway to Enlightenment 1, the popular teleseminar course, will be running again on February 14th 2009. If you would like to join the next course, please visit http://www.learningstrategies.com/Jeddah
*I have recently been in the studio recording material for ‘Fruits Of Enlightenment’ (this title may change!) and this is scheduled for release in May 2009. Fruits Of Enlightenment is the follow-up to Seeds of Enlightenment – both part of the Changing The Paradigm Series. Seeds of Enlightenment is currently available on CD or MP3 through our website at http://www.jeddahmali.com/store.php.
*We have a Question & Answer Forum at jeddahmali.wordpress.com. I offer guidance, advice and direction on spiritual practice and discovery. If you need some assistance with your spiritual practice or discovery, we will endeavour to answer your enquiry within the week. All replies will be posted on the site (when we are unable to answer all questions due to high demand, we will post those that offer the most benefit to all). This is a wonderful way for others to learn from your enquiry, so if you have a question, please consider this avenue.
Till next time,
Jeddah
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Welcome
Welcome to our now bi-monthly Changing the Paradigm newsletter. Usually in each issue there is an article by myself or a guest writer in REFLECTIONS and one from The Great Brotherhood of Light, who are the masters that I work with, in MESSAGE FOR MANKIND. We also include a question and answer section, where we choose one or two of your questions each month and answer them for you. If you would like a question answered in the newsletter, please email it to info@jeddahmali.com and put NEWSLETTER QUESTION in the heading. And finally we have our NEWS section at the end where we announce courses, retreats and product launches. We hope you enjoy our newsletter. If you have a suggestion on articles or sections you’d like us to consider, please send them to info@jeddahmali.com and put NEWSLETTER SUGGESTION in the heading. As you go about your day, don’t forget to smile, to be kind to yourself and others and (as my favourite sticker says) “Cheerful Whistling Permitted”.
I am sending you all much love,
Jeddah
Winter Feast for the Soul
I would like to thank all of you who have participated in the Winter Feast for the Soul meditations so far. I will be leading several more meditations over the next two to three weeks, you can listen to these and the past recordings at:
www.talkshoe.com/talkshoe/web/talkCast.jsp?masterId=31700&cmd=tc.
The home page for Winter Feast for the Soul is www.winterfeastforthesoul.com.
Reflections
This issue we are honoured to have a contribution by Hans Dholakia. His motivational work combines the latest management findings with the timeless Yogic tenets of happy, healthy and successful living. It seeks to balance Science with Spirituality and to blend the best of the modern West with the ancient East.
Demystifying "Work-Life Balance"
by Hans Dholakia
Work-Life Balance has become some kind of a cliche, and the more it figures in our talks, the less we seem to have of it.
To begin with, the name itself is a misnomer. Work is a part of life, how can we balance a part with the whole and is it not vain and futile to even try to do that ? What is actually aimed at is a Work Life-Personal Life Balance.
But even that becomes unnecessary when we have the right attitudes, rooted in right values, which create right perceptions. We do not need to get the happy balance in our lives, we merely have to remove the unhappy imbalance that is there in our minds.
Stephen Covey knows it when he says, 'the way we look at the problems, is the problem'.
Imagine senior managers / executives being taken out to some natural resort and made to play some childish games, to develop team-spirit ; or people writing slogans to develop the so-called Work-Life Balance! We should realize that so long as people do not get along with themselves (which they won't until they take time to know and like themselves), they can never get along well with others.
It is all about Self-awareness.
It is also a major clue to the problem of rising attrition. Nor is this balance about distributing hours ; with long working hours topped by an insane commuting time, how many hours can be spent with family anyway ? But love and care are matters of hearts, not just hours; two people can stay together for a life-time and remain strangers. The key is, where quantity is lacking, quality can surely compensate.
Let us remember that it is not how long we work that stresses us, it is the reluctance with which we look at it and our inability to enjoy it with a happy role-playing detachment. Like the ocean in turmoil at the surface but calm and serene deep down, our outer activity has to be anchored in an inner tranquility.
Our technology is giving us a crazy speed; the inner sense of direction has to keep pace with it.
Unless we learn to do that, even our personal life, which we are trying to side with, in the name of work-life balance, will be a stressor - like at workplace, we shall have conflicts in personal life as we already do. Then, where shall we go ? Are we solutioning or escaping ?
Unless we have balance in our values, balance in our mental attitudes, there can be no balance in our lives. We indeed become what we think. Unless we choose balance in our thoughts and aspirations, i.e. within us, how is there going to be one outside ? We indeed live 'inside out'.
Work, like love, is probably the most beautiful expression of life - rightly done, it can be liberating. That can happen only when we bring our heart to our work and enjoy what we do - no matter how modest it may be ; that's when the barriers between work and family will melt away ; conflicts may occasionally surface but they will always be manageable for a mind that is anchored within.
Life, my Master taught me, is a joyous battle of duty and at the same time a passing dream. We take our roles too seriously, with a crippling sense of doership, so we fail to play them well. To consider Work and Personal Life as opposites, and then try to balance them out, is a fallacy. It defeats itself.
We must stop working like slaves merely slogging for livelihood, which will inevitably happen when we work just for money. Money is not evil, but to work for money alone, certainly is. With that attitude there can neither be happiness at workplace, nor in personal life, nor can there be any way for a balance between these two negativities.
Work life and personal life are complementary to each other, not opposites. We do not need to balance them ; we need to balance our minds.
Hans Dholakia
http://www.hansyoga.com
Message for Mankind
TRANSITION
We see that there is a lot of confusion right now - that many people are caught in a wave of fear that is spreading across the planet with regard to the financial and ecological situation on earth. Some of this fear is from the de-structuring of an old way of life and the familiar comfort that brought. This is very common in periods of transition.
Some of the fear is generated by seeing and feeling others in fear and being influenced by their response.
It is like the herd of antelope that runs because one of the herd becomes spooked. You can see the wave moving through the herd, how the response of one predisposes the next to the same reaction. A momentum builds so at the point where most of the herd have responded, those few who it has not yet reached are receiving a far stronger signal – a greater sense of urgency.
The birth of a new baby is often accompanied by pain and effort. But the process of birth is an important transition for both the child and the parents. Surrender and trust are what carry the child and the mother through the experience. The birth process is an opportunity to enter into a state of surrender and trust – to allow the powerful contractions to take over the body, no matter the discomfort of the experience, knowing that there is a purpose and a wisdom to this process.
This transition is not a punishment for mankind. It is an opportunity. So many of you have asked for change. So many of you have longed for a planet that upholds the principles of love, goodwill, peace and beauty - where human beings honour their origin in spirit.
There has been a thunderous calling of souls for the present climate of fear to pass. Much of what you fear losing, you would gladly give away.
We promise you with heartfelt sincerity – love, goodwill, peace and beauty will remain. As all that was false falls away, they will be seen and felt clearer than ever before.
To move through this transition, cling to the knowledge that these qualities can sustain you. Rely on them. They will hold you up. They will see you through.
And when you feel the tug of the herd to respond with panic and overwhelm, quietly go within. Surrender to change and trust that there is a wisdom driving it. Show others that the strength of mankind is found within – where it has always been.
Our love and our blessings go with you,
The Great Brotherhood of Light
Questions & Answers (Q&A)
Francis: Dear Jeddah,
I have a question about the validity of practicing as an energetic or spiritual healer and whether this is a constructive form of spiritual work. In my work I offer hands-on-healing and I utilize the model of the energy body and energy field as a way of understanding my clients’ situation. Whilst I have witnessed some wonderful improvements to peoples’ health and well-being in my work, at the same time I'm an increasingly drawn to the teachings of non-dualism and resonate with the understanding that we are not form, our true nature is not the body. I'm questioning whether in offering healing for bodily conditions am I in fact reinforcing the paradigm that we are the body? I feel that I bring a consciousness to my work which wards against believing the body to be Real, however I am seeking to be in integrity with Truth and would be interested to hear your thoughts on this.
Jeddah Mali: Dear Francis,
This is an excellent question. Thank you for bringing it to the forum. It all depends how we approach it - how we relate to what we’re doing as we do it, as you pointed out.
Healing recognises that there is more to one’s existence than the body, not least because the healer works with energy to bring about the healing. When we use intent to direct the existential energy bound in form, we are, by our very action, reinforcing that the foundation substance of all form is energy. The healer knows that it is the intent which informs the energy that reorganises substance. So healing as a therapy is immensely supportive of non-dualistic teachings.
Notice the conundrum here was created in the mind… for existential energy has no preference… it knows that all existence, energy and the form arising from it, are essentially non-dualistic. It is only how we use our perception of it that creates any duality.
Keep up the good work. Your intention to assist others by seeing Truth yourself is the highest form of healing. Our hands simply reflect this.
Blessings and Light,
Jeddah |
