Musings and Reviews of Metaphysical, New Age and Meaningful Writings

Posts tagged ‘Compassion’

Why is the Dalai Lama Always Smiling? #BookReview


screen-shot-2016-12-22-at-3-36-03-pmHow can the Dalai Lama always be smiling and full of love and forgiveness given what has happened during his lifetime to the Tibetan people? In Lama Tsomo’s encyclopedic introduction to Tibetan Buddhism, Why Is the Dalai Lama Always Smiling?: A Westerner’s Introduction and Guide to Tibetan Buddhist Practice, she answers this question in depth, having followed the same ancient traditions to find a new way of living for herself.

I now understand why and how the Dalai Lama, and the monks and people who were lucky enough to flee Tibet when the Chinese took over, did not suffer PTSD despite the horrors experienced, and were able to feel compassion for their persecutors.

Lama Tsomo offers a guide to Tibetan Buddhism with steps to build a meditation practice that will lead you to the same inner peace as the Dalai Lama. She starts with an interesting account of her own spiritual exploration, while going through two failed marriages and having three children. After a 25-year spiritual quest, she found the teacher who would offer a course of study for her spiritual enlightenment whom she trusted when she met Tulku Sangak Rinpoche.

Despite the fact that she feels any serious student of Tibetan Buddhism needs to study with qualified masters (retreats or total immersion worked best for her), she does provide sufficient background in the Buddha’s teachings along with techniques which can be tried on one’s own. These techniques are designed to help remove ego identification to allow our true nature of compassionate awareness to shine forth. It will take a lot of time and effort, but as the author asks, “Do I have something better to do?”

Lama Tsomo recounts scientific evidence that the meditation practices of Tibetan Buddhism can help one replace knee-jerk reactions to people and situations with more balance, constructive responses, and improve one’s focus, memory and mood. Instead of clinging to one’s small, separate self, even in times of misery, the seeker of enlightenment learns to see themselves as one with the vast ocean, the one great mind, and be motivated to help others with love and compassion.

The book includes an envelope of practice cards that you can use to build a daily practice and see if you are called to immerse yourself further in Tibetan Buddhism. If so, she offers numerous resources, including books, other media and websites.

This book is not one I could read straight through, but rather dip into and contemplate what I was learning a little at a time. While a glossy paperback with beautiful color photographs, at its heart, it is a serious textbook for those who want a guide to practicing Tibetan Buddhism.

It can be a bit overwhelming as a first introduction to Buddhism (even with the glossary), but for the serious student, this could be an invaluable guide on their path. If you think you’d like to start 2017 with a serious spiritual effort to achieve your own Buddha nature, reading this book could be a wonderful start.

Why is the Dalai Lama Always Smiling? is available in Kindle, paperback, Audible and in MP3 CD versions.

Namaste!
Becca Chopra, author of The Chakra Diaries, Chakra Secrets (FREE through Dec. 23), Balance Your Chakras-Balance Your Life, and The Chakra Energy Diet

www.theChakras.org

Chakra Blog

 

Put Energy Medicine to Work for You and Experience Holistic Healing


cover high def Heidi DuPreeFor a complete, easy-to-understand, and illuminating introduction to energy healing, see The Other Medicine…That Really Works! by Heidi DuPree, RN, CTN. She was a nurse who found Western allopathic medicine lacking in her own healing, which led her to explore and integrate alternative healing modalities into her practice and healing way of life. DuPree explains how the Western model of health care revolves around symptom elimination, while energy medicine gets to the cause of imbalance and can lead you into growth, transformation, and healing of body, mind and spirit.

DuPree uses her own personal experiences, healing stories of her clients, and references to the work of many well-known healers to explain our bodies’ energy systems, such as the chakras and meridians, and how to heal any blocks. She also explains how to recognize your own healing process, what can block your healing and how to work with it. The book ends with useful energy medicine techniques that you can put into practice, including homeopathy, flower essences, craniosacral therapy, meditation, and acutapping (such as EFT and Dynamind, which I explain in my book, Balance Your Chakras – Balance Your Life).

Both the stories of healing and the explanations of healing modalities are beautifully written. After reading this book, you feel you’ve been given a comprehensive introduction to the true path to wholeness.

Here, Heidi DuPree, award-winning author, energy healing therapist, holistic nurse, Certified TraditionalNaturopath and transformational entrepreneur with over thirty years of experience in healthcare – half in clinical nursing and half in energy medicine – answers my questions about her work.

BECCA: What can the reader learn from your own life journey?

Author Heidi DuPree

Author Heidi DuPree

HEIDI: If there is one thing a reader can learn from my life journey, I hope it is the realization that every difficulty in life is an opportunity for deep healing. We have a choice between focusing on “getting through,” surviving or conquering challenges, or embracing these challenges as a vehicle for transformation. If it feels like your life is falling apart, that may be what needs to happen to clear the way to your authentic self.

BECCA: What hope or message do you wish to offer others with this book?

HEIDI: That self-love, acceptance, and compassion are the most powerful medicine in the world.

BECCA: In your book, you write of reaching self-love through compassion. Could you explain that further?

HEIDI: Many people have been conditioned from an early age to judge and reject themselves. This has far-reaching effects on our energy, which compromises health and stunts growth. Transitioning to self-love is a process that begins with accepting every part of you, even the part of you that is self-rejecting! It’s about applying a higher vibration intention to a lower vibration thought or emotion and raising your frequency toward self-love. If you are currently in a low-frequency state such as fear, anger, grief, apathy, guilt or shame, if you can identify what affirmative action you have the courage or willingness to take, this will raise your frequency. Here’s an example: “Even though this thought, feeling, or situation is unacceptable to me, I am willing to accept myself.”

BECCA: What self-care healing practices can benefit the majority of people?

HEIDI: I refer to self-care healing practices that can benefit anyone as “everyday energy medicine.” These practices would include spending time in nature and with supportive community, and using water, nutrients, sunlight, play, rest, movement, creative expression, sound and music, and ritual and ceremony for healing. These practices may sound simplistic, but they can facilitate deep healing.

BECCA: What technique(s) would you recommend to orient to one’s core, and experience oneness with the universal energy field?

HEIDI: Any meditative, mindfulness, or deep-breathing technique would orient self to core. To step into one’s core and into the oneness is to step into the heart center. We all step into and out of our heart moment to moment, and day to day. It’s a process of living more and more in our heart-centered higher self, and less in the head-centered, fearful lower self. My favorite techniques to do this I call Energy Medicine First Aid and Energy Medicine Daily Care skills, which can be downloaded from my website and found in my new book Awaken Your Greater Health.

BECCA: What model of integrated health care would you like to see available?

HEIDI: While I can’t speak to what model of integrated health care should be available for others, as I believe health care is an individual choice, I can share my personal approach. Although energy medicine is typically used as a complement to, or an alternative when Western medicine fails, I use it the other way around. For any health issue that is not life-threatening, I use energy medicine as my primary health care and Western medicine as an adjunct when necessary. Unfortunately, many people have been traumatized by Western medicine and may avoid it all together. The current widespread availability of both Western medicine and energy medicine at the same time is unprecedented in U.S. history, and empowers us all with health care choices.

BECCA: What suggestions do you have for other writers who feel they have an important message to share?

HEIDI: I would suggest that writers use the law of attraction to attract all the support they will need to take their message from concept to published book. This would include the time and space to write, a good writing coach and editor, supportive readers, a publisher if they want to traditionally publish, or financial support if they want to independently publish. Visualize the completed book, the people who helped make it happen, and the people who are benefiting from reading it, and feel what that feels like, as if it has already occurred. And then…this is the hard part…let go of how you are going to get there. Don’t try to figure it out. Let go and stay alert for the signs that will guide you that come through the coincidental, serendipitous, and synchronistic events that occur in our daily lives. These guiding signs usually come one step at a time with the next step revealed once action is taken.

For more information or to contact Heidi DuPree, RN, CTN, please visit her website at http://HeidiDuPree.com.

Namaste!
Becca Chopra, author of The Chakra Diaries, Chakra Secrets, Balance Your Chakras, Balance Your Life, and The Chakra Energy Diet

www.theChakras.org

 

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