In the early 20th century, an enlightened Indian sage named Ramana Maharshi lived at the base of a mountain thought to be the incarnation of Lord Shiva himself.

Ramana’s radiance attracted many disciples, including westerners like Sumerset Maugham. When his disciples asked how to attain Self-realization, Ramana directed them to meditate on a single question:

Who am I?

Follow the maxim to “Know Yourself,” he said, and it will lead to enlightenment.

I’ve spent years pondering this question. At first, I entertained the hope that the “big reward” was waiting for me after just a few more hours of meditation. The deeper I pursued it, however, the more I realized that I could not really say who I was. I couldn’t find any solid, unshakable core of “I-ness,” since everything I thought was ‘me,’ from habits to memories to my body, changes over time.

It took me awhile to realize that being stuck was not a sign of failure. Quite the contrary: finding something definitive to hold on to would have indicated that my analysis hadn’t been exhaustive. Had I thought, “I’ve done it, I’ve found my self,” Ramana might have asked, who exactly is this self who knows? Ramana’s method is a process of negation after negation, cutting through everything you think you know about who you are.

In a similar vein, Zen instructs us, “Do not seek enlightenment, just stop cherishing illusions.”

That’s it. See reality for what it is instead of what you think it is. The trouble is that we often don’t even realize our illusions as illusions. Nowhere is this truer than with the thought that ‘I’ is a solid, substantial, independent entity. I’ve seen first hand how failing to question this presupposition leads to suffering.

Meditation: What’s the first thing that comes to your mind when someone asks you who you are?

Read more of Daniel Goldsmith’s piece at High Existence — Here. 

Image via Google Commons

~ Camryn Manheim

Please click to see each photo by itself.

Where Children Sleep is a project by photographer James Mollison that shows children from around the world and where they sleep at night.

Where Children Sleep is available for purchase on Amazon as an art book; it gives an intimate perspective of these children. You can get a glimpse of what their lives are truly like (and how they are different from your own) by just looking at their personal bedrooms. Read more at: http://www.amazingoasis.org/2013/11/no-thats-not-just-old-dirty-couch-what.html

H/T Amazingoasis.org and PM

Most people can relate to having a strong desire, belief and yes, even faith, that something good was about to happen. This may have been a strong intuition that they were going to get that promotion, meet Mr. or Mrs. Right or even reconnect with someone after a misunderstanding that created a rift in the relationship. However, for whatever reason, despite the strong belief that we had it would all work out, it didn’t. The promotion went to someone else, Mr. or Mrs. Right turned out to be wrong and despite our willingness to rekindle the relationship the other person wanted to stay mad and unforgiving.

When this happens the first step is to immediately see the negative. We berate ourselves for our wishful thinking, for our mistake believes and our misplaced faith in the positive aspects of the universe. We often block ourselves from trying again and sink into a cycle of negativity, cynicism and critical outlook on the world around us.

Instead, there are some simple steps that you can take to ensure that your faith, belief and hope stays alive and you stay focused on the positives. Getting caught up in negativity will only attract more negativity, a concept that is central in my book, “The Law of Sobriety” , which is based on the universal Law of Attraction. Three techniques that really help you stay focused on the positive energy around you even if things don’t go the way you anticipated are:

1. Don’t try to control how positives will come into your life, just look for the opportunities that the universe provides. Controlling the process will simply block possibilities.
2. See yourself as you want to be, not how you want to get there.
3. Have faith and believe in your vision for yourself, don’t set a timeline or a specific date that it has to be accomplished by.

Via Sherry Gaba and IntentBlog

The American “family dinner” tradition, as we know it, is only 150 years old, according to a new book called Three Squares: The Invention of the American Meal by cultural historian Abigail Carroll. This is interesting because family dinner is often viewed as a sacred custom with near-magical powers attributed to it, yet it’s really not as deeply embedded in history as one might suppose. Many societal changes have led to the creation of family dinner — and to the subsequent drift away from it in recent years.

Carroll writes about the pre-Victorian approach to food, which was casual and chaotic. While the early settlers saw a defined, three-meal-a-day schedule as a way to differentiate themselves from the “savagery” of Native feasts, meals were “generally informal, variable, and socially unimportant affairs.” Since fewer than one in four Virginia households owned a table, it was hard to put on a formal meal. As population increased, table etiquette became a way to distinguish between social classes. With the Industrial Revolution, workers packed lunches, which meant “coming together around a table in the evening took on heightened significance.” This was the final push toward adopting the sacred status that family dinner now holds.

Click to read more of Katherine Martinko’s piece over at tree hugger — Food 

Megan Gambino talked to photographer and geologist-by-training Bernhard Edmaierabout how he captures his aerial shots of Earth, such as the above photo of Landeyarsandur, Iceland:

“I do a lot of internet research, including Google Earth [searches], study satellite images of planned destinations, maintain close contact with local scientists and commercial pilots, deal with various authorities and negotiate flight permits,” says Edmaier. “It can take months of research until the moment of shooting has arrived.”

Then, on that long-awaited day, the German photographer boards a small plane or helicopter and instructs the pilot to position him in just the right spot over the landform. He often has that perfect shot in mind, thanks to his planning, and he captures it out of the side of the side of the aircraft with his 60-megapixel digital Hasselblad camera.

From a logistical standpoint, Edmaier explains, “As my favorite motifs, geological structures, are mostly very large, I need to shoot my images from a greater distance. Only from a bird’s eye view can I manage to capture these phenomena and to visualize them in a certain ‘ideal’ composition.”

Photo via Bernhard Edmaier. More of his work is available in his new book, EarthART, published by Phaido

Via Andrew Sullivan