Why Spirituality Matters More than Ever

By Deepak Chopra, MD

In troubled times, when the world seems to be on fire, people think about God and the religion they were raised in–a source of solace and hope matters more in a crisis. I don’t find myself thinking about spirituality in those terms, however. Like a winter coat that’s put away in spring, for many people spirituality, in the sense of going to church or praying to God, gets put away when the crisis has passed.

 

Crises by their nature, come and go, but the deeper need for spirituality remains. This need is rooted deeper than solace and hope. It’s the need for wisdom.  Wisdom is a word that’s open to cheap shots and automatic dismissal. It’s even alien to the kind of spirituality that’s about issues like self-esteem and love. Wisdom is much less personal and mysterious. It gets at the heart of why we exist and what our purpose is. Wisdom gives you a vision of possibilities that are found in consciousness, bridging all ages and circumstances.  It gets at the heart of reality. Ultimately the search for reality is what binds a loose coalition of people who want to reach beyond organized religion and its perceived drawbacks.

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OPRAH WINFREY & DEEPAK CHOPRA LAUNCH SEVENTH ALL-NEW MEDITATION EXPERIENCE ‘MANIFESTING TRUE SUCCESS

Registration is now open for the newest 21 Day Meditation Experience, Manifesting True Success.  The experience begins march 16.  Register now.

oprah chopra

Oprah and Deepak’s 21- Day Meditation Experience: Manifesting True Success: 

Week One-Starting Within

In week one, the aim is to begin creating success from the inside out.  Lessons include how to define your own success, align with your inspired path, make it an everyday reality, increase the feeling of love and creativity around your goal, and harness your emotions to work for you and open up infinite possibilities. 

Week Two- Making Every Decision A Success

In week two, the focus is on making dynamic choices.  Lessons include how to avoid static decisions, expand your comfort zone, measure your goals, record your progress, embrace your innate wisdom, identify what really matters the most, and pay attention to the gift of inspiration when it strikes.

Week Three- Putting It All Together

In week three, the intention is to establish order in our busy lives, move away from judgment and put all of these qualities together to manifest true success. Lessons include mastering how to map out your time, turn fear of unpredictability into a welcoming attitude, develop trust, fall into a non-judgmental state of self and others, and release defensiveness.

The Power of Desire—What Do You Want, Anyway?

By Deepak Chopra, MD

 

Desire is inescapable, and one could spend years trying to discover if human desire is a blessing of a curse. But right this minute a more practical question demands attention. How can you get what you want? Beyond the basic necessities for food, water, and shelter, which are enough to satisfy the desire to survive, human beings invent countless other desires. What we all experience is that some of our desires come true while others don’t. That seems clear enough, but in fact people approach this simple fact from very different angles. If asked, “How do you get what you want?” or an even bigger issue, “How do you make a dream come true?” people will offer answers that aren’t at all compatible:

–Desires are fulfilled and dreams come true if you work hard enough and never stop fighting for what you want.

–Dreams come true only if they are meant to. It hardly matters what you do; destiny or karma plays the major role.

–It’s pure luck which desires come true and which ones don’t.

–Making your dreams come true is a spiritual journey. Prayer, meditation, and good karma are critical.

–Dreams come true by the grace of God. To make your dream come true, you must surrender to divine will.

–Desire is self-fulfilling. Every intention includes a path to fulfillment within its structure, however remote fulfillment may seem to be.

–Getting what you want is inevitable, but you have to look deep enough. Fulfillment can occur on the level of fantasy, dream, or imagination. It doesn’t have to be physical. (more…)

Do Your Emotions Help You or Hold You Back?

 

By Deepak Chopra, MD

Recently, a close friend of mine made the remark that our emotions for the most part are basic, primal, immature, and unevolved. Ever since then, I have been ruminating on the validity of this statement. If our emotions are basically primitive, then how they be our allies, especially on the path to personal growth? Might emotions be so backward that they are enemies of growth instead? Like most generalities, this one about the primitive nature of emotions seems to be equally true and untrue — and therefore, possibly a half truth. In nature’s scheme, nothing is wasted. The universe is a big jigsaw puzzle where everything seems to fit.

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How to Save the World–A Simple Answer

By Deepak Chopra, MD

Around a decade ago, when I first started posting at Huffington Post, one entry considered the world’s four greatest problems. They were over-population, climate change, pandemic disease, and refugeeism. Despite the suffering and fear it creates, terrorism affects far fewer people than these four issues, but if anyone wants to add it to the list, there can be no objection. Compared to a decade ago, all of these problems have worsened. Many observers, along with people in their everyday lives, feel that the world is in total chaos.

 

The greatest factor that fuels chaos is an inability to see a solution. Solutions, if they sound reasonable and have a chance of working, give rise to optimism and a willingness to return to orderly existence. In the absence of a solution, or the prospect of one, irrationality takes over and chaos deepens. Ultimately, chaos fights order not in the world “out there” but in ourselves.

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