June 23, 2007

Recent book I read - Deepak Chopra's The Book of Secrets

From Deepak Chopra's The book of secrets

Accident or Intelligence

1. Desert birds living by the Grand Canyon bury thousands of pine nuts in widely scattered locations along the canyon rim. They retrieve this stored food during the winter, returning precisely to the nuts each one buried and finding them under a deep layer of snow.

2. Salmon born in a small stream that feeds the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest swim out to sea. After several years spent roaming vast distances of ocean, they return to span at the precise place where they were born, never winding up in the wrong stream

3. Identical twins hundreds of thousands of miles apart have immediately sensed the moment when their sibling died in an accident.

4. Fireflies in Indonesia numbering in the millions are able to synchronize their flashes over an area of several square miles.

5. In Africa certain trees that are being over foraged can signal other trees miles away to increase the tannin in their leaves, a chemical that makes them inedible to foraging animals. The distant trees receive the message and alter their chemistry accordingly.

6. Mother albatrosses returning to a nesting site with food in their beaks immediately locate their chicks among hundreds of thousands of identical offspring on a crowded beach.

7. Once a year at the full moon several million horseshow crabs emerge together on one beach to mate. They have answered the same call, from depths of the ocean where no light ever penetrates.

8. On their own, sodium and chlorine are deadly poisons. When they combine as salt, form the most basic chemical in support of life.

To read the above sentence, several million neurons in your cerebral cortex had to form an instantaneous pattern that is completely original and never appeared before in your life.

Wisdom you are already living (Internal) and the Wisdom that I wish to exhibit(external):

Higher Purpose:

(I) - Every cell in your body agrees to work for the welfare of the whole; its individual welfare comes second
(E) - I am here to serve. I am here to inspire. I am here to love. I am here to live my truth.

Communion:
(I) - A cell keeps in touch with every other call.
(E) - I will appreciate someone who does not know that I feel that way.

Awareness:
(I) - Cells adapt from moment to moment.
(E) - I will spend 10 minutes observing instead of speaking

Acceptance:
(I) - Cells recognize each other as equally important.
(E) - I will spend 5 minutes thinking about the best qualities of someone I really dislike.

Creativity:(I) - Although every cell has a set of unique functions(liver cells, for e.g), these combine in creative ways
(E) - I will imagine 5 things I could that my family would never expect - and then I will do at least one of them.

Being
(I) - Cells obey the universal cycles of rest and activity
(E) - I will spend 30 minutes in a peaceful place doing nothing except feeling what it is like to exist.

Efficiency
(I) - Cell function with the smallest possible expenditure of energy.
(E) - I will let at least two things out of my control and see what happens

Bonding
(I) - Due to their common genetic inheritance, cells know that they are fundamentally the same.
(E) When I catch myself looking away from someone, I will remember to look into the person's eyes.

Giving:
(I) - The primary activity of cells is giving, which maintains the integrity of all other cells.
(E) - I will buy lunch and give it to someone in need on the street

Immortality:
(I) - Cell reproduces in order to pass on their knowledge, experience and talents, withholding nothing from their offspring.
(E) - I will read a scripture about the soul and the promise of life after death.