It's not about getting away from it all, it's about getting in touch with it all.
Once you get in touch with that level of solitude, you can take it with you wherever you go.
Don't confuse the role player with role being played.
Is this the key to emotional intelligence?
The goal is simply to:
To live in choiceless awareness.
To live your life without desire any outcome whatsoever. When you do...
When the time is right, wherever I am, whatever I'm doing, I'll be accept, embrace, and be present to the moment.
Deepak admits his fault is in being overly ambitious.
Is it a moment worth sharing??? Facebook?
Every moment we are closer to death. Deepak seems to be driven by a sense of urgency spawned by this fact.
We're all on death row. The only question is the method of death and degree of torture.
When you study to become a monk... You meditate for 24 hours on your impermanence - your death. Which forces you to appreciate life much more. Maybe I could do this without traveling to Thailand.
If you teach 3 people, and they teach 3 people, it only has to happen 25x to reach the entire world.
Consider this for spreading ideas.... (That was from Jaime Oliver's TED talk).
Helpful reviews:
A helpful and interesting take on what Deepak Chopra describes as the three levels of awareness and when and where problems arise. He describes one's awareness on three levels (1) contracted (2) expanded and (3) pure.
According to Chopra, problems arise in the first level, which is called the contracted state. This is a state of being in resistance, being tense, and defensive. This is also described as a level of awareness where one's fears take over one's actions and in many cases cripples a person's mindset and attitude.
Expanded awareness, on the other hand, is the level of awareness where one begins to cope. Problems begin to be confronted and conflicts begin to unravel a little. This is according to the book, where most people function on a daily basis. Between the first and second levels.
The final state of awareness, "pure" is the state that Chopra claims is the goal for a spiritual being. I liked how he described this state of awareness; it's when a person feels completely at home in the universe and lives in the light. In this state, there are no problems and no solutions, just being.
The challenge is to move from one level to the next and he tries to break it down for the reader with examples on what to try and what NOT to espouse in life situations. I found this last state of pure awareness so compelling and attractive. The challenge for me at times is the application to real life because human beings are emotional. One can't talk to oneself about "levels" and "awareness" if (for example) your car explodes or you get robbed of everything (e.g.) Or can you? Perhaps it's all part of the evolution. But very much worth the read- again, application seems the challenge but convincing.