How do you create a stress free and violence free society? This is the question driving Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, a globally registered spiritual and humanitarian who has spearheaded an unprecedented worldwide movement to bring about this very thing. 

We’re all born the same way, says Sri Sri. We all have an innate quality to connect with everybody and to maintain our compassionate innocence. Just look at children; up until the age of two they have this innate empathy and compassion which (sadly) diminishes as they age. 

If this is a manifestation of their cultural environment, what mechanisms can we put in place to prevent that change in behavior patterns?

“Nobody teaches us how to manage our emotions, how to manage our own mind. And this is where spiritual knowledge comes into play. It tells you how breath, body, mind, they're all related, and the mind can be changed.”

In this episode of Into The Magic Shop, Sri Sri shares his wisdom on the need to provide children compassionate, loving and caring role models, why we need to learn how to let go of insecurity in order to create happiness within ourselves, what we can learn from suffering (both our own and others’), and why we need to listen to our breath through meditation. 

“What really bothers us is a sensation in the body and the feeling in the mind. And breath is the intermediary. Using breath you can cleanse these so-called negative emotions.”

On today’s podcast:

Did you know that when you experience great stress in your life it can have a tangible, negative effect on your physiology? But, says Kamlesh D. Patel (Daaji to his friends and followers), spiritual leader, author, and fourth spiritual Guide in the Sahaj Marg system of Raja Yoga meditation, the reverse is also true. 

If you have a calm mind and are compassionate, the parts of your brain associated with reward and pleasure are activated. And when you’re in this state, it actually increases your longevity.  

“Once I was able to open my heart and look at the world through the lens of compassion and gentleness and acceptance, then that changed everything in a positive way but it also changed how people responded to me.”

If you haven’t discovered The Heartfulness Way, then don’t miss Daaji, a modern-day guru, on this episode of Into The Magic Shop. 

Daaji explains about the different Chakras and the effect they have on you, the origins of heartfulness practice, and why when you meditate with a focal point on the heart, it can have an extraordinary impact on everything physical, mental and spiritual.

On today’s podcast:

Eckhart Tolle, author of bestselling book, The Power of Now, was 28 and on the brink of ending his life through suicide, when one night a thought occured to him: if he couldn’t bear to live with himself, was there more than one of him?

“At that moment an inner separation happened between my unhappy self and my deeper sense of I or beingness, which I now call consciousness itself.”

In this episode of Into The Magic Shop, Eckhart discusses the negative self-talk we hear in our heads, why science doesn’t know what thought is, why so much of our thinking has to do with wondering about what’s going to happen next, and why you are not your thoughts:

“If your consciousness is the vast ocean, and thinking is the waves and ripples on the surface of the ocean, and every wave and ripple has a very short lived life, it's very fleeting like every thought, but it pretends to have an independent existence.”

Download and listen to Eckhart today, and join the thousands of individuals who have gained insights into their own lives, transforming them for the better.

“Is it a revolutionary statement to say there's only ever the present moment, that's all you ever have, not the future, and not the past, you can never experience anything in the future. In that sense, the future will never come. Because when it comes, it's the present. There's only ever this moment.”

On today’s podcast:

Links:

• Eckhart Tolle - The Power of Now

Eckhart Tolle, author of bestselling book, The Power of Now, was 28 and on the brink of ending his life through suicide, when one night a thought occured to him: if he couldn’t bear to live with himself, was there more than one of him?

“At that moment an inner separation happened between my unhappy self and my deeper sense of I or beingness, which I now call consciousness itself.”

In this episode of Into The Magic Shop, Eckhart discusses the negative self-talk we hear in our heads, why science doesn’t know what thought is, why so much of our thinking has to do with wondering about what’s going to happen next, and why you are not your thoughts:

“If your consciousness is the vast ocean, and thinking is the waves and ripples on the surface of the ocean, and every wave and ripple has a very short lived life, it's very fleeting like every thought, but it pretends to have an independent existence.”

Download and listen to Eckhart today, and join the thousands of individuals who have gained insights into their own lives, transforming them for the better.

“Is it a revolutionary statement to say there's only ever the present moment, that's all you ever have, not the future, and not the past, you can never experience anything in the future. In that sense, the future will never come. Because when it comes, it's the present. There's only ever this moment.”

On today’s podcast:

Links:

• Eckhart Tolle - The Power of Now

The British have described Stephen Fry as a national treasure possessed with a brilliant mind, a natural wit, and an extraordinary verbal facility. He’s an English actor, broadcaster, comedian, director, and writer. In fact, he does it all. 

He is also considered the epitome of a renaissance man. He's also known for his virtuosic command and comical manipulation of the English language, both in speech and writing. 

“Why should we praise someone who's born, compassionate and dis-praise someone who is born callous, or narcissistic and malignant, like the last president, for example?”

In this episode of Into The Magic Shop, Stephen shares his thoughts on the nature of suffering, why effective altruism is actually cold hearted, the enormous problem with capitalism at the moment, and delves into the question of what humanity really means. 

“Society could not survive unless the vast majority of people are kind. It just could not. But you get into this narrative that people will take advantage of you if you're kind.”

To hear all this and more, download and listen to this incredible episode. 

On today’s podcast:

When American neuroscientist, David Eagleman, was eight years old, he fell off the roof of a house. As he fell, he thought how long it was taking to hit the ground, and how this must be what it was like to be Alice in Wonderland. 

Later, he calculated that he only fell for 0.6 seconds. The time distortion he experienced in that life threatening situation stuck with him, underpinning his adult journey through neuroscience. 

In this episode of Into The Magic Shop, David shares his subsequent research around time distortion - why enjoyable times pass quickly and why we lost track of days and weeks during COVID. 

“So in the case of judging how long something took, it's all about how much memory you've laid down.”

And did you know, only 5% of what we ‘see’ actually comes from our eyes? From why eyewitness testimonies aren’t to be trusted, to what consciousness is, and what happens during a near death experience - don’t miss David explain why our memories construct what we think is reality. 

“The brain is locked in silence and darkness, it doesn't see or hear or smell anything. All it can do is say, okay, look, I've got these spikes coming up these cables, what should I pay attention to?”

This is a fascinating episode you don’t want to miss. 

On today’s podcast:

Links:

• www.eagleman.com

If you’ve ever wondered why you aren’t achieving all you want out of life, or you’re skeptical of the concept of manifestation, then don’t miss Dr. Tara Swart, physician, neuroscientist, executive advisor and senior lecturer at MIT in the Sloan School, and the author of the best selling book, The Source, The Secrets Of The Universe, The Science Of The Brain, on this week’s Into The Magic Shop. 

Tara, a reformed doctor who subsequently discovered coaching, is incredibly passionate about disseminating simple pragmatic neuroscience base messages that change the way people live, and the way people work. 

“I've always specialized in managing extreme levels of stress for executives. So I would say that that's the biggest thing that holds people back from reaching their potential.”

She has a particular interest manifesting intention:

“When you set your intention, when you use the proper cues to put your intention into your subconscious. That's when all of these opportunities and benefits manifest themselves.” 

Tara shares her story from medical school, to discovering coaching, to writing The Source. She also talks about why fear is one of our biggest drivers, why ghosts exist in the executive suite, how formative our early years are, what makes a great leader, and why manifesting is about using your brain power to create opportunities therefore making them more likely to materialize in your life. 

“If your happiness depends on an outside thing, you will never be happy because it will always be the next thing and the next thing.”

On today’s podcast:

Links:

“Growing up, I remember entertaining my friends, my cousins, my siblings with storytelling. I would stage plays. I would write the play and they would act it out. It was my first love.”

Not many of us can pinpoint the exact moment our lives changed forever. For Khaled Hosseini, the New York Times best-selling Afghan American novelist, author of The Kite Runner, as well as two other novels including One Thousand Splendid Suns, and The Mountains Echoed, it was December 27 1979.

As a young boy watching the Soviet Union invade Afghanistan, Khaled knew this was a momentous event. 

Today Dr. Hosseini is an Ambassador for the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) and in this episode of Into The Magic Shop he talks about his experience as a refugee, his own survivor’s guilt, and why the power of stories move us to take action. 

“I believe in the power of storytelling, Jim, I think stories, be they in the form of plays, or films or music, or I happen to be deeply partial to literature, I think they're the single best means we have of feeling empathy for others.”

So what made a successful doctor change course and become a writer, and what is Khaled’s take on war and the refugee crisis?

To find out more, you’ll have to download and listen to this podcast.  

On today’s podcast:

Links:

• United Nations High Commission on Refugees

Frank Ostaseski is a Buddhist teacher and a pioneer and leader in the field of end of life care. 

“I don't know exactly how we prepare for dying. I know that we can use the spectre of death as a way to show us how to live our life really fully. And that may be the best preparation for dying, a life fully lived.”

Frank founded the first Zen hospice project in 1987, and guided that for almost 20 years, and subsequently then founded The Metta Institute, where he's trained hundreds of people in end of life care. 

“Knowing that the people we love will die reminds us how we want to care for them. Now, how do we want to attend to this relationship? It's not to scare us. It's to encourage us to recognize what it is that matters most.”

In today’s episode, Frank shares his journey from the beginning of his spiritual practice, to founding the San Francisco based Zen center, why you need to focus rather than seek, the beauty of a wonder walk, the value of listening, being comfortable in our vulnerability, our immense capacity for love, and why we shouldn't wait until we die to learn the lessons that death has to teach us. 

“The very process of dying is actually conducive to our waking up… People often discover something about themselves that they didn't know before. And this isn't because of some religious or even spiritual practice. It's because they came in contact with something true about themselves.”

On today’s podcast:

Links:

If you’ve experienced personal suffering, an incredibly powerful way to begin healing is through meditation, as Sharon Salzberg, New York Times best selling author, Buddhist meditation teacher, and co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society, discovered back in 1969. 

Having come through a childhood involving considerable loss and turmoil, Sharon’s eyes were opened to Buddhism during an Asian philosophy course at the State University of New York, Buffalo. That one class would determine her life direction. 

“That was an immense liberation right there. It was a moment of belonging that was very, very different than anything I had felt before. And then I heard in the context of that class, that there were methods that were practices called meditation. And if you practice them, you could actually be a lot happier.”

In this episode of Into The Magic Shop, Sharon shares how important a sense of agency is for us to actualize our potential as humans, how we can overcome our negative self dialogue through meditation, why we’re so fearful of showing our true selves, and why we need equanimity in our lives. 

“Equanimity doesn't mean indifference, but it's like a spaciousness of approach that actually enhances compassion. It doesn't diminish compassion.”

So, if you’ve been wondering about the transformative power of meditation, if you’re keen to learn more about Lovingkindness meditation, don’t miss Sharon Salzberg. 

On today’s podcast:

Links: