Balzac and Chopra

Balzac was known for working slowly, but for extended periods of time. In fact, he would write for hours and hours, once he wrote for 48 hours straight and only slept 3 hours.

I finished Chopra's Book of Secrets.

A melange of spiritual teachings and modern psychology. I found it interesting.

Chopra answers 3 essential questions:

Who am I?- You are the totality of the universe acting through a human nervous system

Where did I come from? You came from a source that was never born and never will die

Why am I here? To create the world in every moment.

He says that fear is the avoidance of pain. He says that anxiety and fear are sources of the shadow self, as discussed in Jungian psychology- our reptilian brain that stores negative aspects we choose to ignore about ourselves that act automatically when we dislike a person because they remind us of our own shadows. Sometimes when we repress them enough, they come out in ways such as anxiety attacks or break downs. That's when they need to be addressed. And to address them is to just feel the emotion until it passes into nothingness. Because to be full is also to be empty, it's transient.

"Cancer, the most feared of diseases, is the body's vacation from death, while programmed death is its ticket to life. This is the paradox of life and death confronted head on. The mystical notion of dying every day turns out to be the body's most concrete fact..." he goes on to argue that because our cells are programmed to die, our past selves, are all dead, because we've been renewed cellularly, so there's no use clinging onto an image of oneself, of identity, because it only serves to limit and constrain us to something that is already dead. He says that the gift of death allows constant renewal, a constant progress, and allows us all to develop and grow and shape shift to the next stage. Life is not continuous, physically nor mentally, so what are we afraid of?

He also goes on to quote Nietzsche, who says that humans are the only creatures who must be encouraged to stay alive. This is literally true, our cells receive messages that either tell it to stay alive or to die. Our body can trigger chemicals in our balancing act between life and death, as blood vessels receive signals triggered by cancer cells to bring blood supply to the them, and the exact opposite chemical is triggered in pregnant women that can cause a fatal disorder in which blood vessels die. The fact that the secret of health lies inside of consciousness is something ignored by modern day science.