Nobility requires the right state of mind

Some people are naturally mentally alert, very intuitve, highly conscious of what they think, feel, sense, what their motives are, what they intend and what they want from you.
Not me.
I had to come to the right state of mind after 30 years of hard work.
30 Years ago, I felt like I was a walking automaton. I only know that in retrospect and with the contrast provided by training.
Here is an analogy. Imagine that you were committed to developing a stronger physical sense of well being. Stamina, strength, flexibility all would be on the top of your list of attributes that would be desirable.
Mental training is no different. To be mentally tough, resilient, flexible, creative and alert all require skills except for those blessed with natural talent.
The training process is well established in many parts of the globe.
Go to Asia and watch the rigor, effort and discipline that young children exert in music lessons, learning languages other than their own, studying their required courses and you see how starting at a very young age they are being taught the value of training the mind.

Here are four simple ways to get started if this should appeal to your sense of rightness.

1. Cut out distractions to your attention. Splitting your focus between cell phone, computer screen, friend's voice, telephone, your partner's requests for your attention, kids needs and your work is a great way to reduce your IQ and suboptimize your ability to excel. If you are on the phone be completely and absolutely on the phone with full undivided attention, if you are making love keep your mind on the sensations and the full experience of lovemaking, if you are listening to your kids then give them the gift of your attention-fully engaged.

2. Train your self to spend 5 minutes per day on doing some form of attention- enhancing activity. There are practices in eastern disciplines like "Mindfullness" training, Yoga, martial arts that are amenable to the western student and enjoyable to practice. Or, give yourself the gift of completely listening to your favorite music- dissolve into that Chopin etude or Eric Clapton guitar rift.

3. Find a trainer. It is way more easy to train with someone who is already skilled at mental training than to try to do it yourself. One way of doing that is to buy a good tape, CD or DVD from Sounds True Catalog that appeals to you from a solid, experienced teacher. Or read a book on the subject of meditation or Yoga or Peak Performance or any one of the 1000 subjects readily available to you in this age.

4. Apply the skills that you acquire everywhere. I have been deeply impressed by the emphasis that mental training can have on personal relationships. For example, it is common for all of us to have conversations that are difficult to hear. Someone says something that we don't agree with or that hurts our feelings or that we just plain see differently.
If you learn to be patient and listen with all your focused awareness, you find that the conversations tend to go better and you often learn something you did not know.

I like your responses. Write to me at elad2@ix.netcom.com or go on my website www.noblepurposeconsulting.com

What do you do when dealing with ignoble people?

So big deal, you want to be noble. But the fact is that most of the world is functioning at a second grade level in terms of ethics and consciousness.
What is the implication for you?
I have found more than anytime in my life how true it is that you can find goodness and evil anywhere you look.
It is not the fact of the state of people's minds. It is what you do with their actions.
The Buddha said that all we own are our actions.
I suggest that the two things that we have under our influence is our motives and our actions.
So, it is not useful or skillful to look at what others do except to ask how would I respond that will make me feel whole, skilled and awake?
Several vignettes recently come to my mind. They all illustrate the fact that my part in the interaction was to have been imagining that they were rational or moral or conscious of their actions and the consequences.
None of that was true. Critize me for being naive. I have always had this problem believing people when they tell me something.
I guess I am one of those that PT Barnum spoke of when he said there was a sucker born every minute.
But I would rather be hopeful, caring and assuming the best of people rather than pessimistic and focusing on what is wrong with the human race.

I aspire to something better than the harm that people do to each other. This is part of my noble purpose- to stand for the view that we can all wake up and be our noble selves.

Elad