Introspective
By
Thomas F. O'Neill
I went to science symposium a few weeks ago in Shanghai, China. I went there with some of my students from the Suzhou International Foreign Language School in Suzhou, China. We learned a great deal from listening to various scientists talk about their vision of the future. One scientist spoke about amazing breakthroughs in the area of medical technology. She also mentioned that there is a great possibility that babies being born today, can in all likelihood, have a life expectancy of 130 years – due to the rapped advances in healthcare and medical technology.
One cannot help but ask - what will be the quality of life be like in the distant future?
In China, fifty years ago, life was hard, there were food rations, and coupons were needed to purchase things of necessity. China has, however, come a long way in the last fifty years and there have been extraordinary technological achievements not just in Asia but throughout the world.
In our modern era technology is doubling every 18 months and soon it will be difficult for the average person to keep up with the changing tides.
However, in our fast passed world there are great technological advantages to these changing trends. For instance, the new high-tech gadgets and gismos can aid us in getting more done in a shorter period of time. But our high-tech lifestyles are also coming with a price. The price we pay is higher stress and less ways to elevate our stress from our stressful environments.
We are certainly dealing with a lot more stress than our parents dealt with a generation ago. Stress also comes in many forms, it can bombard us on the job, in our personal lives, and many people are dealing with growing financial burdens.
Some people deal with the stress by popping pills and this is something our parents may have chosen to do. But unfortunately medication over a long period of time is toxic to the body. There are certainly healthier ways to combat stress. One way that is more beneficial to the body and mind is exercise and another is meditation. At the science symposium, meditation was not mentioned, nor was the benefits of having a healthy spiritual life mentioned.
There has been a lot of research done on the brain in the area of meditation and Spirituality. Research using MRI’s discovered that people who meditate on a regular basis are actually creating synapses in the brain that aid the person in creating deeper spiritual experiences. Meditating also stimulates parts of the brain that are believed to be responsible for intuition. Basically, our brains can be hardwired for spirituality.
Human beings are evolving not just physically with each passing generation but spiritually as well but at the same time we are aiding the evolutionary process along. The more we practice spiritual exercises the more we evolve spiritually. In the area of spirituality, intuition, can lead to deeper insights to our spiritual connection with others, nature, and god.
Spiritual Intuition through meditation is a flash of knowing, an immediate insight. It can also lead to a deeper understanding of ourselves in relation to others. Meditation can also aid us in resolving inner conflicts and other unresolved issues in our lives.
The studies being conducted on intuition show that there is a distinction between religion and spirituality. Spirituality leads more towards the objectivity of the spiritual experience. In other words, it leads to a deeper understanding of oneself.
Religion has a tendency to draw people into the ritual of religious pageantry rather than helping people gain insight into their spiritual nature.
The intuitive mind is open to so many possibilities. Many great scientific breakthroughs and discoveries have been made through flashes of intuition. The thought that there are ways to increase one’s intuitive powers is pretty exciting to say the least.
The thought that we are evolving not only on a physical level but spiritually makes sense to me.
We will continue to evolve, physically, socially, psychologically, but most of all we will continue to evolve in the area of science. We are aiding the evolutionary process along through our quest for self-improvement.
It also makes sense that in the midst of all this technological change we need some quiet time. A time to relax, to meditate, and quiet things down. It is a way of getting to know ourselves better. This process is as old as our humanity and this spiritual path has been taken by the old wisdom seekers. Science is just beginning to catch up with what the ancient mystics intuitively understood since the birth of humanity.
Always with love from Suzhou, China
Thomas F O’Neill
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Email: introspective7@hotmail.com
Other articles, short stories, and commentaries by Thomas F. O'Neill can be found on his award winning blog, Link:
http://thomasfoneill.blogspot.com
Click on author's byline for bio and list of other works published by Pencil Stubs Online.
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