Alternative Science and Spirituality, a magazine?

by phil on Monday Sep 29, 2003 6:08 PM
emotional intelligence

Emotional Intelligence: The Smart Heart

Famous scientists have said that their discoveries seem to be merely following up the revelations of mystics from the past, and even the arrogantly sceptical Freud wrote, "everywhere I go, I find a poet has been there before me". The poets and mystics have always known that true intelligence is a blending of head and heart, of thought and feeling and now psychology is moving towards a definition of what EI might be.

Goleman defines EI as including self-awareness, impulse control, zeal and motivation, empathy and social deftness; these are the qualities he identifies as prerequisites for success in career and in relationships. However the term EI was first formally defined in 1990 by the psychologists Mayer and Salovey as: "1) Knowing how you feel, how others feel and what to do about it. 2) Knowing what feels good, what feels bad and how to get from bad to good. 3) The emotional awareness, sensitivity and management skills which help us maximise our long term happiness and survival." More recently they have updated their definition: "Emotional intelligence involves the ability to perceive accurately, appraise, and express emotion: the ability to access and or generate feelings when they facilitate thought; the ability to understand emotion and emotional knowledge; and the ability to regulate emotions to promote emotional and intelligcence"

Comments

Mary said on February 14, 2004 10:52 AM:

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Making Life Make Sense.

Life. It confuses, perplexes and confounds. Many people have written about it, few have offered explanations. In his new book TRUTH, Shaman Ross Bishop offers a unique perspective of life that differs significantly from our normal understanding of it. Bishop provides insight into why life is the way it is and offers some groundbreaking insights into how we might live “fearlessly and passionately.”
Bishop says, “Life can been viewed from many perspectives, and our present view is based upon the antiquated values of the age of conquest. Those old beliefs and values have simply outlived their usefulness. They inhibit our growth and development both as individuals and as a society.”

The Age of Conquest was part of The Age of Karma, a 20,000 year period that has covered much of the period of man’s social existence. During The Age of Karma, certain aspects of spiritual development, like enlightenment, were virtually impossible. We are entering a 50 year period that will be known as The Age of Awakening, and the rules regarding what is possible will be changing.

The Age of Awakening will both foster and encourage us to find different and more profound ways to view our existence, and that involves learning to live from the place of truth. Learning to live from truth powerfully changes how we see and feel about ourselves and how we deal with life.”

?Shaman Bishop says, “True inner peace can only be found by shifting perspectives and moving ourselves to the space of truth. You cannot eliminate emotion if you are in the ego space. Take an emotion like fear, for example. Fear arises because we feel separated from our natural selves – from our God-consciousness, or inner truth. Living in the ego-space, we do our best to confront fear, but from the ego, you can only minimize emotion, you cannot eliminate it. We end up failing and then feel worse about ourselves. That,” says Bishop, “is a major flaw in our or present understanding of life.”
Bishop continues, “Using the fear example, if you shift to your center to the space of Universal Truth, you realize that fear is not a natural phenomenon but something created by our ego to fill the space of perceived separation from the Creator. Once you return to the God-space, fear simply ceases to exists, it is no longer relevant.” This is an example of the essential message contained in TRUTH. One of the book’s secrets is that it shows the individual how to move past the ego and live in the God-space.

The God-space is not some esoteric, spiritual practice known only to shaman. The concepts are quite simple and have been with us for quite some time. Bishop points out that, “For thousands of years spiritual teachers of all kinds have urged us to do one simply thing – to open our hearts to ourselves and to each other. Whether you read the Bible, the Torah, the Bhagavad-Ghita, Buddha’s Sutras or the Koran, there is basically one message contained there: ‘Open your heart.’ Bishop points out that, “All any situation needs is more compassion. Whether it is an argument with your partner, being angry with yourself or the situation in Iraq, the whole world would be enormously better off if we would simply open our hearts to each other, but more especially to ourselves.

The problem is that we have all been hurt and opening your heart under those circumstances can be very difficult. TRUTH has been written to help address the problem of holding the God-space. “I get asked abut how to hold the God-space,” says Bishop. “actually what you have to do is to learn to stop not loving yourself. After that, nature takes care of everything else. I have included a number of useful tools for doing that in TRUTH.”

As a companion to TRUTH, Bishop has also produced a Healing Methods CD, which is a guided tour through the healing techniques offered in TRUTH. The CD is $17.95.

This is Shaman Bishop’s second book. His first book Healing The Shadow, is available through most popular outlets as well as the sources listed below.

TRUTH is available from Bishop’s web site:
www.rossbishop.com

or from:

Blue Lotus Press, PO Box 6105, Santa Fe, NM 87502

TRUTH is 256 pages and sells for $19.95. (+ $4.95 for s&h).