Meditation Secrets Revealed

Welcome to Meditation Secrets Revealed. Here you will find articles about meditation, mindfulness, stress reduction, yoga, cultivation of emotional balance, interviews with inspirational people, and much more.

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Meditation Secrets Revealed founder Vlad Moskovski offers yoga, mindfulness meditation, mindful movement, and NLP workshops in the Bay Area. For more information go you can visit the the About page  or go to his personal website Yoga Muse.

If you have any questions, you can write to Vlad directly: vlad(at)meditationsecretsrevlead.com or leave a comment. Feedback, comments, and personal stories are always welcome.

P.S. The website and the content is constantly growing so stay in touch and come back to check out additional information and new posts.

I recently came across a beautiful story that illustrates the yogic path. It is a Sufi story and therefore filled with awe, wonder, and mystery. We are guided to look within and purify ourselves, to be a reflection and perfect ourselves as mirrors to the world.

Chinese Art Greek Art

Meditation is well known for it’s effects on the mind and emotions. Scientists are now finding that it has profound effects on the nurvous system and in this particular study on how we perceive pain.

By Salynn Boyles
WebMD Health News

April 6, 2011 — Even very brief instruction in meditation appears to help people cope with pain, and a newly published brain imaging study may explain why.

After just four, 20-minute instructional sessions in mindfulness meditation, most participants in the small study experienced big reductions in pain intensity and unpleasantness when subjected to painful stimuli.

Prior to learning the meditation technique, brain imaging showed significant activity in a key area of the brain when the participants were subjected to intense heat, but this activity was reduced when they were meditating.

“This is the first study to show that only a little over an hour of meditation training can dramatically reduce both the experience of pain and pain-related brain activation,” said researcher Fadel Zeidan, PhD, who is a postdoctoral fellow at Wake Forest University School of Medicine.

To read the rest of the article click here.

An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life:

Interview with Pancho Ramos-Stierle by Vlad Moskovski

I can’t remember where I first met Pancho, but he is the kind of person that makes an impression. You can never forget Pancho once you have met him, and in a strange way everyone he interacts with takes a little bit of Pancho with them when they part. He is one of the kindest and most giving people I have ever met. I am honored to share with you this brief glimpse of the Pancho we all know and love. He is us and we are him.   

 This is an shortened version, to see full four page interview click here.

Vlad: It seems that community is such a big part of the work that you do and your life. What does the word community mean to you?

I remember a few years back, writing an email that was called “The Beloved Community” and I capitalized the parts “Loved” and “Unity” –beLOVED commUNITY. So for me community is coming together in love. And how do we fall in love with each other? First with oneself, so that you can bring that presence and authenticity to the members of your so called community. And then realizing that those circles expand more to your family, to your neighborhood to your bioregion, more and more to have the ultimate realization that we live on a living being called the Earth. I like to keep it simple. Loved Unity.

[The origin of the word "community" comes from the Latin munus, which means the gift, and cum, which means together, among each other. So community literally means to give among each other.]

Vlad: How does the practice of meditation connect with these ideas? 
There is a lot of chatter in our minds. Like mud in a lake. In order to see clearly what is up or beneath the surface you need all the mud to settle down. In a very still surface you can see the reflection of the light of the Moon or the Sun or the stars. And you can look deep within the lake to see the bottom. So all those thoughts need to stop for a moment, and then maybe that moment becomes two moments, three moments, and so on.

We need to unlearn things that are deeply rooted in our spirit or our subconscious. When you practice something for about ten thousand hours or more then you really master that activity to the degree that you don’t even need to think about it, you do it automatically. What would it look like to be automatic on kindness, on generosity, on fearlessness, on courage, on inspiration? Just to be in that state we need to work on our subconscious minds. So to spend time to be in receptive silence is part of that work. It is already in us, we need  to stop thinking too much and doing and to start being and embodying these qualities.

When I’m invited to share my perspective in a larger group of people, I love to ask them, “Please raise your hand if in the last week you washed your hands.” Everybody raises their hands. “Please raise your hands if in the last 24 hours you have gone to the bathroom.” Everybody raises their hands. No constipations, wonderful. And finally I ask, “Please raise your hand if in the last 24 hours you have washed your mind” There is usually a moment of, “Hhuhhh?” in the room. Maybe one or two people raise their hands. Can you imagine living a life where you don’t have hygiene in your mind? Can you imagine your hands and body if you don’t clean those parts even for a day or two or a week, let a lone a month!? It gets pretty gnarly. This is what happens with our minds.
So when we enter into that level of consciousness –stillness, awareness and equanimity, a state where we know we are beings who are able to love and be loved– it is easier to recognize how we are interconnected. Because when we do not recognize those interconnections, we don’t know how we could be harming those connections.

Vlad: Every Monday, you do a day of silence with no speaking. Can you tell me where you got the idea and what it does for you?

I’ve been always inspired by the life of Mahatma Gandhi and he practiced silent Mondays. I thought that was a pretty odd practice when you need to be communicating with people, but I decided to give it a try. I started to realize that you can communicate in a very deep ways without words. There is body language, and the pheromones, the look, and smiles. But then I started noticing that people tried to read my mind. And they started to answer themselves. Things they thought I was thinking and I wasn’t but then I thought, maybe I should have. I started to pay attention more to listening. Not only to words but the whole language and then it just became a foundation of my spiritual practice.

I have been doing it over five years now.

Vlad: I believe that you don’t use money. Tell me about your experience with that. It seems so radical. What is it like?

Well, to be a bit more accurate, I am choosing not to work for conventional currency. My work is too valuable to be sold. You can’t put a price on it. For me, love is the real currency that we need to be using. I chose to start volunteering everywhere I go and trusting that my needs could be met. If the community appreciates the work that you are doing, they will support you. And if they don’t, either you have to change what you are doing, or you have to move to another community.
Here is an example. This tangerine. We were just walking on our block, just before you showed up, and we talked with our neighbor who has these incredible 30 year-old tree packed with tangerines. He said: “I grew up wit this tree, and we’d love to give the fruit away.” So we picked some delicious tangerines. You can go to the farmers market and get two pounds, and I don’t know how much it would cost, or you can go to your neighbor and get organic local tangerines. It is just a way to shift the perspective, change the lens, from scarcity to abundance. Every time I see conventional currency flowing into a community, it is an opportunity to see where is the relationship broken.

My best example is grandma power. You go to your grandma’s and have this delicious dinner, tea, and dessert. And at the end of your meal you ask, “Oh grandma this was delicious, how much is it?” Ridiculous. This is unconditional love. What would it look like to start living in community and society where we treat each other as sisters and brothers as family? I know that we are far away –specially in the so called West– and that we need some stepping stones. But I say I am going to go all the way and trust that I am going to be supported.

Real wealth –as opposed to Wall Street’s phantom wealth–  is measured in the happiness of our communities and the health of our children and how we respect the natural world and its the magnificent biodiversity, that is producing this energy and nourishment. Real wealth is shinning eyes and smiling faces.

Vlad: Last year, you and Adelaja were arrested during a raid on the Occupy Movement. Were you intentionally there to be arrested, knowing that you may get deported? How did they whole experience effect you?

We saw all this violence, physical, and structural around ourselves, we knew we need to respond. Not to react, but to respond. We call it integral nonviolence. Nonviolence isn’t just a philosophy of resistance.  It is a way of life. It is not just an absence of violence, not even just the absence of wanting to cause harm.  Nonviolence is a state when your heart is so full of love, compassion, kindness, generosity and forgiveness that you simply don’t have any room for anger, frustration or violence. So, we felt called to escalate our nonviolence and our love for the community when we heard all these hundreds of police in riot gear were going to raid the occupy movement in Oakland.

It was silent Monday. On Mondays we carry a piece of paper that reads, “On Mondays we practice silence, but we like you to hear that we love you.” And it always brings a smile. To bring a smile to the brothers and sisters in riot gear, that was fun.

What interested me, is that we need to come out of the shadows. We need to stress that the Earth is but one country and all living beings visible and invisible are her citizens. How are we going to erase the imaginary lines that humans have drawn in the dirt? Well, if I am working here, through stilling my mind, and being peace, and transform violence, and doing something constructive, helping build harmonious communities and that is a crime, well, then we need to disobey with Great Love.
It was a way to practice fearlessness. If the people in the government of this part of the Planet ask me to leave this part of the Earth, well, I might do it but it is impossible to deport a citizen of the world. Unless, you know, they send me to the Moon or somewhere else in the Solar System. It is almost impossible. And it was beautiful that it was not planned. We knew some of the consequences. We needed to stand up and break the law of man to follow the Law of Love. You don’t know what is going to happen but you know that something is going to flow to raise our collective consciousness.

Find out more about Pancho, watch his talk at Wisdom Seed given on March 18, 2012. For more interviews visit Meditation Secrets Revealed.  

Interview with Pancho Ramos-Stierle by Vlad Moskovski

I can’t remember where I first met Pancho, but he is the kind of person that makes an impression. You can never forget Pancho once you have met him, and in a strange way everyone he interacts with takes a little bit of Pancho with them when they part. He is one of the kindest and most giving people I have ever met. You can see it in his posture, his words, his shinning eyes and beautiful smile. I am honored to share with you this brief glimpse of the Pancho we all know and love. He is us and we are him.   

Vlad: It seems that community is such a big part of the work that you do and your life. What does the word community mean to you?

I remember a few years back, writing an email that was called “The Beloved Community” and I capitalized the parts “Loved” and “Unity” –beLOVED commUNITY. So for me community is coming together in love. And how do we fall in love with each other? First with oneself, so that you can bring that presence and authenticity to the members of your so called community. And then realizing that those circles expand more to your family, to your neighborhood to your bioregion, more and more to have the ultimate realization that we live on a living being called the Earth. I like to keep it simple. Loved Unity.

[The origin of the word "community" comes from the Latin munus, which means the gift, and cum, which means together, among each other. So community literally means to give among each other. Therefore I define my community as a group of people who welcome and honor my gifts, and from whom I can reasonably expect to receive gifts in return.]

Vlad: I know meditation is a really important part of your life, how does the practice of meditation connect with these ideas? Moment to moment?

There is a lot of chatter in our minds. We humans are the result of all this beauty happening on the Planet but the man-made world sometimes also has noise, like mud in a lake. In order to see clearly what is up or beneath the surface you need all the mud to settle down. In a very still surface you can see the reflection of the light of the Moon or the Sun or the stars. And you can look deep within the lake to see the bottom. So all those thoughts need to stop for a moment, and then maybe that moment becomes two moments, three moments, and so on. This is how we move beyond this state of mind and matter. It comes from stillness and it is very counter-intuitive to what we have been taught. We have to unlearn a lot of things and it is very hard.

There are some things that are not so positive for our development. We need to unlearn things that are deeply rooted in our spirit or our subconscious. What is very important to know is that we are only aware of 40 transactions per second in our mind and at the same time we are processing 40 million transactions per second in our subconscious mind. That is a difference of six orders of magnitude! When you practice something for about ten thousand hours or more then you really master that activity to the degree that you don’t even need to think about it, you do it automatically.  What would it look like to be automatic on kindness, on generosity, on fearlessness, on courage, on inspiration? Just to be in that state we need to work on our subconscious minds. So to spend time to be in receptive silence is part of that work. It is already in us, we need  to stop thinking too much and doing and to start being and embodying these qualities.

When I’m invited to share my perspective in a larger group of people, I love to ask them, “Please raise your hand if in the last week you washed your hands.” Everybody raises their hands. “Please raise your hands if in the last 24 hours you have gone to the bathroom.” Everybody raises their hands. No constipations, wonderful. And finally I ask, “Please raise your hand if in the last 24 hours you have washed your mind” There is usually a moment of, “Hhuhhh?” in the room. Maybe one or two people raise their hands. Can you imagine living a life where you don’t have hygiene in your mind? Can you imagine your hands and body if you don’t clean those parts even for a day or two or a week, let a lone a month!? It gets pretty gnarly. This is what happens with our minds, specially surrounded in a consumerist culture and a pollution violence economy/system. To go to its original state of oneness and interconnectedness, to have a mind cleansed by love and see reality as it is, we could practice silent prayer or contemplation of Nature, or meditation or what ever name we use to describe this state of being in receptive silence that remind us of our interdependence.

So when we enter into that level of consciousness –stillness, awareness and equanimity, a state where we know we are beings who are able to love and be loved– it is easier to recognize how we are interconnected. Because when we do not recognize those interconnections, we don’t know how we could be harming those connections.

Vlad: Every Monday, you do a day of silence with no speaking. Can you tell me where you got the idea and what it does for you?

I’ve been always inspired by the life of Mahatma Gandhi and he practiced silent Mondays. I thought that was a pretty odd practice when you need to be communicating with people, but I decided to give it a try. I started to realize that you can communicate in a very deep ways without words. There is body language, and the pheromones, the look, and smiles. But then I started noticing that people tried to read my mind. And they started to answer themselves. Things they thought I was thinking and I wasn’t but then I thought, maybe I should have. I started to pay attention more to listening. Not only to words but the whole language and then it just became a foundation of my spiritual practice.

I have been doing it over five years now.

Vlad: I believe that you don’t use money. Tell me about your experience with that. It seems so radical. What is it like?

Well, to be a bit more accurate, I am choosing not to work for conventional currency. My work is too valuable to be sold. You can’t put a price on it.

For me, love is the real currency that we need to be using. I chose to start volunteering everywhere I go and trusting that my needs could be met. If the community appreciates the work that you are doing, they will support you. And if they don’t, either you have to change what you are doing, or you have to move to another community. I have been lucky, here in the Bay Area, there is so much richness. There is a systemic context for a kindness revolution; gift economy, preventive medicine, restorative justice, independent media, and permaculture are part of the wider ecosystem and a well established culture.

Here is an example. This tangerine. We were just walking on our block, just before you showed up, and we talked with our neighbor who has these incredible 30 year-old tree packed with tangerines. He said: “I grew up wit this tree, and we’d love to give the fruit away.” So we picked some delicious tangerines. You can go to the farmers market and get two pounds, and I don’t know how much it would cost, or you can go to your neighbor and get organic local tangerines. It is just a way to shift the perspective, change the lens, from scarcity to abundance. Every time I see conventional currency flowing into a community, it is an opportunity to see where is the relationship broken.

My best example is grandma power. You go to your grandma’s and have this delicious dinner, tea, and dessert. And at the end of your meal you ask, “Oh grandma this was delicious, how much is it?” Ridiculous. This is unconditional love. What would it look like to start living in community and society where we treat each other as sisters and brothers as family? I know that we are far away –specially on the so called West– and that we need some stepping stones. But I say I am going to go all the way and trust that I am going to be supported.

Real wealth –as opposed to Wall Street’s phantom wealth–  is measured in the happiness of our communities and the health of our children and how we respect the natural world and its the magnificent biodiversity, that is producing this energy and nourishment. Real wealth is shinning eyes and smiling faces.

Vlad: There was this amazing incident that happened lat year, you and Adelaja were arrested during a raid on the Occupy Movement. Were you intentionally there to be arrested, knowing that you may get deported? How did they whole experience effect you?

We saw all this violence, physical, and structural around ourselves, we knew we need to respond. Not to react, but to respond. We call it integral nonviolence. Thoughts, words, clothes, everything. It is a whole approach. Nonviolence isn’t just a philosophy of resistance.  It is a way of life.  Nonviolence is the thoughts we have, the words that we use, the clothes that we wear, the things that we say.  It is not just an absence of violence, not even just the absence of wanting to cause harm.  Nonviolence is a state when your heart is so full of love, compassion, kindness, generosity and forgiveness that you simply don’t have any room for anger, frustration or violence. So, we felt called to escalate our nonviolence and our love for the community when we heard all these hundreds of police in riot gear were going to raid the occupy movement in Oakland.

Lately I have been loving the phrase, “Jai Jagat!” “Glory to the Planet!” Again is not a motto but a way of life. We are the Earth herself. So how do we embody that love ourselves? What is your heart saying that the Earth calls for you to do? And at that moment, she told us to go there, to sit still, and be love. It was silent Monday. On Mondays we carry a piece of paper that reads, ” On Mondays we practice silence, but we like you to hear that we love you” And it always brings a smile. To bring a smile to the brothers and sisters in riot gear, that was fun. What interested me, is that we need to come out of the shadows. We need to stress that the Earth is but one country and all living beings visible and invisible are her citizens. So why is it that people with conventional currency and financial resources can go anywhere on the Planet, but the people that do not have money can not? That does not make sense. How are we going to erase the imaginary lines that humans have drawn in the dirt? Well, if I am working here, through stilling my mind, and being peace, and transform violence, and doing something constructive, helping build harmonious communities and that is a crime, well, then we need to disobey with Great Love, be informed and do it beautifully. So we thought that it was a beautiful way to stand up, and send a message to our brothers and sisters who have no papers that we can not be stopped. We are undocumented and unafraid like a monarch butterfly.

It was a way to practice fearlessness. If the people in the government of this part of the Planet ask me to leave this part of the Earth, well, I might do it but it is impossible to deport a citizen of the world. Unless, you know, they send me to the Moon or somewhere else in the Solar System. It is almost impossible.

And it was beautiful that it was not planned. We knew some of the consequences. We needed to stand up and break the law of man to follow the Law of Love. You don’t know what is going to happen but you know that something is going to flow to raise our collective consciousness.

Find out more about Pancho, watch his talk at Wisdom Seed given on March 18, 2012. For more interviews visit Meditation Secrets Revealed.

Seva: The Sanskrit word for service – to work selflessly without attachment or ego while holding the intention to face challenges and hardships in order to grow spiritually. This is the path of Karma Yoga.

The practice of seva helps us realize through our own experience that we are inter-connected in ways that reach far beyond age, race, class, and material wealth. This practice helps cultivate space and opening of the heart to give unconditionally. The challenge is to reduce the illusion of separation between self and other. What is the difference between you and the homeless person sitting on the sidewalk? Consider that person may have been just like you. Situations change quickly and here they are, without a roof over their head. Just a small turn of chance resulted in that person’s unfortunate situation. On first glance you may see a person with old or filthy clothing, perhaps in need of a bath, on the outside they appear disheveled. Look deeper. What is the expression on their face? Have they not experienced joy and sorry, love, and laughter just like you? Look deeper. What is the desire in their heart? Deep within every person is the desire to be happy, to be safe, to be free from fear and anger? Do you share this in common also? Look deeper. Can you cleanse your inner vision until you see the light within them? Who are they beneath the societal norms, behind the mask of a person with thoughts, memories, and habits? We are all divine. Infinitely capable of the greatest gifts of love and joy despite the harshest of realities.

In doing this work, certain qualities are cultivated that shape us. Practice humility, control the inner ego of striving and boasting. Be simple in your thinking and find solutions that are straightforward. Balance kindness and be firm when necessary coming from a place of love. You don’t have to be perfect to practice seva, know that you are ready anytime with whatever tools and resources you have available to you. Karma Yoga invites us to adjust our lofty standards and the harsh expectations that block the heart from opening and contort the eye from seeing clearly. We must forgive others that may have done us wrong in order to face new situations without resentment, greed, anger or delusion.

Make no mistake, this is not charity work! The practice of seva is as much for our own benefit as it is for those that we hope to serve. Seva is not about solving the world’s problems, rather, it is the practice of opening ourselves up to be available for the universe to use us! To be a humble tool for positive peaceful change. And holding this, in every moment can we focus our mind and heart on the thought, “How can I be most useful, how can I serve the greater good for all of humanity”. That is the greatest and most selfless thought we can have. It is this thought that liberates our egos and frees us from the grips of contempt and fear. This thought will never bring you suffering because even if hardship befall you, nature and the universe will witness that you are dedicating yourself to help all beings and you will be supported, you will be upheld and provided for. There is almost infinite inner and outer power available to those who giving of themselves to the world and ask nothing in return. Give of yourself and you shall have everything.

To practice of seva is to connect with people and look deeper. To look at the world through this lens is to embody an experiential mode of being that encourages growth of empathy and the practice of generosity. Consider practicing seva with everyone. Try not to limiting your practice within the confines of your comfort zone. Be like the water jug, full and ready to give unconditionally nourishing whoever is thirsty.

“An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broad concerns of all humanity.”
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

I believe we live in an exciting time. A unique time in human history – we wield unimaginable power over nature yet have begun to gain glimpses of the equally unimaginable power within. This is a time where anything and everything could change in the blink of an eye based on the small choices that we as individuals make.  One of my passions is to re-read ancient text and one of my favorites is the Bhagavad Gita, a timeless text of wisdom from India and the foundation of Yoga as we know it. I was deeply moved by the following passage, a forward to the Gita that I am re-reading.

An excerpt from Andrew Harvey’s forward to Bhagavad Gita Annotated & Explained

I believe that the whole of humanity is now in the thick of a battle whose outcome will determine the fate of the planet. This battle is between those forces of Life that want to see us living in harmony with the creation, inspired by divine love, and so able to re-create our devastated world with the powers of the Divine itself, and the forces of death – of ignorance, pride and greed – that have brought us to the moment where we have almost destroyed Nature and polluted the world’s min and heart with violence and materialist vision of humanity. The destiny of this vision is so reductive that it threatens us all with despair and meaninglessness at a moment when hope and resolve are crucial. This tremendous battle is being fought out in every arena of our life – in politics, industry, the arts, the sciences, the universities, the media, and in the depths of all our psyches.

The signs are not encouraging. We have known about the progressive degradation of the environment for more than twenty years now, but almost nothing significant has

been done to counteract it. Two billion people are now living in poverty, yet our addiction to an economic system that thrives on such desolation continues unabated. Much of organized religion continues to be largely divisive, drunk on outmoded visions of exclusive truth, and wedded to a vision of the Divine that obsessively restricts transcendence at this moment when the entire immanent body of God-Nature is in mortal danger. The majority of modern seekers in the so-called New Age who pride themselves on participating in a  mystical renaissance are in fact largely trapped in a narcissistic coma, apolitical, unconcerned by and blind to the approaching potentially terminal tragedy of the destruction of nature.

Despair, however, is a luxury those who are growing awake in this darkness cannot afford; all those who see the extent of the potential danger and tragedy threatening humanity and nature are compelled to respond with the deepest of themselves. In the Bhagvad Gita, thos who long to know how to fight wisely for the future will find a handbook of spiritual warriorhood and divine realization that will constantly inspire and ennoble them and infuse them with divine truth and sacred passion.