Fear

Fear - There is no one in this world who does not have it...

Some of my learnings about fear...

What is Fear ?

Fear is an emotional response to a perceived threat. It is a basic survival mechanism occurring in response to a specific stimulus, such as pain or the threat of danger.

Do other mammals, birds have fear? or do they have emotions is a debatable topic. 

What do we fear about ?

Most common fears include fear about, unknown, death,  future(What will happen if ??)

What do we do when we are afraid ?

Fight against whatever is creating the fear, Worry about it, Look for support, Avoidance.

Is Fear Good/Bad? Should we have fear or not?

According to Thirukural, Being afraid for things which we need to be afraid of, is wise man's action. 

How to overcome fear?

Fear about unknown - See if you can learn from someone who knows. Once you learn, fear about unknown vanishes or at least reduces  

Ex: Fear about Snakes. On seeing any snake we generally fear about death. Once it bites we will die and how bad will be the pain etc. But if you learn about snakes, you will know, that 95% of the snakes (in india), when it bites the poison will affect you only to a certain extent but will not kill you. Also most of the snakes doesn't eat us (anaconda's only does that), others bite us considering us as a threat. If you don't threaten then there are less chances it will bite you.

Fear about death - We can't learn from someone who has died already to know how will death be and if there is after life :-) 

But Again, we have to accept the reality, that our human body has a expiry date. We need to learn to live every moment and make the best use of it before it expires.

Fear about Future (What will happen if??) - This is the most common fear which we face day in day out. I feel that this fear is illusionary created by our mind. We need to learn how to handle this illusionary fear created by our mind. If we are successful in this then other fears can be handled easily.

Ex: While driving a car, fear that you will run into a accident, or your vehicle will brakedown in middle etc.

These fears are from previous experiences that the mind has. Again here also the same learning principle can be used to overcome this fear. Redirect your fear towards learning and preparing yourself for the situation, which creates fear. 

Learn to Forget. Mind when it sees something which brings pain or sufferring, avoids it from repeating again by creating the illusionary fear. Take each and every situation individually, this will help you forget.

What happenned to me .....

What happened to me ....

I am back after quite a long break. In this 2 years and 5 months that i have been away from blogging, I have had wonderful experiences in life.

I am happy that the time has come to share about my learnings and experiences ...

Keep watching this blog...

"Learn Understand Experience and Teach"

Tears, Crying and Weeping

Our body is so carefully designed, that every minute part of our body and its each and every reactions are for a specific purpose. Some good information about crying and tears that i found interesting....

Most mammals will produce tears in response to extreme pain or other stimuli, but crying as an emotional reaction is considered by many to be a uniquely human phenomenon, possibly due to humans' advanced self-awareness. Some studies suggest that elephants and gorillas may cry as well.

Based on scientific studies, tears that come out of our eyes are three types:

1) Basal tears: In healthy mammalian eyes, the cornea is continually kept wet and nourished by basal tears. They lubricate the eye and help to keep it clear of dust. Tear fluid contains water, mucin, lipids, lysozyme, lactoferrin, lipocalin, lacritin, immunoglobulins, glucose, urea, sodium, and potassium. Some of the substances in lacrimal fluid fight against bacterial infection as a part of the immune system.

2) Reflex tears: The second type of tears results from irritation of the eye by foreign particles, or from the presence of irritant substances such as onion vapors, tear gas or pepper spray in the eye's environment. These reflex tears attempt to wash out irritants that may have come into contact with the eye.

3) Crying or weeping (psychic tears): The third category, generally referred to as crying or weeping, is increased lacrimation due to strong emotional stress, depression or physical pain. This practice is not restricted to negative emotions; many people have been known to cry when extremely happy or when they are laughing. In humans, emotional tears can be accompanied by reddening of the face and sobbing — cough-like, convulsive breathing, sometimes involving spasms of the whole upper body.

An interesting discovery about the content of tears was made by Dr. William H. Frey II, a biochemist at the St. Paul-Ramsey Medical Center in Minnesota. He and his team analyzed two types of tears:

the emotional ones (crying when emotionally upset and stressed - Type 3) and
the ones arising from irritants (such as crying from onions - Types 1 and 2).

They found that emotional tears contained more of the protein-based hormones, prolactin, adrenocorticotropic hormone, and leucine enkephalin (natural painkiller), all of which are produced by our body when under stress. It seems as if the body is getting rid of these chemicals through tears. That explains why we usually feel better after a good cry.

This is a great study that shows very clearly that our body and mind are very tightly integrated. Emotional stress created in the mind results in the chemical reactions in our body which produces these fluids.

Origin of the Moon

This is the popularly accepted the theory for the formation of Moon:

At the time Earth formed 4.5 billion years ago, other smaller planetary bodies were also growing. One of these hit earth late in Earth's growth process, blowing out rocky debris. A fraction of that debris went into orbit around the Earth and aggregated into the moon

Check out these links to find more about the scientific theories for the origin of the moon

http://www.psi.edu/projects/moon/moon.html

http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr161/lect/moon/moon_formation.html

Personality

I came across a article named Personality Plus by Malcom Gladwell in which he analyzes the different methods available to test and understand the personality.
The following portion of the article captured my interest...

Our personality can hold contradictory elements—is at the heart of “Strangers to Ourselves,” by the social psychologist Timothy D.Wilson. He is one of the discipline’s most prominent researchers, and his book is what popular psychology ought to be (and rarely is): thoughtful, beautifully written, and full of unexpected insights.

Wilson’s interest is in what he calls the “adaptive unconscious” (not to be confused with the Freudian unconscious). The adaptive unconscious, in Wilson’s description, is a big computer in our brain which sits below the surface and evaluates, filters, and looks for patterns in the mountain of data that come in through our senses. That system,Wilson argues, has a personality: it has a set of patterns and responses and tendencies that are laid down by our genes and our early-childhood experiences. These patterns are stable and hard to change, and we are only dimly aware of them.

On top of that, in his schema we have another personality: it’s the conscious identity that we create for ourselves with the choices we make, the stories we tell about ourselves, and the formal reasons we come up with to explain our motives and feelings. Yet this “constructed self ” has no particular connection with the personality of our adaptive unconscious. In fact, they could easily be at odds.

Wilson writes:
The adaptive unconscious is more likely to influence people’s uncontrolled, implicit responses, whereas the constructed self is more likely to influence people’s deliberative, explicit responses. For example, the quick, spontaneous decision of whether to argue with a co-worker is likely to be under the control of one’s nonconscious needs for power and affiliation. A more thoughtful decision about whether to invite a co-worker over for dinner is more likely to be under the control of one’s conscious, self-attributed motives.

What we really need is an understanding of how those two sides of the personality interact in critical situations

-- Excerpt of the Article ends here

He says a person could react to situations differently based on which part of the personality wins over the other and gets into action at any given circumstance

I was impressed with the analysis done. The "constructed self" here could also be referred to as "I - The ego". I think that the Adaptive conscious is created based on the intensity of our experiences, thats the reason it stops with Child-hood experiences...

And what the excersies like Meditation and Yoga does is to become aware of this Adaptive conscious train it and use it in a positive way.

A Earth without people

An interesting article in scientific american about what would happen to our earth that is in present condition. if we humans do not exist.

Go ahead and read this if you want to know what all things we humans have done to the nature and environment....

http://sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=1&articleID=2691D716-E7F2-99DF-38F54EF6075AAB4D

Living Life Naturally

A good web site that i came across on living a natural life. A doctor from AP, India talks about the natural way of living.

Most of the things that he says makes sense. Try it out if you are interested.

http://www.livingnaturallife.com/index.asp