MASTER LIVING

10 Essential Life Skills for Health, Prosperity, Success & Peace of Mind

by Dr. Barbara Condron

416 pages $18.00

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“Are you paying attention?” a parent asks in an exasperated voice. The child looks up, bright eyes shining, “I think I am,” she says innocently.

“I want you to memorize this list of spelling words for Friday,” the teacher says in a matter-of-fact tone to the group of eight-year-olds.

“Listen carefully,” the caregiver cautions. The child looks lost. He knows something about caring and he knows something about hearing. So he tries his best.

I remember many scenarios like these through my childhood years of education in public school. I had many wonderful teachers. They were the ones who made schooling intriguing and fun. Yet, not one of them taught me how to give attention or how to improve my memory or how to listen better.

My choral teachers certainly expected us to listen, sometimes encouraging it with passion. They could tell us if our singing voices were flat or sharp and nudge us up or down in our intonations. That guidance came from their subconscious understandings or a “trained ear.” How or where did one get a trained ear?– I wanted to know.

And that was the whole point, I discovered. I always wanted to KNOW! At one time, teachers almost convinced me that knowing wasn’t important, but that is another area best left to a book I intend to write on the subject of Taraka Yoga, a field I am presently pioneering that applies ancient disciplines to modern mental technology.

Then there’s that most valuable and ever-present essential life skill called breath! The only time I remember hearing about breath in school was when I had trouble “catching” mine after running around the football field three times when I was 12 years old. I learned the meaning of the word “winded” that day, from experience. I waited another 10 years to learn about the power, form, cause, and purpose of breath.

It was worth the wait.

We, as a species, are ready to move forward in our ideas of education. We are waking up to new realities within ourselves, a greater potential than book learning and high tech can offer.

Martin Luther King, Jr. described this eloquently when he accepted a Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 at the age of 35, “Yet, in spite of these spectacular strides in science and technology, and still unlimited ones to come, something basic is missing. There is a sort of poverty of the spirit which stands in glaring contrast to our scientific and technological abundance. The richer we have become materially, the poorer we have become morally and spiritually. We have learned to fly the air like birds and swim the sea like fish, but we have not learned the simple art of living together as brothers.”

To do that we will need to learn how to live with ourselves.

Technology is an amazing testimony to humanity’s creativity as a whole. It brings us a plethora of information. Yet with its virtual manmade existences, we must admit that technology cannot replace human contact in the work of nurturing the soul, the inner Being.

First and last, we need Self Respect;– the capacity to recognize ourselves as whole beings, as spiritual, mental, and emotional beings as well as physical ones. We need to develop skills to reach our full potential as homo Spiritus: the whole, functioning Self; intuitive, Spiritual Man. These skills of attention, memory, listening, and others are spoken about in our educational systems and in our societies at large, yet they are rarely taught or practiced as a discipline.

The School of Metaphysics exists to change this. The school has been teaching these life skills, essential to our daily life, since 1973. In order to know, we must do. We must have direct experience, and so this book is filled with the personal experiences with the Essential Life Skills of young and old, male and female, from varied backgrounds, cultures, and religions. These are a treasure trove of ideas that can alter the way you see and live your life. It is my hope that they will rekindle and feed your desire to know, for the best teachers show us how to use life for learning.

Just imagine when parents and teachers begin instructing the very young to, “Pay attention! Tell me what that flower looks like! What does it smell like? Feel like? Taste like? What does that flower sound like!”

– Barbara Condron, 2005