The Deep Positivity of Life

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A wonderful new video from Andrew Cohen - here's the introduction from Joel Pitney at EnlightenNext:

These days, everyone knows that we're facing unprecedented challenges as a species—the threat of terrorism, the disastrous effects of climate change, and the global economic recession, just to name a few. In the midst of such complexity, it can be all too easy to become cynical and lose touch with our higher spiritual ideals.

But as Andrew Cohen explains in the following video, recorded at a talk he gave in Boston last spring, the fundamental essence of life is inconceivably positive, no matter how difficult things may be at any given moment:



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Spiritual self-confidence is the heaviest anchor in the midst of the unending storm that is life and death.
~ A.C.
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Same Song, Prettier Arrangement

The Subtle Trap of the Messianic Meme
~ from the EnlightenNext Editors' Blog
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This short post from EnlightenNext Editor Carter Phipps introduces a series of thoughtful, provocative articles on the insidious seductions of both apocalyptic and messianic beliefs, exploring why and how this way of thinking endures even in modern progressive cultures. 

Here's his take on the hype around 2012:

2012 is the progressive version of traditional eschatological thinking. It’s the idea that an event is going to occur that is dramatically outside the normal processes of history and change everything, lifting the majority of humanity to a higher level of consciousness and creating a more enlightened future. There are darker versions as well, where a sort of mini-apocalypse has to occur before we get to the better side of the future, but generally 2012 represents a positive version of eschatological thinking. It’s a more benign strain, we might say, but it’s still the same basic song, just a prettier arrangement.

"When our eyes open up to the reality of evolution in human nature and culture and we can look back and see not five thousand years of stasis but centuries and centuries of difficult and hard-won evolution in the interior of human lives and in the exterior of human society, we will stop hoping for messiahs. We will embrace a different vision of the future, one that requires the challenging but ultimately much more rewarding work of contributing to a process that transcends our own lives and that, miraculously, we can impact with our own actions."

Please check out the full article with links HERE. 

~ End Times thinking is one of those mind viruses that simply won't bow to the reality of failure. ~  C.P.


I also highly recommend reading Elizabeth Debold's companion piece entitled  In Search of True Scenius*: 5. Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris.  Here's a clip from that post:

Why is it ... that we so often romanticize the past, believing that there was a time when human life was so much better than now? Why do we create these ideas of a Golden Age where everything was more and better than the present?

Find that article, with more links, HERE.

*Scenius ... is the collective form of genius.  Coined by musical savant Brian Eno, it refers to his discovery that genius doesn’t simply arise in extraordinary individuals but geniuses emerge out of vibrant, cutting edge scenes or cultural niches where a group of people, often crossing disciplines and areas of expertise, are pushing into something new and rewarding each other for taking risks and challenging the status quo."

~ Scenius is the Golden Age of the evolutionary who wants to take responsibility for and create that which has not yet happened. ~ E.D.

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Thanks again to the folks at EnlightenNext for calling us to think beyond the concerns of our individual existence to the future of the very cosmos that created us and that is continuing to evolve.  For not only do we have a personal stake in what unfolds, every single thing we do or don't do affects the totality of that unfolding.  It's at once an awesome responsibility and a miraculous opportunity.  Bring it.
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Only The Beginning

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A Quote of the Week from Andrew Cohen:
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In traditional mystical teachings, enlightenment means it's all over.  You have reached the end of becoming.  But in an evolutionary teaching, enlightenment is where it all begins.  Everything begins when you become enlightened.  That's when you become available - free from narcissism and self-concern and available for the noble endeavor of creating the future.  That's when a new life opens up before you.  That's when the work of evolutionary becoming starts. 

So you want to get to that point quickly, because there is so much you want to do once you get there.  There is so much you want to take responsibility for.  There is so much you want to create.
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It's Better to Burn Out ...

... than to fade away.

Who could forget those famous lyrics from Neil Young, who has, over his amazingly long and varied career, managed to do neither.  This quote from his Rock & Roll Hall of Fame bio tells it all:

Young has consistently demonstrated the unbridled passion of an artist who understands that self-renewal is the only way to avoid burning out.  For this reason he has remained one of the most significant artists of the rock and roll era.

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Just in from Lateral Action:  How Neil Young Became the First Artist to Get Sued For Not Being Himself.  The author, Susan Alexander, begins with a quote from Rolling Stone:

Neil Young is the only artist in the history of modern recording to be sued for refusing to be himself.  The suit, filed by Geffen Records, Young's label for much of the 80s, charged that he was violating his contract by recording 'unrepresentative' albums.  In other words, Neil Young wasn't making Neil Young music.

This fascinating and delightful article explores how Young has managed to "...maintain an ongoing state of creative flow throughout his career - even when he was creating to order for a record company, and even during the litigation that ensued - ... by mastering the art of self-renewal, which is something we can all learn to do."

Susan looks at what Young does (and doesn't do) to maintain this state of self-renewal and the creative flow it brings, and what this has to do with you and me.  Here are the highlights:

        ~ He doesn't use the F word
        ~ He knows why he's doing it
        ~ He gets himself
        ~ He creates his own groove

Here's that link again.

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You learn that no matter how hard you try to please, some people in this world are not going to love you, a lesson that is at first troubling and then really quite relaxing.
~ John W. Gardner:  Self-Renewal
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Between Fine and Dead

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Everybody wants to believe that their parents - and even on some level, more importantly, themselves - are going to be perfectly healthy, climbing the Himalayas one day and dead the next ~ Jane Gross.
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A lot of us think we have come to terms with the inescapable fact of our own death and the death of those close to us. But what I think we fail to accept, indeed often vehemently deny, is that there will most likely be another stage of life in between fine and dead.  And that stage will probably be much longer than we imagine.
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In another excellent  On Being  broadcast entitled The Far Shore of Aging, Krista Tippett speaks with Jane Gross, journalist and founder of the New York Times'  New Old Age  blog.  In this conversation Jane shares her experience of caring for her mother, who, "...was fine and then all of a sudden in a hundred small ways, none of which were going to kill her, not fine."

...you have no idea how long it's going to last. You have no idea what's going to happen next and I think, for so many of us, and, you know, this obviously is an upper-middle- class thing to say in a certain way, but we're mostly people who have been enormously successful in our professional lives and are used to feeling in control of what we're doing. You know, you make a to-do list and you check everything off the to-do list and then, when you get to the bottom of the page, whatever your task is, you're done. This doesn't work that way.

This piece really tore my heart open because Jane's story so closely parallels my experience with my own mother's decline, and she speaks directly and honestly about the raw emotions that permeate that in-between time - the denial, the overwhelm, the helplessness, the guilt and the exhaustion.  And the other, softer feelings that are unexpectedly awakened...

It takes a while to learn that some decisions are far more important than others; some things are actually in your hands and some not. What is vital, and well within your control, is being present in a consoling way and respectful enough to bear witness to the inevitable. This, too, is about slowing down. At first it's hard to walk at a snail's pace beside your mother or father when they can no longer keep up, at least without impatiently rolling your eyes. Or to kneel at their level when they're in a wheelchair. But the pace and the vantage become more natural and annoyance softens into tenderness if you let it.

For me it was a time of great sadness and yet also a time of great tenderness and healing.  As with Jane, my relationship with my mother was strained for most of our life together - again like Jane, my father (my source of unconditional love) died young.  Being forced into the role of my mother's caregiver put me right up against all the wounds and resentments that I had been carrying around for 50+ years but which I was no longer able to cling to as I watched this person, who to me had always been larger than life, slowly fade away before my eyes.  And as layer upon layer of who I thought my mother was fell away, I began to glimpse a beautiful, radiant being underneath, until I could finally see my mother as a person in her own right, not just who she was in relation to me.  It remains a great sadness, though less of a burden of guilt, that it took me so long to wake up to that.  I can't really say that there was complete resolution.  There has certainly been acceptance and forgiveness, although in those moments that I most strongly feel my mother's presence in my heart, through the tears I still tell her I'm sorry.

If there's any advantage at all to them having this long slow dying, there's a lot of time to get things right that you didn't get right earlier. I mean, it definitely changed the architecture of my family. It definitely changed what the nature of my memories of my mother are and I imagine will be forever. I mean, on the one hand, it makes me more scared and, on the other hand, it makes me less scared.

I learned what I was made of; I found my better self. I found my mother. I found my brother. But all of that came later.

Access the full program (podcast or transcript) HERE.

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I have seen in you what courage can be when there's no hope.
~ May Sarton - As We Are Now
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The Friction of Being Visible

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From The Book of Awakening: having the life you want by being present to the life you have, by Mark Nepo
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I found this wonderful book through our local library.  It is a daybook, a collection of 365 short insightful offerings that speak directly from, and directly to, the spirit.  It begins with an invitation from the author:

This book is meant to be of use, to be a companion, a soul friend.  It is a book of awakenings.  To write this I've had to live it.  It's given me a chance to gather and share the quiet teachers I've met throughout my life.  The journey of unearthing and shaping these entries has helped me bring my inner and outer life more closely together.  It has helped me know and use my heart.  It has made me more whole.  I hope it can be such a tool for you.

Gathering the insights for this book has been like finding bits of stone that glistened on the path.  I paused to reflect on them, to learn from them, then tucked them away and continued.  After two years, I'm astonished to dump my bag of broken stones to see what I've found.  The bits that have glistened along the way are what make up this book.

Essentially, they all speak about spirit and friendship, about our ongoing need to stay vital and in love with this life, no matter the hardships we encounter.  From many traditions, from many experiences, from many beautiful and honest voices, the songs herein all sing of pain and wonder and the mystery of love.

I was drawn to this form because as a poet, I was longing for a manner of expression that could be as useful as a spoon, and as a cancer survivor, daybooks have become inner food.  In truth, over the last twenty-five years, the daybook has been answering a collective need and has become a spiritual sonnet of our age, a sturdy container for small doses of what matters.

All I can ask of this work is that it comes over you the way the ocean covers a stone stuck in the open, that it surprises and refreshes, that it makes you or me glisten, and leaves us scoured as we are, just softer for the moment and more clear.

It is my profound hope that something in these pages will surprise and refresh you, will make you glisten, will help you live, love, and find your way to joy.

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Here's a taste:

January 17
The Friction of Being Visible

Living through enough, we all come to this understanding, though it is difficult to accept:  no matter what path we choose to honor, there will always be conflict to negotiate.  If we choose to avoid all conflict with others, we will eventually breed a poisonous conflict within ourselves.  Likewise, if we manage to attend our inner lives, who we are will - sooner or later - create some discord with those who would rather have us be something else.

In effect, the cost of being who you are is that you can't possibly meet everyone's expectations, and so there will inevitably be external conflict to deal with - the friction of being visible.  Still, the cost of not being who you are is that while you are busy pleasing everyone around you, a precious part of you is dying inside; in this case there will be internal conflict to deal with - the friction of being invisible.

As for me, it's taken me thirty of my forty-nine years to realize that not being who I am is more deadly; and it has taken the last nineteen years to make a practice of this.  What this means, in a daily way, is that I have to be conscientious about being truthful and resist the urge to accommodate my truth away.  It means that being who I really am is not forbidden or muted just because others are uncomfortable or don't want to hear it.

The great examples are legendary:  Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, Sir Thomas More, Rosa Parks.  But we don't have to be great to begin.  We simply have to start by saying what we really want for dinner or which movie we really want to see.

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"I used to think that the reward for understanding truth was wisdom, but I've come to understand that the reward for experiencing truth is joy.  And while I'd really like to have both, if I'm forced to choose, at this time in my life I'll choose joy."
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About the author:  Mark Nepo is a poet and philosopher who has taught in the fields of poetry and spirituality for over thirty years. A New York Times #1 bestselling author, he has published twelve books and recorded six CDs.  As a cancer survivor, Mark devotes his writing and teaching to the journey of inner transformation and the life of relationship.
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The World is not "Out There"

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A quote from Andrew Cohen:
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If we are interested in the evolution of consciousness and culture, one habit that we need to break is the tendency to speak about the world as if it exists "out there".  From the perspective that I call evolutionary nonduality, we don't want to separate our self from the world process because when we do we fall into a false or dualistic way of thinking. 

We are not separate from the world process.  In our own small way, we're all contributing to where we're going.  The choices we make, the actions we take, what we say, what we don't say, are all adding to the momentum of the vast cosmic unfolding.  When we really embrace the truth that we are not separate from the process that created us, then we need to become very clear about all the ways in which we are actually affecting the process, so that we can begin to more consciously impact its momentum in positive and evolutionary ways.

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Just Like Me

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from Leap Before You Look

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Whenever a judgment or evaluation arises within you, whether positive or negative, add the three words "... just like me"

You can go ahead and judge another
as lazy, but be inclusive with it:
     He is so lazy, just like me.
     She is arrogant, just like me.
     They are incompetent,
     She is unreliable,
     He is angry,
     Just like me.

Call back positive judgments in the same way:
     The Dalai Lama is so wise, just like me.
     She is so compassionate,
     He is so strong,
     Just like me.

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It is the habit of the mind in separation to want to externalize everything.  If we have not fully accepted the anger or hurt or rigidity we carry in our own hearts, we seek it out in others and blame or judge the qualities we see.  We project our disowned ghosts onto other people or situations.  We judge another as lazy or rigid or cold or closed only when we do not want to see those tendencies in ourselves.  It is in this way that we create division between a you and a me, an us and a them.

On the other hand, if we can feel the judgment and immediately call it back, we can turn it into an opportunity to pass through a small process of expansion and growth.

The three simple words, "just like me", will transform judgment to self-acceptance. 

Practice this as often as you can.  You can use this practice silently inside yourself, or you can speak it out loud.  Either way, you will start to laugh at what previously seemed so serious and begin to celebrate the areas of yourself that had been hidden by your judgments.

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touch your body, touch the fragile part,
but don't break the mirror in your heart.
~ And One
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Non-Violent Communication

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Non-Violent Communication (NVC) came up in a recent conversation with my friend Logan, and I was intrigued enough to explore further.  What I found was not simply a new style of communicating, but a way of being in the world that allows for a natural expression of empathy, honesty and connection with ourselves and others -  "...being open and available to what is alive in others ... and being in tune with what is alive in us in the present moment."
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Here are some highlights from the Center for Non-Violent Communication's Instruction Guide:

We live in a world in which violence has become more and more accepted as the norm. It’s all around us. From wars between nations to crime on the street, and even imposing on our everyday existence, violence manifests itself both explicitly and implicitly. Yet for many people, the very idea of violence seems foreign. They are not involved in physical confrontations or abuses, and thus they believe that violence is not present. But the reality is that whenever we become disconnected from our compassionate nature, whenever our hearts are not devoid of hatred in all of its forms, we have a tendency to act in ways that can cause pain for everyone in our lives, including ourselves. 

Nonviolence, then, does not refer to the mere absence of physical harm. It is a way of life that takes its lead from a compassionate and connected heart, and can guide us toward a more complete and happy way of being. As Mahatma Gandhi said, “Nonviolence is not a garment to be put on and off at will. Its seat is in the heart, and it must be an inseparable part of our very being.” It is a practice rooted in understanding, in living honestly, and in acting empathically with all beings. Of course this starts with the self. We must first understand and act empathically towards ourselves in order to impact the world in wonderful and compassionate ways. This means cultivating nonviolence in every action and being present to our own needs and feelings in each and every moment.

NVC is a “language of life” that helps us to transform old patterns of defensiveness and aggressiveness into compassion and empathy and to improve the quality of all of our relationships. Studying and practicing NVC creates a foundation for learning about ourselves and our relationships in every moment, and helps us to remain focused on what is happening right here, right now. Although it is a model for communication, NVC helps us to realize just how important connection is in our lives. In fact, having the intention to connect with ourselves and others is one of the most important goals of practicing and living NVC. We live our lives from moment to moment, yet most of the time we are on autopilot, reacting out of habit rather than out of awareness and presence of mind. By creating a space for attention and respect in every moment, NVC helps create a pathway and a practice that is accessible and approachable. 

Here's that link again.  May it benefit.

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The way we communicate with others and with ourselves ultimately determines the quality of our lives.
- Anthony Robbins
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A Creative Flow

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A Quote of the Week from Andrew Cohen:
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Think about your experience of those moments when you are most creatively engaged. What does it feel like?

Being in a creative “flow” can be ecstatic and, simultaneously, there is an often surprising sense of urgency to bring into being that which you can sense is possible. That’s why great artists or scientists will work day and night, neglecting to eat or sleep. They are driven by a vision, something just beyond their reach that will not let them rest until they have brought it into reality. That drive is the very same impetus that caused the whole universe to burst forth, fourteen billion years ago, and is now expressing itself through the body, mind, heart, and talents of an inspired human being.
 
When you feel that creative flow, often you discover a part of yourself you are not normally aware of but which feels more like your “self” than the person you usually think you are. It’s like plugging in to a deeper source of energy and passion that transcends whatever limitations you ordinarily assume. A deeper, more authentic part of your self is creatively released. That’s why such moments are so fulfilling—it’s not just the creative work you produce, but the experience of being more alive, more connected, more in touch with a sense of meaning and purpose.

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Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction.
- Pablo Picasso
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Bozos on the Bus

From Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow
by Elizabeth Lesser

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We're all bozos on the bus
so we might as well sit back
and enjoy the ride
- Wavy Gravy
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One of my heroes is the clown-activist Wavy Gravy.  He is best known for being master of ceremonies at the Woodstock festival in 1969.  His contention is that we all have our frailties and vulnerabilities, but can fall down and skin our knees and still come up smiling.  He appears to be unafraid of looking silly.

He is also a master of one-liners, my all-time favorite being the one above about bozos on the bus, one he repeats whenever he speaks to groups, whether at a clown workshop or in a children's hospital.  I use this phrase to begin my workshops because I believe that we are all bozos on the bus, contrary to the self-assured image we work so hard to present to each other on a daily basis.  We are all half-baked experiments - mistake-prone beings, born without an instruction book into a complex world. None of us are models of perfect behavior.  We have all betrayed and been betrayed; we've all been known to be egotistical, unreliable, lethargic and stingy; and each one of us has, at times, awakened in the middle of the night worrying about everything from money to kids to terrorism to wrinkled skin and receding hairlines.  In other words, we're all bozos on the bus.

This, in my opinion, is cause for celebration.  If we're all bozos, then for God's sake, we can put down the burden of pretense and get on with being bozos.  We can approach the problems that visit bozo-type beings without the usual embarrassment and resistance.  It is so much more effective to work on our rough edges with a light and forgiving heart.  Imagine how freeing it would be to take a more compassionate and comedic view of the human condition - not as a way to deny our defects, but as a way of welcoming them as part of the standard human operating system. 

Every single person on this bus called Earth hurts; it's when we have shame about our failings that hurt turns into suffering.  In our shame, we feel an outcast, as if there is another bus somewhere, rolling along on a smooth road.  Its passengers are all thin, healthy, happy, well-dressed and well-liked people who belong to harmonious families, hold jobs that never bore or aggravate them, and never do mean things, or goofy things like forget where they parked their car, lose their wallet, or say something totally inappropriate.  We long to be on that bus, with the normal people.

But here we are on the bus that says BOZO on the front, and we worry that we may be the only passenger on board.  This is the illusion that so many of us labor under - that we're all alone in our weirdness and our uncertainty; that we may be the most lost person on the highway.  Of course we don't always feel like this.  Sometimes a wave of self-forgiveness washes over us and suddenly we're connected to our fellow humans - suddenly we belong.

It is wonderful to take your place on the bus with the other bozos.  It may be the first step to enlightenment to understand with all of your heart that the other bus - that sleek bus with the cool people who know where they're going - is also filled with bozos - bozos in drag, bozos with a secret.

When we see clearly that every single human being, regardless of fame or fortune or age or brains or beauty, shares the same ordinary foibles, a strange thing happens.  We begin to cheer up, to loosen up, and we become as buoyant as those people we imagined on the other bus.  As we rumble along the potholed road, lost as ever, through the valleys and over the hills, we find ourselves among friends.

We can sit back and enjoy the ride.

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Well worth a click:  Elizabeth Lesser talks to Wendy Schuman of BeliefNet about being Broken Open.
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Elizabeth Lesser is cofounder of Omega Institute, the leading educational center for holistic health, psychology, arts, and spirituality. Lesser has studied with renowned teachers like the Dalai Lama, Deepak Chopra, Thich Nhat Hanh, Ram Dass, and many others who have come to Omega. In the 1970s, she lived in a spiritual community and worked as a midwife. The mother of three and author of two books (her first was "The Seeker's Guide"), Lesser teaches workshops on spiritual transformation. 

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Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional.
- Kathleen Casey Theisen
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Being Too Keen

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A martial arts student went to his teacher and said earnestly, "I'm devoted to studying your martial arts system.  How long will it take me to master it?"  The teacher's answer was casual:  "Ten years".

Impatiently the student replied, "But I want to master it faster than that.  I'll work very hard.  I'll practice every day, ten or more hours a day if I have to.  How long will it take then?"

The teacher thought for a moment then replied, "Twenty years".
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The Dangling Conversation

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Simon & Garfunkel's music is not just heard with the ears but also felt as a wave of sensation flowing through the body. I find the melodies in this song particularly evocative... how such fluidly sensuous music can at the same time convey that quality of a "still life watercolor".



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If you liked that, you might like this:
The Power To Evoke
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Would I Still Exist?

from Leap Before You Look
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Take some time to reflect:   Who have you defined yourself to be?
You can write your answers on paper, or practice with a friend, and ask your friend to makes notes for you.

I'm a plumber.    
I'm intelligent.     
I'm a father.     
I'm uneducated.     
I'm a Liberal.    

Now for each of these statements, ask yourself:
~~ If I stopped defining myself in this way, would I still exist?

     ~~ If I were no longer a plumber, would I still exist?
     ~~ If I no longer defined myself as intelligent, would I still exist?
     ~~ If I no longer thought of myself as a father, would I still exist?

Take your time to work through all the labels you have placed upon yourself, and find out if any of them can really define you or contain you.

When all labels have been cast aside, what remains?

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Some labels are easier to drop than others.  Here's a more difficult one:
     ~~ If I no longer identified myself as a woman or a man, would I still exist?

If your definition of yourself is more conceptual, such as "I am light" or "I am consciousness", then your challenge is:
     ~~ Would I still exist without this thought, without this concept?

Whether you do this exercise alone or with a friend, you will need some time for it to go deep.  When it does, stop and feel your own presence when you have let go of all definitions.  Are you still here?  Can you still feel, see and hear?  Take some time to relax into knowing the face you had before you were born.

We perform myriad roles during our lifetime.  Each one may be necessary, even creative or enjoyable, but each can also become a prison if we become completely identified with the role and forget our deeper nature.

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Related RoadKill Posts:
Leap Before You Look 
Who Do You Think You Are?

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The question of identity depends on what I'm meant to be.
I sometimes think that I'm too many people,
too many people, too many people at once.
~ Pet Shop Boys
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Leap Before You Look

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72 shortcuts for getting out of your mind and into the moment
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Just got this wonderful e-book by Arjuna Ardagh - this is from the introduction:

"In recent years many people just like you have fallen into the realization of who they are deeper than the mind, a realization of being silence, of being peace, of being infinity... that what they have been seeking outside themselves is actually who they are, and who they were all along.  What they have been seeking in fact is the medium, the stillness, in which everything arises.  They see that who they are is the silence in which sound is happening, the spaciousness in which movement occurs.  This kind of recognition, whether fleeting or abiding, is called an awakening.

"We discover that who we are, who I am, who everyone is, is less of an entity and more of a presence.  Not even a presence, but presence itself, with no boundaries, no beginning or end in time.  That living presence is empty of form and content but full of love, full of creative intelligence.  Presence is that which is aware of all that is changing.  In order for a recognition of that latent presence - the silence beneath the noise - to be transformed into a gift and a blessing, practice is needed."

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What I like about this book is that the author does not talk about presence as just another idea or concept - he offers what he calls "shortcuts", awareness and embodiment exercises that can be done in the midst of ordinary life, that allow you to experience presence directly and immediately.  Here's an example from the chapter on Letting Go:

Could You Let It Go?

When caught up in a strong belief,
needing to be liked, to be right about something,
or stuck in a strong emotion, ask yourself,
"Could I, just could I, let it go?"
Could you abandon your position?
Could you open your clenched fist
and allow whatever is held there to drop to the floor?
Are you willing for your position to be defeated,
even when you think that you are right?
When you have no position left,
knowing nothing,
how does the world smell to you now?

This practice is not intended to put you under pressure to let things go.  That only creates resistance.  The exercise is simply to inquire and evaluate, in a relaxed way, if it is possible to let it go.  This discrimination, between what is obligatory and what is optional, is liberation.

Letting go does not happen primarily in the mind - it happens in the body.  You do not need to decide to let go; you need only ask yourself if it is possible.  In the recognition of this possibility, something happens in the body: a deep sigh, a muscle spasm, or a release of tension you might not have even known was there, and what had seemed to be a prison becomes a choice.  There is no need to know where a belief comes from, or to try to change it in any way, or to understand anything at all.  It is enough to feel into the essence of any contraction.  That alone will release tremendous energy.  That very energy becomes awakening and connects us to what is real.

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The medium is the message.
~ Marshall McLuhan
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Think About This: The Joy of Stats

courtesy of EnlightenNext:

The issue of cultural evolution is still a controversial one. Have human beings really evolved in the last several millennia? Pointing to the violence of the two world wars and the environmental destruction caused by industrial civilization, some suggest that humanity has not progressed in the last couple of centuries but may have even stepped backwards.

But statistics tell a different story. At least that's the message of the following clip from a recent BBC show, The Joy of Stats. In it, Professor Hans Rosling charts over a hundred thousand points of data and comes up with a unique presentation that is one of the most inspiring, original, and eye-opening four minutes that we have ever seen.



Pretty neat indeed!

"We have become an entirely new converging world, and I see a clear trend into the future - with aid, trade, green technology and peace, it is fully possible that everyone can make it to the healthy, wealthy corner."
- Hans Rosling
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Who is the Victor?

You may have thought mime was silly and harmless, but think again.



Just Don't Mime
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Dawkins on Immortality

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Many religions teach the objectively implausible but subjectively appealing doctrine that our personalities survive our bodily death.  The idea of immortality itself survives and spreads because it caters to wishful thinking.  And wishful thinking counts, because human psychology has a near-universal tendency to let belief be colored by desire.
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Richard Dawkins; The GOD Delusion
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The Power of Gentleness

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Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.
~ Leo Buscaglia
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Upstream/Downstream

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A Contemporary Fable
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It was many years ago that the villagers of Downstream recall spotting the first body in the river.  Some old timers remember how Spartan were the facilities and procedures for managing that sort of thing.  Sometimes, they say, it would take hours to pull ten people from the river, and even then only a few would survive.

Though the number of victims in the river has increased greatly in recent years, the good folks of Downstream have responded admirably to the challenge.  Their rescue system is second to none: most people discovered in the swirling waters are reached within 20 minutes - many in less than 10.  Only a small number drown each day before help arrives - a big improvement from the way it used to be.

The people of Downstream speak with pride about the new hospital by the edge of the waters, the flotilla of rescue boats ready for service at a moment's notice, the comprehensive health plans for coordinating all the manpower involved, and the large numbers of highly trained and dedicated swimmers always ready to risk their lives to save victims from the raging currents.  Sure it costs a lot but, say the Downstreamers, what else can decent people do except to provide whatever is necessary when human lives are at stake.

Oh, a few people in Downstream have raised the question now and again, but most folks show little interest in what's happening Upstream.  It seems there's so much to do to help those in the river that nobody's got time to check how all those bodies are getting there in the first place.

That's the way things are, sometimes.

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Donald Ardell:
High Level Wellness: An Alternative to Doctors, Drugs and Disease
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Who Cares?

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Richard Dawkins (The GOD Delusion) musing on how polytheistic cultures manage to keep track of "who's who":

Who cares?  Life is too short to bother with the distinction between one figment of the imagination and many.

Just started the book and I like this guy already.  May not agree with everything he says but it's a fresh and fun read so far and I like the fact that he's unapologetic about his opinions.  Most of my friends are like that too.  Coincidence?  I think not.
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Wife She Is Very Small

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A (maybe) true story...

Pablo Picasso was traveling by train on a journey across Spain when he was recognized by one of his fellow passengers, a businessman who was used to getting his own way. After exchanging pleasantries, the businessman told Picasso that while he admired his success, he felt his paintings could be improved.
“How so?”, replied the bemused Picasso.
“Well,” the businessman began, “Your paintings are too abstract – you should paint things more as they really are.”
“Could you explain more specifically what you mean?” Picasso asked politely.
“Certainly!” the businessman replied, pulling a small photo from his briefcase. “Look at this photograph of my wife. This is how she actually looks – not some silly stylized representation.”
Picasso studied the photograph carefully for a few moments, then asked “This is how your wife actually looks?”
The businessman nodded proudly.
“She’s very small,” observed Picasso.
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That story is actually the lead-in to another good article by Steve Errey (The Confidence Guy) called Get Confident Enough to Stop Controlling Everything.  He suggests that sometimes creativity means deliberately allowing things to happen as they will instead of getting attached to a certain outcome...

Allowing things to happen takes real confidence and is one of the most powerful and liberating things you can do. It’s not about ‘not doing anything‘ or ‘giving up‘ – it’s actually an active process and a specific attitude.
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Tasting and Touching Transcendence

The Ecstatic Faith of Rumi
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The 13th-century Muslim mystic and poet Rumi has long shaped Muslims around the world and has now become popular in the West. Rumi created a new language of love within the Islamic mystical tradition of Sufism. We hear his poetry as we delve into his world and listen for its echoes in our own.


Rumi's poems are best-sellers in the West and he has long influenced Islamic thought and spirituality, though his Muslim identity is often lost in translation. With an Iranian-American poet and scholar, we'll explore why that matters in our time. And we'll hear the lyrical words Rumi put to the common human search for meaning. He understood searching and restlessness as a kind of arrival. He saw every form of human love as a mirror of the divine.

In this episode of  Being  (formerly called Speaking of Faith), Krista Tippett speaks with Rumi scholar and poet Fatemeh Keshavarz.  Ms. Keshavarz is chair of the Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages and Literatures at Washington University in St. Louis. She is also a poet, and often sets Rumi's words to music. She grew up speaking the Persian in which Rumi wrote, in the Iranian city of Shiraz.  Together they explore the exuberant world of Rumi and reveal the relevance of his 13th-century wisdom to the modern Western world.

I hear Rumi as a perfect voice for the spiritual longing and energy of our time. With his vigorous and challenging language of the heart, he reminds us that we need poetry as much as we need science, alongside our politics and within our diplomacy. We need passionate searching words, not just logical decisive words, to tell the whole truth about what it means to be human, and about the past, present, and future of our world.

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Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn't make any sense.
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A Story about Heaven and Hell

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A holy man was having a conversation with God one day and wanted to know what Heaven and Hell are like.

So God showed the holy man two doors.  He opened one of the doors and the holy man looked in.

In the middle of the room was a large round table.  In the middle of the table was a huge pot of stew, which smelled delicious and made the holy man's mouth water.

The people sitting around the table were pale, thin and sickly.  They appeared to be famished.  They were holding spoons with very long handles that were strapped to their arms, but it was still possible for each of them to dip the spoons into the pot and get some stew.  But because the handle was longer than their arms, they couldn't get the spoons back into their mouths.

The holy man shuddered at the sight of their misery and suffering.

God said, "You have just seen Hell". 

Then they went to the next door and opened it.  The second room was exactly the same as the first one - there was a large round table with a huge pot of stew, the scent of which made the holy man's mouth water.

The people were equipped with the same long-handled spoons strapped to their arms, but here the people were well-nourished and plump, laughing and talking with each other.

The holy man said, "I don't understand".

"It's simple", replied God, "It requires just one skill..."

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Kneel and Kiss the Earth

as we near the end of Coming to our Senses
by Jon Kabat-Zinn

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Today like every other day
we wake up empty and scared.
Don't open the door of your study
and begin reading.
Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel
and kiss the earth.
- Rumi
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Across the span of nine hundred years, Rumi is evoking reverence and how easily it can be missed if, in the face of our endemic discomfort, we persist out of habit in opening the door of our study and begin reading when we might, alternatively, "take down a musical instrument," the closest at hand being our own living body, and let the beauty we love, if we can be in touch with it, reveal itself in the many different ways we might carry ourselves in this moment, here and now.  This is nothing less than an exhortation to practice being truly in touch with what is most fundamental, most important, and a nod to there being no singular one right way to go about it.

When we do not limit ourselves to one way of knowing, or one vocabulary, or one set of lenses through which to look, when we purposefully expand our horizon of inquiry and curiosity, we can take delight in all the various ways we have of knowing something.  We also have a chance to recognize the mystery of what is not known conceptually but sensed, felt, intuited, attended to by the confluence of all our senses in direct unfragmented experience, not excluding anything, even our concepts and what they reveal in any moment, all summing to an ongoing exchange with what is larger than we are and that is nothing other than us as well.  Every one of our mysterious and miraculous senses, including mind, is a way of knowing the world and a way of knowing ourselves.

We are larger than any one way of knowing, and can enjoy all of them as different incomplete and complementary modes for appreciating what is, and for participating in what is with gusto and delight for the moments, timeless and yet fleeting, that we are here for.  We can rest in not knowing, as well as in knowing, in the beauty of form and function and in their mystery, on any and every level that the senses and the mind, our instruments and our instincts, and our efforts to understand, deliver to us in any moment.

- Jon Kabat-Zinn

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Sounds of laughter, shades of earth
are ringing through my opened views
inciting and inviting me

From: http://www.musicbabylon.com

- The Beatles
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Arriving At Your Own Door

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from Coming to Our Senses
by Jon Kabat-Zinn
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The time will come
when with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say sit here.  Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine.  Give bread.  Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit.  Feast on your life.

- Derek Walcott, "Love after Love"
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Every moment we are arriving at our own door.  Every moment we could open it.  In every moment, we might love again the stranger who was ourself, who knows us, as the poem says, by heart.  We already know ourselves by heart in every sense of the word, but we may have forgotten that we do.  Arriving at our own door is all in the remembering, the re-membering, the reclaiming of that which we already are and have too long ignored, having been carried, seemingly, farther and farther from home, yet at the same time, never farther than this breath and this moment.  Can we wake up?  Can we come to our senses?  Can we be the knowing, and at the same time keep don't know mind and honor the not-knowing?  Are they even different?

The time will come, the poet affirms.  Yes, the time will come, but do we want it to be on our deathbeds when we wake up to who and what we actually are, as Thoreau foresaw could so easily happen?  Or can that time be this time, be right now, where we are, as we are?

The time will come, yes, but only if we give ourselves over to waking up, to coming to our senses, and going beyond our own underdeveloped minds.  Only if we can perceive the chains of our robotic conditioning, especially our emotional conditioning, and our view of who we think we are - peel our own image from the mirror - and in the perceiving, in seeing what is here to be seen, hearing what is here to be heard, watch the chains dissolve in the seeing, in the hearing, so we rotate back into our larger original beauty, as we greet ourselves arriving at our own door, as we love again the stranger who was ourself. We can.  We can.  We will.  We will.  For what else, ultimately, is there for us to do?

How else, ultimately, are we to be free?

How else, ultimately, can we be who we already are?

And when, oh when, oh when is the moment this will happen?  "The time will come..." the poet says.  Perhaps it already has.

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I learned as a child not to trust in my body
I've carried that burden through my life
But there's a day when we all have to be pried loose.
If this were the last night of the world, what would I do?
- Bruce Cockburn
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Life Before Death

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Friend, hope for the guest while you are still alive.
Jump into experience while you are alive!
Think ... and think ... while you are alive.
What you call "salvation" belongs to the time before death.

If you don't break your ropes while you're alive,
do you think
ghosts will do it after?

The idea that the soul will join with the ecstatic
just because the body is rotten -
that is all fantasy.
What is found now is found then.
If you find nothing now,
you will simply end up with an apartment in the City of Death.
If you make love with the divine now, in the next life
you will have the face of satisfied desire ...

- Kabir - from The Time Before Death
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Mr. Duffy lived a short distance from his body

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That may be an address too many of us share.  Taking the miracle of embodiment for granted is a horrific loss.  It would be a profound healing of our lives to get back in touch with it.

All it takes is practice in coming to our senses, all of them.

And ... a spirit of adventure.

- Jon Kabat-Zinn in Coming to Our Senses

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and I loved you for your body
there's a voice that sounds like God to me
declaring, declaring
declaring that your body's really you
- Leonard Cohen
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You reading this, be ready

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Starting here, what do you want to remember?
How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?
What scent of old wood hovers, what softened
sound from outside fills the air?

Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect that you carry
wherever you go right now?  Are you waiting
for time to show you some better thoughts?

When you turn around, starting here, lift this
new glimpse that you found; carry into evening
all that you want from this day.  This interval you spent
reading or hearing this, keep it for life--

What can anyone give you greater than now,
starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?

- William Stafford
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The spell of the sensuous...

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...is no further than the sound of the rain taken in, or the feel of the air on the skin, or the warmth of the sun on our backs, or the look in your dog's eye when you come near.  Can we feel it?  Can we know it?  Can we be embraced by it? 

And when might that be?  When?  When?  When?  When?  When?

- Jon Kabat-Zinn: Coming to our Senses

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- Spell of the Sensuous is the title of a book by David Abram which  "...ponders the violent disconnection of the body from the natural world and what this means about how we live and die in it" - Los Angeles Times
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How to listen to music

with your whole body
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Enjoy this soaring musical journey as Evelyn Glennie, a "deaf" percussionist, gives us a remarkable lesson in embodied listening.
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... allow your body to open up, allow your body to be this resonating chamber... experience the whole journey of that sound.
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more about Evelyn
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Find Your Voice

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The moment a person finds their voice... is the moment their life takes on grace.
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That quote is from Steve Errey, the Confidence Guy, in a post called Find Your Voice or Die a Slow Death.  It's a short post but it speaks volumes - here's a condensation of the post, a comment response by Steve and of course my own two cents' worth (hey, it's my blog):

Grace is simplicity, effortlessness and congruity.

Think about it.  What are you speaking with before you find your voice?  What are you saying?  And who are you being before you find grace?

Everything before you ‘find your voice‘ means that you’ll be struggling with things in and around your life, for the simple reason that you’re missing something fundamental.

Your life might be full of clutter and noise.  You might feel like you’re searching for something.  You might drift through much of your career, with no real plan or agenda.  You might feel, in those quiet moments, that something’s missing.

You’ll be dying a slow, safe death.

And all because you haven’t found your voice; that voice that gives you elegance, ease and a sense of wholeness.  That voice that gives you the confidence to do things your way, follow what matters and relax into yourself.

Find your voice, find grace, find confidence.

Asked what 'finding your voice' means, Steve replies:

Your voice is simply finding what matters to you, the things that have meaning and relevance to YOU, and then honoring those things in your life. Look at a moment in your life when you felt really alive, when you were buzzing, firing on all cylinders and feeling on top of the world. Then dig into that moment and ask yourself what was so important to you in that moment. What was it that made it stand out? What is it about that moment that resonated with you? That will give you clues about your personal values, and that will help you find your voice.

Finding and using your voice isn’t about finding answers, it’s singing simply because you have a song.

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That last sentence refers to a quote from Maya Angelou:
A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer: it sings because it has a song.
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As someone who has only recently found my own voice (and who is still learning to sing), I can say without reservation that everything Steve says above is absolutely true.  Once you even begin to realize what is important to you - what gives your life meaning and purpose - then you find your voice.  This is exactly why I blog, and the more I blog, the more I clarify my purpose and the more I recognize my song.

You don't need to wait for some huge epiphany or for some future time when you feel ready - right now start a journal, or a diary, or a blog, and write as if no one is going to read it.  Just speak your truth and don't worry about what anyone else thinks.  Keeping your gift locked inside yourself is, as Steve says, like dying a slow death.  Finding your voice makes you come alive, gives you confidence, and shows you like almost nothing else who you are and why you're here.

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the gift keeps on moving
never know where it's going to land
you must stand back and let it
keep on changing hands
- Bruce Cockburn
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Remembering the Past, Envisioning the Future

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Today is November 11th - Remembrance Day in Canada, Veterans' Day in the United States.  There is a lot of old combat footage on TV, mostly black & white images of World War II.  Every time, I'm struck by how young the faces are and how, even though these boys are smiling and joking for the camera, their eyes are full of fear.  It's sobering to think about how many of those young men never got any older than they were the day those pictures were taken.

Somewhere between 62 and 78 million people were killed in World War II.  Civilians killed totaled from 40 to 52 million, including 13 to 20 million from war-related disease and famine. Total military deaths: from 22 to 25 million, including deaths in captivity of about 5 million prisoners of war. Most of those who survived the war have since died; only a few remain of those smiling boys going off on the adventure of their lives.

The Vietnam war is said to have resulted in approximately 60,000 American casualties and four million Vietnamese deaths - one million of the Vietnamese killed in that war were combatants, the other three million were civilians.

So today is a day for remembering everyone who died in those and other wars - the good guys, the bad guys, the innocent and the guilty - as well as those who were forced to take the lives of others who were just as frightened and confused as they were. Let's remember also the young men and women who are still putting themselves in harm's way, fighting for causes they may or may not believe in.

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But today is also a day for envisioning a new future for humanity.  It's a day for remembering that each one of us has the power to influence what that future will be, and to believe with all our heart that collectively our power is unstoppable.

Is it possible that we can heal our planet and prevent cataclysms?  Could we visualize world peace into existence through a massive pulse of belief transmitted by one million people around the world at the same time?

The best guess today from quantum physics is, "Yes, probably."

If you are inspired by that probability, if you believe wholeheartedly in a positive vision for the future, if you believe that the energy of one million people intending a new global reality together can tip the balance, please visit the New Reality Transmission  site and click the button that says Learn More.

On November 11, 2010, one million people across the globe will mentally project a unified vision of a new paradigm for our species... a new reality.  The very real physics that connects human consciousness with molecular structure will be harnessed en masse during the largest scale simultaneous manifestation transmission in recorded history.

In a world where the messages of Fear and Greed fight with each other daily, it is worth a try to move in the other, more inspired direction.

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you may say I'm a dreamer
but I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
and the world will live as one
- John Lennon
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The World Beyond the Window

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Effing the Ineffable:
How do we express what cannot be said?
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Thomas Aquinas ended his life in a state of ecstasy, declaring that all that he had written was of no significance beside the beatific vision that he had been granted, and in the face of which words fail.  But Aquinas was exceptional. The history of philosophy abounds in thinkers who, having concluded that the truth is ineffable, have gone on to write page upon page about it.

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I have long been in awe of people who can express the inexpressible, who can describe their inner and outer experience with such depth and precision that their words penetrate to my very soul, to that place inside us all that is the source of our being, of who we are.

I think we all long to be able to put into words - and thus share - that "world beyond the window" - at the same time we know it's hopeless, that to describe it is to somehow diminish it, to reduce that mystery that "cannot be described but only revealed" to familiar labels and concepts.

Anybody who goes through life with open mind and open heart will encounter these moments of revelation, moments that are saturated with meaning, but whose meaning cannot be put into words. These moments are precious to us. When they occur it is as though, on the winding ill-lit stairway of our life, we suddenly come across a window, through which we catch sight of another and brighter world — a world to which we belong but which we cannot enter.

Roger Scruton also longs to open that window.  In this article at Big Questions Online, he wonders what these moments of revelation have to do with our ultimate questions - do these ineffable moments point to that which science cannot explain?  Do they point to the cause of the world?

We love each other as angels love, reaching for the unknowable “I.” We hope as angels hope: with our thoughts fixed on the moment when the things of this world fall away and we are enfolded in “the peace which passes understanding.” Putting the point that way I have already said too much. For my words make it look as though the world beyond the window is actually here, like a picture on the stairs. But it is not here; it is there, beyond the window that can never be opened.

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Roger Scruton is a writer and philosopher living in England. His many books include Beauty and The Uses of Pessimism and the Danger of False Hope.
Learn more about him at www.roger-scruton.com.
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all these years of thinking
ended up like this
in front of all this beauty
understanding nothing
- Bruce Cockburn
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You Are Already Here

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Non-Striving
The Fifth Attitudinal Factor of Mindfulness
by Jon Kabat-Zinn
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Non-striving is related to dropping in on the present moment and the timeless quality of the present moment...

Non-striving isn't trivial - it's realizing that you are already here.  There is noplace to go because the only agenda is to be awake.  It isn't some ideal that after four years of sitting on top of Mount Everest or in a cave in the Himalayas or studying with a million Tibetan teachers or doing 10,000 prostrations or whatever it is, that you'll be any better than you are now.  It's impossible - you'll just be older.  What happens now is what matters.

If you don't pay attention now, said Kabir (the great Hindu Sufi poet of the 16th Century), if you don't pay attention now, you will only wind up with an apartment in the City of Death later.  T. S. Eliot said in his last poem, Four Quartets: Ridiculous the waste, sad time stretching before and after.

Non-striving - even the tiniest little bit of letting ourselves off the hook and just realizing we're already here.  The future that we want - this is it.  This is the future of all the previous thoughts you have ever had about the future.  You're in it - you're already in it. What's the purpose of all this living if it's only to get someplace else and then when you're there you're not happy anyway - you want to be someplace else...

This is it.  This is your life.  You only have moments.  This moment is as good as any other - in fact it's perfect.

The Doing comes out of the Being - to some degree that's an art form.  Are any of us good at it?  No.  But at least intending to live that way has a chance of greater balance - greater emotional balance, greater cognitive balance, greater clarity of mind and heart - and is a lot less toxic for other people who live with you or around you.

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nothing left to do when you know that you've been taken
nothing left to do when you're begging for a crumb
nothing left to do when you've got to go on waiting
waiting for the miracle to come
- Leonard Cohen
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Guardians of Being

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The Essence and Being of Animals
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Pet lovers will enjoy these images by Patrick McDonnell, from Guardians of Being by Eckhart Tolle - there are a few more HERE.
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When you pet a dog or listen to a cat purring, thinking may subside for a moment and a space of stillness arises within you, a Doorway into Being.

What is it that so many people find enchanting in animals? Their essence - their Being - is not covered up by the mind, as it is in most humans.
And whenever you feel that essence in another, you also feel it in yourself.



Millions of people who would otherwise be completely lost in their minds and in endless past and future concerns are taken back by their dog or cat into the present moment, again and again, and reminded of the joy of Being.



If you'll excuse me, I need to find a cat (or two) to pat right now...
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Blought for Today

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Although we have been made to believe that if we let go we will end up with nothing, life reveals just the opposite: that letting go is the real path to freedom.
- Sogyal Rinpoche
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Put a Dent in the Universe

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Your body is the vehicle for your life's expression, and it's your responsibility to express that life in ways that are most meaningful.
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Another inspiring video from Steve Errey (The Confidence Guy)
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Confidence is the life-blood that lets you get out there and participate fully in the world no matter how big your fears or doubts are.

What kind of dent do you want to make in the universe?
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Let Yourself Be Seen

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Dr. Brené Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston, Graduate College of Social Work, where she has spent the past ten years studying a concept that she calls Wholeheartedness, posing the question: How do we engage in our lives from a place of authenticity and worthiness?
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In this video Dr. Brown tells a candid and moving story of how what started as an academic research project eventually brought her to the realization that, through her willingness to embrace her own vulnerability, she could open her heart to joy and the courage to be imperfect.  She ends the talk with this heartfelt advice:

let yourself be deeply seen
love with your whole heart
practice gratitude
lean into joy
believe that you're enough

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Who are you?
I really wanna know
- The Who
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Hymn to the Great Song

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In Search of The Great Song, a Song Without Borders documentary series by Michael Stillwater, explores and celebrates the song within us, connecting us and surrounding us. Filmed in America, Europe, and Australia, it features artists, educators, scientists, spiritual teachers and 'ordinary people' giving expression to their unique perspective on this universal concept.

In this episode, 'Hymn to The Great Song', Brother David Steindl-Rast, a Benedictine monk known worldwide for his contribution to interfaith dialogue and advocacy for the power of gratitude, speaks of song born in silence, St. Francis, and the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke.

"There is really only one song, and it's the Great Song, the cosmic song, the song that all things, animals, plants and humans sing in their deepest heart. And every song that a human sings with his or her voice is only an expression of that one Great Song that is there from the beginning and will be there after the end."



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Even though the world changes like cloud formations,
all that is fulfilled returns home to the One,
to the changeless One.
- Rainer Maria Rilke
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A Gentle Re-Minder

~~~~
from Full Catastrophe Living
by Jon Kabat-Zinn
Chapter entitled Yoga Is Meditation
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Bringing mindfulness to any activity transforms it into a kind of meditation.  Mindfulness dramatically amplifies the possibility that any activity in which you are engaged will result in an expansion of your perspective and of your understanding of who you are.  Much of the practice is simply a remembering, a reminding yourself to be fully awake, not lost in waking sleep or enshrouded in the veils of your thinking mind.  Intentional practice is crucial to this process because the automatic-pilot mode takes over so quickly when we forget to remember.

I like the words remember and remind because they imply connections that already exist but need to be acknowledged anew.  To remember, then, can be thought of as reconnecting with membership, with the set to which what one already knows belongs.  That which we have forgotten is still here, somewhere within us.  It is access to it that is temporarily veiled.  What has been forgotten needs to renew its membership in consciousness.  For instance, when we "re-member" to pay attention, to be in the present, to be in our body, we are already awake right in that moment of remembering.  The membership completes itself as we remember our wholeness.

The same can be said for reminding ourselves.  It reconnects us with what some people call "big mind", with a mind of wholeness, a mind that sees the whole forest as well as individual trees.  Since we are always whole anyway, it's not that we have to do anything.  We just have to "re-mind" ourself of it.
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Sunflower Seed Meditation

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A bird in the hand....
is worth a thousand words about being in the moment
~~~~~

I'm always fully present

I'd rather have raisins.

When can we eat?

Eenie, meenie, miney, moe...

They all smell the same.

Shhh... I'm listening.

Can I swallow it now?

Awesome - let's do it again

the world offers itself to your imagination
- Mary Oliver
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