feeding, F...ing, Fighting and Feldenkrais... a movement lesson to accompany

I recently, in my Life Potency Blog, had an essay of the sort: Feeding, F...ing, Fighting and Feldenkrais. Someone asked me to come up with a movement lesson for this.

Here it is.

Sit comfortably in a chair, with both feet on the floor and your back away from the back of the chair.

Feel yourself more or less upright, and feel what that is like. Perhaps closing your eyes can help you get a more clear Sensing feel of yourself.

Now, slowly, begin to bring your right hand to your mouth, and then place it back down in your lap. You've done this a zillion times, so go slower than slow and see if you can notice anything new about this life necessary movement.

Rest.

Now bring the back of your right hand just to the left of your mouth, and bring your hand back down, and as you repeat this movement, move toward bringing the middle of your right forearm to your mouth. After it's there, go back and forth from lap to middle of right forearm at your mouth.

Rest.

Now please come to this last position of middle of your right forearm on your mouth and begin to round and arch your spine. What does that mean?

To round your spine: bring your belly in and back, rock back a bit on your pelvis, let your sternum sink and your nose lower as if you are going to look between your legs.

All the while your arm and mouth are united, and this gives your elbow a downward trajectory as you round your back.

Then when you arch your back, your elbow will lift, your eyes and nose will look up, your sternum will rise, your belly will come forward a bit and you will rock a bit forward on your pelvis.

Go slowly and with pleasure and awareness in the arching and rounding, paying attention to all your parts:
spine,
ribs,
sternum,
elbow,
nose
belly
and pelvis.

Take rests if you get fatigued, or lose concentration, but do come back to this until you can feel and unity of sorts between your pelvis rocking forward and back, and your elbow raising and lowering.

Have thoughts, if you wish, about how this motion in the pelvis region could have something to do with s-e-x.

Rest.

Now, play with this a bit. Put yourself in the same position of the middle of your right forearm touching your mouth as you sit forward on your chair, and arch up so your elbow is more toward the sky/ ceiling and your pelvis is rocked forward more, and from here bring your pelvis into a kind of hula hoop circle on your chair, and allow your elbow to make a corresponding circle that you discover.

Enjoy this a bit, and then reverse the circle. Go slow enough to get a nice realization of your pelvis and spine and head as a grand team.

Rest.

Now for a bit of the fighting part;
Sit with your left hand on your left knee, and bring your right hand down and outside of your left knee, going down and twisting slowly and easily. Then rise up from this with an arching of your back as earlier, but this time raising your right hand forward and up and to the right, as if slapping someone with the back of your right hand, or slashing a sword up and to the right, and any other image you'd like (hitting a backhand tennis shot way to high, flinging a frisbee to the right and upward), whatever the image, feel your whole self participating in this curling down and twisting (as if to load your strike, throw, fling, slap) and then unfurling and letting your back and pelvis participate in a powerful move of your right arm and hand.

Rest.

This is all one sided. Please feel free to read the instructions and then imagine this all on the left side, and then perhaps do it just once on twice to see how clear your imagining was and what you you would need to remember if you were to imagine it again.

Log off, get out, kiss the sky

Me 'n two sweet friends

Around much of the country
tis cold now

tis stay indoor weather

tis tempting to hang around ye
old
computer

some nice email must be waiting
that facebook message that will
let us know
finally
that we are the wonderful
amazing
wonderful
delightful
brilliant
person
we suspected we were
all along

ah, so

and I just opened a year old
Sierra Club
magazine
to an article about a young black man
getting the youth to log out
and get
out
side

so , what's a guy to do?
if you can get outside,
hey
do so

if you can't
log out
get in bed with your sweetie
and have a little nature romp
there

or put on some music
and waltz tango boogie bounce
hoochie kootchie

with yourself
your children
your lover
your friend
your dog

so,
that's today's sermon:
walk out to the outside

dance
or love make in
the inside

or take a cold brisk walk
come
home
dance boogie flirt

and then go to bed

advice given

take it for what it is:
one of life's many ways to act in the world
as you go about
whatever you want to go about inside

perhaps
waking up
is that goal

and we can always come to the now

ciao,
Chris

one more time, "tired" and whatnot, so let's see what happens

how about a few pictures first,
to avoid the writing;

Sonoma garden

Orcas, in the winter,

which I'm avoiding this year

Austin one morning this winter,

just to show how far 

"avoidance" will get you

Okay, time to "get to work"

and is that true?

I'm at an airport in the middle of california,
waiting for a plane.....

The plane will take me to Austin,
so this seems like a  journey, right.
going somewhere
i've never been to Austin.

i know two people there,
one a friend of my son's,
who my son is sure will turn me on to lots of people
for the amazing work i do
and a friend I met at a conference, in chicago last summer,
a friend who has disappeared since our time together

my friend's son won't call back,
has answered one email,

no one is interested in helping me get started in Austin.

it's october 16 of 2010,
that's last fall

october 16 of 2009 I started living on Orcas island full time,
and wanted to do something else for the winter

i'm 65 years old

so I'm on a journey
that you are on:
I was born,
way back here,
and now I'm here

and I lived up here,
and I'm going to here

and before Orcas,
which was a couple of months in the summer of 2009
i lived in.


okay,
the facts of all the places aren't interesting right now

born 1945
so far 65 years later,
i'm at an airport
on the way

where was I halfway between 0 and 65,
let's call that 33
and I was in Berkeley, my son is two years old,
he was born in Berkeley,
the son who grew up to have the friend,
Jake Silverstein,
who is now the editor of the TExas Monthly
and maybe he'll get back to me someday
maybe not.

so,
journey:
Southern California to Northern California
Betkeley to Sonoma
Sonoma to cutting loose in February of 2009

12 years of Sonoma
22 of Berkeley,
two of the great places and why would I want anything more?

have you ever got tried of "really great" according to everyone,
but you wanted something more

like awakened people

or a climate less jolted by global warming

or a different scene just for a different scene

or you didn't think your work was respected enough in the "home town," a
and wanted to take it somewhere

or, a relationship was over
and that seemed the end of an era
and it was time to move on

Marile
sweet gal
8 years
we decided to split
blah, blah,
I'm tired of that one,
i'm tired of why I left Sonoma

I wanted to see the world

on January 31, 2009 my former girlfreind of 8 years,
holds me in her arms and i hold her,
and she cries and we part

we have been friends
lovers
gardeners and bike riders
explorers of Byron Katie, and yoga and Feldenkrais and hypnosis
together
we've read books together
created two gardens
slept outside for months on end in two different location
gone on some great camping adventures
had some fine talks
created a lot of healing for each other
helped raise her second daughter together a bit,
had some sweet times
and 5 months before we decided to part ways

why wait until january 31?
we'd found the almost perfect place in the country
and neither wanted to give it up,
and we'd started there feb 1, 2008
so I said i'd leave feb 1, 2009
we'd part

why did we decide to part?

the journey of awakening,
she didn't want to join

the journey of the Feldenkrais Anat Baniel work,
she didn't want to join

i wasn't being allow to ply my trade craft art on
the almost perfect land (picture of the roses in the
garden above)

reasons, reasons,

time to go

she drops me off,
I'm in Berkeley, and I've set up a month in Tuscon starting a week later in February.

I go to various places, one in
atlanta, I work on a table like this with a special needs child,
bently grace,
her picture is in my composite

and the Tucson sunset

and the Arcata farmer's market

finally in June i arrive in Orcas

many places have been touted as reallly great

to me, Orcas is.

reasons, reasons:
hitchiking
exchange
keys in the car
everyone knows permaculture
library as social center
interweaving fun house people taking care of each other

and it's heaven

and this and that happens which would take too long to explain
and some travelling to Gunnison Colorado

and the back to Orcas in Ocober of 2009
and then there for a year,
but for training in the Anat Baniel systen

which is.
anyone want to move better

anyone want to lie of the table and feel better

and october 16 2010
I'm on a plane to Austin,
and someone I don't know is
picking me up

John Green and Brigette Reece,
who live on Reese street in Sunset Valley
are going the couch surfing thing for me

three nights
i help them with their garden


22 minutes

man, this is great
and i'm still tired

luckily a friend has designated herself
as the pull this together person

good luck
and
thanks to
Amparo

try 3, something must be being learned, is that true?

I don't know
and
here we go:

in the airport
on the way:
where to: Austin, Texas
why?
more special needs kids
musicians
warmer winters
son suggested it, his buddy is a supposed "in" to lots of people
met someone at a conference in Chicago in July: they made it sound amazing,
hippy church, open people from all over

why special needs kids
where from:
small island in the pacific northwest, orcas island
amazing place
and only 4000 people there in the winter
and
supposed to be a cold winter
and
dark, even if not cold
and only a few special needs kids
one of whose parent is how I met Orcas Island,
he's another
Anat Baniel Method practictioner

okay:
two journeys so far:
Orcas to Austing
What is Anat Baniel method practioner
and what does that have to do with this:

the table,
in front of me, on the stage, unopened

couple behind in line:
are you some sort of body worker

me: well it looks to outsiders like body work,
but it's brain learning, repatterning, helping the person
learn and move and think and especially, be present to themselves in new ways

c:
huh

m: well, i didn't really say that>
brain work that looks like body work

c:
we're both accupuncturists, we have a real fondness for seeing the
tables where the work takes place, what do you call your work

m: the anat baniel method is my deepest training
originally trained as and am practitioner in the Feldenkrais Method

c: oh, yes. we know it well.
where are you going?

m
where am I going
Austin

which is here,
and I know two people, well three, though two fairly well,
and both haven't time patience curtousy whatever to contact me
back
when i tell them i'm thinking of moving here

so why move?

wanted a change
wanted bigger client base

wanted to see what a place would be like
that I didn't already have set up

because i'm always on the move?

not really,
but in February of 2009 I left behind 12 years in
one of the world's supposed paradises
and took off for a month at a time in
various pre set up places,
all with a friend, or almost friend waiting with a place
to stay for a month

And before Sonoma,
where I was established enough to have designed
and created a 3 acre garden
and run for city council
there was
22 years in Berkeley,
where I raised to kids to high school, and beyond
and transitioned out of sitting on the butt work of
doing therapy
to moving around and making thing work
of design build and landscaping

And that's another journey
the spiritual journey of sit on the butt
and do goody goody meditation
and the reading of sufi stories
to the Gurdjieff work where the mediation
is to sit in the morning
and do
,,,,,
and then get up and do
,,,,,
all day

sense both arms,
both legs,
notice sound come in my ears
light coming in my eyes

something i could much more easily do
building decks and additions
and putting in gardens
that sitting in a room
talking to people

and the journey away from therapy
and back, later,
to being able to help people with any of that
via the work of Byron Katie

so:
at the airport:
on the way to Austin

Oakland airport, October 16
and the previous Octover 16 I'd come to Orcas Island,
leaving it several times for training in
the Anat Baniel method

that journey: getting more skilled

what is it?

move ourselves,
alone,
in groups,
hand guided

someone want to lie on the table?
anyone in the audience want a little journey
of guided movement,
and your brain will be a little better tuned
and you'll feel more flexible and younger and
more present
probably

all bets are off for humans,
exactly,
but each lesson
is a journey of discovery:

so journey:
Of you in your seats
Of someone here on the table
of me spiritually going out to do gardens and build gazebos,
fun for the Stanford book learning man
and the spiritual work is fine
but if the back hurts
the back hurts and in Berkeley
where I'm raising kids and making money
and being awake to arms and legs and breathing and light
and sound
or not

and what if we
now shift to arms and legs
and light and sound
and begin to turn your heads

no first

no first

and does coming back to now shift your
self
and is that shift a journey
and is to create an opening for that inner shift
why we take these outer journeys

and the back hurts in the work
and Berkeley is full of Feldenkrais classes
and I lie down on the floor and make simple
movements
and feel healed
whole
wonderful
better

so that is a start of my F/ ABM journey

and then Berkeley becomes the garden journey,
Berkeley Botanical Garden,
and landscaping
and
finally a Permaculture training
and I have to move to The Land
to begin to grow food,
become a farmer

looking many places,
22 years in Berkeley
what is the "right" spot
Santa Cruz

and so on

22 done,

I like this

Good.

let's throw in some Sonoma pictures

Coming to Austin, art 2

Another day
another 22 minute run through

Sonoma Coast, in the middle of California,
called Northern California,
and near the OAK where the story/ talk
starts
and same time of year, October of 2010

So, I'm in the OAK airport, I'm in line, I've got all sorts of stuff,
I don't travel light,
if you come to dance, this is the full backpack I carry just for a couple
hours away,
and I've got this massage table like thing.

And I'm going to a place I've never been.

I'm on a journey.

The table is a journey.

My life since February 1, 2009 is a journey.

My life since April 13, 1945 is a journey.

This moment is on a journey, and either I'm awake to this moment,
on not.

And learning to wake to each moment,
to lots of moments
is a journey.

And you listen, you sit in a chair,
and if we did a few things besides what you usually do,
it would be a journey.

Yes, yes, listening to me talk, that is a journey, if I'd ever tell the story:
why am I going to Austin,
why am I leaving from OAK,
what's this about living on Orcas Island,
and what's THAT journey about?

Okay.
Let's come out of journeying, just a moment,
feel ourselves in this moment , in this chair,
or standing on this floor.

Can you and I sense the gravity of a spine holding up our head.
Can we find arms and legs and feet, and are our feet touching the ground.

Can we feel gravity.
Can we feel the air coming in and out of our lungs.

Once upon a time: no gravity.
Once upon a time: no breathing.
The womb.
We came out.
Wow: light, gravity, breathing.

Sound there had been all along.

So, I'm in Oakland, and I'm on my way to Austin,
and I'm a little scared.
I don't know anyone in Austin who's willing to depart from
their rut, their pattern, their hurry, their program,
their ongoing life
to welcome me at the airport, to put me up for a few
nights, to orient me to Austin.

They don't give a shit.
They are too busy.
I'm not important to them.
All could be true, or could be stories,
and the two people behind me in the line start the trip
off nicely:
What's the table for?
Feldenkrais and the Anat  Baniel Method.

Oh, we know that well.
We are both accupuncturists and going back to Vermont
and it does our heart good to see body work tables.

What I do isn't really body work, it's

We know, we know, Feldenkrais is fantastic, where are
you going?

Austin.

Do you know people there?

No.

You're moving there?

For the winter, October till April.
I want to work with more special needs children and musicians
as well as the usual aching backs, necks, shoulders.

In the summer you live in the Bay Area here?
(Does everyone know that OAK aka Oakland is in the Bay ARea,
next to Berkeley, but more wild and wooly and integrated and multilevel
and both right across the Bay from San Francisco, and that Bay
in Bay Area, is San Francisco Bay,
second biggest estuary in North America after the Cheesapeake Bay)

No, summers a small island up in the Pacific Northwest,
in Puget Sound, above Seattle, north of Victoria the city
at the tip of Vancover, Canada.
The island is called Orcas Island and I imagine it's beauty
is kind of like Vermont's.

We've heard of Orcas.

So you know people in Austin?

Two, but they won't get back to me, so I'm starting it with
couching surfing this couple I know over the internet.

Good luck.

And the line moves on


And they go to on plane, and I go to another,
and on my plane, more evidence of "good luck"
The people next to me are a nice young couple,
both in jeans,
and by the end of the flight they've had the three minute
elbow shoulder lesson,
and are excited about my work
and the two men in front of us, older
(as in my age, but the usual silver hair that accompanies
"my age" in the chronological sense,
look like lawyers, businessmen,
both handsome, obviously doing well,
and in jeans)

Austin is going to be good.

So, I've got this table.
I didn't always have this table.
I didn't always take off for new towns not knowing anyone.

How did I get the table, the craft, the skills to heal special needs children,
and radically improve the tone and ease and quality of a musician's playing,
and enhance sleep, or dance, or sex, or yoga or tai chi?

When did that start?

How did that start?

Mid fifties.

Why?

Went to a weekend workshop while living in Sonoma.

What am I doing in Sonoma, which is in the middle of California,
though that part is called Northern California?
I thought this was a journey from Orcas to Austin.

Well yes.

And
(damn 22 minutes is up)

And I might have a one man show here,
if I weave in a group lesson,
and someone lying on the table,
and how I learned Feldenkrais
and the whole
Sonoma, Tucson, Atlanta, Arcata, Orcas,
leaving Marlie
living together for five months though
we knew that end was Feb 1, 2009

and so on,
exciting
and
"I don't know" what I'm going

which is fine:
I'm in the discovery mood
mode
manner


tune in this afternoon, all seven readers,
and I'll take a continuing gander at this adventure tale

love
chris


And the journey to love
ah,
and
the one
to waking
ah

we'll see
we'll see
said the blind man

1010: Reflections on Movement in Life of the Journeying Sort

Twenty two minutes to begin the journey
of talking about
journeying

I am at the Oakland Airport, familiarly know as OAK, and am in the Southwest Line.
Medium sized suitcase, normal. Duffel bag, pretty full over one shoulder: sort of unusual.
Very full backpack: normal, but usually for the young travelling suitcase free.
Duffel bag to carry on, not so unusual, though no one else ever has one.

And this stands out: a table of some sort, massage, or something, folded in half it's
about this high,
gesturing to three feet high,
and this wide
same

There are ropes around it, and the ropes hold a packing blanket,
that provides it some protection.

This is a lot in the line
and it's October of 2010,
and I'm in Oakland, and on my way from a year living on Orcas
Island,
with three times off in Northern California, coming in and out of OAK,
though before without the table,
whatever it is

A year of living on Orcas Island,

this tiny jewel Brave New World, amazing social microcosm
beautiful cedar and apple and eagle and wild happy book reading eco loving
funky smart artist hardworking sort of hippy folks mixed with retired
people like Richard Bach of Johnathan Livingston Seagul and Richard Donner of Superman
and blah blah
names

A year of living on Orcas came October 16 2009
and left OAK to go to a new supposedly amazing place Octover 16 2010

And this new amazing place is.....
going to be....
I've never been there

know only two people there, both of whom don't answer phone
calls,
nor email,
nor have interest in helping me establish there

but supposedly amazing place

which is....

Austin, Texas

Ah, so.
We are in Austin now, listening to me,
if you are in the living room the first Saturday of March, 2011
and now you are .....

and in the story I am on this journey,
from a year of living on Orcas Island, Washington
to trying out winters in Austin, Texas

And in the year before living on Orcas for a year,
I'd living a month or thereabouts in
Tucson, Arizona
Atlatnta, Georgia,
Arcata, California (the real notth, of redwoods, and pot growers and endless rain, fog mist ecological correctness to put even Berkeley to shame)
Gunnison, Colorado,

And I'm 65 years old, standing in line with 5
items, three to check,
but it's Southwest and I only have to pay for the table

And what's that table about,
is that a journey?

Yes.

And am I a lifelong vagabond and this is just the shaggy
last one two or seven chapters of that story

Well, not really
or yes,
depending on young youth
of slightly mobile parents:
Ohio, Pasadena, Newport Beach, Denver, Cincinnati, back to Newport,
to college firss So Cal, then No Cal
that is movey aroundy

and then the 22 years in Berkeley
some call it the new Vienna, comparing it to the fermenting years
of Einstein and Freud
22 years in Berkeley, raising two children, they actually live in the same
house all through their public school years,
and
then 12 years in Sonoma California,
where I settle in enough to create a still ongoing 3 acre public
garden,
and run for city council and still visit and live with a friend
when I come to No Cal
and fly in and out of OAK

So, 22 and 12 years in two places
and then I get older and take to the road
to do what i couldn't
and didn't really want to do when I was younger:

to ply my trade at different places
to meet new people
to keep writing my book
to discover what is grand about living in other locals

to tell you the truth:
or, my truth,
okay:
to tell you my opinion;
the people in Sonoma were sort of narrow minded in
their idea that Sonoma was "the perfect" place
to live in the world

true is was an hour from grand culture
true it is a growing place among the best in
the world
true the hot summer days always cool down into the fifties at night
and the winters of rain, rain, always have scattered weeks, even
in january and February in the 60's and 70's
and...
the ocean is nearby
and....

but I wanted to discover a bigger world

and there where relationship 'reasons"
and
the trade,
that has something to do with the table, which is called a Feldenkrais table,
and the skill I had gained,
called either the Feldenkrais Method
or the Anat Baniel Method
or
both

and that's 22 minutes

and the talk is "supposed to be 10"
and we haven't even glanced at why Austin,

or what is the journey
to get to the table

or what is the journey of someone on the table

alas,
more torommow me thinks,
this same blogspot

ciao
for
now

Chris

1009: Valentine's Day Offering, second post of the day, hey, hey

Think of “habitual talking.”

You have a partner, and they say a bit, and you say a bit. Usually people say no more than one or two sentences at a time, and then the next person has to chime in with their Very Important Thing to Say.

Sometimes this comes as an interruption, sometimes as just shoveling in the words at the first hint of slowing down or silence on the other person’s part.

Which means the talker has to rush ahead without any gaps, or their “air time” will be taken away. Which means: no time to pause, sense the moment, discover inside what we really want to say.

Most tragic: no time to wait for something besides our bundle of automatic speaking tapes.

Just like in movement: if we speak/ move fast, we have to do what we’ve always done. It’s the way the brain works. So, “normal conversation” almost guarantees two people’s robots spouting back and forth at each other.

Any way we cut it, we don’t have much time to say our bit, and we don’t give much time to the other. And what is said is the same old, same old, as if talking is some mental equivalent of taking a poop.

And another habitual process that contributes to the automatic/ robot nature of most talking is that when we are supposedly “listening,” we are most often formulating our next Very Important Thing to Say.

And it’s a wonder that the divorce rate isn’t any higher, because this description only hints as to how poorly we communicate when the “fur starts to fly” and our talking gets defensive/ offensive, when the couples of life go on the “warpath” / “argument trail” with the one(s) they supposedly love.

Grand if you want to be a robot. But what if you want to wake up?
Perhaps a little something different could come in handy. Like what?

Like this:

Find someone willing to spend some time talking with you in a way very different than “habitual” talking.

With this person, sit down with a kitchen timer, and set that timer to 2 or 3 minutes.

Take turns, so first one talks, the other listens, no interrupting, or face making. The talker can talk about present awareness, or likes and dislikes in their life, but not any either likes or dislikes about the one that is listening. When the timer goes off, the talker stops, and both people follow their breathing for a little while.

Then it’s the listener’s turn to talk and be heard without interruptions. Start the timer again, look into each other’s eyes, and begin, the second person now, to talk.

And how’s this for non-habitual: when we take our turn talking we don’t comment on the other person’s stuff. No advice, suggestions, one ups, theories, explanations.

Just speaking from what comes up in us when we leave the other person’s words and actions and ideas, problems and insights and successes and plans and failures alone.

No feedback, no advice, no criticism. Just staying with yourself for two or three minutes. Being listened to. Being witnessed. But not being helped, cured, fixed, one upped., questioned.

Each person gets to talk without having to live up to anything.

They just get to be. To pause. To explore within. To find out what if means to be present while talking.

This is good. This is big. This is huge, actually, and you’ll know that if you’ve tried to be awake while talking. And if you haven’t, this is your chance.

Good.

Back and forth. Maybe go for 4 minutes or 5, once you get the hang of it.

Back and forth and being present while you talk and present while you speak.

See if this is a kind of food, a kind of “intercourse” in a sweet and everyday meaning of that perhaps overloaded word.


Good.

1008: Friday, the 13th, not: Friday before Valentine's day, yes... What is Good?

What is true?

What is good?

What is beautiful?

Somehow I remember these as the (THE) Q's of philosophy.

And what is true?

You are sitting or standing or reclining somewhere, reading this.
You are aware, or are not aware of your breathing.
Same for me.
Okay, so that seems true: two organisms, beings, humans, on this
planet, both knowing language. English.

Is that true?
Well, you are breathing and can sense and feel that, and your head
is held somewhere in space in relation to the rest of you, and you can
feel that, unless you've had a rather severe injury.

What is true?
Words about the "ongoing moment" aren't that glittering
or nourishing,
and the
experience of the ongoing moment is
very peaceful, and nourishing.

To me, anyway.

What's your truth?


MOVING RIGHT ALONG:

WHAT IS GOOD?

Heck if I know.

It's good to be warm, it's good to walk,
it's good to have someone to cuddle with at night,
IF that's what you have,
and it's good to sleep alone and have all the bed to
yourself
your warm and wiggly self
to move and dream and squirm
and experience
all by yourself.

Valentine's Day is for Lovers,
they say,
and is what "they say"
ever true?
Sometimes.
Often not.

So, to heck with "they."

And what is Valentine's Day for?

Marrying yourself.

Kissing yourself in the mirror.

BEing amused by any "my sweetheart sweetest lovey, lovey
stories
you are telling yourself.

And even more amused by the lovie , lovey, loverly lovely stories
that you are your Mate
AGREE ON.

This is so often love's sweet mask:
yes, yes, we both believe the
"we are so wonderful together" story,
the "we are so in love" story,
the "we have such a special thing" story,
that we don't have to wake up
and be present to each
other today

we'll just coast on the story

...
la, la


for some it lasts and lasts, this story,
and some actually use the positive
and grateful framework of that story
to look at
TODAY (as in Now,
as in True, see above)
this mate, friend, partner, stranger,
caretaker of billions and billions of brain
cells that aren't ours,
and experiences that aren't ours,
and thoughts that aren't ours,
and knowledge, learnings and knowings
that aren't ours

They are different

oh, well

on a good day, we love that

on a bad day, we resent that and want them to be
MORE LIKE US

and on really good days,
we see the sameness
the oneness
unity
all that good stuff
beneath the differences which we love

We are all life
or awareness
or someone

we are all ONE

"They" say,

and maybe they are right,
who knows

......

WHAT IS BEAUTIFUL?

A flower
a blue sky
a friend laughing
us laughing
a friend being alive
us being alive
the quiet sweet joy of an empty mind

these are my opinions

I'm not a philosopher
and I'm a lazy person this Friday afternoon,
and Valentine's day is Monday

Good: write yourself a love letter,
if you have a mate
and if
you don't have a mate

If you want to send one to them,
too,
fine

And if you have estranged edges with someone
try this:
write from them to you
a love letter
where they say, you doing the imagining and writing,
EXACTLY WHAT YOU WANT TO HEAR

......

It sounds weird.

It's worked
for me.
"Worked" = ???

Find out if it "Works" for you,
and if there is other sh.. hanging on
in your heart,
then it's in your thoughts
and there's
always the
Work
the Work of Byron Katie
to sweeten your love  for self
for another
for life

play in those fields if you want truth that leads to peace
and beauty

good

happy V love and waking up day

which might as well be them all, eh?


chris

1007: Smiling, laughing, etc

I have a friend,
you might even call her a girlfriend,
who is most beautiful when she smiles and laughs.
And yeah, the other thing, too.


And when she is present in talking to me,
or doing anything
she is doing.

And,
I have watched people in both Anat Baniel trainings and
Feldenkrais trainings
get more and more beautiful as the days went on
and as the training progressed.

So: what have we here:
Beauty is not just in the eye of the beholderl
if the beholder is me,
but in the presence and joy
of the person at whom we are looking.

And what does that mean?

It means:
be nice to your love ones
so they'll smile and laugh and be more beautiful.

It means: be present
around your loved one
so they will feel calmer and more at ease
and more present themselves
and then will be more beautiful and the we'll enjoy
looking at them more

High level selfishness this:
be kind and present and joyful around people
and you'll have a nicer world to look at

good fun,
eh?

ps, coming to Texas for the "warm winters" seemed a "good idea" Friday as the temps hung out in the 70's
and today, in the 20's, well:
the old saying:
"Want to make God laugh:  have a plan."

take ease
chris