Eating from Wakefulness, the new chapter 12 in the book

The tongue has the biggest representation in our brains compared to its size in our body.
Why?
Eating.
Talking.

And, guess what? If you are in the mood to “wake up” in the enlightenment sense, and are on the pathway to being present and aware at every moment, you might or might not have noticed that these two times are times when we often go back to “sleep.”

So here is today’s game, so simple and so deep and so off the normal track as to appear almost impossible.

And in the words of Moshe Feldenrkais, the goal of an amazing life is to “make the impossible, possible; to make the possible easy; to make the easy elegant or pleasurable, or both.”
The end is a bit of a paraphrase.
Oh, well.

Eating.

Look at your food as your prepare it. Find your feet on the ground, and your eyes bringing in light and images, your fingers touching the food, your breath coming in and out.

Notice your arms and legs and spine.

Breathe.

Prepare your food so that it looks and smells good to you.

Sit somewhere that is conducive to feeding yoru body, and your heart and your spirit.

Sit up somewhat straight.

Take three breaths before you take a bite. If you live with other people, hold hands with your eyes close for many breathes, and then look around at each person before letting go. Maybe say something meaningful to you. Listen to what anyone else has to say.

Before the first bite, follow three breaths.

After the bit, put down the eating tool, or the bowl or the cup. Down, hands free.

Chew and savor and taste.

Take a breath when the food is “gone.”

Then pick up the eating tool, cup or bowl, and resume, one more bit, again setting this down while you chew and savor.

If others are there are you going to talk?

I don’t know.

Find out, and if you do, see if you can put attention all on eating and then all on listening and/ or talking, but make them separate.

Make the attempt.

Slowness and awareness will feed something deep in you.

Try it and feel, see, experience;

Good.

The book can be purchased over the internet as
a pdf that I'll email you.

You pay pay pal, they email me,
I email you your pdf.
You can print it up,
or read it off the computer.

This unique collection
of 108 games/ actions/ learning practices
costs
$54
fifty cents a game.
Do one activity a day for ten days
and the book will have paid for itself.

108 Paths to Awakening: $54

Move, Feel, Think, "soul"

LOW COST OPTION:
This book is about changing your life
by doing AT LEAST ONE NEW ACTION A DAY
do this
and see if it changes your life.
Meanwhile, here's the honor roll book.
Pay $27 now
and after the 108 games you feel so transformed
you feel like buying it again, go right ahead.
For now: get involved.
Do 1 a day,
or even better four: moving, emotional learning, thinking and "soul"
Change makes for change.
Have fun.
Wake up.
Meanwhile, I'll send you the pdf.

$27 Honor Roll Low Cost Book

Here's the struggling and wanting to transform option:

108 Wakings for $13

And here's the full fair fare,
go for it,
you are this valuable,
signal your value to both you and me:

108 Wakings for $108

The tired thing, and an obvious solution

This happens to me sometimes,
maybe to you, too.

Toward the end of the afternoon, and this Nap Urge
slithers out.

Now, the obvious solution:
set the timer for twenty minutes,
or in my case, since it's a favorite meditation time number
for me,
22 minutes.

Set the timer, 20, 22, 18,  and lie down
and see if sleep comes.

if it does,
great
a twenty minute plunge into reviving
ourselves

if it doesn't,
great,
we've calmed and let ourselves be supine and out of
the up and down world of chairs and walking and talking.

Back to the fish world,
the lie down and see what the body feels like
when it feels support over a large surface.

Ah, that could be nice.

So, I don't know about you, but I'm certainly talking myself
into a little 22 minute horizontal eyes closed, sense the arms and legs and
spine
and follow the breathing
meditation/ nap.

And if I don't know what will happen,
how much better,
how much like life as it always really is.

What's next?
We don't know.

Wait and see.

Breathe and see.

Sense the moment and see.

It's all a chance to be present.
And if we, or I, anyway, fall asleep
in this little interlude,
I'm going to be glad of that.

And if I don't,
wait and see if it perks up the old "tired"
thing,
that started off this late Friday afternoon ramble.

oh, well.

It's so uncool to live in the world of
"I don't know,"
and so peacefully powerful.

Good.

The Importance of Living

I was going to write some serious
and exploratory thing about Relationships beyond Ownership
but to hell with it.

Since I don't know about that,
but I do know about this,
I'll write about this.

This = the importance of living.

I happen to be weird and very lucky.


I think death is great.

You are born.
You live.
You die.

Three miracles in a row,
and always in that order.

So glorious,
and death is the wild card, eh,
the sweet lover who says:
get it now,
because now is all you can count on.

And what is it to get
now.

Life.
Get it that we are alive
in this glorious moment.

And this one, too.

And the universe is big.

And there may be others out
there
and there may be angels and fairies
and qoozies and woozies
but in this neighborhood
there are people and plants and trees and a creek and some
air
and some sky
and a bunch of cars
and some bridges
and it's just so f...ing
glorious

So, there you go,
Texas after a rain we've been waiting
for the last three months:
it'll bring the lover and the liver
out in us all,
and
then again:
no matter how shitty the day
our mood
the circumstances,
we are in the middle
of the great

born
live
die

cycle.

that's important.

you can have your miracle
and sense love and live it too

good

The untragedy of "things ending"

The Buddha said it:
life is impermanent.

He said also life is suffering,
and what I think he really meant is:
when we fight the impermanence,
we suffer.

Or, more fully:
when we fight Reality
we suffer.

As Byron Katie
and I
say:
When we fight reality
we lose
but only a 100% of the time.

So, for what ramble is this the
pre-amble?

Penina and I have choosen
to create a non-blaming,
loving the other,
no complaining to the other,
or to other people about the other,
end to our "relationship."

Which means,
actually,
we are creating a whole new relationship.

The scary thing about this:
we are jumping into the world of
"I don't know."

The wonderful amazing "almost enlightened" thing
about this:
we are jumping into the world of
"I don't know."

The world of "I don't know'
has another name.

It's called being present.

In the present
we can dredge up a story from the past
about what's next,
but that's just a story.

Who knows what's next?

What a great gift Penina and I
have given ourselves,
this jumping into the world
of the now
as we discover
whatever we are going to discover
as your love
changes and expands out into
the world.

Good.

Unhappiness as a huge clue to choosing happiness

Choosing Happiness.

This is a trick.

Go through your day paying attention to whether or not you are happy.

If you are happy, keep your attention on the present and enjoying and deepening your experience of the present.

If you are not happy, think of this as a chance to see if you are in the present or not.

Most likely you are not.

Most likely there is a thought/ belief/ worry/ opinion/ idea you are believing.

Chose to bring your attention out of the thought/ story/ belief back into the present.

Not to be happy.

Just to be present.


See if this is not actually an easier way of “choosing happiness” than any old fashioned “pursuit of happiness.”

Repeat: just use unhappiness as a huge clue: I’m not present now.

“Just!”


This is like saying: your life could be totally free and different by reacting to unhappiness not as something to escape, but as a clue, one huge banging you over the head clue, that you aren’t being present.

A wake up call, as it were.

So unhappiness, too, is a gift to our life.

Good.


Here's a link to the page
that tells about the book,
and has the entire 108 section
table of contents.

If you'd like to order the book
here's the pay pal
thing:

108 Paths to Awakening

4 Brain Transformation