1001 + ways to heal ourselves and our planet

love is everything, love is blind, the heart isn't

2012-01-20T05:48:00.000-08:00

I used to post on this blog on Fridays, and then paste it in the the
waking movement waking love blog also

who knows if i'll start doing that again

and:

here goes:

love is everything, love is blind, the heart isn't blind

the heart isn't blind:
it knows what it loves:
everything

it knows whom it loves:
everyone

and then we find someone to hang out with,
mate with, partner with, marry

all that is good
and then what happens
and where is this
blindness they
(the famous "they")
talk about when they say
"love is blind?"

blind to the possibilities of disaster
if you or I are counting on love
to carry the wood in
or cook the dinner
or make the car payments

love can be an incentive to do
all that
but we have to make real efforts
and real movement in
the world to do these
and many other
thngs

and so;
why chop the wood
or weed the garden
or go to work

for love

wait wait
isn't love about the yummy hug partner
go to bed with
make kids with
talk to
friend

yes

and love is about
moving our life through love
with grace ease and gratitude

and I still haven't discovered why love is
blind
and the truth comes out:
these pseudo poems are me
discovering what I know

as I go along

and love is blind
if you want it
if I want it
to translate into control:

as in: just because I adore you,
you won't snore
or
you won't get upset
or
you won't make ridiculous demands of me

and with blindness
I am "surprised" if you are less than perfect
and get all twisted and
forget to love you

so then, love is blind to the obvious:
i'm imperfect
you are imperfect
that's perfect

it wants the other person to be perfect

and the other person is

it's just that there behavior sometimes
is not what's best for our life
and we have to say no,
or let's spend some time apart
or let's talk about this while we are present
or let's do the work of Byron Katie

and if the heart isn't blind:
what's that mean?
we can always always always love
another person,
whether we are saying yes or no,
the heart can see through the nonsense,
the demands they may be making
the demands we may be making

love and the heart can always
let the person live
and
if need be
find ways to create some "room"
for ourselves
if that's what we need

This is a fine ramble
there is a lot in here
I can use
and perhaps
you, too

may love speed your day

good,

happy discovery Friday,
Chris

God is love, so might as well love back

2012-01-17T17:36:00.001-08:00

GOD:Loving God for the hell of it

God is good. We’ve heard that. But then again, we don’t have to believe that.
We don’t have to believe in God.
I don’t have to care about or think about God.
And we like to love God, sometimes and those times are in indication of the deeper callings in Life.

Remember when you were small and looked up at the stars and it seems so amazing, that they were so many and so perfect and so brilliant and you were down here and they were up there and it was all just amazing.
That’s what loving God can be like.

Or when you sat by a stream one time, or many, and rested your back against a tree or a rock, and just did “nothing.” Just watched the water flow by and delighted in the sparkling, rippling, reflecting light bouncing from the sun off the water and into your eyes and into your brain and into your heart and your breathing and you and the stream seemed as if they were one.
All is one. All is One.
Some people say things like that. What do you think?
What do you feel?
What do you experience?
What do you love?

Say you love flowers. Is that a way to love God? Sure.
Say you love sunsets and walks on the beach. What if loving that is loving God is loving yourself in your expanding form?
Say God is something like the Whole Tamale, and so anything you love is loving God.

That makes it easy to love God. Later we’ll roam around in the scary world of God is everything, even the “bad stuff,” but let’s start easy.
Loving sunsets and puppies frolicking in the mud and babies laughing and birds singing and rainbows rainbowing these are all easy.
And that’s good, you know. We tend to forget the easy, the simple. We want God to be something fancy we have to pray hard for, or go to India to join the ashram.
We think God is some strict father, and we don’t get the goodies, the love and okay to get into heaven and whatnot, if we don’t toe some line, shape up, be good.
We don’t’ have to be good.
We might want to be kind and loving and useful to others and the Earth, and when you really feel those urges they are from that complicated and simple all at once place of All is One. The being kind to you is being kind to another part of me. The helping the Earth along is being useful to another part of me.

We appear to be apart from others and from Nature. And we appear to be a part of others and a part of Nature.
We are a part of love.
Love is a part of us.

We spend our days often, way often, forgetting that we are love.
That’s okay. God is love, some say, so that God, She or He can but us some slack when we forget to love.
Cutting us slack is called mercy.
Someone once said two things are infinite: human stupidity and God’s mercy. One kind of calls forth the other, and maybe humans are less stupid that confused and cut off from their natural intelligence.
And how do we get back to God, get back to our true selves, get back to days of more and more Love.

Start now, course. We always start now.

The love we want is in us now.
When we come to the Now, everything slows down, and we have this great swoosh of peace. Why? Because all those things lined up ahead of us don’t exist in the present.
Because all those things we remember and have told ourselves about our past, they don’t exist in the Now either.
In the now, the Now, the NOW, not much is left.
Except a peace.
A happiness.
A friend.
A sense of having come home to our true selves.

Is coming home to our true selves, our True Selves, coming home to God?

Maybe.
You don’t have to believe in any God, or anything, to feel very peaceful, happy, free by coming back to your true self, your true Self, in the Now.

And does that make the Now another name for God?

I’m not sure. I don’t think so.

I think God might be the vastness, the beauty, the ALL OF IT, that we can see and feel and merge with from the now.

But that’s just my story.

What’s your feeling when you come to the now, really now?

Does that feel like God, or a path to God, or just a great relief from all the regular ordinary everyday suffering and hurry and worry and contention and bother?

It’s your life.
It’s your feelings.
It’s you now to love and live in or not.

Try loving God, with or without believing in God. And then just coast there, without thoughts, in the Now, and see what happens.
Feel what happens.
Love what happens.
Love yourself.
Love It ALL.

Enjoy.

love is this moment caressing itself

2012-01-06T11:34:00.001-08:00

Love is important
and it goes like this:

you are amazing,
alive
and I cherish you just as you are

that's the honeymoon
phase
and why not have it always be the honeymoon

like this:
the Other does something that irriates
us
we see that as our problem
we got irritated

and we see it as a chance to play:
"Hey, I tweeked myself when you
did
so and so

is that weird, that I tweeked myself
or is that some insane notion
that you are supposed to always
do things just the way

I want you to do them?"

the quote means
you say it.
you speak to the other person
about the bother in you
and
you do NOT
blame them for the bother

you both get curious:

them about whether they wanted to tweek you

you get curious about: whether you have program
that the Other "should" do
what you wish the other to do

....
i know
i know
it sounds too simple

aren't we supposed to get in
conflict when we
"don't get our way?"

if we want to be unhappy
we can get into conflict

if we want to be happy
then curiosity
and good old fashioned
letting the other person be
who they are

goes a long way

and la
la
la

here's the deal:
until we wake up
there is no real happiness

what does that mean?

it means
in the present
love is always possible

out of the present
it's just our robot and theirs
either meshing
or not

hard reality
except
so fucking amazing:
we can come free any
now
and
now
is always right now,

no waiting wanting or coniving
it's right here

this one , too, of course

love
and such
to one
and all,
Chris

if the other way doesn't work, try something new: beyond arguing, some possibilities

2011-11-21T15:47:00.000-08:00

Most so called conversation
is two people, semi-listening
and mainly
"thinking" what they are going
to say
and waiting for an opening
to sneak, shove, slide or otherwise
to insert
their
very very important words

BAD conversation
aka arguing
aka "fighting" has two generic
forms,
one worse than the other
and both a sad waste of
human life love
and liberty

the normal awful arguing mode
generic style is:
person A, telling person B
this:
I'm right, and you are wrong

person B, sees it just the opposite
and is defending, attacking, interrupting,
yelling,
whatever it takes for this important message:
I'm right and you are wrong

notice the similarity in their messages

the AWFUL style
is both have this message:
I'm good, you are bad

ouch

Now,
what's some alternatives,
non habitual communication
as it were

one is Non Violent Communication
which isn't my training
and it's roughly:
let the other guy talk
+ really listen
and then say:
okay, what it seems to me
is that your feel ......
because you need/ want/ feel you aren't getting.....

It takes the amazing assumption
the other person has real issues, feelings, and order in their
own world

great

A tried and true other way:

person A listens
person B talks, rants, accuses
whatever for awhile
(way way best to set a timer here,
a little ranting goes a long way if
person B has to really listen, can't interrupt,
and had to repeat it back)

and that's the next step
person B says to A,
here's what I heard you say,
and gives it back
without any interpretation
or defending

( tough stuff,
but good,
"You said I was a creep
and never pay enough attention to you,
and I really let you down when...")

And then, B asks: did I miss anything
(another reason for a 2 minute to 3 minute turn each,
it's hard to remember too much stuff,
especially when it's emotional "stuff')

if A says you missed....
then B says, okay, I missed ....

If A says, no you got it,
then B takes a short turn
A listens without interruptin
and repeats it back

Called reflective listening

this practice,
the non habitual listening
and honoring the other person,
can really help
that wounded feeling of
"You don't care about me,
won't listen to me feeling"

which is often true in arguing
when the yelling is about OUR important
stuff,
and precludes listening

there are two more cool non habitual
communication games
I like

and let's make it short

each requires you to
take turns with a timer
it can be a little,
or a lot longer,
since there is no feedback

in the first type:
when it's your turn
you talk about anything
except any feedback, suggestion, etc
about what the other said

so each of you agrees to only talk
about issues that don't involve the other

in the more complicated type,
you can address whatever came
up
but you have to listen when it's your turn
to listen
and the more you can keep it
in the famous "I" statement
response
the better

this is tricky
and can work in a mature
relationship
especially one committed
to full time being present

....
this wasn't really a poem
was it?

who knows

could we both,
you gentle reader
and me sincere writer,
go back to the beginning
and read the whole darn thing
with an attempt to follow our breathing
and sense two arms
and two legs
and one
spine
at the same
time?

I'll give it a go

you'll do what you do

i had to read it several times,
discovering typos along the way

and rereading
and going slowly
is nice

very nice

at a point
the words
didn't matter,
just being present
felt
plenty good
enough

hope your
present
is presenting you
with ease and joy

and if nothing else
that thrill of being
in your life
at the moment you are living
your life

Za Wake Up thing--- talking about now, and being asleep

2011-11-11T06:21:00.000-08:00

In my Sonoma days,

a nun came to town.

Not the Catholic kind, but Tibetan,
some fearless gal from Canada or Ohio
or something who
had
gone to
Nepal and sat in a cave for
????? a long time
under supervision of the Tibetan Buddhist
path

she'd gotten a lot of
strength wisdom freedom
from
this experience
and her talk was inspiring

after
wards
I joined the line of those
saying, Oh wow, thanks for your
talk, blah blah

And then,
going out to my bike
realized
that the blah balh
blah
had all been said in a state
of
sleep

eggads!
again!

oh, well.

sensing feet and arms and aware of light
and sound
i walked the now not asleep Chris
back into the building
and found the nun
and said,
you know last time I talked
to you about how great your
talk was
I wasn't conscious
now I am
and thanks

She woke up to match me
out of the shaking hands
daze
and we glowed
at each other for a brief
eternal now
moment
and
then I went back out
to my bike

it would be nice to say
i've been awake since
that moment,

but alas,
the learning
and slipping
and re re remembering
(which members?)
happens
over and over

luckily
it's a delight
to come home
each and
ever
y
time

ciao
for
NOW

Chris

ps sign up for newsletter if you wish,
place to right for that

what would your mother say, if she were dead and you were grieving?

2011-11-04T08:55:00.000-07:00

so hi,

and hey,

someone has to ask the question,
right,
about the grieving thing
which is
"normal"
and if you don't do it "enough"
all sorts of bad stuff is supposed to happen
and besides
everyone will think you're a creep

and God knows, the purpose of life
is to avoid other people's bad opinions

but,
let's ask the dead Mom's
what they would want

and guess what,
this has not been tested or approved by the FDA

so:
hey Mom,
you're dead,
and my question is:

how much should I grieve

and here's the answer I here:

"As much as you want,
but from the dead side
of things,
you really see how amazing
the life side of things
is,
and don't grieve so much
you forget
even for a second
how amazingly lucky
YOU are
to be in the life boat,
the ship of the living,
RIGHT NOW

so stay present while you grieve
and immensely grateful to be alive

and if you want to feel grateful
to me
go ahead,
that's good for you

but why cry about gratitude
I loved loving you

and if you want to keep loving
me,
go ahead,
that's good for you,

but why cry because we can't hug
or talk

just send me love
all the love you want

it's the best you can
do and
loving yourself
for doing the best you can do

is what I want for you

and the yucky sobering part of
grieving
the part where you have these
chilly realizations that you
could have loved me more

hey, forgive yourself,
i could have loved you more,
too,
and it's just the reminder that's important:

love people while they are alive
call them
up
write them,
have their memorial six months BEFORE
they die
not two weeks after

just learn from what you weren't perfect
in
me,
I wasn't perfect either

forgive me
in case some of your grieving is convoluted
anger that I wasn't better

i was perfect
you weren't perfect

that's perfect

send me all the love you
want
and then
quit grieving
and go out and love so living
people better
and better each day

and here's a hint:
you're a living people

so love yourself better each
day
too

good,
love
Mom

the importance of love

2011-10-28T09:15:00.000-07:00

now
nature
love

this can take us almost anywhere we want
to go
and guess what?

the easy part is that we are already
there

think of nature,
and how easy it is to love a redwood
tree
or a rose

and what if
what if, a wonderful phrase,
and way to live,
what if
we saw every person we saw
today
(and even Bigger: ever person we "thought about")
as beautiful and perfect and magnificent,
like a rose

who demands the rose
be prettier
or that the redwood tree be
thinner
or that either like love and appreciate
us more

we want nothing from them
and they give us
the everything

of how free full and loved
we feel
when we are just
loving out
loving out
loving out

and not really slogging around
in the "what am I getting back"
trenches

and
now
what's now
got to do with it

ah, the redwood
the rose,
and we forget tomorrow
and yeterday
and don't worry what to say
to them
and just enjoy

does love have to always be
in the present?

no, we can remember love
and imagine love in the future,
but the good feeling

that's always right
now

at least that's my take on
it

but the thrill of this adventure
called
life
is for you to be your own
well loved
"what if" experiment

what if you paid attention
to how and where it felt
to love today?

what would happen?

who knows?

and how wordless and wondrful
could that be
and you don't have to report
it to anyone

you're going to do
just perfectly

wow

now

wow

nature

wow

love

ciao,
Chris

Index of Postings (1052, so far)

2011-10-21T23:11:00.000-07:00

INDEX

JANUARY 2012

1052. January 17: God is love, so might as well love back

1051. January 6: Love is this moment caressing itself

NOVEMBER 2001

1051: November 21: Beyond the arguing thing

1050. Nov 11, 2011: Talking and ... asleep or awake, what a grand choice

1049. Novem 4: What would your Mom say if she were dead and you were grieving?

OCTOBER 2011

1048. Octo 28: Now, Nature and Love: we are perfect, so are the roses, redwoods and the "others"

1047. October 21: Friday and the Sun is shining, weather or not we command it so

1046. October 14: If Love is the answer, what is the question?

1045. October 1: Geothe on Commitment and moving forward in life

SEPTEMBER 2011

1044. Sept 30: Divorce Blues, relax Jack it's just life, ("just!!!!!!!!

1043. Sept 23: Waking up in relationship, or having to be our moms and pops

1042. Sept 11; The joy of 9/11

1041. Sept 10: The Joy of Divorce, via slowing down

1040. Sept 4 Carlos Casteneda after 30 years, the first Harry Potter

1039. What are Brains for?

AUGUST 2011:

1038. August 28: What to Do about Heat, death, taxes, people who are mean to you?

1037. August 19: Love, God, Mira, Hafiz, sec and sacred

1036. August 14: Lovers and Gods and the I AM in us, now

1035. August 13: The Way out of Suffering: no Shit

1034. August 5: Who is We, underneath za garbage and ze conditioning

JULY 2011

1033. July 22: Wake the F.... up!

1032. July 15: The Joy of Divorce

1031. July 9: The Joy of overcoming difficulties

1030. July 1: The purpose of bad days

JUNE 2011

1029. June 23: What iz Life Fur?

1028. June 17: Consolidation at WakeUpFelddie Blog

1027. June 10: Finding, Feeling, F...ing, Fighting: Waking up to Cure Cancer

1026. June 3: Feeling good even though part of us feels bad

MAY 2011

1025. May 20: the tired thing, the nap possibility

1024. May 13: The Importance of Living

1023. May 6:

The untragedy of "things ending"; relationship shifting with Penina

APRIL 2011

1022. April 29: Friday, Eating and Moving toward a new level of awareness/ fitness

1021. April 22, Friday, Good Friday: So Slow in this moment of our lives

1020. April 15: friday, taxes are taxing, death is relaxing, love is everlasting

1019. April 8, friday: How to sit more easily happily and kind of your backly
at your computer

MARCH 2001

1018. fri, March 18, giving to give, vs giving to get

1017. Fri, March 11: An improvement and healing and awaring lesson: how are you sitting right now?

1016, FRIDAY, March 4: Landmark Forum, can you wake up in a herd

1015. March 3: Preliminary Landmark Forum thoughts, with cute Moshe Feldenkrais story way at the end

FEBRUARY 2011

1014. Feb 27, Sunday: Movement lesson for feeding, f...ing, fighting and spine breath happiness

1013. Feb 25 Saturday: Outside, Inside, life is good

1012. Feb 19: try three, at least 3 journeys, all at once, maybe 4

1011, Feb 19, coming to Austin, and the journey, art 2

1010: Feb 18: beginnings of a journey talk

1009/ feb 11, Valentine's Day offering: real communication, out of habit, into the present

1008. Feb 11: Nor Friday the 13 but the one before V day, true, good, beautiful to you and you and you

1007/ Feb 3: Make God happy, be present and make your loved ones smile; make God laugh, have a plan

JANUARY 2011

1006. Jan. 29: Turn around 3 ways: to self, to the other, the whole shebang is wrong, Good

1005: January 21: The Way of Loving, ourselves and others

1004. January 14, Friday posting is the new game: The Importance of Living via the Importance of awakened moving

1003. Jan 7: Book for Sale: may led to happiness, awareness and waking at 4 levels

1002. Jan 6: First four of the amazing games/ activities/ meditations from 108 Ways,
a book coming out this April

1001. Jan 6: Love and Death, one secret to happiness, plus nice picture of Madrone tree bark

1000. Jan 3: the balm of all suffering: emptiness

999. Jan 2: happiness is an inside job

DECEMBER 2010

998. Dec 30: resolutions, 1

997/ Dec 24 today is not Christmas

996. Dec 23: What's important?

995. Dec 22: Love in the winter

994. Dec 21: Love is loving the imperfect, 22 minutes of mullng

993 Dec 20: What is good about life, one person's opinion, and opinions aren't truth

992. Dec 14: fear can be real, or just another grand wake up call

991. Dec 3: You do not have to be good: a Mary Oliver poem

990. Dec 1; waking up good guys bad guys nonsense or no nonsense

NOVEMBER 2010

989. Nov 30: Austin cold like winter, warm like life

988. nov 25: thanks for the sweet empty void, source of....

987. nov 24: stuck and unstuck, the magic of "I don't know"

986. nov 23: another happy poem, is that permissible

985. Nov 23, happiness in the morning against the chattering brain odds in Austin

984. Nov 10: Impatience steals us from the now: plus a utube sermon, good

983. Nov. 1: The blame temptation

OCTOBER 2010

982. Oct 29 Life is good in a cool morning

981. October 26: Amazing Austin, plus letter to folks who might want to try the work in Austin

980. October 18: Looking for clients, and cool people and housing in Austin, Texas

979. Oct 16: the wonders of now, yep, this one right now

978. October 6: the importance of love, 2

SEPTEMBER 2010

977. sept 30, the importance of love

976. Sept 22: Criticism In, Criticism Out: getting free of the programming

975, Sept 14: The Nearness of ???? (God, Life, Love, Your Real Self)

974. Sept 13: The Meaning of Life, Learning and Happiness: Chapter One

973. Sept One: What Difference Do it Make, or Homeless Wisdom, or: Sweet Book

AUGUST 2010

972. August 19, or so: Argue with your feet, your truth, but not with the one you love

971. Aug 14: life is now, even when you are "late'

970. Aug 12: story, story, on the brain: what's left minus

969. Aug 10: the wonder of it all, sort of

968. aug 9: waiting to be caught, or to catch

967. august 7: Waiting for the Friend, and pretending its out there

966. August 6: waiting, part A

965. August 5: now or nothing, and now and nothing win/win

964. August 4: Waiting to Be where we Already ARe

963. August 3: Poem a Day, ha ha

962. August 3, Tuesday: Reality as a sweet feast

JULY 2010

961. July 29: the Sweetness of Baby Learning: a 3 minute vidoe

960. July 21: A frame for mediation

959. July 20: Practicing thinking

958. July 18: Happiness is not a sin

957. July 17: Up and Down, Lengthening and Awaring and Easing into our Day

956. July 13: The name they give us not = us, nor the labels, what's left?

955. July 10: Heaven and Earth and our human awareness in between

954. July 9: Thinking and Walking: Giving ourselves options to the ongoing "worry"

953. July 6: emotional upping: choices at the unhappiness node

JUNE 2010

952. June 30: Present to feet and eyes: the up and down of being human

951. June 29, "thinking" without words

950. June 28: emotional learning: what thoughts do what

949. JUNE 24: day 109, we have a spine

948. June 14: Five lines and loving life

947/ June 7: Loving God, do ya have to believe to do that?

MAY 2010

946. May 30, Sunday, Jesus in the New Yorker: was Jesus sometimes not "Christian?" Gads, what to do with that?

945. May 26, wednesday: Weather we like it or not, today is today, and now is now

944. May 19: wednesday: Waiting as a Fruitful and ever available food

943. May 12: Unhappy, happy, who is the real me?

942. May 7: Day Forty Two: Going Slow

941. May 1: Day Forty One: Having Fun

APRIL 2010

940. April 30: Day Forty: The Fullness

939. April 27: Day Thirty Nine: The Pause that seems to slow can ///// instead. What is /////?? Try it and find out.

938. April 24 . Lots of writing of the one page per action/ motion/ learning sort. 16 days worth.

937. April 21, Wednesday: twisting and learning in sitting

936. April 17, Saturday: Toes are for walking and learning. brains are for waking up and learning. life is for living

935. April 15, Thursday: The Importance of Love

934. April 13, Happy Birthday Chris, Day Thirty five: Waking to Life and Now, even while chatting, talking, blah, blahing

933. April 12: Day Thirty-three: look at a tree

932. April 9, Day thirty-four: Happy Toes, Happy Feet, movement lesson

931. April 8: Day thirty two, what to do: Change around our "take" on various emotional reactions

930. April 5, Day 31: For the glory of God and our own Amusement

929. April 3, day 30: waking to our real selves

928. April 2: Day 29, what to leave behind, death of part of "me" = change, = rebirth

927. April 1, index of the second time around on 108 days, starting November 1 last year, ending Feb 24, 2010

MARCH 2010

926. March 30: Day 27: One way to Heaven : move with awakening

925. March 25: Day Twenty Five, More alive, less "have to"

924. March 24: Day Twenty-Four: Sensing the Floor, the gravity game, enjoy

943. March 22: What to do? Be, be, be of good cheer

942. March 21, Day Twenty One: The turn around

941. March 20: Who are we WITHOUT the story?

940. March 19, Day 19: Who am I WITH the story?

939. March 18, Day Eighteen: The Work of Byron Katie, #2: Is it absolutley true?

938. March 17, Day Seventeen: The Work of Byron Katie, #1: Is it true?

937. March 16: Why Wake Up, or Fun in Nowing and Moving and Inventing

936. Day 15: Rich in Possessions = Poor chance of getting into Kingdom of Heaven

935. March 14, day 14, seventh day, of rest, prayer a lot, little bits

934. March 13, day 13: lucky thirteen, season time, seasons of the day time, take a walk

933. March 12, day 12: more five lines in actions, folding from on back

932> march 11, day 11: towards heaven, 2: emotions minus words in the head

931. march 11, Troubled? Love Poem to God, by Hafiz

930. March 10, day 10: emotional freedom by varying what we usually get "stuck" in

929. Day Nine, actually, acture not posture is where to hunt

928. Day Eight, March 8: Round and arch in standing

927. Day Seven, March 7, March on, ho hi ha ho, The Day of Rest, the Kingdom of Heaven

926. March 4, day six: This is My Life

925. March 4, Day Five, Feeling more alive, waking to our 5 lines in forward bending

924. March 1, Day Four: Open the Door, what door? Well, discovering which door is opening the door, in a way

FEBRUARY 2010

923. feb 28: Why live?

922. feb 27: arms and legs, sensing expands, day two

921. feb 26: day one: sensing, difference, breathing

920. feb 24: day 108: this is a beginning

919. feb 23, day 107, this is my life, 2

918. feb 22 day 106 up and down and five lines, the easy and not so easy

917. feb 20. day 105: sitting and side bending

916. feb 17, day 104: slowing down

915. feb 15: day 103, emotions as actions, so let's move toward free

914, feb 14: happy Valentines, day 102: Write Yourself a Love Letter, both hands write, go slow, love and learn

913. feb 12, day 101: ten fingers, ten toes, belly, eyes, ears, nose

912. feb 10, day 100: a review of sorts

911. feb 9, day 99: having a good time discovering the new in the now

910. feb 8, 98: la, la, la: past over rover, oh well, oh great

909. feb 7: 97, heaven: lying on our backs, learning

908. feb 6 , day 96 rotation for fun, joy, meditation, learning, "relaxation," and upgrading of awareness, ease and "energy

907. feb 5: day 95: 3 kinds of business, Byron Katie shortcut

906. feb 4: day 94: making hell for ourselves by believing the story, q 3 of the work

905. feb 3, day 93,

904. feb 2, day 92: But I don't want to forgive. Ah, to be human and stuck, welcome to the Life on Earth show

903. Feb 1, day 91: Go inside, let it go, and find real Peace

JANUARY 2010

902. jan 30: day 90: Go outside, and see what now tastes like there

901. jan 29: 89< doing fine, breathing two ways and the joy of a spine and a sense of humor

900. jan 28: day 88, heaven's gate = ???

899. jan 27, day 87: hard but, what the heck, waking up is amazing

898. jan 26, day 86, movement around the axis, playing in rotation

897. jan 25, day 85, the pause that wakes us up

896. Jan 24, day 84, what's amazing in your life?

895. January 23, day 83: tongues to the nowing

894. jan 22: day 82: arching and rounding in sitting

893. jan 21, day 81: what we like as a clue to what we are like

892. jan 20: the glory and necessity of now

891. jan 19, day 79:listening in new ways, part 1

890. jan 18:day 78: hopping in two ways, thinking and moving, yes

889. jan 17, day 77: other people are (surprise!) what they are

888. jan 16, day 76: reality through two lens

887. jan 15: day 75: what is reality and other "little" q's

886. jan 14: day 74: what's more, round and arch

885. jan 13, day 73: breathing our way to now

884. jan 12: day 72, what to do: waking to others while talking

883. jan 11: day 71son of a gun, or: awake while yakking

882, jan 10, of what, plenty?

881, jan 9, day 69: what to leave behind

880. jan 8, day 68: breathing out, two ways

879. jan 7, day 67: to heaven, one (remembered) breath at a time

878. jan 6, day 66: pick up sticks, flexing our spines, touching the ground, the wall

877. jan 5, day 65: alive

876. Jan 4, day 64: There's always more, but what...?

875. Jan 3, day 63: Looking at a tree, part 2

874. January 2, 2010: day 62: leaning, rising, being in now not thought

DECEMBER 2009

DECEMBER 2009

873. dec 31: day 61: what we want vs. who we really are

872. dec 30: day 60: silence is a/ the path

871. dec 29: day 59 : other people and staying awake

870. dec 28: day 58: down on the ground and learning

869. dec 27: liking what 'it' doesn't like

868. dec 27: day 57: Up from down, gravity movement learning and fun

867. dec 26: Day 56: Up and down, for learning and fun

866. dec 25: Christmas songs and two grand hints: silence, nature

865. dec 25, Christmas, day 55 being alive, fully alive

864. dec 24, day 54: nice vs kind, kin and being present

863. Dec 23: day 53: arch and round and breathe in sitting

862. Dec 22: day 52: Wake up to Who we Really Are

861. Dec 21: day 51: What's new under the sun?

860. Dec 20: Day 50: Other people, can we listen deeper?

859. Dec 19: Day 49: More spine, sitting and standing, plop, plopping

858. dec 18, day 48: five lines all day, hmmm, hard and amazing

857. dec 17, day 47< do not let the sun set on....huh??? #2

856. dec 16: day 46: be angry but do not sin, huh??

855. dec 15, day 45: alive and moving on side, spine and pelvis again

854. dec 14: day 44: moving spine and pelvis, lying on the side

853. dec 13, day 43, 20 nice things about an "enemy"

852. dec 12L day 42: What to do: Pause, wait, see, yes

851. Dec 11: Day 41: It's done, it's us, good news: the turn around

850. Dec 10: Day 40: the end of suffering, who are we without the story?

849. Dec. 9: q #3, consequences of attaching to the thought

848. Dec. 8: 38: question 2: Can you Absolutely know this thought is true?

847. Dec 7: 37: on way to Heaven, the Byron Katie boat, part 1

846. Dec. 6: Right now and rotation around ourselves: fun and exploring and NOW

845. Dec. 5: day thirty-five: Now is around and waiting, where are we?

844, Dec 4: Day Thirty-four: Happy, unhappy: watching

843. Dec. 3: Day Thirty Three, really seeing a tree, = love

842. Dec 2: Twisting in Sitting, fun

841. Dec. 1: Day Thirty-One: Talking and Staying Present, 2

NOVEMBER 2009

840. Nov. 30: Day Thirty:Down and Dirty, or not, the being present present present thing

839. Nov. 29: Day Twenty-Nine: Don't take it Personally

838. Nov. 28:Day Twenty-Eight, Standing up straight via spine furling and unfurling

837. Nov 27: Day Twenty-Seven: One Way to Heaven, Slow Down

836. Nov. 26 Day Twenty-six: Gratitude as a fun game, rather than a being good duty

835. Nov. 25 Day Twenty-five:
What if we didn't "Have to...."

834: Nov. 24: Day Twenty-four:Moving with Attention

833. Nov. 23: Day Twenty-three: Sensing our Five Lines

832. Nov 22: Day Twenty-two: Be of Good Cheer

831. Nov 21: Day Twenty-One: First time through, Awake while Talking

830. Nov. 20: Day Twenty: This is my Life, 2

829. Nov. 19:Day Nineteen: Sensing arms and legs AND spine

828. Now 18: Day Eighteen: Waking in Moving

827. Nov.17, Day Seventeen: Emotional freedom, sensing without the words

826. Nov. 16: Day Sixteen: Sweet Sixteen, sweet and bitter straws of life

825. Day 15: Day Fifteen: Take a Nap

824. Nov 14: Day Fourteen: Neck and spine and Pelvis: Or, the Neck starts in the Ass

823. Nov. 13: Day Thirteen: Rotation around our axis, more

822. Nov. 12 Day Twelve: Coming to Ease via Aware Moving/ Learning / Waking UP

821.Nov. 11, Kingdom of Heaven, 2

820.Nov. 10: ACTURE and the real world

819. Nov. 9: Loving our Spine

818. Nov. 8: Standing up Straight

817. Nov 7, Kingdom of Heaven

816. Nov. 6 This is my Life

815. Nov. 5, Being Alive, Sensing Arms and Legs

814. Nov. 4, What if God were around?

813. Nov. 3: Day Three: Emotional Choosing, ? Maybe

812. Nov 2: Day Two: Breathing plus legs, to wake up

811. Nov. 1 Sensing our Legs to Wake to Now

OCTOBER 2009

810. October 23: Benefits of Anat Baniel Method

809. October 16: working to create a sweet space

808. October 7: life is good

SEPTEMBER 2009

807. Sept 24: working too hard

806. Sept 13: soul now

805. Sept 12: What will it profit a dude or dudess ?

804. Sept 10 Go Slow, Joe

803. Sept. 7: new phone #

802. Sept 5: Waking necessary to change

801. September 1, 2009: What's the Problem, inner vs outer worlds

AUGUST 2009

800. August 20: Be happy, or what?

799. August 15: Nice vs real, or "????"

798. August 13, This is my life

797. Aug 11, Tues: Who am I?

796. Aug 10: Be of Good Cheer

795. August 9, Sunday: Be angry, but do not sin

794. August 8, Turning to the left with awareness

793. August 7, for love of love

792. August 7, 108 days of now-ing, day one

791. Aug 4, Hi Sweetie

JULY 2009

790. July 20, Love is good, Morgan some more

789. July 15, hiding behind the mask, or not

788. July 14: yes to it all

787. July 9: I'm in love and so what?

786. July 7 yes life good day ha ha hee hee ho

785. july 2 ten fingers ten toes wake up call, sort of

784. July 1, How to get smarter

JUNE 2009

783. June 30, balance and Moshe and more

782.June 24 loving life a few days after solstice

781. June 19 the porpoise of life

780. June 11, every morning, more chances to love

779. June 4, love, change, awakening

778. June 1, this moment

MAY 2009

777. gone

776. May 19, 2009: Orcas finally, and beautiful it is

775. May 18, Monday: Stuff happens

774. May 16, Arcata fine place, not a place I wish to move to

773. May 15, 2009: Doing Less, sometimes

772. May 2, 2009: Saturday: Arcata, Hello; always a choice: now or not now

APRIL 2009

771. April 15, Now is Easy, Why don't we always go there?

770. April 15, 2009: taxes and death, good????

769. April 10, 2009: Life is good

768. April 5, 2009: Anat Baniel Practitioner, Brendan and his dad, both

MARCH 2009

767. March 31: love is all around

766. March 26, Thursday: Light upon Light, the light verse of the Qu'ran

765. March 20, Friday, what's love got to do with it, 2

764. March 18, Wed, What's good about being alive?

763. March 13, Friday: watch this, you'll be glad

762. March 11: Tuesday: the beauty of today

761. March 9. Monday, 2009: one meaning of the Resurrection

760. March 7, Saturday: Love, Busy-ness, Forgiveness

759. March 2, 2009: What's love got to do with it?

758. March 1, 2009: Sunday in Atlanta: Snow and Love

FEBRUARY 2009

757. feb 27: other people

756. feb 25: poor me, not poor me

755 feb 22: good day Sunday: take advice on alfalfa and car roofs

754. feb 21: good day, Saturday

753. feb 17: who would i be without the story?

752/ Feb 15: Katie and Jesus

751. Feb 10: in Tucson, with and without the story

750. February 5: an exercise from Orage

749. February 4: in a new place it is tempting

JANUARY 2009

748. Jan 30, Friday: Last day, yoga pose, good for life

747. Jan 29, Thursday: the primacy of love

746. jan 24, at 2009:::: sun today

745. jan 23, too much, just the right amount

744. jan 22 2009: baraka and nobility and the power of possibilities

743. jan21 wed 2009: new day, end of an error

743. jan 21, 2009: Barack's speech, print form, let's get to work

742. jan 20, tuesday, 2009: finally, it's okay to have a brain

741. jan 19, mon, 2009: love and not love

740. jan 17, 2009: sat, drink tea be happy

739. jan 16, 2009, friday: for love

738.jan 15, thurs, breathing

737. jan 14, wed, why not be happy

736.January 13, 2009: tuesday, :: for love of morning, life is...

735. January 11, 2009: Sunday: the porpoise of life

734. January 10, 2009, Saturday: boundaries and love and possibilities

733. January 9, 2009, Friday: 'tis grand to breathe and be alive

732. January 8, 2009: So called "tired"

733. January 7, 2009, Wed., If what you are doing isn't working...

732, January 6, 2009, Tuesday: this poem has nothing

731. January 5, 2009: The Peace that Passeth all Understanding

730. January 4, 2009: to be awake is to love

729. January 3, 2009: What can a real person do?

728. January 2, 2009: If another person is a pain in the ass

727/ January 1, 2009: New Year, New Chances to Love, Yes

INDEX OF 2009 POSTINGS, # 727 -873

603-726, INDEX OF POSTINGS, June 18, 2008- December 31, 2008

509-602 , INDEX OF POSTINGS JANUARY 1,2008 TO JUNE 17, 2008

1-508: Index of Postings August 2004, to December 31, 2007

Friday and the sun is shining

2011-10-21T09:28:00.000-07:00

Some place are getting cold
and maybe they had beautiful days
somewhere between June and October

in Austin we had about
zero
and now it's
beautiful
so maybe that's "fair"

or maybe it's the way the globally
warming Earth is playing
its game this year

for whatever reason
I commend you
all
to take some time
out
doors

today

not rushing to the car

not "getting a lot done"
in your garden

not even doing your "power walk"
or walk and talk walk

and what's left:
just go out
and see where your feet
lead you

is that fair

on a Friday?

when there is
"too much to do"?

yes

why?

someday you will take
your last breath
on this planet Earth

what happens next is belief
superstition, possibility,
who knows

but the last breath comes
and as it approaches

you get to be present
to the immense glory
of being alive
and having been alive

fall
does that to people
somehow

gives the preview to the
looking back
and feeling the immense
glory and wonder of
it all

so fall out of your routine
and into the fresh air

and feel experience see hear
notice enjoy
whatever happens

good

if love is za ansa, vat is ze question?

2011-10-14T08:17:00.001-07:00

IF LOVE is the ANSWER
what is the question?

And why is the question there?

Because we love to be in suspense

be cause we love to trip fall dance leap
move forward

if we always know
their is no learning
no asking
no wonder

I wonder what love is for

for to clue the planets together?
for the grow the grass?
for to sing song life into action
and keep it rolling and roiling

life from movement
the sexy stuff
that can be love
always hints at love

and then we cling
and demand
and try to control
what we can't
and love

seaps
away
crying

but not dying

love never dies

it just goes into a cave to nourish
itself

into the pearl to become an oyster
or into an oyster to become a pearl

which came first
the answer or the question:

what is love for?

for your delight
and falling out of the cage
of the self that doesn't exist
falling out, and having to fly,
the bird push out of the nest

no you
and yet you have wings
and you could fly
you have to fly

and what flies you
wings you onward?

love

....
this appears to be a mystical answer
me
my
mo
mooo

it's fun to know
not
what we are going t
o
do
or
say
or learn from the word,
pushed out of the nest,
where are they going to go

maybe they will fly

today,
it felt like they did

good

Goethe quote, good

2011-10-01T13:51:00.001-07:00

Until one is committed,
there is hesitancy,
the chance to draw back,
always ineffectiveness.

Concerning all acts of initiative ( and creation),
there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans:
that the moment one definitely commits oneself,
then providence moves too.

All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred.

A whole stream of events issues from the decision,
raising in one's favour all manner of
unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance,
which no man could have dreamed would have come his way.

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now".

- J. W. von Goethe

divorce blues and the wake up call

2011-09-30T08:29:00.000-07:00

In divorce,
each person almost always feels cheated
of a dream.

And the dream was to be really loved,
loved on their good days
and loved on their bad days.

The trick is,
it's hard to love people on their bad days,
and so that's probably what the divorce is about:
more bad days than good days.

Not enough love.
Not enough appreciation
Not enough fun.

And all that was probably true,
and then the divorcee is all alone
and wishing they'd been treated better.

Oh, well.

Here's a couple of interesting shifts on all that:

One, the past is passed. Gone. Over.
The X is never going to whisk you
back in time
and act perfect the way you wish they'd been.

Two,
they are over whatever place they are
wishing you'd given more love.

Three,
getting someone new
aka "moving along"
while a good aspirin for the pain,
since sex always makes us feel better
about life,
and helps us pretend that
"now we are really loved:,
but "moving along"
without having
"done the work"
is the path to a life of no growth
in our ability to love.

Because this is what we have to do with
the X'
sooner or later:
Love them for their inability to love us enough.

The work of Byron Katie
is the quickest and easiest way to get there.

And just for starters realize this:
if they could have loved more,
they would have.
It's fun to love.
Inability to love is painful.
Their inability to love more is
their pain.
Hope that they get over that pain.

And second, realize: hey,
if I can't love myself every second of
every day,
how could have they.

So, that's the start:
realize they were in pain.

Two, realize you're in pain,
since you don't know how to be a full
time unconditional lover of yourself.

And then, "move on."

Not necessarily to another person,
but the a world brightly aglow
because you are in love with every moment.

Good.

Options = freedom, the crunch times in relationship

2011-09-23T12:04:00.001-07:00

As I write this,
and as you read this,
we are either mindful
or not.

Aware can be all sorts of things,
but it seems to need to be at least in part
grounded in the physical reality,
like our breathing, or our arms and legs,
or light coming in our eyes right now.

The good old here and now.

and if we aren't mindful,
then we are on some sort of automatic,
which even Thich Nhat Hahn admitted was hard when writing.

And he's not in relationship.

So, we meet someone.
And they are groovy
and they think we are groovy
and sex is good
and we like a bunch of things in common,
so whoopie,
life is solved.

Feels like that for awhile,
except that once we start to spend enough time
together,
someone is going to fall away from the "perfect" projection
and fall back into normal jerky selfish scared angry whatever.

You know, the stuff happens.

So one person has stress and reacts,
and then the options are:

one or both people realize things are off and become mindful

neither become mindful which means you
by definition
are on automatic (which sounds nicer than mindless,
but that is the opposite of mindful isn't it)

Anyway two people on automatic have to fall
back on what their parents taught mainly
and then any other training
or habits they've developed/ gotten away with
over the years

So we have the couple:
stress
people fallen into not so great patterns
and various automatic responses.

Which means: if you and your partner had perfect unconditionally loving
parents,
who dealt with stress with love and listening and humor,
then you can fall back on some pretty high grade
automatic behavior

without such parents,
things more or less have to disintegrate

or the couple has to get more and more busy
and distant
and businesslike
to stay out of the trouble zone

or the "trouble" can be held inside
and gnashed away at as
it eats somebody's guts out
(and chances are the inner gnashing
if used by one or both,
was a pattern they picked up)

So:
without the mindfulness
to feel what we are feeling
as in us
and the mindfulness to stay
present to the other
and to our words as we "deal"
with a situation,
we are bound to either avoid
or conflict

and what to do about all this?

one is to agree,
in calmer moments,
what the default agreed upon
pattern will be when conflict happens:

say, doing the work of Byron Katie

or listening to each other without interruption
of five minutes at a time

or stopping the talk and touching for awhile

or arguing in gibberish

or non violent communication

or taking a walk and calming down

or writing up gratitude lists

or prefacing each statement with:
I know anything that bothers you
is in me too

or.

well, the world is full of things to do besides the usual painful ones

it's kind of amazing
we take so little advantage of them

oh, well.

See: My Joy of Divorce website, five month course page
if you are by chance interested in a group from yourself
or your friends that could lead out of a LOT of suffering

The Joy of 9/11

2011-09-11T07:05:00.000-07:00

By the time you finish this little ramble
at least 3000 people will have died on this
beautiful planet from idiotic reasons:

Car crashes,
stupid wars,
starvation because the rich stole the food that was supposed to go to the poor
starvation because the world bank shoved the country into monoculture and the people forgot or weren't allowed to grow their own food
drugs that doctors gave doing the person in
lover's quarrels where the gun is the answer
drug war idiocy

and so on

This human race does dumb things
with its big brain
that gets used to make weapons
and to justify the most common human
fallacy:
The Me Right, You wrong fallacy

And throughout today,
many will be busy saying
the terrorists were wrong
or that George Bush was wrong
or that the whole economic mess of the country is wrong

and you know what:
everyone who wants to be right,
is
and yet,
are they happy?

So let's dance around and wonder:
are we terrorizing ourselves with the idea
that 9/11 shouldn't have happened

are we terrorizing ourselves with the wish
that in this country at least
crazy men with the idea that they can solve
anything by killing a bunch of people all at
once ( Hiroshima anyone? firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo)
should happen

people want to be right
the most idiotic form of this is to go
out and figure that you are so right
you get to kill off a bunch of the Wrong crowd

crazy

and then,
if we want to erase this idiocy
from the world
or from happening in "our" country,
who are we, but mental expungers of the
the Wrong folk
so we wipe the "bad/ dumb/ wrong THEM" out
with our judgment

me right, you wrong
ah, such sweet poison

such a common way to waste our lives

and the unfailing way to be unhappy:
You, the past, should have been different

me right, the past should have been my picture,
you, reality, the past as it was, is WRong

la, la

lots of luck

so, if you don't agree with me,
be happy,
but don't be right,
be amused, confused,
curious:

how could he possibly think that way?

what would it be like if I tried that out for awhile?

And if you can't entertain an "alien" viewpoint,
why get so mad at the terrorists,
who clearly lacked humor and the good graces
to see that not everyone agreed with them

they are just like us
with the extreme of getting to really wipe out
what they don't like
including themselves

imagine how much self hatred goes into terrorism,
forget all the hogwash about 40 virgins in heaven,
these dopes all knew they were going to die,
and that they were destroying themselves

nothing but good old lack of love
for self
others
and the whole big mess
can lead to such drastic acts

and then again as the ramble rumbles
down,
and the 3000 mentioned above are all
dead
and here we are still

what's that about?

it's our moment
this gol dern moment is
our life

how much love and joy
and tolerance of the "wrong" people,
and love for the "wrong" people
can we conjure up

IN THIS MOMENT,
CAUSE IT'S THE ONLY ONE

ciao
for
NOW

Chris, 9-11-2011
whoppie, here we are,
you and I
alive

Slow down, in the emotional world, too/ divorce advice good 4 us all

2011-09-10T14:41:00.000-07:00

In a time of divorce
or separation
or breakup,
the temptations are two:

to simply lie down, pull the covers over one's head
and
"give up:

and
to add a bunch of extra activities,
learn Spanish,
take dance lessons,
keep busy every single night

Ah, yes.
Well, in a way, both are useful if they
shift us out of the rut
we were in,
AND they are only useful
to our true discovery of ourselves
and our inner transformation,
IF
we take part in them as mindful actions.

So, if we go dancing:
pay attention to all the movements, thoughts and feelings
while showering and dressing to go
while getting in and driving the car
or getting on and riding the bike
while waiting for someone to dance with
while getting instructions
while either "getting" the instructions, as in knowing what to do, or not

In other words,
if we are desperate for approval,
and that's what our relationship seemed
to be satisfying,
and wasn't really,
and then we go off to dance,
and are desperate for approval there,
even if we find someone who seems to be the one
who will give that approval

it won't work

unless we are content within and
able to give ourselves approval up and down the line,
good days and bad,
in sickness and in health
in poverty and in wealth
in good mood and bad

then we aren't ready to pretend that someone
else is going to do that for us

they aren't

So, maybe only do one or two new things.
And take them as experiments to be mindful
the entire time.
And don't try to meet anyone.
And watch, and be lovingly humorous about
our wish, need, demand, craving for outside attention
and
approval
and
affection
and
"love"

Why don't we take this breakdown time
and a breather
a breathe in
and breathe out
time,
time to discover who we are,
who we would be without the approval, or disapproval
of any person
or set of people

Okay, and what of the head under the covers
path.

Slow down on that, too.

Can we go to the bed, slowly, and sense our entire body.
Can we feel ourselves on the bed,
can we feel the covers,
can we sense where our arms and legs and spine are
in space
can we follow our breathing

can we get so relaxed and "into" our body on the
bed under the covers
that we can start to watch our thoughts
as a very entertaining show

and if the thoughts are coming too
fast
or are
too mean,
can we slow them down?

how.
by getting a journal and writing them down.
slowly.
carefully.

One "Should"
and one "shouldn't"
at a time.

All misery has a should or shouldn't or a should have or a shouldn't have attached.

Can we slow down, by writing, and then looking at what we have written with our
eyes and heart and brain,
and say: Oh, that's what I believe.

Soon, with the shoulds and shouldn't written down
the transformation can deepen.

But just to get away from hiding from the thoughts
behind our misery
into writing them down
and recognizing them
is to move so much closer to mindfulness
as to almost constitute,
then and there,
the new life we want for ourselves.

Good.

Carlos Casteneda after 30 years, whoopie

2011-09-04T06:56:00.000-07:00

Back in the days,
if you read Carlos Casteneda
you got hooked

magic
mystery
deserts
Indians
sorcerers

whoopie

in was like Harry Potter and
it was supposed to be real

and who knows
some probably was

he's got some great stuff,
reading through Journey to Ixtlan
about treating the world as a mystery
as an unknown

that we don't need to buy into everyone
else's description of Reality

and you read the first part of Awareness through Movement
and basically, Moshe is saying:
the society wants you to be a cog,
that's it's purpose

and hey, person: what's your purpose

and what's the best tool to escape the mold,
the mask as he calls it,
and discover the life you really want for
yourself?

awareness.

and what's the best step to awareness?
movement that creates new patterns
and increases complexity
and demands
and rewards attetention

and will attention lead to awareness?

well, it is awareness while being used,
and it can turn on our "awaring" ability
as at first a gift
and then later a necessity:

life is so dull and same same same
without awareness

and even my fingers
now
on the keyboard

I can get the job
or sense the tips touching and my spine holding
up my head
and my eyes looking at the black shapes
appearing on the screen

needless to say,
awareness like that can contribute to
wanting to leave the restricted world
of the computer,
but awareness like that sharpens me
wakens me
back into life

and so all Carlos' adventures
real
or not,
was I following my breathing while
reading them

was I real
as i thrilled to his learning to be more real

sometimes

it's a great day
to live in reality

have a great time

here's the book again.

I have so far made 10cents from people buying Amazon books
off the blogs,
so it's obviously a flourishing source of income

Awareness Through Movement

PS my book for sale to the right,
if you click to the demo chapters you'll see choices
of four prices
the bottom price is just for another week

great day
play in the fields of awareness
do things wrong
see who you are
if you forget who you are

be your own sorcerer

good

What are Brains for?

2011-09-03T12:10:00.000-07:00

You know that seems like a silly question,

or an obvious one?

And in our day and age,
an insulting phrase is floating around:
"it's a no-brainer"

As if a human could stand,
let alone breathe,
let alone make an easy/ what the talker or writer thinks is obvious
decision.

And brains can get us in trouble:
they are very good at comparing;

So and so has a bigger car?
You should have been nicer to me (comparing reality to our picture
of how reality "should" be,
is ,
alas,
one of the great ways to suffer in this world)

It's hotter outside than inside,
or vice versa.

Brain's notice.

They also are kind of lazy, sometimes.
If you know how to open a door,
we "just do it,"
we don't really feel our fingers on the door,
or "play around with/ experiment with" several ways
to open the door.

When is the last time we used the other hand
to open a door?

When is the last time we slowed the rate of turning
as we opened the door?

When is the last time we noticed how our feet were placed
or how our breathing felt
when we opened the door?

And this is just one of the many things
that we could,
for all we know,
improve,
or at least become more awake and aware and playful
about.

What others?
Saying hello.
Looking around on the computer.
Rummaging around in the kitchen.
Walking to our car.
Getting in our car.
Driving our car.
Getting out of our car.

Me, not having a car,
like to point out how auto-matic
people tend to get around their auto mobiles,
but put a mobile phone in my hand,
and I go automatic, too.

Except when we don't.

Brains love to learn.

They love to notice differences,
and learning could be said to be
the noticing of differences that make a difference.

So brains love to learn.

In good Feldenkrais and Anat Baniel Method lessons,
our brains are given, via movement, opportunities to
tune into options and possibilities that were there
before the lesson.

We learn that we are less restricted than we thought.
We learn how big and amazing our possibilities are.
We learn how to move easier and more gracefully
and farther from the clutches of pain.
More pleasure.

This is all learning that takes place in the brain,
by new pathways and options being opened.

Brains love to learn.
Brains love to stay to same.

This clues us into the challenge and opportunity of living an
amazing life.

How are we going to use our brains?

For a change.

Good,
Chris

What to do about Heat, Death and Taxes and People who are mean to you

2011-08-28T15:46:00.001-07:00

What to do about heat?
It's now some interestingly impossible heat in Austin,
I'll go ask the iPhone,
the modern device to amuse use and destroy all our telepathic abitilities:
109
while LA a mere 85 and Sonoma, for some reason, the place I left
as getting too warm with global warming: 77

La, la
What to do about the heat?

Be happy.

Next:
death.
What to do about death?

You guessed it,
be happy.

Why?

Why not?
You aren't going to die until you die,
and then,
if you can walk down the street in 109 heat, or 77 or 85 and be happy,
how hard can it be
to just stop?

I mean each night
we
just stop/

and in a good meditation
we
just stop

and any argument we've ever had
and been tortured in
and then shifted the
whole
shape of our ugly
world
we
just stopped

so,
here's the game:

we can sit in chair A,
and think: shouldn't be so hot,
death isn't so great/ is bad/ is scary

then we can shift over to chair B
and
just stop
our thinking

and see what's left.

sometime's it's happiness

there are lots and lots more thinks to do,
to leave behind unhappy Chair A

that could be our assignment for the next hour:
find a couple of mental/ emotional places
that aren't so great
and

get in chair A and feel how ungood/ bad / yukky they feel

and then figure chair B, the just stop thinking chair,
and go there

and then
figure chair C
and do something else there

and chair D
and do something else there

and chair E
and... you know what.

Taxes, people who are mean to you?
if those bother you, try the game.

if not, have some trying anything that bothers you

good
Chris

Love poems to and from God

2011-08-19T15:38:00.000-07:00

Hafiz first
a poem challenging those
with their small tiny gods/
tiny small hearts
who want to shove away sex from the
sacred
as if the sacrum isn't rotti toot toot to both:

Some god say, the tiny ones,
" I am not here in your vibrant
moist lips
that need to beach themselves on the shore
of a
naked body."

Some gods say," I am not the scared yearning of the unrequited soul,
I am not the blushing
cheek
of every star and planet--

I am not the applauding Creator of those
precious secretions
that can distill
the whole mind
into a perfect wincing jewel
--- if only for a moment

nor do I reside in every sweet warm dung
born of the Earth's gratuity."

Some gods say, the ones we need to hang,
"Your mouth was not designed to know His,
love was not conceived
to consume the luminous realms."

Dear ones beware
of the tiny gods frightened men
worship

to bring an anesthetic control
to their sad
days.

*****

Mira:

In my travels I spent some time with a great yogi.
Once he said to me,

"Become so
still
you hear the
blood
flowing through your
veins."

One night as I sat in quite,
I seemed on the verge of
entering
a world inside so
vast
I know it is the source of
all
of us.

****

Again, this book has 12 mystics,
including people you haven't heard as mystics before:
St Thomas Aquinas, St John of the Cross

Love Poems from God

Lovers, all

2011-08-14T16:05:00.001-07:00

if we forgot what we were
doing
and just
"just"
remembered the glory
of
I AM

would that be enough?

I don't know.

But I suspect that it
Would

Let's try for a while
and see what
happens....
shhhh
no words in the head

ah, peace, empty
can't even say it
can we

and...

pretty nice

Chris

And from Kabir:

I sat one day with a priest who expounded
on the doctrine of hell

I listened to him
for hours
and then he asked me,
what I thought of what he'd said.

I replied:

"This doctrine seems an inhuman cage.
No wonder all the
smart dogs
Run Away."

And from Mira:

I tried controlling myself
but it did
no good.
My senses are aflame.

I heard You singing.
that started all this blessed madness.

I openly made love with everything in sight
last night
and this morning.

The constable showed up and wrote over twenty citations.

I guess I shouldn't have jumped
naked
on him
in front of his wife.

the hypocrite,
he wouldn't have complained at all

if we were
alone.

St Catherine of Siena:

If you cried in Heaven,
everyone would laugh

for they would know,
you were just kidding.

Poems are pointers
where do they point
for
you
today

and what if you read
them again
tomorrow

would the arrows
have sprouted branches
and the branches
leaves

and the leaves
shimmer
light every which way?

Who knows
but you
and your experience
of this
existence

just
now

me, gain, again, gain nothing
and it
s
all here
for
you
and
me
and the
big blue
see

the non me ones,
slightly shifted around,
from
Love Poems from God

BEyond Suffering, life is freedom, and we can choice many many option

2011-08-13T16:52:00.001-07:00

Let's just do this all up quite grand:

Pain is stuck
is lack of differentiation
is same old same old in an unsatisfying way

The way out:
freedom

Can be the shake the chains,
go beserk (from Norse warriors, foamed at mouth, destroyed all in sight,
and lots they couldn't see through the foam),
trash about,
do the opposite of our conditioning

and we're still slaves:
two ways of doing something is still slavery:
the way and the reaction to the way

So, here's what I realized:

Any feeling bad can begun to be broken
open into mindfulness
by coming home to ourselves and looking/ noticing/ awaring:

The thinking part of the feeling bad
(I'm no good, he's so awful, this is not fair, etc)

The Feeling part of the feeling bad
(sad, afraid, angry, annoyed,
etc)

The sensing part:
sensations in our body,
almost always restricted in feeling bad

and the
"soul"
part,
which is some lie about how small and little and separate
and unvaluable we are

Okay.
That's just the start.

Then in each of those four areas:
how about at least four options;

Thinking:
Take the thought and see the difference if we perceive it as
an opinion or the truth

Take the thought and hear the voice to it, and make options
with that voice

Many, many more

Feeling:
Going MORE into the feeling

From that going less

The feeling plus constricted posture and breathing
the feeling plus upright posture and breathing

The feeling plus gratitude

many more

Sensing:
Where is it in us: make it more intense

Find the edges'

Sensing that part, plus the arms and legs

Sensing that part, plus looking outside of us and hearing outside of us

Movement and that sensation

Many, more

Soul:

This feeling as if we have forever to live,
this feeling as if Life is this moment now

This feeling as a story people laid on us:
who is the real us underneath

This feeling watched from emptiness

Much more

Okay,
I consult by phone.
Expensive,
and you can go and go and go
with this.

I hope you do.

Chris

Who is we

2011-08-05T20:35:00.000-07:00

who is we?

You know the you in You
how sternly judges and looks down
on
You and him and her
growling out a string of whatever
with the undercurrent:
You are yuk

That one's not You

And the other side
Gestalt called it the underdog
we can call it the Victim
it looks out from it's sad little hole,
and thinks how mean, rough tough ufair
awful everyone
everything is
especially the long long long ago parent/ ex-spouse/ trauma
such pain, the scabs peeled back daily
as proof

that one's not you either

so what's left?

Go quiet
beneath the voices
any voice
listen to the birds and the wind
sense the spine and your fingers and toes and skin
look up into the blue, blue sky
don't talk even about how beautiful it all is

just experience:
that's you

Ze Joy of eet All, yes, yez

2011-07-22T04:48:00.000-07:00

this moment

fades
it is already gone

we don't know what the
next
will be
and
to surf that moment

is a thrill

an always available thrill

the ultimate cure for
boredom

and the only way to love

because if we love
we have to be seeing,
hearing,
touching,
smelling,
"getting"
the person in front of us,
right now,
otherwise we are interacting with
our story of them,
our mental construct

that's not love
that's the head
make a match
maybe even a "this is love"
match

but without the present,
smelling that rose,
you don't love
the rose,
just the idea of the rose

we are alive
this instant

that's an idea
until you experience the sweet amazing
wonder
of YOU
ALIVE

right now.

That's the new title page to me website:
SAVE THE WORLD:
WAKE THE F.... UP TO NOW!

The world is to the living

Without the Now
we are mindless creatures,
maybe in high grade automatic,
but still
mindless or mindful

and what's more fun?

wake up to this moment
and you won't even need to tell
me
or
yourself
or
anyone

the reward is there,
here
now

eternally
here
now

and...
hey, if we want a better life:

happier
more free in body,
thinking better,
contented soul

where to start?

where else can any action
come from
but
ze goot ole NOw

The Joy of Living Dangerously

PS to Sis: Address stuff fixded, I hope,
check to right

The Joy of Divorce

2011-07-15T16:41:00.000-07:00

I am deepening and broadening my work.

I will be including the Anat Baniel method of working in
groups and privately with people to upgrade their nervous systmes
to undo pain,
transcend limitations,
become more young, free and intelligent in their bodies

AND

the work of Byron Katie
to transform
pain, hurt, anger, resentment and confusion
into
peace, freedom, joy, love and happiness

AND

the "not really work"
more the life path
of Being Present

to help us all recall the everypresent
present
as a way out of suffering
and
into pleasure, creativity, potency, and lifelong vitality

AND

some work/ play/ discovery I've taken
from Gestalt Therapy
and refined to make a marvellous path
to taking the juice away
from both our Inner Critic
and our Inner Victim
and bringing it back
to the calm, happy, smart and loving Real Self
who is us
without the baggage

AND

Conscious Communication
patterned on Speaking Circles,
with the goal and pleasure
of real talking
real listening
being present in both ends of the conversation
and the delight of all that

So, I'll say more on this here tomorrow,
but I wanted to get started

If you are a sister of mine,
or someone who might want to write an old fashioned letter
to me:
my new address is to the right.

Good.

One of life's great joys: the overcoming of dificulties

2011-07-09T04:44:00.000-07:00

"The overcoming of difficulties
is one of the essential parts
of the pleasure of living"
is a part of the second to last sentence in The Potent Self.

This is a book worth reading,
either front to back
of bit by bit.

There are tremendous sections on the problems
of how most of us were raised, most specifically
the "oh, that's so good" praise/ conditioning when e
were "good". This seems so kind, and yet, the message is
always there:
Stop the rewarded/ approved behavior and you are
not so good
which can quickly and easily be felt and expereienced
as
you are bad.

Tremendous sections of how the central feature
of humans is that they learn,
here with the upside of becoming Pablo Cassals or Michael Jordan,
and the downside of become the same sort of neurotic that
Mom or Dad was.

And then, this is Moshe Feldenkrais, right?
Huge amounts of the book talk about real posture,
which he calls acture,
and the use of the back and spine to further
mobility and ease

and potency.

Sex is important to life
and to Moshe.

Good sex is one of the essentials of a good life.
He shows how his work compliments
and even transcends traditional talk therapy
for dealing with potency issues,
and gives examples of people who
under his guidance where able to go from
impotence to potency.

And then, of course potency
is potency is
potency.,

And one of the great and glorious things to do with potency:
dive into the pleasure of overcoming difficulties.

Good.

the purpose of "bad days"

2011-07-01T18:36:00.000-07:00

suffering is either an addictive junk food,
or a very precise kick in the rear:

wake up, suffering says,
you are fighting Reality

looking around at What Is
look inside at your demand/ complaint/ whine/ judgment

see the difference

feel the suffering?

try this:
stand over here
stand in your belief
really, really believe reality should be, or should have been different
write down a big fat list of how
that makes you feel
in emotions
in body
in actions
in breathing
in being present

now,
move
stand over here,
a new place
and see what it's like
without the story
about how reality should be different
no story it should be what it
is
no story it shouldn't be what it is

just observe, taste, experience
reality

how is that

and if suffering gets you to compare the two
stand in the two places

it did a good job
for you
didn't it?

have a happy fourth
i'll be travelling all that day,
ferry from Orcas to Annacortes
shuttle from Annacortes to Seattle
plane from Seattle to Austin

this is good

What is a Life for?

2011-06-23T21:50:00.001-07:00

What are you doing right now?

That is what a life is for.

And if it isn't "good enough"
what do you want all the little nows
to add up to?

And how wonderful do you want this little
now
to be,
even on a computer,
which we go to...

to communicate?
listen?
learn?
avoid?
find?
amuse?
distract?

practice being present?

all sorts of possibilities
are there not.

????

and what is a life for?

well,
you decide,
what would you like your life to be for?

good

Signing off and on the way to Orcas for the week of July 25-July 3

Doog is backwards good

good

Chri

Consolidating at Life Potency/ Enlightenment in Action blog

2011-06-17T17:25:00.000-07:00

Hi Francesca
and anyone else who reads this:

a person who is giving me some wonderful guidance
in achieving my own consolidated Signature System
suggested I consolidate the blogs,

so I'm posting Monday, Wed, and Friday,
in roughly the same three areas:
children and parents
movement and waking up
love and life

all at http://wakeup-feldenkrais.blogspot.com/

and today's post is more into
the Big C
cancer as the wake up call
essay I started here
last week

it might be a week by week thing
for awhile

Cancer is like
a cancer
in our society

if i ever move back to Sonoma,
this is a great name to hang
under

love
to one
and if there's more,
all

Chris

Finding, Feeling, F...ing, Feeding, Forgiving, Waking Up

2011-06-10T06:56:00.000-07:00

To cure cancer,
I'd suggest this is a wonderful chance to find
your
true
self.

This is a long discussion, and a good start
would be to write a list of 108 things you are grateful for,
and to think long and hard about
who you would be if you stopped thinking.

Doing the work of Byron Katie would be indispensible
to forgiving
which always needs to be done if we have any dis-ease.

All illness has an anger component
turned inward.

Also:
sugar and flour and unfermented soy and crap fats
have to go.

Look at the food page of my website.

F...ing
we need to feel vital and sweet inside

if you have a mate,
talk to them in the present
5 minutes they talk and are present
5 minutes you talk and are present
each listens in the present

do this for half an hour
before sex

have sex every day
no matter how "tired"
so do the talking every day

be present

if you feel stuff,
feel
it

find the sensations
without the words

again,
do the work of Byron Katie to get there

this is short

it will either save
or life
or make every day you
have so much better
you'll thank your dis ease
for waking you
up

this moment
is the
best
to start
a lifetime
of
being
present

good.

Feeling good even though part of you feels bad

2011-06-03T16:35:00.000-07:00

Paintings by yours truly

Fun to be "not yet good" at something
lots of learning for now, and tomorrow and so on

You could be "broken hearted," but what if you paid
attention to your feet feeling good,
and made a list of 100 things for which you were grateful

You could have 'too much' in your belly
and realize:
hey, a chance to slow down, and
take a walk
and sense my brething
and see what happens to me moving
in ways that remind me of places besides the belly
in me
that are enjoyable

and right now,
sweet reader,
what is enjoyable in you?

as a sensation?

As a feeling?

What gratitudes are lurking,
and can you jot down ten?

The warm sweet outside air
the miracle of this computer stuff
tea that I made for myself
the tai chi I'm inventing
Love returning
the summer coming on
my amazing spine holding up my amazing head
the skills I have in the world of Neurological Upgrading
the difference I can make in people's lives
the invention of moving toward of a Process of transformation
moving with ease
feeling happy almost at will

eating too much
so I'll have something to write about

what's your awareness list
or
your gratitude list
and
have you been outdoors in
the last several hours.

I haven't and intend to once this is done
and three
(and no more than three)
emails are rewritten

I'm grateful that I have this skill
and often remember it,
being intuitively aware
when "enough is enough"

and knowing when "enough is enough"
on the computer
is a grand, sweet skill

necessary I do believe
to the survival of the species

if we forget to walk
and forget to love nature

we are doomed

my opinion,
and I'm happy now
the species can be doomed
or not

to be present is to be happy

.............

enough is enough here..

Do consider buying my book and having a transformation
game a day for 108 days.

link here: Contents of 108 Game/ lesson/ adventure/ meditation Book

four prices $13, 27, 54, 108

Eating from Wakefulness, the new chapter 12 in the book

2011-05-27T07:07:00.000-07:00

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.

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.

Here's the struggling and wanting to transform option:

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

The tired thing, and an obvious solution

2011-05-20T16:34:00.000-07:00

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

2011-05-13T11:34:00.000-07:00

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"

2011-05-06T13:36:00.000-07:00

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

2011-05-06T06:05:00.000-07:00

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:

What would an intelligent, brain and heart happy "exercise" and/ or weight loss program look like?

2011-04-29T11:12:00.000-07:00

Barefoot rock lifting

for the brain

spine

ribs

pelvis

arms

breathing

awareness

brain

joy of it

Let's say you or anyone wants to:

lose weight and be healthier
or
just plain be healthier, their weight is fine and they know
they aren't really feeling "fit" as a human being
or
improve an ongoing skill in tai chi, yoga, music

How could we/ they/ you/ I
go about this?

Let's take some steps from the Anat Baniel Method
and
the Feldenkrais Method
and
a whole lot of other things that say:
Do something, no matter how small,
to get the ball rolling.

And the Buddhist and other traditions
that hint either subtly or not so subtly:
either we are mindful
or
mindless.

So:

If you keep being and doing the same thing,
nothing will change, so let's start with some small changes:

One:
In moving, I'd like to suggest ten minutes worth of "moving"
with awareness that could make a huge difference in
somebody's life:

One five minute package,
and set the timer, and quit at five minutes,
you can work up to more,
or do another five,
but for three or four days,
quit at the buzz or harp or marimba of the timer:

Go outside if you can
Get barefoot if you can
and do this:
Touch the ground (bend your knees all you want)
in whatever way comes easiest to you
and then
lift one or both hands up toward the sky.
Find a pattern and repeat what you have picked
for five to twelves times:

As you go up and down notice:
the shape of your spine
your breathing
(go very slowly on this, so you can feel/ sense and
savor yourself at every point of the movement)
where is the weight on your feet

which foot has more weight
what's going on in your ribs
are you keeping your neck soft
where are your eyes focused
are your fingers and toes and jaw soft and relaxed
what is the "five line" shape of you, two legs, two arms, one spine
how is your pelvis shifting in this

After a number of times,
stand up and just notice yourself,
and then pick another way of going down,
maybe a little twist
or just touching with one hand
or touching between your legs, or out to the sides
and as you come up
find another variation on what to do with your arms
and then
feel
sense
savor
learn from and enjoy doing this a number of times

Then stand and rest

Now, if you want to get a little strength from this
get something,
a rock
a broom
a gallon jar partly filled with water,

and touch that object to the ground,
and lift it up overhead

Have a pattern that you decide on
and repeat it
slowly
and with great awareness
a number of times

You can lift the object with one hand
lower in with the other

Lift it near your body
or farther away

Make circles in your lifting

many many choices

Pick one at a time
and enjoy really feeling and sensing this in yourself

Do all this for five minutes
and then stop

And what of the other five minutes:
get a bicycle and go ride it somewhere uncrowded

Play around with what is about 50% effort,
what is 30%, what is 80% and so on.

Then start at 20 % and increase up to 80%,
keeping your back easy
your jaw relaxed
your arms relaxed
your breathing through your nose

When you get tired,
slow to any amount of effort you pick
less than 50%,
keep breathing and recovering
and making sure the rest of you that isn't pedalling
is as relaxed as possible.

Then, when you pick, speed up to something above 50%,
you pick the amount,
you pick the duration,
but don't go until you are panting and unable to easily
breathe through your nose.

You pick when to slow back down to
less that 50% effort.

Notice where your attention is.
Can you look out at the world and sense inside yourself
as you do this.
It's only five minutes.
Enjoy.

And if you don't have a bike:
walk out of your house,
this has to be something you can do
as often and easily as possible,
walk out and
walk like this,
alternating less than 50% of what you feel like your
maximum effort could be
alternating that with some figure/ guess you pick
above 50%

This again: with looking
and breathing through your nose
and keeping all the places not involved in walking (neck, nose, jaw, fingers,
even toes except to push off and press into the earth) keeping
all of you as soft and aware and relaxed as you can
while you change up your speed and effort

Again, just for five minutes.

Later, a longer essay on eating,
and you can see the page at my website:
Food, Health, Weight Loss: Discoveries and Suggestions
from halfway decent shape 66 year old

Here's some starter ideas:

A green smoothie each day

Consider a diet without these:
flour products,
pasteurized dairy,
fruit out of season,
sugars like sugar and agave and the fake stuff,
soy that isn't fermented
nuts and seeds that aren't presoaked

Figure out what sort of high grade protein
might be wonderful for you

You can eat lots and lots of what's left:
high grade meat, eggs, vegies, soaked nuts, smoothies,
beans if that's your thing (not mine), butter, especially raw,
fish

Lots

a study went like this:
people of semistarvation diets
of 1000 calories:

90% fat lost .9 pounds a day
90% protein lost .6 pounds a day
90% carbs gained .24 pounds a day

raw fat,
in a raw meal,
will lose you weight
and build your body
and feed
your brain

(see Nourishing traditions, below)

Think about how a meal or two a day of
raw eating could figure in with the above ideas

Don't worry about it.
Make one shift today
and see how fun that could be.

Consider a "cheat day" per week where you go out,
buy and consume out of your house,
the various "left behind" elements.

Alight

Here's some "Eating a cooler and smarter way books:

For non raw this is amazing, and cured me from the vegan trap:
Nourishing Traditions

And for Raw eating,
this chick is 50 and hasn't been sick in 14 years,
eats raw meat, cheese and milk,
and has a lot of fun:
Raw Fifty

And these people
found at RawFamily.com
are sweet, amazing,
and the inventors of the
extremely useful and delicious
and life changing
GREEN SMOOTHIE:
Green Smoothie Revolution

Goodnight Jesus

2011-04-24T20:02:00.000-07:00

Easter came and is almost gone
and I didn't make it to church

but I was around a lot of people
in states of sharing and touch and love

dancing together

what would Jesus think?

Good
Life is good celebrate life

What was Jesus for?

To remind us to wake up
from the sleep of unforgiving
the sleep of resentment
tbe sleep of forgetting to love
our neighbors

Why is that a sleep?

What's not to love about the one
who lives next door?

They do what you want:
easy love.

They do what you don't want:
harder love
and you can love them for developing your love
muscle

and who can we love right
now
who is a bit hard

that's the Easter game
the egg to hunt

who are we holding out on loving
and what is the story
by which we are protecting ourselves
from loving
the "boundary" behind which our castle/ kingdom
can stay at war with theirs

give up the war
give up the kingdom
the kingdom is within

we are all one

hallelueh

ciao
and happy bunny

Chris

This moment of our lives

2011-04-22T16:15:00.000-07:00

Go slow.

You've heard that here before,
you'll probably hear it again,
and for now:
go slow.

It's good Friday.
It's hot.
It's Friday.

People are dying, right now,
people are being born,
this is the moment of this moment of our life.

I just gave a "lesson,"
in the Anat Baniel Method.
I was
"tired"
and hence forced to go slower than usual,
and guess what:
going slow I could notice even more than
I usually do
(which most would say is a lot)
and noticing more,
and using an even lighter touch than usual
and smaller movements,
and letting myself find the laziest easiest way
to come up with the next improved movement,
the lesson went
extremely well.

And what about Good Friday.
There is a death story.
Go slow about what we are supposed to think
about a death story,
even though tradition
and habit
and culture all say:
think and feel X about this,
go slow.

Just breathe.

You are alive.

Slow down enough to savor that.
From that think about the death that comes
before resurrection,
or not.

Mull over Katie's third question:
Who and how are you when you attach to and believe the thought
and
the resurrection question:
who and how are you when you don't have the thought, or don't believe it?

Go slow with even these thoughts.

Take a walk.

Read a book you love.

Take a nap.

Go slow.

This is the moment of your life to be at one
with this
moment of your life.

Good,
April 22, Friday, 2011.

Taxes are taxing, death is relaxing, love is everlasting

2011-04-15T07:16:00.000-07:00

taxes come
taxes go

the time of year
so near my birthday

and we can be taxed
or vexed
or tweeked
or rushed

or just sit down
and do
what we have to do
and follow our breathing
and look out the window at the birds
and take a walk
in now
(see my book, for many a "soul" chapter
in "walking in the now")
and remember:

we are alive
now
no matter what rigmarole life
is seeming to require of us

and then
we die

which,
with a story
can seem sad
scary
unfair
weird
whatever

and without the story:
it could be like going to sleep
at night

the hurry and worry and rush
and demands
all disappear

and the Sufi's
say: die before you die

have that death to the worrier
and the controller of others
and the unhappy one

have the death to stress
and trying to hard
and even
to being bored

die to the "later it will be time
to be happy"
and
just be happy now

on the way
to whatever is next

and when we do the Work of Byron Katie
and judge our neighbors
write it down
ask four questions
and turn it around

that turns into a little death:

the death of :
"so and so should have been better/ different/ more
the way I I I I me me me wanted"
and what's left after that?

freedom
love
release

love can be what's left when we
"die"
to the stories about how x and y and z
should be different

and we can improve
that's what huge amounts of my work is about

but let's love ourselves along the way

and working with the children:
love them exactly as they are
so we can be there with them
as they discover
as we help them discover
what can be next in their skills
and increased
love of life

and how does that incease?
noticing more

noticing more differences

noticing more of the glory of life
to be in love with

helping the children
to love more of themselves
and more
of life

what a nice job

what a nice job for anyone

helping ourselves and others
to love
life
more

good

happy April

Chris

spine, head and eyes in the "now" at our computer

2011-04-08T08:58:00.000-07:00

Recent blog postings at the other two locations:

Monday, Hints for special needs parents with a child that likes/ habituates with a hand in the mouth
at http://specialneedschildren-chriselms.blogspot.com/

Wednesday: the "Swiss Army Knife" movement for all 4 of our backs movements
at http://wakeup-feldenkrais.blogspot.com/

Friday: here, Hi.

I sit at the computer, realizing, as sometimes I don't,
that sitting at a computer
is
sitting
and
looking.

So, reminders to you reminders to me:
is the screen about at head height.
Mine isn't though I have 7 books under my laptop
(I have an external keyboard, otherwise you end
up typing like a dog swims),

The top of the monitor is just above eyelevel
so I get to "so what"
and "it's too much trouble"
this awareness,
or actually get off my rear
(the sitting part of this)
and fetch a few more books, so the computer will be such that
the middle of the screen will be at sitting upright
eye height.

Oh, well,
up I go

And, I'd forgotten the pitfalls of gathering books
especially from a house wherein most of the books
are not "mine," and hence
full of rare jewels that I haven't gotten around yet
to perusing,
so many books, so little time

AND
I found just the right 4 more,
and of course, 4 or 5 "have to look at/ read' books
that didn't get used as props.

Okay,
eye level screen

and now
the sitting part

well, you know, I imagine
that leaning back in the chair is
nice for napping
and even for low grade yapping (when our mouths work
and we forget we have a body)
but for thinking clearly
and writing,
hey; try it and see,
sit forward on the chair,
both feet on the floor

feel your spine easily holding up your head

how to find today's nice placement
for your spine

round down, middle back back, nose
descending to the desk,
chin coming toward your chest, feel your weight shift to the back of your pelvis,

then un slouch by coming forward on your pelvis
and bringing your head to upright

leave the shoulders out of this
your spine with the attached ribs hold
up the shoulders easily and all on its own
but do soften and maybe bring your belly
forward a bit
so you feel your back muscles
holding up your spine
with the head at the top
a pumpkin on
a broom handle

(Need a haircut, but waiting until Monday to trade
with worlds's best slackline female,
Faith Dickey,
see their website: http://somewhereelseland.blogspot.com)

now you are have a good 20 minutes or so
on the computer

and it is legal to shift side to side a bit
and rock to mini slouch
and mini arch
to keep your spine happily in motion,
since we tend to lock into positions
that might not be exactly where is
best and easiest for us
just now
just today

good

Loving Life, Weird or Not Weird, or The Big Sweet Unknown

2011-04-01T06:06:00.000-07:00

Sometimes things are boring
sometimes we are bored
sometime we bore ourselves
by not being present to the ongoing amazing
brightness of now

Oh well

And then
sometimes
people are strange or
make us
"uncomfortable"
or strike us as
"weird"

And that's an interesting place,
eh?

Because sometimes "uncomfortable"
means we are cluing into
something that would be clever
to avoid

but more often it means:
this is my program
and this behavior isn't what my program is used to
and instead of being
curious
and realizing we are out of the
present
we want to "get out of here."

And this all has something to do
with being in Austin
with it's slogan:
"Keep Austin Weird."

Which means:
let the people who don't
"fit in"
be honored citizens
or the sort that
the holy fools
once were

and it's April Fool's day
and
no fooling:
fooling around is good for
us
but since we don't know what we're doing
when
we
fool
around
then, it might edge out into weirdness

and other people can take this as
entertainment
or
food
or
possibility

or they can take it
as
some strangeness to be avoided

and
"strange" too
like all the above
weird
and uncomfortable
can just tell us:
hey,
this isn't in the robot's programming

calm down
make sure you are physically safe
and the other stuff
look at like this:
your rut/ ego/ pattern/ conditioning
is
a bit frightened

oh well
take a deep breath
and think of how much fun
YOU
could have if you were a bit
foolish
silly
strange
weird
unpredictable

today

or
any
day

good

the importance of happiness

2011-03-25T08:35:00.000-07:00

there is the happiness when you eat a fresh peach
off a tree

this is imitated by ice cream

and sweet is sweet and the sweetness of life
is something we want

it's good for us

sweet lives don't go to war

and then
there is the happiness
of being present
when everyone around you is all caught
up in worry or hurry
or concern for outside approval
and you're just sitting there,
watching a bird,
or the clouds,
or taking a walk in the woods or the neighborhood

that's a more sure fire happiness
than the peach,
because peaches only come at a certain time of year

and even though ice cream can be purchased any minute
practically
of any day
happiness that involves driving somewhere and
purchasing something
seems slightly precarious

so, peach
or walk
or ice cream

how about thinking about
and experiencing the feelings that go along
with imagining

thinking about what makes us happy

and then coming back to the present
and just
BEING
and don't even "try" to be happy

just BE
and see what happens from that

and
then
and
then
there is the happiness of puttering in a garden,
seeing some work come along

and the happiness of setting out to do a job
and doing it
the happiness of acting in the world

and often action goes unconscious
but it doesn't have to
and a long string of ideas could make the case
for practicing action in the world
with the kind of movement lessons I speak of in my other
blog,
the Life Potency/ Happiness/ Awakened movement blog

but
you try it is you want:
be present
and move slowly your ribs to the right
and your head to the left
and your eyes to the right
and go a lot slower
and smile
and follow your breathing
and come back to the center
and do the three way turn again,
and just enjoy yourself
and see if this gets you ready
for aware action in the world
today

and just being
curious
that's a kind of happiness, too
isn't it

good

giving to get, and giving to give

2011-03-18T09:56:00.000-07:00

You have too much
zuccini, say, and you give it away
and it feels good to pass it along
and that's that

you're having a good day
you want another person to be happy
and you smile
and sing them a song
or take them a batch of flowers
or invite them for a walk

and that's nice,

you've got extra and you're passing it along

or, you're just alive
and thrilled with that
and you meet another
and they like your garden
and you can't wait to give them a batch of flowers

so,
nature,
zuchini, flowers, hugs, laughs, smiles, walks,
songs
lots of ways to give

and then there's the Gift,
capital G,
and it's "supposed to mean something"
and maybe it does
maybe it doesn't

sometimes gifts come
with no strings
like:
i saw this book and I thought of you,
here

lots of times they come with
worry:
here's some special something because I'm worried
you don't like me enough
and I want to buy your love

or they come expecting
AT LEast
the
BIG THANKS

the "oh, you were so wonderful for getting me that"

or, even better,

the BIG THANKS plus a reassessment:
you aren't so bad,
I let you off the hook,
I'll stop being grumpy and
love you again

in Brother's Karamazov
there's a great talk by an old gal
who wants to be nice to the poor,
but is afraid to,
because she knows how pissed off
she'll be if they don't kiss
her ass
with enough gratitude

we can have a lot of fun
recalling when we've been
like that

good

new blog, special needs children

2011-03-17T18:44:00.000-07:00

new blog, on Monday's replacing the 4 brain fitness one.

it's called specialneedschildren-chriselms.blogspot.com

A movement game: How are you sitting now: website "improvement"

2011-03-11T09:32:00.000-08:00

This is lesson #3 from my book of Moving, Thinking, Feeling, and "Soul" activities.
Link here, if you'd like to see the 108 activities.

It is also on a new page on my website, called Movement Brain. Soon I'll have all the 4 brains on the website. The Website, as you probably know is http://4BrainFitness.com

Here' a game of improving
as usual
by a little of this
and
a little of that
and a
lot of
slowing down
and
AWARING.

GOOD:

How are you sitting or standing or lying down, right now?

What happens if you add on awareness of your eyes, and move them easily in a circle. Then easily right and left. Then easily up and down.

What happens if you are aware of your neck and nose?
What happens if you make a circle with your nose?
What do you feel in your neck?
Which way did you choose?
Try the other way, slower and try different sizes of circles.

Now put both hand on the top of your head, if you can easily do this.
In this position imagine making circles from in front of you and then up and then to the right and then down and then to the left with first
your right elbow,
then your left.

Find the pleasure in this.

Can you do it again and allow and encourage your pelvis to join the party.
Don’t try for “right.”
Try for learning, fun,
“interesting.”

And feel the added power when your pelvis is involved, and the change in your breathing.

Enjoy this, and keep moving slowly and with love of learning.

Rest.

Try the other elbow if you are in the mood.

How are you in sitting now?

Landmark Forums, or Can You Wake up in a Herd?

2011-03-04T10:19:00.000-08:00

This is a beginning impression of the Landmark scene,
or top of many glimpses before I stepped foot into
one of their introductory evenings.

Before I arrived I'd seen people
who used Landmark as a safety,
as a church
as a home for finding safe friends
and a world view that they found "worked"
and that was part of the safe friends thing:
they really really wanted other people to see the world
through the Landmark lens.

And what is the Landmark lens.
Well, you can go online and get the syllabus to the three day training.
And they hand them out when you show up for the intro night.

It's something like this:
we are programmed beings,
and out programming creates our VIEW
and our VIEW determines how we'll perceive and
act in reality.

We have a story that seems to validate the view,
we confuse and conflate the story with What Happened,
and the story is an illusion,
and once we see things the Landmark way,
we can "get on the bicycle" and ride
in the world of possibilities.

All that at the end sounds vague,
and it works,
because in part they are trying to have their cake
and eat it too:
deprogram people
almost with a hypnosis about "and now you
will be deprogrammed once you know it
our way."

It's all words.

Sort of
because they are big on action,
especially making phone calls to apologize for
being lost in "the story" about
some person you've been on the "outs" with.

There are no internal movement lessons
that give a feel for the new in a person.

There is no practice of being present,
though there is gobs of talk about the past and
the future not being real,
they are good on that,

and what about this now,
outside of the leader's words
and our / the audience's words
about the leader's word

is there a way to
be
to be now
okay now,
to be present,
follow your breathing,
or sense your arms and legs and watch light
and notice the sounds as they are happening.

or sense your big toe and your tongue and your thumbs
as you eat and talk

not really

life as a meditation
or an ongoing experience
is not offered

"possibilities"
are
"transformation" not change are

it's cool stuff
in a way
and....

So, you have a leader,
and he's been through "breakthroughs"
which are the currency of the L F,
you give up the "story"
and you get on the phone
and you apologize to people you've had trapped
away from your love with your VIEW

This is all very good,
and could be done with the Byron Katie work,
but she doesn't say
you need to/ should/ have to
do her work,
she doesn't want you to get everyone you
know
in
she leaves that up to you,
the work is to be done any time you are feeling
bad,
and only if you want to know the truth instead of suffering

And then the Feldenkrais/ Anat Baniel work
is a set of movement possibilities
that help us feel younger, more free,
clearer in our thinking,
but they are an approach to lifelong
discovery.

And in Landmark, too,
the world of possibilities is the cool
place

and it is

but,
the way to that,
the pressure to come to more and more trainings,
to get every one else in so they'll all "get it,"
the push to "get on the bicycle"
all mitigate against real inner clarity.

And it feels good, though,
to belong,
to be around people who are changing,
to be around people who have the same world view,
to be around people who have the same "born again"
experience,
not Jesus here, but Landmark.

And there is more
and this is hard to articulate,
but at the end of the introductory evening
the trainer brought up
some new people,
and had them admit an overview
that seemed to dominate their life.

One was: "I'm not good enough"
one was "I can't do it"

These two people were pushed to see
that these statements were illusion
(Which isn't all true:
sometimes all of us aren't good enough,
say, to fly a plane,
or can't do it, like quadratic formulas,
but as a blanket over view, both VIEWS aren't so useful).
And thus they didn't have any power over the people.

When the second person said she was fine when
she didn't believe her story,
the trainer pushed her around emotionally,
told her that wasn't so,
that she could NOT believe or disbelieve something
that was an illusion,

which is bullshit

that's the history of the world
falling apart
with
couples and neighbors and nations
all going to war over the illusion:
you should change
you are wrong
I am right and you should see/ do/ feel/ think it my way

So, he's demanding she get with the program
He's denying an absolute full proof way out of suffering,
which is to stop believing the story,
He's promising her the Landmark pie in the sky
if she signs up for her $485 and learns to "ride the bicycle"

But the worst is,
unlike any person in the present,
who can't demand others shape up,
he isn't present to her,
he's present to the problem of solving her
to get her to demonstrate to the audience how
cool his method is

so he's not listening

oh, well.

that's my view,
and man do I fail at it,
sometimes,
don't we all,

this listening to others less enlightened than I

and that's always a false story of mine,
and to my mind,
was a false story of his

So, that enough.
Except the huge dishonesty of saying at the beginning of the night
that this wasn't a pressure thing,
and then pretty much making it almost impossible
to leave
if you didn't sign up at the end

And yet,
they were so happy

one almost wants to join the cult
to get that "oh, my, now I fit in" rush
and to
"get with a program"
that opens a lot more doors than "ordinary living"

and not to "disappoint" all the smiley faces,
if you'd just join our club
we'd smile even more
and love and hug you
and take you in
in
in

and there are boyfriends, girlfriends
a whole world,
like a megachurch
all is contained

come on in
come on in

all is safe

join the Hitler Youth
the born again
the we love the 49ers
the Tea Party
the communist party
the party party

join us
join us
and we will love cherish accept
take care of you

the Scientologist club,
wow, that's probably the closest

and then again
to just
"just"

be present

and including the ideas of making small changes
and noticing differences
and slowing down
and living in the emptiness of
now
and no story
and waiting and seeing

ah,
life as it is in the moment,
and seeing what happens,
in movement
in thought
in emotions
in spiritual work

that, too, will set us free

but without that warm mob family tribe feeling

and we can always do the work
as in TheWork.com (Byron Katie, again,
and you don't have to do that,
and you CAN do that
all on your own,
and Katie/ me/ others
won't love you more
if you do or don't do it)
on any feelings that it's wrong/ bad/ scary/ hard
to be alone

la,
la

and
I thought this was going to be short

Oh, well

Some preliminary thoughts on attending a Landmark Forum "guest night"

2011-03-03T10:43:00.000-08:00

Well, I went to the Intro Evening

which with diabolically clever packaging,

was the last 3 hours of a weekend training

people were all whoopie do about their

training

and for some good reasons

and their last night assignment:

bring in the newbies

and it clearly had

"worked"

(recall a statement I annoying make now and then,

our three choices as humans:

low grade robots, high grade robots, awake--

worked meant, it appeared to me, radically upgraded robots)

And yet,

and yet,

this work is obvously hugely effective

for those

not having done anything like the work of Byron Katie

or encountered, apparently,

the difference between attachment and non attachment

or story vs not believing the story

or identification with programming vs not identifying

a huge gob of people

had woken up to their pre-judging

and had made phone calls to parents

ex-mates

and so on

apologizing for narrow mindedness

needless to say,

lots of breakthrough

but back to the diabolical

because the "sharing" some of these breakthroughs,

plus the clever pitch that this was an invitation not a demand

and then throwing in some hints about the power of

realizing we are run by our "view" of reality

and the frenzy built

and by the end

the pressure was on:

if you came,

as a guest and didn't sign,

your life was forever lost, you'd blown it,

you really were making a mistake

huge pressure

after the promise of no pressure

I'll talk some in tomorrow's slow sonoma essay

on the difference between trying to push (hard)

someone to give up their story (done in the example time

at the end by Mr Trainer, an ex-Marine with all the

suitable breakthrouggs)

and Byron Katie's loving the person with and without their

story

and having no attachment to them "getting it"

even

doing her work

But, if you've come this far,

the thing,

and the way it's set up for a lifetime of associates

and friends who all "get it"

in the way of Landmark speak/ understand/ breakthrough

(dating services, huge crowds, endless keep up with it courses)

reminds me of Moshe in Potent Self

talking of "great men" in history,

studied in books in school

in exact circumstances to stiffle the originality

and thinking for themselves that made the "great men"

(or women, of course)

the wild weird contraction:

wanting to bring freedom

to a herd

and not giving them the internal experiences

that say

a movement lesson

could give

leaves people in a weird bind

almost a double bind

a cult devoted to deprogramming you from the ongoing

cult

I'll have to mull it over

because it's fun seeing how useful and effective their

work is

and how

convoluted the pressure to bring in everyone you know

OR ELSE

is compared to / distinct from the thrust for freedom

and if you are still reading

good,

here's a

story from Denis Leri on Moshe at an EST

thing

and Werner up front ranting about "all you assholes don't

even know how to walk"

and Moshe standing up and walking across the floor

Werner

modified:

"All you assholes except one don't know how to walk."

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

2011-02-27T13:38:00.000-08:00

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

2011-02-26T14:46:00.000-08:00

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

2011-02-19T17:51:00.000-08:00

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?

2011-02-19T12:16:00.000-08:00

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

2011-02-19T09:18:00.000-08:00

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

2011-02-18T19:33:00.000-08:00

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

2011-02-11T17:34:00.000-08:00

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?

2011-02-11T12:13:00.000-08:00

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

2011-02-03T15:42:00.000-08:00

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

1006: One Day Late, Doing the Turn Around 3 times three

2011-01-29T08:21:00.000-08:00

In the work of Byron Katie,
you know the drill:

Judge your neighbor
Write it Down
Ask 4 Questions
Turn it Around

The turn around, I discovered last night,
has been clarified, and not left to chance.

Do it three ways:

To yourself
To the other
The complete turn around

So last night, a man tortured by his son's "disrespect,"
did the turn around three times three.

First he search for
and found
Ways that he did not respect himself

He gave three examples of that

Then he found how he didn't respect his son

And found three examples of that

And then he did the total turn around
of "My son doesn't respect me"

to "My son does respect me"
and found amazingly poignant examples,
considering how much anger and disappointment he
started doing the work with.

And the turn around didn't
come until the four questions:

True
Absolutely true
How does that do me in my life, how do I react
Who am I without the thought

Good,
try it if you'd like freedom
and
joy

1005: Love as ACTION not feeling ( And feeling good is good)

2011-01-21T07:36:00.000-08:00

Penina's painting, copy for sale, come to our i love you i love you thank you pre-valentine's day sale, Jan 29-30, in Austin. Email me for directions and a pdf flyer. first 32 sections (0f 108) from Tao of Now also for sale, and mini "lessons" in the Anat Baniel Method

Here's the pdf.

Double click (? left click, right) on the pic
and in my computer anyway it

expands out all big and beautiful.

Who knows what it will do for you.

And maybe next Friday's essay will be on Loving What is,

since Byron Katie is going to be in town (Austin, town)

THE ESSAY FOR THE FRIDAY THE NAME OF TODAY

AND WHAT IS "TODAY"

ANYWAY?

ONE MORE CHANCE TO LOVE

AND LEARN ABOUT LOVING

AND LOVE

ABOUT LEARNING

AND LEARN

ABOUT LEARNING:

We want love, sure, all of us do

and
when we are lucky
we feel love as who we are
and
ACT in ways that
Take care of,
Nourish,
Adore,
Enhance,
Give attention,
Pleasure,
Awaken,
Calm,
Happify,
Relax,
Release,
Stimulate,Delight
Light up
Lighten
Brighten

Another person.

This is our job in life,
maybe,
what with concepts like
"life purpose,"
"life mission,"
"what I was meant to do,"
and so on,
all fraught with peril if they come into the good old
awful
"should" machine.

And, who knows what the purpose of a living being is.

the famous quote, true/ untrue from Bach
when asked why 22 kids and a zillion works of music:

"For my own amusement
and
the Glory of God."

That doesn't include all the above definitions of love
as an
action
except
one,
a very nice one:

amusing himself: love

glorifying God: love

So to the list of the actions results of loving
another
we can add:

Amusing
Glorifying

and we can re invent the directionality of the list and say:

these are all the results of and'/ or intentions in
one;
loving others
two:
loving ourselves

and underneath it all:
maybe something like this

loving being a live
even the time we waste looking at a computer forgetting that we are
breathing
and have a spine
and a smile
and sexual organs
and ten toes
and ten fingers

but we could be
shoulders
ribs
pelvis
hip joints
thighs
be remembering that
and would
that not be something like the
famous
LOVE

giving ourselves that sort of attention?

methinks so.
how about you?

1004: The Importance of Living

2011-01-14T11:37:00.000-08:00

We are all alive,
though the amount of time we spend following our breathing,
or noticing our spine holding up our head in space,
or feeling our feet on the floor,
while doing the "computer thing"
is pretty small.

Oh, well,
stand up for a minute and play with your spine in four ways:
one: fold forward,
two: arch up
three: rotate your shoulders left and right
four: side bend a little bit so your right hand goes down toward the floor, and then your left hand does, at your side.

Do these all "less than your limit"
Do them for the joy of "being alive."

Really, now, get up
(me, too),
let's move and wake to nowing.

Did that shift anything for you?

It did for me.

And now:
do all the spine openers as above,
with this addition: have your hands behind your head.

So when you side bend your elbow go side to side

So when you arch and round your head and back are more connected and
aware
of each other

So that when you twist you can feel this more all up and down your spine.

Okay,
inertia is hard and you are busy blah, blah,
and get the fu.... up and have more awaking
time

this is your life

your spine is "central" to who you are?

dance, sex, walk, sit, even sleep: spine is there, there, there,
so up we all go and more
awakening:

hey, that felt great

okay one more upgrade,
and if you know me, you know I could have about ten more levels,
but just
get up
(gads)
one more time,
and as you do the round, fold and twist,
let your eyes
easily,
slowly,
gently,
with awareness and love
go the opposite way of your head

like this:
folding down, head lowering, belly in, lower back back
and eyes going up

arching up, belly out, butt back toward the back of your head, head tilting up,
and eyes going down

twisting left from head, spine, pelvis,
eyes going to the right

twisting right from pelvis, ribs, head,
and your eyes going to the left

and tilting?
you play with some eye game

okay, up, up,
the computer will be a whole new world after this one:
treat yourself

come on,
do it
up
and move
and awake
and aware

ah, that's sweet and like many a "vacation"
being relaxed makes it "harder" to plow ahead
in the usual tense ways

oh, well:
that's it for today folks,
the importance of living
is
you
now

and moving with awareness is the treat
you can
always make
a mini
re
treat to

good

enjoy your day
and get up
and move now
and then

ciao
for
NOW

Chris

1003: tenth exercise from the revised and "for sale" 108 ways

2011-01-07T08:11:00.000-08:00

This is from the exercise/ activity/ meditation/ game number 10 of the original 108 way book. 108 "ways" to be happy, to be more aware, to be almost enlightened, to be more free, to move, think, feel, connect to who you really are in new and delightful ways.

108 "Ways" of waking up to the glory of you and life and now.

I'm rewriting that book. The book rotates through
   Movement awareness,
   emotional learning,
   thinking improvement and
   soul connection.

The exercises are powerful, highly varied, and can change your life.

I'm going to be selling the first 32 "ways" as a pdf for $12. If people complete those and write email me of their "learning," I'll sell the next 32 "ways" for $8. And if they do and finish and write me about these, I'll sell the final 42 ways for $13.

Email if you wish by clicking here

So here's the tenth, without "easy" paragraph breaks. If you want easy reading, be so good to yourself as to email me for the first 8 activities in pdf form. Free as said above.

Here goes for number ten:

Ten: Emotional Learning

Learning: differences, similarities. We aren’t alone, 2.

Think of a person for whom you have both “positive” and “negative” feelings.

Write down three traits of this person that evoke each attitude.

Look from one list to the other. “Good traits” to “bad traits” to “good traits” and so on. Notice inside yourself the “feelings” that the positive list evokes and the feelings the negative list brings up. INSIDE YOURSELF.

This is huge. They are what they are, but where you put your attention creates what goes on INSIDE of you.

Don’t TRY not to be negative. When you look at the “negative” list, feel what you feel. And as you go back and forth allow real emotion learning to take place as you notice differences, notice differences notice differences. This is learning.

Now, take all six traits and find them in yourself.

Try to do this as if you were an outside observer, some sort of anthropologist taking notes on some exotic tribe. You and the person are both from this exotic tribe. The anthropologist has no stake or judgment about any of these six traits. They are just interested, and very empathetic with both of you for being this way.

The anthologist knows humans are hugely similar.

See and feel the ways you and this person you have picked have a lot of similarity, or have "fallen" into the same habits, or have the same patterns.

Doesn’t matter how you say it, just “be with this” and realize once more, how you are not alone.