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

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

Some preliminary thoughts on attending a Landmark Forum "guest night"

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"

or 

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

so

Werner

modified:

"All you assholes except one don't know how to walk."

To be fully alive, Day Twenty Eight

We can torture ourselves to live up to some standard of “being good.” We can look inside and love ourselves and look outside and at least enjoy the people around us, and from a sense of being “Fully Alive,” we can treat them in ways that make us and them happy.

the porpoise of Life
Chris Elms, March 31, 2010


The porpoise of
Life is to
Live

Not to be good
Though if you are really stressed
or have an IQ lower than
Body Temperature
Being Good
Will keep you out of
Trouble

But to be
Fully
Alive
go ahead
and make
Mistakes

Just be present enough
To
Look at everyone around you
And
Be happier
When they are happy
And do something in your actions
That creates
Fully aliveness in
You
And
Happiness
in
All

So this is the game today: be present. Present and happy. Sense your arms and legs and spine, without “trying to” be “good,” but just because it’s interesting and feels good. Smile when you breathe out. Look out at other people and make the game of the day to create mutually enjoyable situations.

This is best done, you’ll probably find, be being present and happy and acting from then.

But find out for yourself and enjoy.

65: Feeling Alive

Feeling alive

Coffee and cookies can get you feeling “good” for awhile, as can a drink or two, or your very special football/ baseball/ basketball team “winning” their game.

You can smile at a child who smiles back.

You can make a green smoothie of Kale and banana, or parsley and pear.

You can take a long quiet walk in Nature.

You can jump on a trampoline or take a brisk walk or run and bike at a bit of a pace.

You can smile and breathe easily, smiling each time you breathe out and feeling and sensing yourself as you breathe in.

Or you can smile and breathe easily each time you breathe in, and sense and feel your five lines as you breathe out.

You can sit in a chair and do as nothing as you can, and let your breathing and your thoughts entertain you, and when your thoughts start to run you, back off from them and just watch, and let them float on by.

You can write down all the thoughts that bother you and do the work of Byron Katie, or you can crumble them up and burn them, or you can look at the words of the thoughts and sense yourself as a living being right now, and realize how much more real you are right now as a living being than those words on that paper.

You can take a walk and recite to yourself five or ten or fifty things you like about being alive.

You can do all sorts of things to enjoy this Being Alive, Feeling Alive thing.

Try some of the above, or make up your own and have an ordinary day that is a wonderful day.

How simple and repeatable and low impact and worry hurry money free can your happiness today be? How simple? How discovered rather than planned? How ongoing without efforting, as you go about your “usual” day?

in a new place, it is tempting

La Peña cafe and meeting space

in a new place it is tempting
to cut back on
the efforts/ intentions/ joys
of consciously staying awake

this is partly because the
new place slightly
or largely wakes us up with its
new sights and sounds and patterns

and our disruption
of our routines
nudges us closer to awake

and yet
awake
is really awake

too fun
to skip

even in a new
place

which is???
Now it's Berkeley


Mrs. Dalloway's Bookstore

a sweet and amazing city, even if i've
only gotten to wander in a small edge of it

all on foot

good

to be awake is to love

To be awake is to love

And: is that true?

Try it and find out.

here's a few hints:
without the "story"
about "so and so" should be different
it's very easy to love them

like this: gaze upon yonder redwood tree
or blue sky or
flittering bird:
we don't want them to be different
we delight in them
just as they are

something very close to love
happens when we have
no "words in the head"
no "story"

then we can be awake

and from that,
love seems easily to pop out

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ALMOST ENLIGHTENMENT
a 108 activitiy 108 pages ebook
for sale in an unusual way see
almostenlightenment.blogspot.com

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