119: Practicing thinking, practicing options

what fun it is:

Notice your head in space.

Notice what can notice that.

Turn your nose to the right and your eyes to the right.

Now turn your nose to the right and leave your eyes looking ahead.

Now turn your nose to the right and turn your eyes to the left.

Alternate among these three a number of times, sensing and noticing the difference.

Then rest, and think about noticing differences and how that is crucial to learning, or maybe is learning.


Now take an emotional bothering thing, and play with thinking about it, in alternation, almost as the nose head eyes thing (I.e. don’t take too long on each one): the problem is big and bad and awful. And, the problem is Oh, Well. And the problem is interesting. And the problem is some sort of gift in disguise.


Now rest, and take the inner tone of your thinking words, and come up with three or four difference voice tones for them, and again, in fairly move it along style, practice rotating the reality. Keep playing all day.

99: Having a Good time with variation from NOw

buffalo meat won't you come out to eat, complete with egg yolk


Changing in the present

The past can’t change.

The present can.

Often we do things exactly the way we’ve always done them.

We had a day, a ways back as part of the 108 days, of trying “something new under the sun.”

Today, pay attention to whether or not you are in the present.

When you get there, pause and breathe and just enjoy “being.”

And from that being, think of options.

Options about WHAT you could do next.

And options about HOW you could do next whatever you are going to do.

So, you finish your breakfast, and pause. You could brush your teeth, read the paper a little, take a walk, make a short phone call.

The walk could be fast, a new route, the usual route, slow, on the insides of your feet, skipping, pigeon toed, bow legged, singing, following your breathing, counting your breathes, counting your steps.

Don’t worry about what you decide.

Just play with the possibilities and stay present to how that is all going.

All day.

Good.

Day Thirty-four: studying happy and unhappy

DAY THIRTY-FOUR:: LESS IS MORE
Studying Happiness

Sometimes we are happy.

Sometimes we aren’t.

What if happiness were more or less our birthright, and when we are unhappy, we have a grand and glorious chance to learn just how we take away ourselves from our birthright?

To learn: How do we throw away our happiness?


So today, make a study: when are you happy?

And: When are you unhappy?


Notice three things: What kind of thoughts you are having when happy and unhappy?

And: What is going on in your body in times of happiness and times of unhappiness?

And: Are you present when you are happy and are you present when you are unhappy?


Actually, notice four things: When you discover yourself unhappy, do you get more unhappy about this, or do you get curious?


So have fun, and don’t be too serious, but be more than a bit honest: when are we happy, when are we unhappy? What are happy thoughts, what are unhappy making thoughts? How is our body when we are happy?

How is it when we are unhappy?


And, hey, here’s a good place to discover: if we are “unhappy,” and don’t want to struggle for happiness, and don’t want to nag and demand ofourselves that we shift in an instant, what place can we exist which is neither happy, nor unhappy? Where can we find a neutral place from which to make a new stance in our day, or in our life?

Happy awaring.