Feeling good even though part of you feels bad

 

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

Taxes are taxing, death is relaxing, love is everlasting

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

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

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

118: Happiness, a sexy possibility

Happiness is not a sin

Somewhere along the line, many of us got in trouble when we were young and enjoying life more than the worn out and weary adults around us and they scolded and yelled or frowned or looked wounded or some darned thing to convey guilt to us about our joy.

And we might have elements of that training still left.

And then again, in various churches and weird interpretations of the Bible, almost anything enjoyable can come up “bad,” be it dancing, card playing, being lazy (surely not the only way to live, laziness, but without at least a bit every day it’s almost as if life is worth living), and especially the big bad “fornication,” which, delightfully, is an F word.

Leaving aside all the complications that sex can create in people’s lives by being confused with approval, or being used for manipulation, or driving people crazy because of dependency, how can we go about today as if we were as happy as if we were having wonderful sex?

This can be if we are with someone on not, are having good sex, or bad, or none.

Just allowing and cultivating that orgasmic and post orgasmic feeling of satisfaction and peace and fullness.

Let’s explore a day as if happiness were the opposite of sin, as if it were the underlying current of who we really are.

Day Thirty-Two: Going for Real Emotional Peace and Freedom

We have had various experiences, and usually have ourselves locked into a narrow box, our interpretation of that experience. What if we began to uses our imaginations to stretch our heart and feeling and understanding of these events? Could that lead to an amazing inner peace?

Take some event in your life that was a “little bit” on the “bad” side. Not a major trouble area, but something that you have in the category of Not So Great. Or maybe Sort of Awful.

For that event write a very, very short 3 to 5 sentence rundown of what happened in this Not So Great event.

Then look at your sentences and feel what you usually feel. Write down your overall impression of that event.

Now, look at these sentences and give yourself another way of perceiving this than what you have sentenced yourself to all along.

Look at this event as interesting. Look at it as tragic. Look at it as amusing. Look at it as wonderful. Look at it as awful. Look at it is funny. Look at it as a big mistake. Look at it as a Gift. Look at it as a setback. Look at it as a great stimulus.

Obviously, different viewpoints will be a hard fit, and so what, this is to stretch us. Change means change means change.

If we always perceive things as we always perceived this, we are stuck. High functioning robot. Low functioning robot. Somewhere in between. But not free. Not awake. Not fully alive.

Anyway, look at the “sort of bad” event in many ways, and then come back to your body and your breathing and sensing yourself, and try to, play with this: look at the event just as What Is. Or What Was. Just as an event, without any up down or sideways take on it. Just pure experience.

And then take a little rest. Walk. Breathe. Smile. Drink some water.

Okay, now take an event that was “Sort of Good.” And run it through all the possibilities.

Then look at this event without any interpretation.

Rest between sections. Maybe walk. Maybe re-do one of the awareness and movement games we’ve done so far in this book.

Next: take a “Medium Bad” episode and run it through the options. Be sure to include, this was a Curse. And this was a Blessing. Then look at this event without any interpretation.


Rest, walk, move, draw, garden.

Back: Take a “Medium Good” time, and see it as Grand, as Awful, as Liberating, as Stifling, and as all the above possibilities and more you can think of. Then look at this event without any interpretation.

Rest. And if you are ready, take a “Really Bad” event, and let it go through your mind as Awful, and a Curse, and Wonderful and a Blessing. As the Worst thing that ever happened to you. And as the Best thing that ever happened to you. As tragedy. As comedy. As crippling. As liberating. As punishment. As gift.

Then look at this event without any interpretation. Make breathing and knowing your are breathing and sensing and being present the highest priority, from which you can scan back as see this event as just pure “happening.”


And now, after another rest, go about your day looking at everything as either something you can interpret one two three or more ways, and as something you can just experience without interpretation.

Judge not that ye not be judged. Somehow this fits in here. See if you can grasp this in a deep and nonverbal way.

Good.

Day Twenty-Three: How to be free, one: Be angry but do not sin

If we are “normal” and have the usual rough and tumble in our lives, situations will come up that “tick us off.” This is Life on Earth. And in the Bible, this suggestion is offered, an amazing distinction: BE ANGRY BUT DO NOT SIN. How to go about this.

Well, shucks, first step is obviously to get clear on what anger is and what sin is. The following views are mine and not approved or disapproved by any person or agency.

To be angry means to rise up in that hot blooded state where our muscles and emotions (e-motion, the pointing of our motion a certain way) are mobilized for some big deal effort of the sort where we rip to shreds, kill, wound, or otherwise push away some thing or persons that are either actually threatening us, or are perceived as a threat to us.

Needless to say, a lot of conditioning can make us perceive very weird things as a threat ( a black person moving into our neighborhood/ dating our daughter; someone making fun of our favorite book/ movie/ car/ laundry soup; you name it).

But anyway, anger rises, and we want to bash, physically or verbally, or both.

And there might be real situations where this makes total sense: we see someone abusing a child, say.


Okay, anger brings out the slasher and basher in us.

What to do with that?


Here’s my latest interpretation: either act, or don’t act, speak, or keep our peace, and inside have an attitude of love.

Sounds weird. Sound impossible. Oh, well.

Sin, as I understand it now, is leaving the present and leaving an abiding in love. That “simple.” (Ha!)

Our child is swinging a bat around and could seriously harm their younger sibling. We could just stop them and give a little talk. But maybe we get angry, and come at them with strong words and actions. Or maybe we aren’t angry, but pretend to come at them in angry, to get the point across.

The “do not sin” part, is that while we are doing this, a part of us fully and completely remembers that this little rascal is a child of God, a child of ours, a beloved and wonderful being.

That’s the do no sin part, acting in a rage or not acting, and still being angry, while all along, underneath that anger we love the other person, see them as our equal in some way, have at least a partial realization (easy to bring back later, out of the heat of the moment) that just about any idiotic, mean or selfish thing they are doing, we have done sometime in our past.

So, be angry, act or it or don’t. This is part of our growing to wisdom and a certain control in our lives. Act even, and shake up the whole scene, create conditions for a more just and safe and kind world. Stop a criminal in their tracks. Wake up someone to a mean habit of theirs.

Fine. But not with an I am better than you inner state.

No, our job/ path/ challenge / opportunity is to rise to our Real Self level and do that by keeping alive inside of us a sense of living in the present (sensing our anger, seeing the other and hearing them in the moment), a sensing inside our own real bodies in the rushing of our emotions, AND a realization of their lovable nature as human beings, even under the mess.

How to translate that into today’s practice: think about and cultivate something like “joyous anger,” a sense that our joy and love is our primary relationship in life no matter what we do.

So, hey, cultivate joy and love and presence and if anger comes along, great! Welcome it as a chance to build our joy and love and presence muscle, even while the temptation is to do the “normal” thing, become a beast fighting a beast (or worse, a beast fighting an imagined beast, remember the person insulting our magazine taste).

Good.

Day Seventeen: The Work of Byron Katie, Question #1

A sort of “death” needs to take place to achieve real happiness and emotional freedom. The Byron Katie work offers simple, though life and heart changing, tools to achieve this. Today the first question: IS IT TRUE?

Other people sometimes drive us crazy. Sometimes we drive ourselves crazy. Sometimes the world seems “awful,” “unfair,” or just plain “too hard.”

Good. All this unhappiness is Reality’s gift to us.

And a grand incentive to learn and master this path of undoing emotional suffering and bondage: the Work of Byron Kaite.


The work of Byron Katie leads us back to the one person who can make us happy or unhappy--- ourselves. It does this by suggesting that we:

Judge our neighbor.

Write it down.

Ask four questions.

Turn it around.


Today’s work/ game / play/ learning is this: notice all our thoughts that are of the ilk, “So and so should be different.” Write these –in one sentence form -- down on paper. Cut to the chase: puteither a should or a shouldn’t in the sentence. Like “X should be nicer to me.” “Z shouldn’t be so angry at me.” “T shouldn’t ignore me.” “My Mother/ Father/ Brother sister should have…”

Write them down. This is judging. This is writing it down.

And ask the first question after you write it down: Is it true?

Don’t get too fancy, and work at opening your heart and mind to this distinction: true vs. an opinion. If I hold out a rock and let it go, my opinion makes no difference in the truth of gravity. If I have the opinion that X should be nicer to me, that is not the same kind of truth. It’s what I want. Other people might agree. Agree that I am “right,” and X is “wrong.” Oh, well. Their agreement or disagreement, though the source of much gossip and social backbiting, doesn’t make my opinion true.

Spend the day noticing your thoughts that want others to be different, write down the should/ shouldn’t sentences about these “wrong” people, and then begin to come to freedom by asking, Is it true?

This work can be “gotten” from the Website: thework.com, and from Katie’s books, all of which are wonderful on CD listening form. Find the books and CD’s also at her site.