what is the key to a good life?

what is the key to a good life?

perhaps this:
realizing you are going to die,
and hence,
you are alive,
and hence,
can be experiencing one and only one
moment:

now

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

Day Thirty-Five: Alive, Waking While Talking

Sensing ourselves, arms and legs, even when talking. This is amazing, and can be done.

We are programmed over and over and over to put our attention “out there” when we are talking. And that attention has a huge amount to do with spending a lot of time “up here” in our heads, preparing our next batch of words.

Usually we are preparing our next batch of words while the other person is still talking.

We listen to but the first sentence, or maybe even less, of what another person says before we go “up here” into our heads, to find the right tape loop, the right prerecorded offering that we will send out as our next bit of talking.

So we only partially listen, and then go up into our heads for a batch of words for “our turn.” And these words are very often words we have said over and over and over.

True thinking requires that we become quiet inside, and at least search for a new way of seeing and communicating what we want to say. What we really want to say, not just spout out something.


So this is the game today:

One, when another person is speaking, be quiet inside and sense our arms and legs and spine and follow our breathing and listen to their words, and listen to their hearts and listen for their souls.

Two, when it’s our turn, slow down, say less, search for something real to say, something that isn’t some stored away tape loop we’ve said so many times.

Three, while talking and listening, to be sensing our feet and our relationship to gravity and sensing arms and legs and spine, and our physical shape in each moment. Walking is grea for this, because at each moment one of our feet is pressing into the Earth, and at each moment our shape is changing.

Can we be aware of that?

Aware when talking, aware when walking: a sweet day.

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?

Day Fifty-five, Being Alive

Being alive. Fully alive.

What does it mean to be alive?

This can seem like an obvious question, and it certainly seems like a relative to the “Who am I really?” question.

And it is it’s own sweet inquiry.

What does it mean to be alive?

How much of our day is spent on something that might have no real purpose to a life that is simple lived as a life.

When in our day, and when in our lives, do we act fully alive, aware of this being alive, and even more important, aware of the fully alive-ness of others?

And this can sometimes feel almost tragic, as we see from our eyes and feel from our hearts as we live in the present, that many around us are just going through some pre-established motions, not at all aware that they are alive.

And so be it. What is our “job” around other people? Is being present to being alive an avenue to help them, no sermon, just example, say, to waking to their alive-ness?

Who knows. Something worth discovering, this power of our aliveness to wake the aliveness of those around us. And then, of course, on some days and in some times, the fully aliveness of those around us is the wake up call we need.

A day of gifts today, the gift of our knowing our aliveness and their aliveness as our gift to others. Their vitality and aliveness as their gift to us.

A good day.


Come into the present today, as all days, and today with this goal: to remember we are alive and that others around us are alive and to feel, sweetly and grandly, the miracle of all that.