Thanks Five, Being Alive

thanks to Mom
and Dad,

for getting together,
in love
lust
whatever it was

and bringing
me
along to this miracle
and crazy
learning that is
sometimes called life


thanks to Earth
and Nature
for evolving me
us
humans
plants
edibles

movement to get the edibles
and to make the next generation


and thanks to
those who
figured reading and
speaking
and clothes
and shelter

some minor
details
we take for granted

running
drinkable water

we've really
got it
made


and thanks for the realization:
time to wake up
get enlightened
stay and increase ecology:

be of service
to Earth
and others
and our
own joy

what a sweet
task,
eh?

Nothing to Say

Is that true?

Well, once I ask that question,
I recall how wonderful it has been
to have the Work of Byron Katie
as the system I find most human
and useful
for those troubled moments in life
when something doesn't go my way.

Funny about life,
how it hasn't woken up
to it's job
of making everything just so
comfie, comfie,
flattering to my image
for me.

Alas,
of course,
then there's the turn around:
I haven't woken up
to realizing that it's my job
to make this life what i want it
to be.

And what is that?
Happy.
Aware.
Useful to others.
Creative.
Learning.
Useful to nature.
Happy when the yap yap mouth starts yapping.
Aware and awake when the yao yap mouth starts yapping.

ah,
the tongue
organ of taste
organ of speech
organ of conditioning

our mother tongue,
the lie:
these words are reality,
the miracle:
these words can makes sense to other
people
the drag:
these words can tell us what to do
and who we are
and shame and twist us
the glory:
these words
can sometimes be sprung loose
and be used to remind us
of the glory
when we are
quiet
and not in words
but in Reality

what is reality?
who we are without the story,
which brings us back to katie
and to the end of this little entry.

a bit to say
after all.

la,
la

rain, rainbows, byron katie, life, yoga, and so on

today,
the six o'clock get up bell
and the six o'clock sun
met the six o'clock drizzle
rain
and
lo,
rainbows,
and double rainbows

rain in july

is the world upside down
of what
nice for the deer,
hard for the fires later,
great for the air,
fun for the shaking up
of all our set ideas
of how it's
"supposed to be."

people at dinner interested
in hearing about Byron Katie
and her weird lineage:
alcoholism,
obesity,
raging,
depression
and then
waking up
weirdly,
in Barstow,
to the nothingness of herself
and all the thoughts
that kept that myth
supported,
and her love for
anything and everything
in front of her

good world

tired today

learning goes on
Feldenkrais
classes popular.

So nice to do so little
in the efforting department,
and get such huge results.

Fun.

Ciao
Chris

If we want to be happy

We can do a couple of really great things.

One,
we can decide that this is our right
and our duty to be joyous
into the world.
Joyous as an affirmation
of why we are here,
in the midst of this miracle of life.

Two,
we can pull the plug on our unhappiness.
Easiest and most thorough
to do this,
is one vriti at a time.
Here the good old Work of Byron Katie
helps wash away our suffering
and makes it very clear how to
deal with other people.

three,
get clear,
as Byron Katie says,
that what other people do, say and feel and think
is their business.
If we let it get to us,
that's something we
did to us,
and we can do the work on.

If we wish to be free.

Four,
wish to be free.

Five,
live in the present
where there are no
words to make ourselves
miserable with
by discribing any story
about how what is
should be different.

No words,
no comparisons that lead to suffering.

Good comparison:
which is warmer right now,
your right or your left hand.
Which feels longer: your spine
or your left leg.

Six,
find real things to pay attention to.

SEven,
have some awareness and gratitude
reserved for the miracles,
the miracle of having awareness,
and life,
and being in this great game.

Ciao,
Chris

Awakened Beings and Suchnot

The nice thing about Byron Katie
(you know, thework.com
is that though she shows all the signs
of an awakened being:
no desires,
no real sense of self
(listen to her or read the latest,
Thousand Names for Joy,
where she enjoys her body,
doesn't think it's real,
loves being a woman,
doesn't think that's real,
loves the sights and sounds
of the world
and doesn't think they are real).

To finish the sentence:
even though she shows all the signs,
she never uses the word
enlightened,
or realized,
says that's just one more concept
to take us away from reality.
won't claim anything
except to have had
"a moment of clarity"
which just happened
to have radically changed
her life.

She doesn't even have desires
that people do her work.
It's just there,
and she keeps offering it,
because people keep asking.


when she's with people
she says that our suffering
and what we are going through,
she can understand from our point of view,
from hers none of it exists
and since there is nothing left
of her,
we are her
when she is in interaction with us.

One of my favorite times with her
was at one Nine Day School
she came into the room
(no bowing or whatnot,
just smiles of love
to everyone in front of her)
beaming
and said:
"Isn't it a beautiful day,
even though none of it is real."

Another favorite
at a New Year's Juice Fast,
people getting cranky,
someone stands up and starts
chewing her out,
she's beaming,
lets the woman finish,
and says to everyone:
"Don't you just love it.
Isn't she speaking for all of us."

So be it.
Fun

What happens when we realize
we are asleep
and want to live a more full and awake
and wonderful life?

we can go right back to sleep
by telling ourselves that
we waited so long to discover this

we can go to a more interesting sleep
and make a dedicated vow to be all
the time awake

we can cultivate an awareness of what
we like
what we love
in the moments of beign awake

we can cultivate a taste for the difference
a hunger for the real
a subtle alertness to the quality of our life

we can laugh when we wake with a start
to knowing
once more
that this now
is it
this is our life

we can smile with happiness
and breathe a sigh of relief:
ah,
i'm home again.
i'm here
i'm now,

what is my life right now?

hmm.
how nice to realize that is
a fine
and fun
and fruitful
place to put out attention:

what is my life right now?

hopefully
there is love
and amusement
and some little sweet and amazing
challenge

What are the sweetnesses in our life?

The smile of ones we love,
the song of a bird,
the flight of the hummingbird,
the smell of sweet food,
the taste of cool water,
the richness of the Earth,

a song
a chant
a walk
a dream
a pathway
an ocean
a cloud
a happy child
a happy us

and on
and on

where does the sweetness in life
come from
does it have a source?
what would a life lived in the sweetness
more often be like?
who are we really?
where does the sweetness come from?
where do we go when we forget it?

Human Learning, One of the Wonders of the Universe

Human Learning, One of the Wonders of the Universe.

A dog from Chicago has no trouble communicating with a dog from Japan. A newly born deer is ready to get up and run within hours if not minutes. These animals, much as they love them, have an easier time of being who they are meant to be, and they miss out on what’s central to the human experiment: learning.

They don’t need to learn to crawl, to sit up, to walk: it comes with the package. The don’t need to learn to talk: that doesn’t come with the package.

This is humanity.

We learn.

When we are young, this is our whole life, learning.

Then we go to school, and we keep learning, but a lot of crap we don’t need to learn: how to stifle our movement, how to be quiet, how to do what we are told, how to wait our turn, how to play the school game.

Along the way, we might learn to read, if the teacher doesn’t get in the way of our abilities of figure stuff out and doesn’t set us up to fail but disconnecting reading from the game that it is. But that’s another topic, the topic of how fun it is to teach kids to read and do math, about which one essay has already been written.
( Titled :
Math isn't hard, it's a chance to learn how to use our brains. )

For now though, for a short sweet piece: learning makes us human and we can learn wonderful new things, a musical instrument or a new language. And we can learn how to constrict our breathing and hold ourselves to have back pain, or the wreck our hips. We can learn to hate ourselves and feel bad about life.

There is lots to learn.

And what is the core of learning?

Noticing a difference that makes a difference.

That’s nice isn’t it?

Noticing a difference that makes a difference.

What have you learned today? Maybe this essay has been part of the wonder of life for you. I hope so.

Ciao.

Miracles all over the Place, and we forget

MIRACLES AND CHANGE
Here's a story of Moshe working with a young man who started with trouble and had had that trouble made even worse by the "help" of surgery.

Photo: R. Dale

"And I'll never forget what Karl Pribram said at the end of that 'demonstration' (for some who might not know, Pribram was a former brain surgeon turned neuroscientist/researcher at Stanford University--who came up with the "Holographic" model of the brain --which sparked Moshe's imagination no end).

"The young man had, I believe, Cerebral Palsy and had undergone brain surgery to eliminate the spasticity in his right arm. The surgeon's scalpel had slipped in the operation and mistakenly severed a nerve governing the young man's tongue.

" He could no longer speak clearly, as his tongue was not able to differentiate itself from his lower jaw. To add insult to injury, his spasticity left only for a few weeks or months-- and then came back worse than before--plus he could not speak clearly.

"Interestingly, when he played tennis, which he adored, he lost his spasticity and could also speak more clearly. And flirt with the girls. So, Moshe pulled a clean handkerchief out of his pocket, and took his tongue and moved it this way and that way --'showing off' for Pribram.

"Then after about 15 minutes, he stopped and said to the young man, "So what do you have to say".

"The young man replied--clear as a bell--"Hello".

"Not a dry eye in the house.

"Then Moshe went on and worked with his arm and soon the spasticity left. The whole thing took maybe 40 minutes, tops.

"Karl looked at Moshe, awestruck, and said--"You can do more with your hands, than I ever could accomplish with my scalpel".( Recounted by Deborah Elizabeth Lotus)

There are two miracles here: one, the work of Moshe Feldenkrais, which a few thousand of us in the world are trained to duplicate and expand upon.

And two: the reluctance of almost everyone to go through the kind of learning that this young man went through in his transformation. Moshe gave his brain a chance to rewire and to learn anew, as we all learn when we are fresh and young and alive.

We have this chance every day of our lives and throw it away, throw it away, throw it away as we muddle along doing the same things in the same way, feeling the same things, saying the same things, thinking the same things, eating the same things, running raggedy to keep a show afloat that has nothing to do with our real selves.

This is the miracle: we are alive and could be living moment after moment of newness and presence. And we forget.

This is the miracle: at any moment we can wake up and remember, once more: this is me, this is now, this is my life.

I am alive.

You are Alive: the Miracle of it All

SLOW DOWN, COME OUTSIDE, TAKE A WALK
We are alive. That's a miracle. In this season when the days get shorter and the night moves toward the longest night, when the dark is strong and the cold is rising, some people tell the story of a birth of a miracle.

And yet, every birth is a miracle, an event of huge magnitude in this immense universe, and each day is one more miracle granted to us in our life.

Are we savoring that miracle?

Sometimes yes, sometimes no, probably.

And to be aware of when life is sweet and amazing for us is to begin to pull back from all those forces that want us to rush through our lives in some sort of forgetful frenzy. Always preparing, planning, worrying, regretting, scurrying from one item on the "to do" list to the next, short of breath or forgetting to breathe in our anxiety to "get it all done," accepting invitations we wished we had the courage to decline with grace and honesty, plowing ahead in states of tension and dis-ease and forgetting that one little detail:

We are alive.

We are alive and this is a miracle, this every second of this miracle of our life.

Sometimes, taking off in a happy sprint, or dancing up a storm, or skiing down and beautiful mountain, the joy of speed and motion can be one of life's great thrills. But the rush/ rush hurry/ hurry speed with which we are stressing and dis-easing our lives, this is all a distraction from the miracle.

We are alive.

Could slowing down help to remember this miracle? I think so.

Could coming outside, reconnecting our feet with the ground, reconnection our eyes with the sky, our lungs with the fresh air, our souls with the fullness of nature, could this help us remember this miracle? I think so.

Could allowing ourselves to slow to the natural human pace, the pace of walking, the joy of shifting right to left to right to left, with the pelvis swinging one way as the shoulders swing the other, feeling ourselves propel ourselves with delight and ease as human beings are meant to move, could this facilitate our inner peace and joy and commitment to the wonder of life?

I think so. What about you?

( This continues with "Moving and Learning, the Miracle continues," at WakeUp Feldenkrais)