Why Paint?

To have stuff to put up on your
walls that amuses
and delights you.

I'm in a course where they want you to "process" this
and "process" that,
but I just like to move colors onto the paper,
feel how that makes me feel,
look at what I've got,
fool around a bit more,
and see what I come up with.

The process is discovery.

Big deal.

Well, actually: all discovery
is a return to who we really are:
majestic beings in the thrill of the unknown
now.

What's next?

Put up another color and see.


And when to stop?

Go slow.
Follow the breathing.
Keep looking.

Ask yourself when is it done.

When you think it's done,
it is.

Good.

Happiness, Patience, Loving What Is, Having Fun with Improvement

Moshe Feldenkrais has a great book,
The Elusive Obvious

You can only get it in hardback.

Oh, well.

It's good.

One section in there he says what he need to realize
with ourselves, our children, our partners:

If you aim to get something "right," you've only got
one option.
In your mind you've got one finishing point,
and that's it.

And, you usually get annoyed until you get to the "right" finishing point.

And the alternative:
"better."

And since lately I've been on the trail of expanding what I do into
executive and divorce coaching,
I'm really interested in four alternatives:

So one is to "do it right."

One is to head toward "better,"

But "better" can be Easier,

can be more interesting

can be more pleasurable

can be more weird

can be more entertaining

can be more complex

So, now we've got a whole lot of directions
and possibilities.

So, that's the way to head when we want to improve something.

And our internal state:
the word patience is in the title.

Patience means we honor where our feet are
Right Now,
and don't demand that they be across the room
until the get there.

Patience and mindfulness ride hand in hand,
as we can sense our feet moving across the room
toward the new spot,
the "better spot,"
and along the way,
we could be improving the
ease
pleasure
awareness
variation
delight
of plain old walking across the room.

So, you can see how this fits with the special needs kids,
can't you?
And the partner who won't "co-operate," which
usually means, "do it our way."

Patience is loving what is.

Improvement with patience is what Anat writes
about in the essential of "Loose Attachment to Goals,"
in
Move into Lifeanother good book












We can love the children totally as they are,
and we can have so much delight it helping and watching
and bringing them to lessons
where slow and aware
and learning are the game.

This is a good game for us
all
anytime.

Even
now.

Ciao,
Chris

What to do about Heat, Death and Taxes and People who are mean to you

What to do about heat?
It's now some interestingly impossible heat in Austin,
I'll go ask the iPhone,
the modern device to amuse use and destroy all our telepathic abitilities:
109
while LA a mere 85 and Sonoma, for some reason, the place I left
as getting too warm with global warming: 77

La, la
What to do about the heat?

Be happy.

Next:
death.
What to do about death?

You guessed it,
be happy.

Why?

Why not?
You aren't going to die until you die,
and then,
if you can walk down the street in 109 heat, or 77 or 85 and be happy,
how hard can it be
to just stop?

I mean each night
we
just stop/

and in a good meditation
we
just stop

and any argument we've ever had
and been tortured in
and then shifted the
whole
shape of our ugly
world
we
just stopped

so,
here's the game:

we can sit in chair A,
and think: shouldn't be so hot,
death isn't so great/ is bad/ is scary

then we can shift over to chair B
and
just stop
our thinking

and see what's left.

sometime's it's happiness

there are lots and lots more thinks to do,
to leave behind unhappy Chair A

that could be our assignment for the next hour:
find a couple of mental/ emotional places
that aren't so great
and

get in chair A and feel how ungood/ bad / yukky they feel

and then figure chair B, the just stop thinking chair,
and go there

and then
figure chair C
and do something else there

and chair D
and do something else there

and chair E
and... you know what.


Taxes, people who are mean to you?
if those bother you, try the game.

if not, have some trying anything that bothers you

good
Chris

Awakened Christianity: the baby and the bathwater there

I haven't posted a long time
in my Awakened Christianity blog,
and only a few people have looked at it

And
the mystical universe being what it
is
someone of high intelligence
and good
heart
crossed my path
in the night
and we talked of these things:

the baby and the bathwater of Christianity:


The bathwater
nonsense
demeaning aspects that make this fine possible religion
a burden to people's minds, hearts and souls:


ONE:
The idea of death as the "bad guy"
as if it's okay for the carrot to die
for us to eat it
and the bird to die after flying around
and glorifying the world in song
for its span on this beautiful planet
and it's okay for the summer to die into the fall die into the winter die into the spring

but
people can't die

so, you have to be afraid of it
or allow yourself to be afraid of it
or , the real thing: don't inquire about
the fear
and since "everyone" knows death is bad/ scary/ to be avoid/ the worst
people
accept,
like good sheep,
yeah, yeah, death = bad

and the essay on why be fearless and even happy
and excited at the prospect of eventual death,
that's another one

but for now,
the death as big
deal
and then the whole
pivoting of everything on Jesus' dying
as a big
deal

but, hey, folks,
death is what people do,
if Jesus wants to do the human thing,
die He must

on a cross is severe, no doubt,
and so is liver cancer and burn victim car crash
and having your head bashed in by your neighbors
during the genocide in Rwanda

death can be less pleasant than going to sleep
at night
or
it can be just the same

and I degress
a bit,
(not really, it all fits together,
just have fun with it,
let your own examinations of what "they" say,
be a source of endless amusement and freedom
for
you)

TWO, in the bathwater: BRIBERY
it's as if Christians allow themselves to be big
versions of little children
who
if they are good, and Santa knows,
yes, Santa knows,
they get presents
and if they are bad,
they get no presents

but worse, meaner awful really,
as if any God based on love and understanding
wants to send people to Hell

but anyway: this deal,
making life a big good get ticket to heaven
bad, get punished go to hell
is demeaning to what it really means to be human

and dumb
to the actuality:
when people are living out of love and the present
their lives are hell
so they don't have to wait until after death

THREE: EXCLUSIVITY,
as if God doesn't want as many avenues to Her or Him or It
as possible
and the Christian insistence that it's "my way or the highway" ( to hell,
to boot)
reduces a beautiful religion to the level of Go Seahawks, or Go Cowboys,
my team is the winning team

alas,
so
why bother:

because
"The kingdom of heaven is within"
right now

"Let he who is sinless cast the first stone"
perhaps the best spiritual story of all times

"Love your enemy"
easy to say, supposedly hard to do,
and until you and I and everyone learns it,
we are in hell

and it's not that hard,
just get real about what the un-loving is doing to your heart,
mind, guts and soul

or,
if you want some help,
jump on in with Katie:
thework.com

and you don't need the books,
but the titles get you thinking
about what a real world of God consciousness
might be:
Loving What Is



I Need Your Love: Is that true?

A Thousand Names for Joy
this the rendering by Stephen Mitchell once more of the tao ti ching, and Katie's take on what life as an awakened one/ master is about, pretty great

Four Ways to Do Anything: leaving suffering

 

Life is a mystery

Tomorrow can be anything,
or the same old nonsense

We can wish or plan or expect "something new"
to happen tomorrow
and something will.

But, this moment,
whatever we are doing,
has a posture/ body component

a thinking component (wondering about my words,
listening, agreeing, disagreeing)

a feeling component (patient, impatient,
really feeling something nothing to do with this
particular string of words,
and maybe on the computer to "avoid"
that feeling)

and a "soul" component,
which is tricky to talk about:
but some part of you knows,
bubba bubbete that this earth bound
life
is not forever
and thus
knows that this second
instant
moment
whatever you want to call it
and it's
gone already

is precious.

Four ways to do anything:
you are already "doing" the look at the computer thing
one way,
and
to be aware of all or some of the four components
is another way

and so
to be free,
play it out in two more ways.

Shift your body shape, or breathing pattern, or do
a little aware moving

Look for a feeling that adds to whatever you are
feeling
or
select a feeling you'd like to be having
or
deepen the sensation and the emotion of what you are feeling
or
add on feeling plus sensing as a wholeness
or...

do you know what I'm talking about

call or email if you don't

and the basic idea: we take our feelings as so real,
not a cloud floating through
and a cloud we create at that

and what of our thinking,
what are a couple of amazing or interesting
variations
we could make on that

who knows:
me
i'm going to stop typing and try out all this grand advice
now
and see what I can teach me
by this.


.....

okay, that was fun

many many messages about standing,
moving
breathing
getting more physical than I can behind a keyboard
and screen

what happened/ happens for you


Good

Transformation is a big deal

Harper putting her weight on one knee
and then the other.
This is a different level of world
than life on two knees,
she's doing some real "balancing" her.
Look at her concentration.
And in light of below essay,
the second knee after all sorts of other
learning was "almost too much."

We throw the word "transformation" around
as if it's a fancy kind of change,
like a new set of clothes,
or how nice you feel on a vacation,

but transformation is a two edge sword,
because it means shedding the old you
to allow a new you to develop

think of a child that can't crawl
and then
they can

this is a different child

as I've said/ written many times,
no acupuncture, adjustments, relax massage, "energy" work
is going to facilitate that transformation

it's build on real sensations
and real connections of hands and shoulder
and shoulders and hips,
and lower back and head
and knees and back
and so on

it's a miracle the child puts together for herself,
and it's fun, because she can get around better,
and she's not the same kid

now, lessons are like that
and for a child
it's  a thrill moving to a new level
and a little or a lot "scary"

and we don't know their experience,
but we can just think about say,
we're in a foreign country for a month,
and finally ready to "wing it with the new language,"
we're out there
and don't really know what'll happen

same for the child as the newness builds up
and up

and with children who have seizures
or have emotional trigger points,
this can create an amazing balancing act:

how to keep the lessons challenging enough
to be real
transformation

and how to take enough rests,
and know when to back off
before the child goes over the edge
of
"too much"
into a seizure, or a crying spell

it's "hard"
and part of the transformational work
for me,
is staying present enough to each second
with the child
to catch myself when I'm getting a little too
advance
and to prod myself
when I'm playing it a little too safe

wow:
what if adults
in their conversations looked
for this edge?

wouldn't that make life
amazing????


Don't forget to play around with the ideas in Anat's book
Move Into Life

Cancer and Love and Food

This is a start, partly to get more books
up here.

Just started to watch an amazing uTube thing,
of home school guy,
out to figure out why no cures
for cancer,
(embed doesn't seem to work:
HERE'S THE LINK TO THE UTUBE OF THE GERSON CURE
FOR CANCER)
ps the video has a bunch of extra stuff in the beginning
but it gets there finally
actually, it goes on and on about the bad news
of traditional dentistry
and then the bad
news of
food additives

only watch if you are in
the mood to get riled up:
basically:
eat healthy,
eat food




and wait there is one,
and it was/ is based on nutrition,
a lot like mentioned on the food, health page of my website

So far,
a couple of things I've left off:

get mercury out of the mouth

stop flouridated water drinking

get acquainted with Weston Price,
who work led to
Nourishing Traditions,
already recommended


but why not go all the way with learning what Weston Price
discovered as a dentist looking for groups with really
healthy teeth,
and these people have no cancer, heart attacks, or diabetes

Here's the basis book:
Nutrition and Physical Degeneration














Good links without a book are
One: The Weston Price Foundation

Two: Price Pottenger Nutritional Foundation

Okay, that's enough for tonight

Hafiz, Mira, love is everywhere:

Hafiz first
a poem challenging those
with their small tiny gods/
tiny small hearts
who want to shove away sex from the
sacred
as if the sacrum isn't rotti toot toot to both:

Some god say, the tiny ones,
" I am not here in your vibrant
moist lips
that need to beach themselves on the shore
of a
naked body."

Some gods say," I am not the scared yearning of the unrequited soul,
I am not the blushing
cheek
of every star and planet--

I am not the applauding Creator of those
precious secretions
that can distill
the whole mind
into a perfect wincing jewel
--- if only for a moment

nor do I reside in every sweet warm dung
born of the Earth's gratuity."

Some gods say, the ones we need to hang,
"Your mouth was not designed to know His,
love was not conceived
to consume the luminous realms."

Dear ones beware
of the tiny gods frightened men
worship

to bring an anesthetic control
to their sad
days.

*****

Mira:

In my travels I spent some time with a great yogi.
Once he said to me,

"Become so
still
you hear the
blood
flowing through your
veins."

One night as I sat in quite,
I seemed on the verge of
entering
a world inside so
vast
I know it is the source of
all
of us.

****

Again, this book has 12 mystics,
including people you haven't heard as mystics before:
St Thomas Aquinas, St John of the Cross

Love Poems from God

The alternative to suffering--- Rumi's take

Rumi:
plus moaa


The wonder of the water
rushing over the rock in the
stream
justifies existence.

the swish of a horse's tail
and
again I am stunned by the grandeur of the
Unseen One
that governs all Existence.

I resist looking at my palms sometimes
Have you ever gotten breathless before
a beautiful face----
I see you there sometimes
my dear

there is a wonderful problem waiting
for you
that God and I share:

how to keep from fainting when we see
each
other

In deed eo:

How does God keep from fainting all
day
when She sees Herself again
and again
and
again

Light is moving like a stream,
and a myriad of celestial beings
applaud.



Rumi,
via Daniel Ladinsky
via
me
via
you

look at it
smile
close your eyes
sensing your beingness
and
then write
your version:

light streams
just now
from your beauty to mine

it dazzles
and what is
IT?

you are it
I am IT
it is IT

all the explanations crumbe
when we see that the mirror
is bursting with love
and laughter


good

new website:
mystical
practical enlightenment
as the cure
for the divorce blues thing
to transform it,
inta:
da da

The Joy of Divorce:

TheJoyOfDivorce.info

'cause even divorced
we can
faint with love
and joy at the thought of
each
other

what a sweet little piece of the stream's
dance to the ocean
that was

and if we forget the sweetness,
time to remember, time to remember,
yes
what else is time for,
but to
re
member
our Selves
as
pieces of God
staring at other
pieces of God

ha,
ha

don't believe any of the above

and
if
you
wish

experience as much of it,
as you can
stand

with or without
fainting

ciao for Now,
chris

New Website: thejoyofdivorce.info

 .com wasn't available
And Info is always good:

there are only three pages on it.

Please check it Out:

TheJoyOfDivorce.info
the three pages so far:

One: the home page.

Two telling of two Friday night intro evenings
and a five month process

Three: telling of an intensive 2 or 3 day process for one
or both of the people undergoing the divorce.

Here's a bit I like from the website:

In Chinese, the character for
Crisis
is the same as that for
Opportunity

Most lives in contemporary society are mere shadow lives, played out behind a SOCIAL MASK, squelched by CONDITIONING,
and riddled by PARALYZING FEAR OF DISAPPROVAL,
that reaches into our every movement,
thought,
feeling, & even
spiritual aspiration.

Times of breakdown are among the few in our life when we can “GO BACK TO ZERO”
and
reconstruct ourselves as we really are,
and really wish to be,
and are really
MEANT TO BE.

This has huge parallels to the Feldie
and ABM work,
since sadly, though people could be going from good to great
to better in dance and sports and music and breathing and walking,
they
mainly come in when things are
"broken."

The above quote, from me,
is a nice reminder: these broken periods
are VERY fertile times for building a new
life.

Good for us.

Good for the broken ones who clomp on in.

Thumb and little finger, games for you, and maybe food for the brain of a child

Last week the toes, 
this week the fingers.

And what is the biggest different we can
find
in the fingers.

Between the big strong and ever useful thumb,
and the little weak, and often forgotten pinkie
is a great place to start
(though in reality the ring finger is the least recognized
in the brain, but that's okay,
let's make the differences as far away as possible:
big finger = thumb
littlest finger = pinkie.

Now, this gets tricky with a special needs child,
because we can play with these fingers and the
child might not be able to distinguish
the differences.

So what to do?
As always start with yourself:

start with whatever hand is connected to the  shoulder and elbow
that feels best.

Let your hand be wide.

Splay out your thumb and little finger as far away from each
other as they can comfortably go,
and then paying attention to them both,
begin to rotate and gyrate your hand
in many places and positions.

Roll in around, way out there,
up high, over the the side, down between your legs,
behind your back.

Bring it close and rotate the hand up and down your front side
feeling the differences in the thumb touching your body and the
little finger doing the same, and feel/ sense all the while,
the relationship in space and in sensation of the two fingers.

Take lots of rests.

Have some fun.

Take a walk to rest, or lie down.

Then do everything you did above
with realization of the elbow
and the shoulder blade
and the ribs
and the spine
and the pelvis.

Think of different ways to circle your head
with the pair of fingers, the little finger and the thumb,
all the while keep attention and awareness
on and open to your spine and ribs and pelvis.

Take lots of rests.

Would this to be good for your child.

In little doses, sure.

Keep it small.

Don't force their hand,
and I have never said that literally,
it's kind of neat:
don't force their hand.

And touch their spine or ribs now and then
as you do this.

If you don't force anything,
and don't expect yourself to have had the
years of training a practitioner has,
and just let it be joyful,
something will happen.

You will have some experience.
Your child will have some experience.

If you are non judgment,
and not forcing,
they will learn.

You might not know what.

That doesn't matter.

Go slow,
gentle
curious.
Enjoy the touch.

Love poems to and from God

if we forgot what we were
doing
and just
"just"
remembered the glory
of
I AM

would that be enough?

I don't know.

But I suspect that it
Would

Let's try for a while
and see what
happens....
shhhh
no words in the head

ah, peace, empty
can't even say it
can we

and...

pretty nice


Chris

And from Kabir:

I sat one day with a priest who expounded
on the doctrine of hell

I listened to him
for hours
and then he asked me,
what I thought of what he'd said.

I replied:

"This doctrine seems an inhuman cage.
No wonder all the
smart dogs
Run Away."


And from Mira:

I tried controlling myself
but it did
no good.
My senses are aflame.

I heard You singing.
that started all this blessed madness.

I openly made love with everything in sight
last night
and this morning.

The constable showed up and wrote over twenty citations.

I guess I shouldn't have jumped
naked
on him
in front of his wife.

the hypocrite,
he wouldn't have complained at all

if we were
alone.

St Catherine of Siena:

If you cried in Heaven,
everyone would laugh

for they would know,
you were just kidding.




Poems are pointers
where do they point
for
you
today

and what if you read
them again
tomorrow

would the arrows
have sprouted branches
and the branches
leaves

and the leaves
shimmer
light every which way?

Who knows
but you
and your experience
of this
existence

just
now

Chris

the non me ones,
slightly shifted around,
from
Love Poems from God

Ze trans formation ov Suffering

Let's just do this all up quite grand:

Pain is stuck
is lack of differentiation
is same old same old in an unsatisfying way

The way out:
freedom

Can be the shake the chains,
go beserk (from Norse warriors, foamed at mouth, destroyed all in sight,
and lots they couldn't see through the foam),
trash about,
do the opposite of our conditioning

and we're still slaves:
two ways of doing something is still slavery:
the way and the reaction to the way

So, here's what I realized:

Any feeling bad can begun to be broken
open into mindfulness
by coming home to ourselves and looking/ noticing/ awaring:

The thinking part of the feeling bad
(I'm no good, he's so awful, this is not fair, etc)

The Feeling part of the feeling bad
(sad, afraid, angry, annoyed,
etc)

The sensing part:
sensations in our body,
almost always restricted in feeling bad

and the
"soul"
part,
which is some lie about how small and little and separate
and unvaluable we are

Okay.
That's just the start.

Then in each of those four areas:
how about at least four options;

Thinking:
Take the thought and see the difference if we perceive it as
an opinion or the truth

Take the thought and hear the voice to it, and make options
with that voice

Many, many more


Feeling:
Going MORE into the feeling

From that going less

The feeling plus constricted posture and breathing
the feeling plus upright posture and breathing

The feeling plus gratitude

many more


Sensing:
Where is it in us: make it more intense

Find the edges'

Sensing that part, plus the arms and legs

Sensing that part, plus looking outside of us and hearing outside of us

Movement and that sensation

Many, more


Soul:

This feeling as if we have forever to live,
this feeling as if Life is this moment now

This feeling as a story people laid on us vs
who is the real us underneath

This feeling watched from emptiness

Much more

Okay,
I consult by phone.
Expensive,
and you can go and go and go
with this.

I hope you do.

Chris

Ze pain of judging another, the old mindful vs mindless truism, more

the more:
one of the paths to happiness:
let go of being "Right"

watch this:

Life is like this:

we have a choice
at any moment:
mindful or mindless.

This doesn't sound polite,
but it's true by definition.

The harsh truth beneath this
is that in the mindless world,
we can cruise on automatic when
things "go well,"
but when the "shit hits the fan,"
if not mindful
= mindless, then...
alas....
we have to fall back on conditioning
and with most of our parents
and past "troubles"
this can be slippery/ messy / awful territory
into which to fal

yuk

and it's no wonder life is so
"hard" sometimes

and here's couple more
"truths"

when mindful we can't accuse/ blame/ judge

I'll explain that later,
but you figure it out

and it's cousin:

when we do judge,
we are always mindless
and
always in pain,
because it's totally and always true that when we judge
we also judge ourselves
and that's painful

indeed,
the pain of judging ourselves
is what we try to relieve by judging
others

never works,
though we can get the false satisfaction of
being right.

except this is true,
too:
you can be right or you can be happy

sometimes both:

like right about the time,
or about loving a flower,
but the right that makes another "wrong"
as in "bad person wrong"
always brings unhappiness

ask Jesus,
ask Gurumaya
ask Buddha,
ask your experience:
think about getting huffed up and "right"
about another person being
"wrong/ bad" and feel the yuk
of how it really was to be you then

la,
la

life is good

More mystical poems

Close to God

One may have never heard the sacred name 'Christ'
and be closer to God
than any priest
or
nun.


St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)

I Just Laugh

If I told you the
truth
about God
you might think
I was an Idiot.

If I lied to you about the Beautiful One
you might parade me through the streets saying,
"This guy's a genius!"

This world has its pants on backwards.
Most carry their values and knowledge in a
jug
what has a big opening in the bottom.

What to do?
With a clear grasp of the situation,
when asked to explain the Universe,
I just laugh.

Kabir  (c1440-1518)

What is Grace

What is grace? I asked God.

"All that happens," He replied.

"All that happens."

And then he added, when I looked perplexed:

"Could not lovers
say
that every moment in the arms
of their Beloved
was
Grace?

Existence is my arms,
though I well understand how the
heart
can turn away
from me

Until the heart
calms,
wakes up to the ease
and wisdom
that let's it know."


St. Teressa   (1515-1582)

A Hundred Objects close by


I know a cure for sadness:
Let your hands touch something
that makes your
eyes
shine

I bet there are a hundred object close by
that can do that.

Look at beauty's gift to us--
her power is so great she enlivens the
Earth, the Sky, our
Soul.




Mira (c 1498-1550)

Wherever you may look


Wisdom is so
kind and wise
that
wherever you may
look
you can learn something
about God.

Why
would not the
omnipresent
teach that
way?


St. Catherine of Siena (1347-1380)

Wring Out my Clothes


Such love does the
sky
now
pour

that whenever I stand in a field

I have to
wring out my clothes
when I get
home.

St. Francis (1182-1226)

There are twelve poets.
The book is divine,
in a meaning deeper than usually
used iwith
that word.

Oh, yeah,

Hafiz (c13320-1389):

Two Giant Fat People

God
and
I
have become like two

giant
fat
people

living in a tiny boat

We keep
bumping into
each
other
and

l
a
u
g
h
i
n
g

That's a nice taste,
write a few of your own

They'll be perfect

if you think not
read the above poens
again

with your mind calm
and your heart
giggling

it's all
waiting inside
gurgling up
weather we
know it
or not

and the weather is
always
what it is:
God saying:
Hello
and
Wake up
(and maybe: treat the world
just
a tiny
bit
better,
who knows?

You listen.
what do YOU hear?

All from this book,
which you might love:








And not from here,
also amazing,
and there is only one Hafiz
in today's offering
he wrote thousands

Up and down for the parent, toes and brain and delight for the child

This is my weekly post,
mainly for parents of special needs children,
but the ideas are obviously valid all over the place.

I.e. in life.

watch those feet in action

The wonderful thing about my work as an Anat Baniel and Feldenkrais
Practitioner,
is that I can move around inside myself
if I have forgotten just what connections might be fine
and wonderful for
any of my clients, be they adult or children,
to learn next.

Recall that the learning is about expanding awareness,
pleasure and options (freedom), not "doing anything right."

So, parents have feet, children have feet.

What can we do with this delightful fact?

I recommend this to all adults:
for five minutes in the morning,
warm up to life by bending the knees and touching the floor or ground,
and then reaching up and touching toward the sky or ceiling.

Now, up and down and up and down
and it's one more donkey thing.

BUT if each time you reach down for the floor
you create some slightly different placement of
weight on your feet, and different shape of your feet,
and pay attention to a different area of your whole
self
(feet and ankles,
feet and hips
feet and spine
feet and knees
feet and head)
the time will fly and you'll be amazed at how wonderful
it is to be human.

And your child:
play with her feet with the memory of all the different ways
your feet could push down into the ground,
and you are pushing gently and playfully up
into her/his feet in all these directions and
combinations
(both feet turned this way,
pigeon toed, toes out, both to left, right,
all sorts of angles)

and as you play with the different directions
and shapes of pressure,
think
Pleasure

think
Play

think
where else might this connect,
as above:

(feet and ankles,
feet and hips
feet and spine
feet and knees
feet and head)

Have a smile on your face.
Pay attention to what she/ he likes.
Pay attention to your ease and pleasure and breathing while
doing this.

Have a joyful learning session with your child.
A meditation for you.
A gift and a delight for them.

And the other way around, too.

Good.

The Way of Love, the mistake of "original sin"

Let's say sin is this,
"missing the mark,"
as translation
and what's the mark?

love.

sin is that which takes us away from loving God, ourselves,
nature and others

any order is fine, that's another sin, dividing and splitting into levels,
but we'll pass that by for now

and think about the idea of
original sin

people being born "bad"

which is nonsense

look at babies
no bad
pure love

the idea of original sin is a sin
against babies
and against what we really are underneath all our conditioning

it's a control trip really

and that's the way it always is:
you can have love
or control

to see everyone as good and innocent at their core,
this is an idea with much less power to shame, and bully
and get people to cowtow before God

as if that's what God
wants
shamed and self-hating people
on their knees repentant for the sin of being alive

hooey to that:
hell is always in the moment,
when we are out of love
with now
with the joy of life
with ourselves
and others
and nature
and God

any order

and we can be in love
or we can be condemning
but not both

the sin of original sin tries to turn us into human
beings haters

bad idea
bad loving
bad living
bad medicine

and if we don't say bad:
lets  just say, not so useful

good

this book great, not on this topic particularly
but on what love
without all the doctrines
what love could be
and
is
when we are their and taste in its/ our / God's glory



and two great pathways back
to the love
of who we are
originally:

Awareness Through Movementspeaking of the use of awarness found
in movement based in presence and discovery
to lead us back to who we are
before conditioning
underneath the Mask of "fitting in"


and Loving What Is,

Katie's treatise/ roadguide
to life as if ALL and EVeryone
is God

so it's all love
(or else the sin of suffering, no, the suffering of
not being in love
in that moment)

Loving What is

Who is the real You, underneath the voices?

who is we?


You know the you in You
how sternly judges and looks down
on
You and him and her
growling out a string of whatever
with the undercurrent:
You are yuk

That one's not You

And the other side
Gestalt called it the underdog
we can call it the Victim
it looks out from it's sad little hole,
and thinks how mean, rough tough ufair
awful everyone
everything is
especially the long long long ago parent/ ex-spouse/ trauma
such pain, the scabs peeled back daily
as proof

that one's not you either

so what's left?

Go quiet
beneath the voices
any voice
listen to the birds and the wind
sense the spine and your fingers and toes and skin
look up into the blue, blue sky
don't talk even about how beautiful it all is

just experience:
that's you

three God poems

I'm in my second week on Orcas island.

Several wonderful events have been part of my life
here.

One, the Orcas Island Community Church hosted a Kindling's Festival,
a gathering of singers, preachers, dancers, artist,
around the theme of Mourning into Dancing.

I loved the people.
I didn't quite fit into "the club," and that's not to go
into here,
though I will share one clear realization:

the idea of original sin
is
a sin

But that's for a book
or a subset of a novel

because God isn't an idea
and the gathering of people who were sure they were Right,
was as limiting to them
as it is to us practitioners,
when we want to "fix"
someone
rather than wake them up to a bigger
version
of themselves.

Anyway, struggle, not fitting in, feeling "not so great" and great all
at once:
these are the juices of a good life.

The second grand event
was the reuniting of me with this book,
Love Poems from God





Here's three, one my me,
and two by Christian saints.
There's plenty more to come.

August 3, 2011

Faith is remembrance,  Chris Elms

The dried up ones speak of Hell
and all God’s real children
         giggle
         fall asleep
         run away to play

For play is the real work of the child

And

The adult who wishes to remain
sane:
play, dance, sex, laughter, learning
underneath all the tasks of the day
doing the unexpected
falling into the wonder, the delight of “I don’t know”
toppling in the new of the now of the Wow!

Real hell is when the juice of
life in us
- and how much our juicy Self
loves
other juicy Selves-

Is forgotten

Re all faith = re membrance

The Pulse of God, St. Thomas Aquinas

The limbs of a tree reached
down and lifted me
thinking I was its child.

And in the meadows my spirit becomes so
quiet
that if I put my cheek against the earth’s body
I can feel
the Pulse of God

“Tell me the way you do that, birds—

enter the private chambers of my Lord.”

And they all sang, they just

Sang

I gathered it was time to become a musician

And I did

Years passed and one day the

Sky reached down and

Lifted me;
the birds noticed and spoke:

“How do you enter the Sun like that and

Know
the Pulse of God?”

Clarity is Freedom:       St Teressa

I had tea the other day with a great
theologian
He asked me: “What is God’s will?”

I liked that.

The distillation of thought hones thought in others
Clarity, I know, is freedom.

What is my experience of God’s will?

Ah, everyone is a traveler,
most all need food, lodging, clothing

I let enter my mouth what will enrich
me
I wear what will make my eye
content
I sleep where I will
Wake Up

with the strength to deeply love

All that my mind can hold..

What is God’s will
for a wing?
Every bird knows that.

Cancer and Love

I had a long post a ways back
on food,
and emotions,
and getting outside
and this and that
for Cancer.

I highly, highly recommend buy my book
and starting movement lessons in the Anat Baniel Method
or the Feldenkrais Method.

Without newness
without novely,
the whole soul really doesn't have a reason to live.

These lessons unleash the new
and the now
and a sense of wonder and discovery
and help life get fresh again,
along with helping anyone,
anyone no matter how clunky or
how "advanced" they are in their body,
to improve and feel more ease and pleasure
and awareness in their embodied self.

And then there's love.
Love making.
Making more love room
in your life.

Making more love.

Three steps.

1. UNDO ALL RESENTMENTS AND GRUDGES.
ALL OF THEM.
Get to the Work of Byron Katie
(see thework.com, for all you need to do
IT ALL,
though the book title is a good reminder
of how far this can lead




No matter how big
nor how petty your complaints
about anyone
and EVERYONE
in your life,
get them released via this work,

or any other way you know.




2.  Make more love
by listening more.
EVERY DAY
SET ASIDE 30 MINUTES.
Get a timer.
You talk for five minutes, your partner doesn't interrupt.
When their turn comes, they don't comment on
nor talk about what you said.
They explore what means a lot for them.
Back and forth, 3 times each, of 5 minutes.

3/ Then make love.
Sex.
No sex, that's not important.

Get naked.
Touch.

Touch a lot.

Bathe in this wonder of being human.

Each day,
after talking with real listening.

Real listening:
no interrupting,
eye contact,
try not to even be "thinking" inside of your
responses to what the other said.

Just listen.
Follow breathing.
Be aware of yourself and the other as alive.

Caring this over into making love
the clothes off,
lots of touch,
who knows what's going to happen
way.

Each day.

Your soul needs
food.

If you combine those three with non habitual movement,
the joy juice in life will go way
up.

Try it
and love your life more.

And here's  books on food:

Nourishing Traditions




Green Smoothie Revolution
Green for Life

Raw 50, Carol Alt at 50 not sick for 14 years, beautiful and raw










Here's her starter book:
Eating in the Raw


This on great on fermented foods
and how fun, yummy and vital they can be:










This on how a whole family transformed:
one losing gobs of weight,
one stopping asthma
one stopping diabetes
one ending heart ahrhythmica
(and later they discovered they need to add green smoothies to raw,
Carol adds raw meat and dairy,
also important for super super top notch health,
in my opinion,
and here's.....
Raw Family



And one more,
if I had cancer, I'd closely follow the recommendations for my blood type,
and especially my sub geno type,
laid out in this book:
Diet and Genotype;







And this on relationship, and making more money, essentially by love and giving:
The Go Giver

What about the OT, PT that comes for "free?" A troubling decision for parents of special needs children

This is a tricky question.

Who would want to turn down "free"
help from these professionals who have trained
so hard,
and have such good intentions?

Well, maybe you.

As in all of life:
observation has to be our guide.

Recently I worked with my wonderful little friend
Maggie.

She comes from Fort Worth, about a five hour drive and has either four
or five lessons in a weekend.

Usually, we start a little back from where we ended the last time
and progress to a bit further.

This time, though, her arms just didn't "want" to soften
and act like real arms.

And, of course, I was "working" on the arms
via the spine and pelvis and wrists and legs and feet.

This usually wakens the brain
and the arms starts to float freely,
all connected and happy with the rest of the body.

This time,
the arms,
one at a time,
or together,
seemed tight and "stuck."

I asked the parents if the OT or the PT
was "working" on the arms,
and yes, one was.
I forget which one, but this one was on a campaign
to "get the arms to cross the midline."

A great idea.
A grand Idea.

But it appeared she was doing this the way that is
so "natural"
the FIX IT way,
be more or less yanking continuously and forcing
poor Maggie's arms to cross the midline.

Since no new neurons are being created
in her brain,
and since she isn't discovering this,
this well intentioned yanking has the effect
of teaching Maggie that her arms are
some sort of war zone.

So, even with the roundabout work
from the Anat Baniel method they, these wonderful arms,
were ready to be very mobile.

.....
So, what do you think?
Should these parents let go of this practitioner?

Or try to shift her work.

She's too far away to send to me for lessons,
but that would be great, if she'd come down one weekend.

Best would be for her to take Anat's training,
and maybe second best, for her to watch the DVD set
of Anat leading a weekend workshop.

And, as always, when life isn't
"Just So,"
we have to do our best.

What do you think?