Do you want to be Happy: Two Huge Choices,

This is chapter one of the book, which is now better and better and has the magnificent title of:

here it is, for your transformation and delight:

The Juicy Now, Love, Gratitude and the Wonderful Life

What are you aware of right now?

SPEAK five sentences, aloud, starting with the words, “Now I am aware….”

Do it.

Now.

As you read this book, there will be a lot of action, action that will always be as much in the juicy now as possible.

Here’s the deal: we are alive. Someday we are going to die. In between we have two great choices:

SUPER CHOICE #1:

LIVE IN THE PRESENT, OR BE LOST IN THE PAST OR THE FUTURE

Not that learning from the past is a waste of time. We’d be fools not to. But, and this is a HUGE but, a large percent of human misery is complaining/ demanding/ wishing that the past have been different.

Can’t be done.

Not even yesterday.

Not even ten minutes ago.

Living in the future is again usually an escape from our real life as it is happening, a having our feet ten steps ahead of us, and getting in trouble.

And the future is hugely important as a pointer, as the place we empower our dreams, as the hangout for our visions of the more amazing us we can be as we live a more amazing life. It can be magical and transformational and juicy to have large and amazing goals for the future.

AND, right now, and now and now, as you move toward the future, is the only place you can be happy. This is the moment by moment choice: happy or unhappy. 

And…

Why waste life being unhappy? If you don’t it yet, being in fear is, along with being out of the present, one of the major ways we all waste our lives and live in unhappiness.

You can’t be afraid and be happy. 

And here’s the miracle of clear choice:

This is choice #2

YOU CAN’T BE IN FEAR WHEN YOU ARE IN EITHER LOVE/ LIKE / OR GRATITUDE

You can be in either love or in fear, but not in both.

You can like things and yourself and moments and people in your lifew, or be in fear. And you can’t be in both.

You can be in either gratitude or in fear, but not in both.

If you live in fear you can’t be happy. And here’s the fun benefit you can change your life with right now: wishing ourselves from unhappiness to happiness is usually not that easy a feat, but shifting, right now to either “I love..” and filling in the sentence, is not that hard.

Even easier is shifting, right now, to filling in this sentence: “I am grateful….”

So, here we go with the next two fundamental and crucial practices toward a life of transformation, ease, happiness, love and great sex.

FUNDAMENTAL ONGOING JUICY HAPPINESS PRACTICE #1: GRATITUDE

As I’ve said before, and brain research is proving, you can be in fear, or you can be in gratitude.

Not both.

So, now, write five sentences like this:

“I am grateful….”

“I am grateful…”

“I am grateful…”

“I am grateful…”

“I am grateful…”

THERE IS A BONUS FOR SMILING AND SENSING YOUR HAND AS YOU WRITE THESE DOWN.

Write these anywhere, on any piece of paper. Go out and get yourself a gratitude journal as quickly as possible.

Write in it at least 3 times a day.

This is your prayer to the glory of life. This is your remembrance of the miracle of being alive.

And an “I am aware…” journal.

And a goals journal. Later on that, but transformation means that you get to be present and be happy and be healthy and starting to create a vision for the fabulous (or more fabulous) life you want for yourself.

For now though, let’s run through all three:

Saying aloud…

“Now I am aware….”

“I love…”

“I am grateful…”

Try different orderings of these three. This book needed to start with the Now.

But this is the order I prefer in my day, and it’s the order that Carol and I use to say aloud to each other before we meditate:

Five each of

“I am grateful….”

“I love…”

“Now I am aware…”

Try this with your children. Help them dip continually into what is best and juiciest in life.

Don’t you wish you’d been taught this as an ongoing practice when you were young?

Try this throughout your day. Spend a minute or two saying aloud or writing down one or two or three of each.

Notice what happens to your mood.

Have a gratitude journal.

Write in it at least twice a day (beginning and end). If you want a miracle life, go to at least three times a day. (Wait until I tell the story of meeting the love of my life who moved in half a block away, and was getting ready for me and vice versa as one of the things I was doing three times a day was writing a long list of gratitudes and of goals)

Super Game #2:

Write down five things you love.

You can do this in a separate “Like and Love” journal, or as part of your gratitude journal.

And here, first time around, write on anything. 

As long as you are handwriting.

It can be in the air or on your leg.

Better a piece of paper.

Better collected with all your other likes and loves and gratitudes.

Simple, though, and do it right now, write now, and do this anytime and any time and every time in your life that you want to switch out of fear and into reality.

(Reality is God as Love, and you don’t have to believe in God. You do know that life is at its best when you are loving and being loved. 

That’s the core.

And it’s the Universe, too.

Life is Love.

So going to love at least three times a day is praying to what Life is really about.)

And right now, write now, five sentences:

I love….

I love….

I love…

I love…

I love…

Read these over.

Maybe even read these aloud.

And then proceed to game 3. Which we started with, but I wanted to position it as game #3, because this is the sequence Carol and I start our meditations and our going to sleep in:

Gratitude.

Love.

The present.

Game #3: Write down, or say aloud, or both, five things you are aware of right now.

Not thoughts.

Not opinions.

Not even emotions.

Just pure observation with no commentary and no judgment.

“Now I am aware…”

“Now I am aware…”

“Now I am aware…”

“Now I am aware…”

“Now I am aware…”

If you write these, perhaps you can start a love and awareness journal, because it is very fine, very useful, transformative to have gratitude journal.

And do it.

This is the third game…

to start this book

to start any meditation

to get out of shitty moods and worry (which is always about fear)

to get back into the juicy now and the love of life and your higher, real self.

That’s what this book is about: finding and living in happiness each and every moment in your real self as you

one: enjoy every second of your life

two: move toward and achieve your life dreams

three: do this with a fabulous partner if that is what you wish

Good.

That’s chapter one.

And if all you do is these three things twice a day the book will have already changed your life.

Good.

A full time meditation if you please: 10 fingers, 10 toes...

Five ways of Meditation:
Two: Sensing Arms and Legs and Noticing Gravity

Do you want to wake up to the now?

The now is always now and so “meditation” is a bit of a cop out: what about the other 23 hours of the day. If you even meditate an hour a day.

And why sit, eyes closed, or open, and see what happens with an agenda to do nothing, to stay away from texts and internet and talking and cleaning house and driving and talking.

Talking, talking, talking.

Have you noticed what a waste of time this usually is?

If not, start to notice: do you have anything new or useful to say? Does the person talking really care about talking to you? Can they listen?

Can you listen?

And here meditation comes in handy.

What if you practiced really listening to yourself, moment by moment for ten or twenty or thirty or forty minutes?

What would you discover?

Meditation is a chance to slow down the conditions and see who we really are without all the hubbub.

And this meditation is about having a container for anything you might be feeling or thinking.

It has a strikingly simple premise: we live, on this Earth, in a body. Paying attention to this body, not in a narcissistic way, but in a moment by moment way of sensing what is, this paying attention is to ground ourselves in the stunningly obvious and often forgotten truth.

WE ARE ALIVE RIGHT NOW.

So here’s the meditation. It is about you spending time for ten minutes or more twice a day noticing this subset of the obvious: you are in a body that has a skeleton.

Moving the skeleton is how we stand and walk and hug and eat and cook our meals and build our houses and play tennis and make love and dance.

We move because we are alive. Knowing where the skeleton is, either consciously or unconsciously, is linked to everything we do.

Almost everything.

Even sitting here, or standing, or laying and reading this, your skeleton is arranged, usually without your knowing it, in ways that keep the book where you want it to be.

Now, we’ll meditate on how to be more aware, all day, of this wonderful skeleton of ours.

Specifically: the arms and fingers. And the legs and toes.

Just for a starter, before we even meditate: notice  that something is holding your head up.

Good.

Notice that your have ten fingers, probably, and that each set of fingers is at the end of an arm, an arm that goes from finger tip to the shoulder blade.

Notice that you have ten toes, again usually anyway, and that each set of toes is at the end of a leg that starts at the hip.

You have two arms and ten fingers.

You have two legs and ten toes.

You have a spine that holds up your head.

Your head has two eyes that see the world.

Two ears that hear the world.

You have a nose that breathes in air and a belly that could be the bottom of your breathing as you take air deep into your lungs by expanding your diaphragm out by letting your belly soften and expand.

This is it.

10 fingers

10 toes.

belly

eyes

ears 

nose

That’s the ditty to remind you of where to go in this meditation.

You might want to read this several times before you try, or have someone read it to you.

There is no real correct way.

It’s just filling up with attention on the animal basics of you in the present moment.

Meditation #2:  10 fingers, 10 toes, belly, eyes ears & nose

Sit in a chair or on a bench or at the edge of your bed. 

Have both feet on the ground.

Breathe easily and feel the air coming in your nose.

Breathe a little deeper and feel as if you are breathing into your belly.

Love this.

Smile a little bit if the urge comes.

Smile a little bit if the urge doesn’t come.

Start to sense the toes of your right foot. Grove on that, and then easily add on the rest of your right leg, moving slowly up, through the ankle and the lower leg and the knee and the thigh, till you “fill in” the whole leg with sensing and awareness from five toe tips to the hip.

Hang out their for awhile, just with the right leg. (“Just!” Notice how big a chunk of your real estate that even one leg is.)

Now, keep the right leg in awareness, and add your attention to the tips of the fingers of your right hand. Then slowly move attention to add on the rest of the fingers and the palm and whole hand and the wrist and the lower arm and the elbow and the upper arm, all the way to the shoulder.

There is no rush in this.

You keep the right leg “lit” with awareness, as you add the right arm.

Then enjoy this two limb, one sided feeling for awhile.

Sense your right leg and your right arm in their entirety. Recall the air in the nose and down to the belly, too.

After a bit of this, keeping those two in awareness, add on attention to the left shoulder (you are going “around the world” in attention).

Sense the left shoulder and then slowly bring your attention down, through the entirety of your upper arm, and then your left elbow and then your lower arms, wrist, left hand and out the fingers of your left hand.

Breathe easily and fully.

Sense all three limbs you’ve “lit up” so far.

When attention strays in this meditation, come back to where you were on the circle and continue.

Add the last limb, the left leg, starting at the hip bone, and then going through your left thigh to your left knee, and then down through the lower leg to the left ankle and left foot out to all five of the left toes out to the tips.

Now you are four.

All four limbs in awareness.

Breathing into and enjoy the rootedness of that.

Stay there for awhile.

Add on your pelvis, both sides, and then go slowly up your spine, lower spine, middle spine, top of the spine (aka "neck") keeping the arms and legs in attention and awareness too.

Feel your “five lines,” the main organizing tool of your brain when you are in any movement.

Enjoy your five lines.

Breathe, from your nose, down into your belly.

With the belly reminding you of the bottom of the spine.

And the nose reminding you of your head at the top of the spine.

Keeping all this in awareness, add on the ears, and what sounds are coming into your attention.

You are now grounded in inner and outer attention, all in present reality.

Sense what you sense.

Hear what you hear.

Skip all labelling and comparing and commenting on any of your sensations.

Hang out in the fullness of sensing and breathing and listening.

Then open your eyes and see what light is bringing into your eyes as images of the outer world.

Return to smiling if you forgot.

This is a fun world.

This is a full world.

Arms, legs, spine, breathing, ears, eyes.

Enjoy this.

Realize that you can be in this fullness all day.

Talking, walking, reading this book, doing your work, driving your car.

It’s harder the more mental the activities become.

And this can be the grounding of all activity no matter how mental.

Can you do this?

Sometimes maybe.

See how often you can return to this as a reality grounding for the rest of your life.

This is you, alive, in a living body, right now.

Enjoy. 

Be fascinated, because you are fascinating.

You are alive.

Amazing!