The Other Side of "Lust" -- What are your dreams and goals?

 Another side of Lust:

What do you REALLY want in life?

What is your dream?

What is your PURPOSE/ BIG DREAM?

The Super Power of GOALS

Wedding Vow #9 (Spoken first in public on our wedding day, March 5, 2017. We now say this aloud to each other almost every day, and many a day write it with our finger on each other’s naked body)

“We are joyfully creating a

Long & Happy & Healthy & Enlightened

Love, Friendship & Marriage

that is getting better and better and better

every day”

Here’s the amazing part of life: OUR PAST DOES NOT HAVE TO DETERMINE OUR FUTURE

There is tons of conditioning out there that tries to trick us into thinking that if we failed ten times at something before, we should quit, because number eleven can’t be a success.

We may have struck out on four dates: to hell with it, I’m no good at dating.

We may have flopped at four business: to hell with it, it’s “too hard.”

We may have had one or two bitter divorces or breakups: to hell with it, relationships/ the other sex is impossible.

We may have started writing our book ten times and not finished (this one, being one of those, though you will soon hear how one of those writing “phases” led to a conversation with Carol that turned an hour and a half lunch meeting into a twelve hour discovery session, after which we knew: this is the person for the rest of my life). Temptation: give up.

Reality has many examples of those who failed to get their book accepted, or their business successfully running, or their first one or two or three marriages to work, and then went on to hit a home run.

Actually, one reason this book is being written, is that the failed relationship shift to successful ratio is pretty poor, mainly because the new relationship is almost always based on looking for Mr Right or Ms Right as characteristics instead of practices of connection.

And enough of that: what is your big goal in life?

Is one of them having fabulous love at the center of your life?

I’ve given my ideas of what fabulous love means, and that’s not what this book is about. This book is about you being present to your experience right now, every instant of your life.

This book is about you being happy, almost every instant of your life.

This book is about you either finding a great love for your life, and then having it go through the troubles it needs to in order to get “better and better and better every day”

Or, taking good, bad, lousy, “okay,” or even great love to a more and more expanding and fabulous level.

What do you want?

What do you desire?

What is your dream?

What is your Goal?

And this can be: I want to clean my house.

Better: I want to easily and in delight and presence and a slight giggle be easily cleaning my house a little each day. Better: twenty minutes, or some non scary amount.

It can be: I want fabulous love at the center of my life.

Better: I want to have amazing experiences as I find the amazing partner for my life

or

I want to have daily expansions in all areas of my love: the physical, the emotional, communication, cooperation, listening, friendship, forgiveness, fun.

Those are my lists.

What are yours?

Here’s the day three game: get another journal, and call it your Goals journal.

If you don’t have a goals journal, write on a piece of paper.

If you don’t have paper, write it in the air, or on your leg, or on your partner’s naked body.

Don’t write goals first.

Later, we’ll talk about how when Carol and I had our discovery/ falling in love/ miracle twelve hour beyond the best date you could ever have, one of the things we shared was our favorite Bible verses.

One of mine was Philippians 4:4-7, which ends with something to the effect of: Give Thanks to God and then offer up your petitions.

Our translation: 

Write down gratitudes.

Then write down goals.

Why?

So you will be writing goals from the full and heart opened and real you, not the small and needy and scared you.

So, finally, here’s the game for day three:

Day Three: Lust Game #4 :Write three goals from an Open Heart.

And from being present

How to have an open heart:

Write at least five gratitudes, with a smile on your face, and sensing your torso area as you notice your breathing two.

The heart is surrounded by the lungs.

When we breathe with awareness we help to open our hearts.

The smile is connected to our deep happiness.

When we smile we open up many many avenues to love and delight and the inner child in us.

Day 3:

Warm up for Goals…

Open Heart Gratitude Game:

While following your breathing,

and

having a slight or large smile on your face:

Write on paper, or in your gratitude journal five gratitudes.

I am grateful

I am grateful

I am grateful

I am grateful

I am grateful 

( I didn’t copy and paste)

Deeply enjoy writing these five sentences.

Then stand up and go to a window and stretch your arms above your head, and breathe in deeply and lift up on to your toes and say, “Yes.”

Do this five times.

Then come back and write three goals, or more..

Here’s the deal: these have to be positive goals, not erasing the negative goals.

I want my boss to stop being mean, is a negative goal

I want a fabulous boss who is in happiness and encouragement all the time, is a positive goal

I want to stop being so poor, is a negative goal

I want to shift, easily and in ways beyond what I can ever imagine, to earning at least $200,000 a year. That’s a positive goal.

Notice the goals aren’t just targets, they are about the “how to” of what your life is going to be like on the way to your dreams.

(This is an oft neglected truth in parenting children:

If you say, “Don’t run in the street,” they have a picture in their head of running in the street and just might tear off to do that.

If you say, “Stay on the sidewalk and have fun holding my hand,” they have a picture of something to do that keeps them  where you want them: safe and sound.

It’s the old “Don’t think of a white monkey” thing.

Same with goals:

I don’t want to be poor, and you have the picture of poor.

I want to earn a million dollars a year, and you have a much more compelling picture

Now, WHY you want a million a year is one reason you start with gratitudes.

From gratitude you might want that to help your family, or move to a place where you can love nature even more than you do now.

Without gratitude you might just be feeling badly about yourself and want the million as a cover up to self-hatred)

Day 3, #2:

Writing Goals as a Part of Your Deep Lust for Life

In a goals journal, or on a piece of paper, sense yourself in the present, in your body and your breathing and your smile.

If you write in a goals journal, write them on the left page.

Write at least three goals that really turn you on.

Write them as positive and delightful dreams for your life.

Write about the ease, delight, discovery, friendship, fun that can be a subset of achieving this goal.

Write slowly and smile at the possibility of each one.

Stand up once more and go to a window again, and raise your arms in the air and feel the “Yes” of life as you raise your arms.

Smile.

Wander around and see if you can feel these goals in your body.

And now, alas, and for great good fortune, there is one last part of opening up to the lust for life of admitting and writing down our dreams and goals.

Day Three, #4: Action Steps
In the journal, across from each goal write one possible and interested “action step.”

This may be the usual action step of making a phone call, or writing an email.

It can be very small, but one real action starts making it real to your whole self.

It can be scheduling 15-22 minutes to brainstorm this on paper.

It can be visualizing deeply your life if this goal were accomplished.

It can be having the goal in mind and doing the pelvis and breathing and spine shifting movement meditation to lock it into your body.

There will be many times to refine this through the book.

This book is five days worth of transformational work, that we will be circling through four times.

Day three, day eight, day thirteen will always be to strengthen the goal writing, and big dream part of lust.

And here’s the deal

For the rest of your life, if you want fabulous love at the center of your life, incorporate at least these three activities:

Pelvis rocking with awareness and breath

Write gratitudes at least twice a day

Writing goals at least once a day

The pelvic rocking is to get your energy and sensuality moving in your body where it needs to be for great sex, and great sports and great health and great vitality.

Here it is again

Day Three, #4: Keep up with the "I am alive" pelvic rocking and awakened breathing.

Sit on a firm surface.

Breathing in

Rock your pelvis forward,

Push your belly forward

Raise your sternum easily

Lift your nose and head slightly toward the sky

Say to yourself “I am” as you sense as much of your body as you enjoy

Then pause at the top

And reverse

Breathing out

Rock to the back (spine part) of your pelvis

Pull your belly in

Lower your sternum easily

Lower your eyes and head as if curling in toward your genitals 

Say to yourself “Alive”

Extra credit:

Do this with a smile full time

Double extra credit:

Sense your feet and how they are “grounding” as you are doing this

Quadruple extra credit: feel or visualize your goals as you are doing this.

Good.

Day One and Day Two of Transformational Practices/ Leaving Unhappiness Aside

Day One: Two LOVE games

GRATITUDE…. the first Magic Carpet toward Love

Gratitude is a magic carpet ride. The brain can be in fear, or in gratitude, but not in both.

You can discover this by experience.

And that’s the purpose of this book: taking your life from whatever level it is to a more bright and amazing level. 

This is a book for people who want fabulous love at the center of their life, whether they right now have “the one” or not.

This is a book for people who want fabulous sex, if they have a partner, and fabulous lust/goal connection to your biggest and deepest dreams whether with or without a partner.

This is a book for those who want “enlightenment” as ongoing happiness, ongoing awareness, and ongoing joy (and ongoing service to the Big Picture).

One way to start with love is to up our gratitude practice.

This is essential to loving, to expanding our love, to fighting the mess  of American politics without becoming a mess.

Day One has games for all three of Love, Lust and Enlightenment.

Let’s play two gratitude games today, as our first two love games.

We’ll express gratitude, NOW, two ways.

1, Saying it aloud as we sit. 

2, Writing it down as we sit. 

Gratitude Game #1: SAY ALOUD three gratitudes.

Simple.

Start these three sentences and finish them, and say them aloud:

“I am grateful….”

“I am grateful…”

“I am grateful…”

Gratitude Game #2: WRITE down, in handwriting,  three gratitudes.

Any paper will do, any pen or pencil.

The writing is handwriting, not typing onto a computer or thumbing it into a smart phone.

Not dictating into said smartie phone.

Old fashioned, and so useful.

I am grateful….

I am grateful…

I am grateful…

Finish the sentences.

This can be a chance to be present to your arms and legs and breathing as you write. (Which will be a later, enlightenment “game.” Just a foretaste now.) Carve those gratitudes into the world by feeling your hand move across the page.

WRITE, RIGHT NOW, THREE GRATITUDES.

Not later, alligator. Not when you’ve read a bunch of the book and “have the time.” Right now, write now, and FEEL what begins to shift in you as you do this.

Breathe in.

Smile.

Do the writing three gratitudes now, if you haven’t yet. (even “air writing” if you have no paper)

This is no small thing.

This is a huge thing.

See, notice, be aware of how you feel, as you are doing this.

Does anything shift?

Get ready to have a gratitude journal, one that you write in at least twice a day, once near the beginning and once near the end of the day.

And many more times in between, if you wish and if you like the shift you notice when you slow down and write these gratitudes.

Day One: Two Lust Games

The PELVIS is the Center of Good Movement, Good Breathing and Great Sex

Sit easily somewhere on a relatively firm surface. Sit so that both feet are on the floor and your back is not slumped back into anything.

A soft couch is not so great for this, but a firm chair, or a bench, or a rock are simple great.

Note for those without a partner: If you want to feel better in your back, do these games.

If you want to breathe easier and be more full of life, do this games.

If you want to be healthier and live longer and be mobile up to a hundred years old, do these games.

If the nonsense and depravity in our national politics is “getting to you,” do these games.

You have a right, maybe even a duty, in these awful times to be happy.

And, YOU CAN’T BE HAPPY IF YOU CAN’T MOVE YOUR PELVIS AND BREATHE EASILY AND DEEPLY.

Lust Game One: Rock Your Pelvis and involve Your Whole Spine

This is so simple that you can do this in small amounts at a boring meeting, or in small amounts at a non-boring meeting.

You can do this while eating alone, or eating with friends.

You can even do this while driving.

The curse of modern life, is our disconnection from the body below the neck. We aren’t even aware of what we are hearing or seeing right now, much of the time.

Lost in “thought,” we are marvelous beings trapped in a bunch of words in our heads, which we imagine are “thinking,” but really aren’t.

That can be discovered as this books helps you reconnect with your fuller and more real self.

And for now, 

One: Feel your pelvis against your sitting surface. 

Two: Begin to push your belly forward, and shift your weight farther forward on your pelvis. Forward means the direction you are facing. Forward on the pelvis means your feel your weight shifted more towards your thighs.

Three: As you push your belly slightly forward, lift your sternum just a bit.

Four: As this belly pushing forward, and weight shifting forward on your pelvis is happening, feel the arching in your back, so that someone looking at you from your left side would see a slight C shape in your spine.

Five: As part of this C shape let your nose and eyes raise a LITTLE, and let the back of your head come back a LITTLE, as if you are looking slightly higher up the wall or window or whatever is in front of you.

Six: And then come back to “normal,” whatever “normal” is to you.

This may seem like a lot of words.

Read them twice and try them out, and see if it comes to you.

Here is the short version

One: Shift forward on your pelvis against the chair or bench or rock

Two: Push your belly forward

Three: Lift your ribs and sternum a little bit

Four: Arch your back 

Five: Let your eyes point up a little and the back of your head come back

Six: Come back to “normal”

Do this five or six or ten times. Each time feeling the shift in weight on your pelvis and how that connects to your spine and ribs and sternum and belly and neck and head.

This is a lot.

All good movement lengthens the spine.

All good movement involves the pelvis.

All good sex involves the pelvis.

All good health involves the pelvis.

We are starting slow.

This will calm and enliven your day, no matter where you are.

And now, let’s rock the other way with our spine, again originating the movement in your pelvis.

Lust Game Two: Pelvis Rocking Both ways and your Spine is part of the
“Real Body You” Project

Do all the steps in the prior game, and instead of coming back to normal, add on the opposite direction of pelvis, belly, back, sternum and head.

Like this.

AS you come down,

One: Roll your weight on your pelvis more toward the back, more toward the tail bone, more as if you wanted to actually get the very bottom of your spine to touch the chair or bench or rock.

Two: Pull in your belly.

Three: “Slump” down, and let your sternum come down.

Four: “Round” your back, which means that from the left you now look like a backwards C, and from the right your back is folded forward at the top and the bottom so you look like a C from the right side.

Five: Let your neck come forward, and your nose look down a bit. This one you can let your head move all it easily can do, up to the point of slumping your chin all the way to your chest.

Six: As part of this slumping and rounding forward, let your eyes point as if to the floor or the ground or even down toward your crotch.

Again, here’s the short version:

One: Weight rocking back on your pelvis. 

Two: Pull in your belly

Three: Sternum down toward the legs

Four: Rounding the spine. 

Five: Nose curving in toward the crotch, which is moving toward it.

Six: Back to the midpoint, and then continuing to the arching movement.

So you are going back and forth

Belly in/ belly out

Sternum down/ sternum up

Head down/ nose us

Weight to back of pelvis/ weight to front of pelvis

Back rounded/ back arched

Do this slowly, so it feels good.

Do this even slower, so this feels really, really good.

Do this with the delight in moving your spine and head and pelvis and ribs as a delighted and unified and happy whole.

Do this “many” times.

Which means up to twenty.

Feel the huge shift in 

SPINE SHAPE

WEIGHT ON THE PELVIS

BELLY POSITION

STERNUM POSITION

EYES AND HEAD ORIENTATION

And, best of all: do this slowly enough to feel PLEASURE.

LOTS OF PLEASURE, in the movement of your pelvis and spine and ribs and head.

Do this many times a day.

Let your mind be empty of all those yammering words, and let the pleasure of movement centering on your pelvis be your game and your gift and your transformational delight.

Day One: Two Enlightenment Games

Breathing is Life.

“I am alive” is the core of deep enlightenment

This is so simple.

Life is so simple.

This is so glorious.

This is so glorious.

You are so glorious.

How do you know you are alive?

This may or may not seem complex.

And…

 if you hold your breath for a couple of minutes, you know that you will die if you continue that for much longer.

If you are alive, you are breathing.

If you follow your breathing, you reconnect with the part of your deep self that is alive, and knows it is alive (and really, is deeply grateful to be alive.)

So, now, we are going to add on to the pelvis games with two wonderful additions.

I won’t go through the whole arching and rounding scenarios. You can read them again above.

But in the first game we “simply” add on 

breathing in to the belly out phase of shifting our weight on our pelvis and 

breathing out to the belly in phase.

It is as if you are filling the belly as a balloon as you breathe in and arch up, and

your are pushing the air out by constricting the balloon as you breathe out and round your nose toward your pelvis.

Breathe in and expand.

Breathe out and release.

Feel the truth: you are breathing.

You are ALIVE.

Here’s the full set of steps, if you’d like the whole series of instructions, and it is very good for your mind and body to see how different words are from the reality of life in the moment and in the body

ARCHING 

One: Shift your weight forward on your pelvis

Two: Push your belly forward

Three: BREATHE IN TO THE BELLY MOVING FORWARD. As if your belly is a balloon expanding to fill up with air.

Four: Raise your sternum

Five: Arch your back so that it looks like a C from the left

Six: SLIGHTLY lift your nose and eyes toward the sky or ceiling

ROUNDING

One: Shift your weight back on your pelvis

Two: Pull your belly in

Three: BREATHE OUT AS YOU PULL YOUR BELLY IN

Four: Lower/ “slump” your sternum

Five: Round your back so that it looks like a C from the right

Six: Lower your nose and eyes and head down toward the floor, or your crotch, even to the point of letting your chin, if it can easily do so, slump down on your chest

Do this many times.

Each time enjoying it.

Each time feeling the fullness of being alive as movement.

Each time feeling the fullness of being alive as breathing.

Each time feeling the fullness of being alive as shifting your shape and your weight and your spine head body.

Many times.

Smile while you do this, if you wish.

Stand up and walk around a bit and, if you can, look at something pleasant outside before finishing this next enlightenment game. As you walk, notice your breathing.

Enlightenment Game #2:  One fundamental truth: “I am alive.”

Do all the first game.

And add on,  as you breathe in and arch up, say aloud or to yourself, “I am….”

As you breathe out and round down, say aloud or to yourself, “Alive”

Many times enjoy this simple and most basic truth of our existence: “I am alive.”

See how much of your body you can feel this in.

See how many of your cells can soak in this reality, this miracle.

Day Two: Learning is What makes for anti-aging and transformation

And…

Beginning to learn how to shift out of happiness

Here’s one of life’s weird and wonderful secrets.

You do not have to “try” to be happy.

You do not have to “learn” happiness.

You do not have to “pursue” happiness in the chasing it down meaning of pursuit. ( The pursuit of happiness as a pastime, like say, the pursuit of garden mastery, or the pursuit of classical music, this is the original meaning and big chunk of what we in this book are calling “enlightenment.”)

You are happiness at your core.

We have all learned a bunch of ways to hide this and block this and destroy this, and become unhappy.

It’s as if “ease” is who we really are.

And we have a bunch of bad habits that we use to shift to “dis-ease”

So, on day two, we are going to do everything we did on day one, with the addition of using the games of each day to experience how we can begin to easily and quickly shift out of unhappiness.

As the book develops, this is what we will all be attaining: an ability to have almost continuous happiness.

Don’t you agree: WITHOUT BEING HAPPY, LIFE IS PRETTY MUCH NOT WORTH LIVING.

And of course we aren’t talking ice cream cone, lollipop indulgence happiness. Nor even get the great job happiness.

We are talking the waking up and doing your movements and meditating and eating breakfast and going to work and all that, all that, in a state of ease, grace, flow and happiness.

And here’s how we start.

LEARNING IS ESSENTIAL TO A GREAT LIFE.

LEARNING IS NOTICING A DIFFERENCE THAT MAKES A DIFFERENCE.

Without going into that, you can begin to experience some differences right now.

Day Two, Love Game #3:

Unhappiness contrasted with gratitude

A huge part of the transformations that will take place in this book will be created by your awareness, in different locations, of what goes on when you chose one thing, and what goes on when you chose another.

For this game, have two chairs. One that doesn’t have to be near a table on which you can write. One chair is at a table on which you have your “gratitude journal” if you have one yet, or any piece of paper if you don’t have one.

Have the non paper/ journal chair be the “unhappy” chair.

Start there.

Sit in the unhappy chair, and let your mind dwell on something that “makes” you unhappy. ( We will learn soon who really “makes” us unhappy). Pick something mildly stressful for starters.

Think about it just a little and feel this as emotional, too, usually in your mid body, and almost always as a slight or huge constriction of breathing.

Don’t overdo it. But do get a sense of the thought/ emotion/ body components of unhappiness.

Now, switch to the gratitude chair.

Take a deep breath. 

Feel your pelvis on the chair.

Put a smile on your face, whether you “feel” it or not.

Write, slowly, allowing the opening that gratitude creates, write three gratitudes.

Slowly.

Feeling the pen/ pencil in your hand.

Feeling your aliveness as you write.

Remembering at an emotional and intellectual and even physical level what the gratitude was about.

Notice the two.

Feel the contrast.

This is learning about gratitude. Not in theory. But in your real experience. 

Day Two: Lust/ Pelvis vs wallowing.

One reason most people are unhappy most of the time is that they are so busy living about the neck, and most of the so-called “thinking” that is going on their is words of war against either themselves or another or the world in general (“It’s not fair”)

In this era of “Trump-ism” you can follow the “news” and drive yourself crazy with all the thoughts of “it shouldn’t be this way.”

And it may be well that there is a lot, a huge amount if fact, that could be done far differently and with a  radically more kind and intelligent set of values, and we all need to be able to stop wallowing and come back to the present just as it is.

One of the best ways to come to the present, for those of us at the computer too much and sitting in meetings two much and driving too much, is to MOVE OUR PELVIS. WITH BREATHING. AND A SMILE.

Later: there is a side of “lust” that is about goals, and big goals, and desires, and big desires. What we lust for in life. Our dream.

And the body is always the place to start if we want to be more present and sane and happy and kind.

(And sexy, if we have a partner.)

Game #3 for Lust/Pelvis.

Have two chairs. One chair is once more the worry/ wallow/ unhappy chair.

The other chair is the COME TO FULL LIFE CHAIR.

Start out in the wallow chair, and do just that. Wallow in some small matter that we can use to make yourself unhappy.

Get a rough idea of the thoughts involved (almost always a “should” in there). Feel a bit the emotion and probably some bodily constricting and shutting down.

Now, shift to the COME TO FULL LIFE CHAIR.

Here do the pelvis shifting back and forth, with the back arching and rounding, and the breathing coming in fully and going out fully, and the head and eyes going up and down, and the sternum rising and collapsing.

Do this a lot.

As the place you put all your attention.

Count this breathing and pelvis and movement game so that you do it at least twenty times.

Go for pleasure.

Go for awareness.

Go for noticing the difference in your spine and your pelvis and your ribs and your head position as you go back and forth.

Go for noticing how breathing as a part of full body movement makes a difference in your whole level of well being. 

If you get “bored” it just means that the part of your mind that likes to control you with it’s yammer wants to get back in charge.

Counter-act that with the fullness of sensing your spine and your arms and your legs all the way out to your fingertips and all the way out to your toes.

As you enjoy the breathing coming in and filling you up as you expand your ribs and lungs, and the release of your air going out as you collapse your sternum and allow yourself to round your back and curl in to yourself.

Don’t worry about my words.

Have your experience.

As experience.

This is enlightenment: feeling your experience, right now, as experience, without words describing it, or commentary or judgement.

Just your life, your experience, right now.

This is always ours.

This is always huge.

Day Two, Game #3 for Enlightenment.

Wallowing vs “I AM ALIVE” with movement/ pelvis and breath 

Again two chairs.

One: Wallow a bit in the wallowing chair.

Two: In the FULL YOU CHAIR,  do all the pelvic and breathing movement you did just now, and add on what you did in day one:

Breathe in

Lift sternum

Shift to front of pelvis

Arch back

Look up

SAY TO YOURSELF OR ALOUD: “I AM>>>”

ROCK THE OTHER WAY

Breathe out

Lower sternum

Shift to the back of your pelvis

Round/ collapse/ release your back

Look down

FINISH THE SENTENCE….”ALIVE”

Do this a number of times.

Feel your aliveness.

Experience your aliveness.

Notice the shift.

This is learning that is creating real transformation.

You never have to “fight” unhappiness.

You can always chose to go back to the wallowing chair.

Indeed, you might need to go back and forth a number of times, to feel deeply the contrast.

This isn’t about the intellectual you, “supposed” to chose the chair that relieves the suffering.

This is about the real you noticing that you have options.

Sooner or later the real you will take the option to leave unhappiness behind. For a short while. Or a medium while. Or a long while.