Love, Lust, & Enlightenment
Eight Principles to Transform Your Life
1. Be Grateful
2. Be Present
3. Real Learning is the real use of your Brain
4. Be Peaceful/ The truth will set us free/
“I’m an ass, you’re an ass, let’s have a laugh”
5. Reach for and connect with the (Divine) Life Energy/
Write Goals from “the energy” and your Real Self
6. More Love/ More Sex (Every Day or More)/
More Fun/ More Awareness
7. Be Happy (full time, even “bad times”)
8. “Save the World” / Have a Huge Purpose
Chris Elms, M.A.
360-317-4773
chriselms@vom.com
Copyright—— 2017
Principle One: Gratitude
The mind/ brain/ heart can be in gratitude or fear/ but not both
The mind/ brain/ heart can be in gratitude or fear/ but not both
Find Gratitude in Your Heart (Love)
and in your Body (Lust)
and in your Awareness of the Miracle of Life (Enlightenment)
Grateful for Carol and I.
On June 20, 2015, I walked down the street on which I lived, to meet a woman I knew and admired and liked, but with whom I thought I had no “romantic” expectations. We were going to meet for a lunch and “study” session. I was writing a book on radical listening. She was smart and kind and I wanted her input. Her name was Carol Williams then.
It’s Carol Elms now.
One of the glories of my life on that day when I walked unexpectedly into a new and wonderful life was my practice of Gratitude.
I had a gratitude journal, in which I was writing three to five times a day.
Writing gratitudes does many things for you, and was doing them for me.
It focuses you on what you love about and appreciate about life.
By doing so, it keeps your attention on what you WANT in life, not on the complaints and Don’t Wants that so many lose their attention in.
Gratitude has been proven to help shift our brains. These wonderful brains of ours have been shown scientifically to be able to be in either gratitude or in fear.
But not both.
So when I walked a half a block down to the house that is now Carol and my house, I wasn’t in fear.
I was focused on what I love and like and was grateful in life.
Carol, for her part, a a vigorous prayer life. She wanted to discover the deep and real parts of Christianity, and communing several times a day about her deepest wishes and her thankfulness and gratitude was a big part of her life.
She was sixty-six. I was seventy. We both had plenty of reasons to believe that chances of finding a life partner were pretty slim. If not impossible. So, neither of us were counting on, nor even expecting a miracle.
We were going to have lunch together and talk about my book.
We weren’t counting on a miracle, but gratitude had us both ready and able to let it unfold.
The one and a half hour lunch meeting turned into a twelve hour “non-date,” at the end of which, I just barely dragged myself away (and she just barely let me) and we were pretty darn sure we’d meet the love mate that we’d almost, but not quite, feared wasn’t out there.
And we had our secret fuel: we were in gratitude.
So fear didn’t win.
The miracle did.
Now it’s your turn.
Gratitude and Love
One reason I am writing this book is out of gratitude for my teachers, and for my Life, and for the Deep/ Holy Spirit.
I have had wondrous joys and learnings in my life and would love you to have access to the same.
Love comes from the heart.
I love the idea and the FEELING of writing this book for you.
I love the miracle of several years ago walking down the street on which I lived and meeting a woman who would, within a year, become my life, even though I was seventy at the time and she was sixty-eight.
I am deeply grateful I was engaged in “energy” practices and involved in being deeply present, and was writing a book, the precursor to this one, in which there was a communications game that gave Carol and I a chance to get to know each other better and better and better.
You will be given “energy practices” later, and an access to a somewhat amazing source of this energy, and you will be given, as principle #2, the incentive to base your life around being in the present moment, and you will be given, again as part of principle #2, a similar communications game, based on listening and speaking from the present.
For now though, let’s play our first Awakening Game.
Love and Gratitude Game #1:
Say aloud five things you are grateful for. Feel your heart as you say these five.
Really, do it now. This is not a book to “just read” and imagine “doing it” later.
Say aloud five things you are grateful for, and be as present to your body and your voice and your heart as you can be while you do so.
This is a book for those who feel the stirring to live an awakened life. The word “Enlightenment” is in the title, and I’m assuming that this word calls to something in you that deeply values not only being in the magic of the present moment, but has at least tasted what a life that was lived from our Real Self, rather than our conditioned self, would be like.
Gratitude is an avenue to our real selves.
Brain research has shown that we can be either grateful or afraid, but not both.
With fear we almost always are slave to our conditioning, which, if you had parents anywhere as lousy as mine, isn’t very good news.
With gratitude we can be grateful even for those lousy parents, and as the book progresses, forgiveness and it’s fundamental component (not believing our thinking) will be part of the principles to set us free for a life a great happiness, sexiness, love and purpose.
Gratitude helps your heart remember one of the key elements of this life: the miracle that we are alive.
This return to gratitude cannot be done too much. When the wheels of fate, and the Gods of Love, and the energy of the Universe conspired for Carol and I to fall in love, two old farts who had almost given up on the possibility of finding someone as wonderful as we were, and willing to put up with and adore us in spite of the less perfect side, a huge part of my life was the writing of gratitudes at least four times a day.
So, let’s get another sense, our arms and our handwriting, involved in gratitude.
Love and Gratitude Game #2:
Write down at least four things you are grateful for.
Feel again your heart area as you write.
If you have a journal you can start as your daily gratitude journal start in there. If you only have a spare piece of paper or the back of scrap mail, start there.
But now, like this now, right now, write now, write four gratitudes.
Sense your hand as you write.
Follow your breathing as you write.
Have a smile on your face as you write.
Now.
Write now.
How did that go?
This is going to be part of how you live your life.
Or, a good time to quit the book. If you wish to read and not do, then this won’t work for you: to change we actually have to do things.
Although, sometimes the “doing” things, will be to “Do Nothing” as we take a walk and sense our arms and legs, or to sit in silence and find the awareness at our center. Or find four minutes every hour to “be still and know I am God.”
All of which are a switch out of the same old same old.
If you aren’t at least a little discontent with what happens when your conditioned self runs your life, this book is totally not for you.
And if you are slightly to hugely discontent, and willing to dream of a fantastic future for yourself, as a spiritual being, as a lover, as a human being living and loving and learning in a body, as a person who is meant to make a HUGE difference on this planet, then this is a good book to hang out in for half an hour a day or so.
For how many days?
Until you are done.
And then, probably, go back to the beginning and do it again.
Too much trouble?
For sex every day?
For forgiving the annoying/ wonderful partner and your parents and yourself?
For almost full time happiness?
You decide.
This really is a book for those who want to transform, to become the even more amazing people they want to be.
One of the principles will be to have big goals and to write them down, and before we can do that, we need to have ourselves rooted in the present and in gratitude.
Gratitude and Lust:
The book title is with Lust, So you have been clued in: this enlightenment is not above the world, not above the sensual pleasures of normal life.
I’m even hoping that you are wanting a healthier sex life, which includes at least three things:
Sex fairly often, like daily or more.
Sex as a mediation, so it’s not the usual thrashing around.
Sex as variety, with lots of time for “non-reciprocal” sex, so each of you has plenty of chance to surrender and receive without the usual conditioned program about performance.
One of my huge gratitudes is not only did the love of my life move into town half a block away, not only did we meet and talk in the present and talk and listen and talk and listen, and share Bible verses and deep philosophy and fall in love, but that as “old timers” we are together both having the best sex of our lives, better than we did in our twenties and thirties.
So the enlightenment of this book is a sexy, sensuous kind.
This is kind of obvious, and many, many of us life a life where this is forgotten: we live in a body.
We have feet and legs and toes.
We have arms and hands and fingers.
Fingers can touch.
We can hold hands.
We have genitals. They can touch.
We can touch genitals with fingers, with tongues, with mouths.
Lots of possibilities.
And where shall we start gratitude and lust.
Gratitude and Lust Game #1: Stand up.
Put your arms above your head.
If possible stand outside or near a window with a view of outside.
Wiggle your arms around.
Jump up and down and side to side a bit.
Smile.
Feel ALL of your fingers.
Feel your breathing.
Feel ALL of your toes.
Keep smiling.
Do this for a little longer than seems “sensible.”
Feel the gratitude/ “kick”/ joy of being alive.
Smile even more if you wish.
Go on.
Do this.
Not write now, but right now.
I know, I know, it’s so much easier to just read and imagine doing this later, to put this in the “get around to-it” bin.
And don’t.
Stand.
Wiggle.
Sense all toes and all fingers and smile and know you are in a body and alive.
This is a big deal.
Can you feel gratitude.
For being alive in a body?
For all of your fingers?
For all of your toes?
For breathing.
For the fun of wiggling around?
Gratitude and Lust Game #2:
Stroke your right hand with your left.
Feel the left hand and how it is touching your other hand.
Then switch attention, feel the right hand and how it is being touched.
Try some variation: faster/ slower
And longer/ shorter
And harder/ softer.
Feel gratitude from the point of view of the stroking/ caressing/ exploring hand.
Feel gratitude from the point of view of the receiving and being stroked/ caressed/ explored hand.
Isn’t it great to touch and be in a body?
This will come in handy later with a certain very, very gentle stroking of the clitoris (for those in a relationship with a woman), this variation of softer/ firmer and the variation of longer and shorter and the variation of faster and slower.
Really.
Do it.
Stand and do it.
Stand and breath and smile and do it.
Good.
Do this again, but switching teams.
The right hand caresses/ explores and the left hand receives.
Very much enjoy this as one gives and one has the pleasure of simply receiving.
Again, feel gratitude in the giving hand and gratitude in the receiving hand.
Let the variation be part of both hand’s fun and pleasure and gratitude.
What does this have to do with gratitude?
People love to be touched.
Not everyone has a partner. Or a partner who wants to “play” or has time to play. (If they don’t this could be an interesting conversation, but maybe first get more practice in learning to listen from the present.) BUT IF YOU DO HAVE A PARTNER THAT WILL “PLAY,” LET’S CARESS ANOTHER PERSON’S HAND.
AND BE GRATEFUL FOR THE SENSE OF TOUCH. AND FOR THIS PERSON’S WILLINGNESS TO BE OUR TOUCH PARTNER
And, if you do have a partner, then go ahead and play the next game.
Lust and Gratitude Game #3
One partner present one hand to be the receiver.
The other partner use both hands to caress and stroke and explore this hand.
Use the variations listed above and more.
Faster/ slower.
Firmer/ softer.
Longer/ shorter.
And more.
Be grateful to receive.
Be grateful to give.
Set a timer.
Do this for three minutes.
Then switch.
Feel again, from the other side, the gratitude of giving and the gratitude of getting.
And why should you listen to me?
Don’t listen to me, as in believe me.
Listen like this: “I wonder what will happen if I try these games out?”
Give yourself the gift of exploration.
Which will lead to an expansion of who and how you are.
And in life we really only have two choices: to expand, or to contract.
(Have you been doing the exercises? All along, if you have been reading them and not doing, look carefully at yourself as someone “too important”— which means too trapped into their head and the verbal world— to actually ACT in the world and a new and interesting way.)
Enlightenment and Gratitude
This is bizarrely obvious and it’s the most missed part of human existence as far as I can tell.
We are in the miracle called life.
We are not a rock, not a car, not a horse, not a house, not a dog.
We are a human being.
We are alive.
Enlightenment and Gratitude Game #1:
Realize that you are alive.
Feel the wonder of that.
This is either immediately obvious or not.
Some of those reading may be in some of mess. Splitting with their mate. Life not making sense. Stuck in some addiction and whatnot.
The list goes on and on.
And guess what?
Gratitude is the way out.
Go back to writing and saying gratitudes.
Go back to wiggling around.
Try this if straight ahead gratitude for your existence doesn’t grab you:
Enlightenment and Gratitude Game #2:
Go outside.
Look at the sky or a tree or a hill or a cloud or a squirrel or a bird, or a leaf or a rock.
Anything that makes you happy.
Feel that you can be aware of that.
Feel yourself as an awareness.
Feel this awareness AS YOU.
Enjoy that.
Feel gratitude for the awareness you are.
This sounds like I may be pushing something on you.
I am.
Except, like everything in this book, it’s about your discovery, not your belief.
This is the only thing we really have: OUR EXPERIENCE IN THE PRESENT MOMENT.
EVERYTHING ELSE IS PAST OR FUTURE OR COMMENTARY.
To delight in our experience in the present moment we need to come there, which brings us to our second principle, the good old fashioned: Wake Up to Now principle.
(And, there are goals, and purpose and big dreams, but all along, if we aren’t present it doesn’t matter how grand the goals are, we are lost to being alive in the now. Which is when we are alive.)
Enlightenment and Gratitude Game #3:
Experience your experience right now.
This now.
Notice it changing and changing and changing.
So what?
Be present to your present.
Feel gratitude for that ability, that gift, that miracle.
Good.
So many of us have great gaps in our days, or our weeks, or even our years, when we don’t really know we are alive.
Notice what happens for you when you return to this central truth of life: WE ARE ALIVE, RIGHT NOW.
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