Love is everywhere, just shut up

We walk by a tree
chattering in our head
about this worry
or that plan
or this future conversation
or that past yammer

and we miss the tree

and
if we saw the tree

really saw
without words,
just the light and the color and all the glimmer
and mystery

that would be love

and

all around us

and inside us

there is something, many things
we could be experiencing

in a direct experience
that would be love

so
if we quite the yammer
and just experience

we can be in love
with our toes
or our partner's nose

and the wall of our apartment
or the floor of
our office


and sometims
in this present
we might realize,
we'd like a "better" present

an office with a window that opened say
and friendly people all around

okay
that works

write the goal down
love the goal

look around you
love it until you've got the better place

follow your breath
love being alive


...

this is incomplete

listen to some Adyashanti talks if you want
the fuller picture

smile
smile

sense gravity

enjoy light

enjoy sound

attention on movement
that you invent

and discover

hang out in the "I don't know,"
which is another name for the
NOW

go learn something today

to meet five new people

have an adventure

cheers
Chris

10 Steps to Happiness

Want to be happier?

Let’s play with some ways this could happen, and let me start out saying that happiness is a byproduct of being present and engaged and loving in your life. It’s not something you chase, it’s a barometer that tells you that you are living right.

Okay, let’s play.

One: Do something wrong. If you do tai chi, do some of the moves wrong. If you always button your shirt from top to bottom, go the other way. If you always come late, come early. If you always come early, come late. ( Once. See if the world crumbles)

This came from giving a Toastmasters talk on happiness where I offered 5 ways of being happy. The Sacred Rule in Toastmasters is to always present 3 things. So I presented five and by doing that demonstrated the first step.

Here, I don’t know how many steps I’m going to give which leads me to

Two: Living in “I don’t know.”

Sometimes a very fun thing to do when answering a question is to answer, “Well, there are three/ four/ five aspects to the answer.” Not knowing what they are. And then wing it and fill in.

Goals are sweet and nice and good for your character and all that, and a central trait to all happy people is the ability to let a new goal emerge from the present, a surprising and interesting path that hadn’t occurred to them until just then.

And when people ask you a question, or you are telling yourself you should have it all figured out, Hang out in “I don’t know.”

Three:

Be present.

If you don’t know what’s coming next, or what you are going to say next, or do next, you do know what’s NOW.

Experience that.

As sensation.

As feeling.

As noticing your body shape, where are your arms and legs and spine.

As noticing what images are coming in your eyes.

As noticing what sound is coming in your ears.

As noticing where your breath is, coming in or out, or in a pause.

This you can always know. For certain.

Your own experience of the famous NOW.

Four: Be grateful

Tell someone some things you are grateful for, especially about them.

Five:

Be grateful for stuff you thought was really really bad news.

Recently , the wonderful woman who was my girlfriend and lover, and is my girlfriend and lover, decided to call it quits. Instantly and with no discussion.

This was supposedly a disaster.

Except that it threw me back on loving and enjoying myself, and discovering even more deeply the secrets of happiness. ( The toastmasters talk, was before we got back together)

And when we got back together, I was grateful for the way it went down, and our time apart and our getting together at a newer and higher level.

Six:

Be wrong.

There’s a good saying: “ You can be right, or you can be happy.”

We, this lover and girlfriend and I, got back together by having an almost enlightenment moment, when we got together after 57 days apart to slug it out. I realized instantly and she soon after, that there was no problem. That all our stories about how the other had been wrong were not worth getting into.

That was over. We were in the same room. The love was still there. We were wrong about the other having been wrong.

We were free.

From freedom love can flow easily.

Seven: Let it go.

That was what we did, though not systematically.

There is a deep and thorough way of letting things go, called the Work of ByronKatie.

And there’s a kind of Byron Katie lite method called the Sedona process.

Pick up a pencil. Grasp it tightly. Okay, you’re holding on.

Now loosen a little and let it roll around in your fingers. No you aren’t so stuck.

Now open your hand and what happens? It drops.

You’ve let it go.

Good.

Take some story about how someone else was wrong, or there is something wrong with you and ask these three questions:

Could I let this go?

Would I let this go?

When?

There are no right answers and usually yes, yes and now will get the story dropped.

Try it.

Now.

Eight: Laugh.

On purpose.

For ten minutes.

Just start laughing and keep it up.

You may feel foolish.

Good.

Nine:

Be silly.

Move around for ten or twenty minutes in silly, wrong, new, interesting, being present ways.

Or longer.

Eyes closed.

Goof and notice and enjoy and discover.

This is a hidden two part suggestion: Be silly. Move more.

Ten:

Be curious.

What four more suggestions could you add to this list?

What four more could I?

( I’ll go mine in private. You are welcome to write yours in as comments.

Cheers,

Chris.

does this poem, from slowsonoma.com, tell tons about giving a good lesson?

yes. ( and there is more to a lesson than just learning from the I don't know
state,
but it's a start.

and without upgrading action, too, it's not a real lesson)

Austin geology: Southwest Parkway

today's poem

is

stuck

in the usual place

we get stuck, mind, body, thinking, feeling:

the

this needs to be better

this shouldn't be like this

this arm shouldn't...

this relationship shouldn't...

this world shouldn't...

that place

a ripe place,

good poop crap shit

manure

for the compost of:

"IS IT TRUE?"

the good old turn it around question

the good old wake up

to God = Reality = who rules the scene anyway?

as a friend says:

when i argue with God I

lose

but only 100% of the time

and so

the way out of stuck

is always

"right around the corner"

but not "right" as in right vs wrong

that takes too long, too much suffering a lifetime

of agony

but the  right around

like nearby

right around the corner

from our stuckness

from our suffering is

the question:

Is it True?

Tis it true,

tis it true

tis it true,

Is this thought idea belief batch of blah blah in my head

is it reality

or

just

(sigh: once more)

the good old

blah, blah?

And the answer

Is "Nah," and we're free

or, "I don't know"

and we're in the world

of....

well: you look feel sense notice

....

what's it for you,

the "I don't know" world?

when you are in the "I don't know" world

and you don't have the story you "should" know

what's it like?

the verbal answer to that can even

be

"I don't know"

what it's like to be in the "I don't know" world

which is consistent, if nothing

else

and it's more

a lot more

because without the words

and with the question:

What's it like to be in the "I don't know" world:

 what's your experience

what's your experience

now?

la

la

Not Knowing: Good Food for our life

Not Knowing

When we do the Byron Katie work, a big conclusion is :”I don’t know.” The first question asks: Is it true? And the answer is often: I don’t know.

If we truly live in the present, what the future is going to be: I don’t know.

Brendan remembered from a book on Leonardo diVinci that one of his abilities was to live in the state of, you guessed it: I don’t know.

About Moshe Feldenkrais, it has been said that he had a huge tolerance for ambiguity. He didn’t need to know. He loved not knowing, that meant he got to attempt to learn something.

With a client in WakeUp Feldenkrais and the Anat Baniel Method, we don't have to know the specific outcomes. That is impossible. But we try lots of variations, to create some outcome, some change, some (maybe even radical) opening of possibilities. If we try something and it "doesn't work," great, we are in the I don't know state: we try something else.

Always something to learn, for ourselves and our clients.

A lot like a real relationship, and keeping love alive.

About life: the “such and such is too hard” story often gets undone and dissolves, with the Work, into a state of excited curiosity: I don’t know how to do this YET, and what am I going to do to learn what I don’t know yet.

What I don’t know yet, is the field of potential glories of my life to come.