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!

Delusions that keep people in suffering

The past determines the present.

Forgiveness is a sucker's racket.

Life is bearable without a great love at the center.

Happiness is for later, or other people, or both.

Waking up is impossible.

Life outside the present is real life.

Fun and challenges are not compatible.

Fun and work are incompatible.

Fear is what life is all about.

Bitterness gets you somewhere.

Complaining shifts the past around and other people jump to and act the way you want them to.

Stillness is not next to Godliness.

Silliness is not next to Godliness.

Godliness is hooey. And not fun, if it isn't hooey.

If you are feeling badly now, you need to be feeling badly five minutes from now.

You have no choice.

Love is for other people, or later.

If love isn't happening, it's the other person's fault.

You don't deserve a wonderful and amazing life.

If you are in the "I don't know," the world will fall apart

Solutions come from "trying harder" and "grit"

There is no God

There is no ongoing source of grace/ love/ energy/ delight

Life is rough, no fun, and you have a right to be stuck

Challenges mean that life sucks

If life sucked last week, it's going to suck this week

Laughing is bad for you

Movement with joy is for fools

Love is a myth

There is no way out of suffering

To live in love and happiness all the days of your life

How many times am I going to rewrite, Love, Lust and Enlightenment?

As many as if takes to write it from awake and happy and in love.

Which these new, first two chapters are written in.

Enjoy.

Why wait?
This is your life, NOW!

Please think of two things you love about life. Imagine writing them down. Breathe a little more deeply as you think about them, and let at least a hint of a smile come to your face.

Now please stand.

And go to the nearest window with the best view of something outside.

Look at the most pleasant thing outside and lift easily up on to your toes and come back down ten times.

Breathe with this in a way to make it pleasurable.

Stop and look around outside, and feel your connection to gravity and to breath.

Now, lift up onto your toes again, this time twenty times, with a hint of a smile and some softening and deepening of your breathing as you do this. (Extra credit, for each count from one to twenty sense a new toe or finger. That'll get you to twenty and get your mind WAY out of thinking. Notice, if you'd like, how a break from thinking tends to feel like happiness.)

Now, come back to the book

Get a pen or a pencil and a piece of paper or a journal. Write four sentences that start like this…

I love…

I love…

I love…

I love…

Then read over your list and feel whatever you feel when you read a list of four things/ people/ places/ parts of yourself/ experiences that you love.

Then stand again and go to the window, looking again for something or things pleasant to gaze at.

Then lift again to your toes and add on this: as you lift to your toes, raise your arms up and above your head.

Breathe with this in some easy way.

Do this at least 20 times. (Again, for extra fun and "awareness muscle building," sense the ten toes and ten fingers one by one as you do this. It really is fun.)

Go slowly enough to feel your body and skeleton from feet and toes to arms and finger tips.

See if you can notice something new each time you do it.

Now come back to the book, and to your pen or pencil and your paper or journal.

Please write four sentences, that start like this and that you finish,

I am grateful…

I am grateful…

I am grateful…

I am grateful…

Now read over the four “I love…” sentences and the four, “I am grateful…”

Feel how you feel.

Then stand again and go to the window again, and do at least twelve more of the movements where you lift your heels and lift your arms and smile at least a hint and let your breath be synched with the movement.

Then go outside, if you can and take a little walk.

This book is about transformation. It is a set of joyful pathways to an awakened, happy and love filled and successful life. Conscious movement, especially with pleasure and learning brings about transformation.

Gratitude brings about transformation.

Love is at the center of life, and when you recognize that this is who you really are, that brings transformation.

And even before you realize that, returning to love brings transformation.

(So does having a hint of a smile -- or more-- on your face. Just saying, in case you want to instantly upgrade your vibration.)

You have begun transformation.

As you walk, feel and sense your body and think and feel about more things you love and are grateful for. And smile at least a hint of a smile.

Do you want Awakened Love at the Center?

This is a book for those who want an awakened love at the center of their lives. And who want that awakened love to spread out to family and friends and the healing of the whole world. 

(The whole world? Yes. Starvation over, world peace, and an end to the ecological mess-- that's a few of the places awakened love can move to and begin to heal. This is not a book for selfish people, but if you've played the games in the first chapter, you are probably well out of the normal rut, and so you know, at least at some level that happiness and the narrow and selfish life just cannot be lived together.)

If you have another person in your life who could be or is your partner in waking up to AWAKENED LOVE, great.

If you have another person in your life who is driving you crazy and with whom you want that shifted to fabulous and AWAKENED LOVE, great.

If you have no one in your life, and want someone in your life, for the fun of it and the love of it and the waking up of it, great. AWAKENED LOVE beckons and you don't know where or how you'll find it, great.

It's waiting there.

I'm a fun story of that, having had God/ the energy/ grace lead me to the love of my life half a block away when I'd almost given up and then stopped that giving up nonsense and shifted to happiness and awareness and writing goals and writing lots and lots of gratitudes.

If you are looking for someone, first we'll help you find yourself, and then fall more deeply in love with life, and then another person almost has to come along, there being such a lack of really great people.

As you become more and more of the really great person that you really are, then the wonderful person who is also lonely for someone equally great is almost inevitably going to find you.

They might even be moving in half a block away, the way Carol did for me.

So...

Even if you are discouraged and can’t seem to find anybody, this book is for you.

Even if you have had a rough divorce, this book is for you.

Or a rough and awful breakup, this book is for you

Even if you have had that really really rough road of having lost a mate to death, if you are ready to have a deep committed love again, this book is for you.

If you want AWAKENED, FUN, HAPPY, SATURATED, YUMMY LOVE AT THE CENTER OF YOUR LIFE, THIS BOOK IS FOR YOU.

Okay, time for some action.

Get out your pen or pencil and your gratitude journal, and write five things for which you are grateful.

Now, write now.

Enough reading.

If you want AWAKENED LOVE, writing gratitudes at least three times a day is going to be a new nourishment.

Food for your soul.

And your luck.

Go on, write now, right now, write. 5 gratitudes.

Smile.

And yes, now go to a window.

And instead of up and down on the toes, do this: arms out to the sides, and slowly, counting on the toes and the fingers, rotate left and right side to side twenty times.

With a smile.

And awareness of breathing.

And awareness of pleasure.

And awareness of gravity.

And awareness of that minor detail: you are alive.

RIGHT NOW.

Back to reading. 

About? About who this book is for, which is you if you want joy, awakening and love, as well as successful and delight work/career/creation, at the center of your life.

And...

If you have no one in your life, and want to keep it that way, but you do want something else to be the center of your life, a center you love and cherish, that’s great too. This could be your art, your God, Nature. It might even be your work, though many people who claim to be in love with their work, are really addicted to getting things done as an escape from realizing who and what they are in the present moment.

And their are those who love their jobs.

This book , Love, Lust and Enlightenment is for you if you wish to shift so that you love EVERYTHING,  including your job and your mate or your health and your friends and your family. 

If you want everything to be love.

If you want everything to be a turn on.

If you want everything to be enlightenment!

Then this book is for you.

Now, go to the window again, look out smile and go up on the toes with the arms up and every time your arms go up say, "Yes!" 

Twenty times, all the toes and all the fingers.

Smile easily.

Breathe easily.

Be happy.

Become More Amazing

Hey, hi!

Try this: smile, take a deep breath and write down on thing amazing about you.

Look at that.

How does that make you feel?

Good?

Now, swap the pen or pencil over to the other hand, and write two things you love about life.

Go on, right now, write now.

Look at all three things you've written.

Breathe deeply again and keep smiling.
Swap the pen or pencil back to the habitual hand and write three things you are grateful for.


Good.
Now stand up and put your arms up in the air and jump up and down a little bit and wiggle a little bit and make some fun sounds.

Okay. This is the real you.
Full of love and fun and knowing your are amazing.

Then, there's the other parts of us.
Pretty good and wanting to be great.
Fair and wanting to be great.
Crappy and wanting to be great.

And, you've got six things down proving there's a higher and more wise and happy part of yourself.

That's what co-active coaching is about. Look it up at TheCoaches.com

It's the most widely used coaches training in the world, and weird in times when most popular usually means degraded, it's very much the cutting edge.

Why>
Because it focus on the client/ coachee.

The coaches job is to ask and listen and bring love and appreciation and intuition to helping the coachee get wonderful results in all aspects of life.

The Being aspects: inner peace, love, content, wisdom, fun, ease.

The Doing aspects: making the money, finding the true love, building your health.

This is for people who want FULFILLMENT.

Enough said.
It's taken forever to get back to blogging, and I'm committing to posting something at least once a week.

As the lead page says, text for a 30 minute sample Co-Active Coaching session if you'd like.

The nice thing about now
Is
There is no waiting around

We're all there
Already

What do YOU want? I mean, You, the real you, not the trained seal

Who are you?

How amazing do you want your life to be?

     
    Are you one of the people Love, Lust and Raw Enlightenment coaching is designed to help with life joy, delight, love and transformation?

Is this you????

You want more love in your life. Again: You want more and deeper love in your life.

This can take many forms.

You have a pretty good relationship and you want a spectacular one. This can take the form of having better communication, or better sex, or more fun, or resolution of “issues” that are never broached, or “just” plain old enlightenment.

Just plain old enlightenment means that instead of going through the motions, no matter how polite and well choreographed, you are awake and present to each other most of the time.

Including the hardest of times: when you are talking.

Or the even harder of hard times: when you are in disagreement and one or both want to slip slide slump into reactivity and conditioned responses that have been automatic for a couple of million years.

You have a dull relationship, and you are tired of the boredom and the stagnation and the lack of connection. 

This is common.

Gad this is common and all our electronic devices make it so much easier to ignore. You “just have” to check your email, or your phone, which is glued to your eyeballs, as your breathing almost stops and your posture hunkers over your little device.

And when you are finally ready and willing to talk to your partner, there they are, “too busy,” as they are hunkered over, hardly breathing, some oh so important text or Facebook hooey, and it’s so convenient to forget about you.

And even before devices, people read newspapers, watched sports, watched TV.

Still do.

Avoiding life and love and connection (and various “hard” areas to work through, and various vulnerabilities left unsaid) because we have our attention absorbed with anything but present based touch and talk and love and lust with our partner.

It seems a little better than loneliness, except this is often extremely lonely.

You don’t have a relationship: you’re single and tired of it.

You see the couples out there. You know a lot of them aren’t that happy, but at least they have someone to hold hands with. And sleep with.

You want this for yourself.

You are normal, of course you are. You have a deep wish for a wonderful partner, with whom you can have a joyful and awakened and loving and growing relationship, a relationship as a spiritual pathway to become all that you can be.

And you don’t have one.

How do you find someone?

What skills can you practice with friends and acquaintances to prepare you for having real and deep connection with a good person, if you meet them, great connection that can help you each decide easily of this is “the real deal?”

What is a waste of time in the dating world, and what might be ways to practice real connection, whether or not they are “the right one?”

(And: Is dating even necessary?

I don’t think so.)

 What is necessary is being awake and present, whether you are with someone or alone, or with nature or a pet or a book. You can be out to lunch, not present and sort of wasting time until sleep comes at night, or death comes at the end. But what could you be doing in the interim (your life) to have rich and amazing times as one moment becomes the next becomes the next, as the present flows and floods through us as our life keeps going and going and going.

Till it doesn’t.

You don’t have a relationship: you are divorced and not quite healed from it. Or far from healed from it.

Loving your enemies is crucial for a good life.

Forgiveness is essential to a  happy life.

Letting the nonsense go and learning from our mistakes is how we expand and become more and more amazing.

Divorce, like a serious illness, can be a wake up call. Literally: wake up to the present. And metaphorically: start changing things around so you don’t make the same mistakes the next time around.

This book will have tons of ways to let go of anger and hurt, tons of ways to be kind to yourself as you wait and search for another, tons of suggestions about how to find someone that is the real deal for you this time, lots of ways to become much more the person you wish you’d been the first time around.

If you want a fabulous relationship at the center of your life, then Love, Lust and Raw Enlightenment coaching might be for you. As the title page says text for a free 20 minute deepening into your big desires.