Better talk and touch, and love and sex.... part 4 of 60

Not really 60 days straight, but in a program of ten days of work each other, that gets cycled through three times.

day four

This is going to be fun.

Every day is going to be fun, and yes, yes, there is going to be even more blow back from the habitual world, because, believe it or not, there is a big chunk of your inner programming that doesn’t want you to be happy and the busy/ kids/ tired/ sick/ whatever whatever excuses are going to rear their ugly ( and false, if you look carefully at the real problem to be solved and not the FEELING that things can’t be any different) heads.

So, keep it up.

Half an hour a day.

Preferably before dinner.

And here goes:

TALK

Sit close and look at each other for a minute. Just connect in silence.

Then a minute while holding hands.

The talking today is going to be an every other sentence loop back to the “gurdjieff meditation” I mentioned yesterday.

In that, you start first thing in the morning, and sense your right toes, and bit by bit sense up through foot ankle shin knee thigh to your right hip.

Then sense the entire right leg and hang out there a while.

Then, keeping that in awareness, add on, right finger tips, fingers, hand, wrist, forearm, elbow, upper arm and right shoulder socket. Then sense the two, right arm and right leg.

Breathe. Enjoy giving yourself real attention.

And the complete and unequivocal being “present” that this is.

As experience. Word free. Now, now, now, now.

And then, keeping the right arm and leg ( and fingers and toes) in sensing attention, go to the left shoulder and work your way down to the left fingertips.

Then hang out in those three: right leg and arm, left arm.

Then add on, keeping going around the circle, left hip, down thru thigh, knee, shin, ankle, foot, out to all the toe tips.

Then sense all four.

There is more to the “Gurdjieff meditation” and this much can be revealed today:  this is something for all day and all activities.

And so, for today’s talk, we’ll go around the circle every other statement, and you can sense up the right side and down the left, or just zap into the whole limb at once, and it’s going to bring you present, now, present, now, present, now.

Person A, goes like this for 3 minutes:

“Sensing my right leg and toes, I notice….”

“This is what I like about me…”

“Sensing my right arm and fingers, I notice…”

“This is what I like about you….”

“Sensing my left arm and fingers, I notice…”

“This is what I like about me….”

“Sensing my left leg and toes, I notice…”

“This is what I like about you….”

“Sensing my right leg and toes, I notice….”

“This is what I like about me…”

And so on.

Then, person B, for one minute, feeds back to highlights of what they heard.

Switch, the other way.

Do it again, so 16 minutes is taken up being present to ten fingers and ten toes and to liking of oneself and to liking of the other.

TOUCH;

5 minute massages of one of your partner’s feet. They can make requests. But not too many. Sense your arms and legs as you give the massage. Especially sense in your foot whatever you are massaging in their foot.

And sense the fingers you are using, and the using of your arms and whole self to move your massaging hands.

One minute each to say how that was for you.

Seven minutes the other way around.

be present, even in grief, it's the doorway to God

WAKING UP

If I’m present I’m really alive.

It’s not the only game in town, and (AND) it’s necessary to at least two of the other great games of this overall game called “being alive.”

--happiness

-- love

Another essay could be written ( and has been, search through the blog) on the impossibility of happiness and love without being present. Discover this for yourself, or transmit any time of un-happiness or un-love to a time to happiness or love by becoming present.)

And there’s one game that can be played from not being present, and often is, and it’s a big and fun game in life. It’s this one:

--making money.

Lots of people have discovered that it’s a lot more fun and lot easier and lot happier ( and….full of love) game if played from being present. And it appears that a messy version can be played, and even played well from what I’d call, copying Gurdjieff and many others, a state of “sleep.”

And then the last great game…

--Service. Helping others. Making a difference.

Ah, me oh my. You can be of service and be asleep, and it can work, but it’s a perilous situation. If surrounded by peaceful and almost saintlike people, who are also good at self care, you / one can get away with being asleep.

And, on the other hand, burn out, and grumpiness and feeling ripped off, can be so prevalent. There is a great passage in Brothers Karamozov, where a gal admits that she has a hard time give to the poor because they aren’t sufficiently grateful.

Lots of prayer and quiet time, which is often close to being present, can help people get away with being of service without a practice of being present, but usually, the people you are serving will suck you dry, since there is really no you there to be around them, just your good deeds.

And that’s that.

There is one more great reason to be present and it’s almost as if it’s your way to salute the universe for the wonder of being alive. Which is kind of like happiness, but on a quieter and more reverent sort.

And being alive is the gift and the glory.

And here we shift to the second half of this discussion, a “harder” part, and it is about his: how to be present when someone we love dies.

They are gone.

No longer in our lives.

We are still alive.

They aren’t.

This can hurt.

This can wound so deeply our whole lives are turned inside out.

Rumi’s endless poems of love, which he didn’t write, but shouted out while whirling and his disciples wrote down, came from his grief at this beloved mentor and enlightenment friend, Shams, being gone. The suspicion is the jealous disciples and even some of his own children murdered Shams.

And in that grief, plunged to the depths, he found a love and poetry that has nourished our souls throughout the ages.

And if we aren’t Rumi ( yet!), what to do?

Be present.

To reality.

Reality is what we see right now. What we hear right now. What we are sensing in our bodies.

In our bodies the grief may be surging in great ferocity, and we can always meet that with awareness. What ever we are sensing, we can be aware of those sensations in the moment.

Moment by moment.

Breath by breath.

And this too, be can be aware, that we are alive, that we are aware, as we sense this sensation of grief inside us. Balancing that with awareness of gravity and light and breath and sound, as per yesterday’s blog on Ten Fingers, Ten Toes, Belly, Eyes, Ears and Nose, might make it “easier,” and no matter.

We are alive.

We are in love with these sensations, or we could be, as this is the way to honor our life exactly now.

And then, there can be suffering. Pain is one thing, suffering another.

The suffering is not real, but always sets of words, always of the sort that “This should be different,”  or “That should have been different.”

That is, we are demanding that Reality change to suit our wishes.

The elephant should be a card table. Impossible.

The rabbit should be a dog. Impossible.

This past event should never have happened. Impossible.

To fight reality brings suffering which is different than pain. Last weeks essay on the four questions and the turn around can always get us out of the suffering.

The pain remains as long as it remains.

And when we are present, we are riding the surf of reality, no matter how rugged.

Something is being ripped open, and in the stillness of not filling our minds with all the words that create suffering, and in the hot furnace of sensing the actual grief in the moment, something new can be born.

What it will be can’t be predicted.

The present can point to and wish for a certain future, but reality can play funny and beautiful and mystical games with us.

That’s it’s job.

Our job.

To be present and love what is.

This is either too many words, or not enough, and words are all a bit of a lie, and maybe they can point to the rose garden. Maybe we will walk there. Maybe the thorn will prick us deeply and we can be aware of our wound.

Maybe we can look at the sun reflecting in the drop of blood and see the meaning of our love and our lives.

Who knows?

If we are present, we’ll be there to find out as we discover.

Now, really? LIke this now?

Slightly before the Power of Now came out and it was suddenly cool to be in the moment, I am leading a small workshop on being present in the hills above Sonoma.

People are given the simple assignment of talking a half hour walk, alone, and hanging out in the present and seeing what that was like.

What it was like was great.

Everyone came back rip roaring excited about the peacefulness and the intense moment by moment vitality of their bodies walking through the woods with their minds mainly focused on being present.

All was well.

We parted.

I was pleased, and then I realized an odd thing, thinking back on the sharing about their walks, a noticing I'd had while they were talking but kept submerged.

They hadn't been present when they were busy, happy and excited to share about their walk in the present.

Perhaps even more shocking: I hadn't been that present either.

Ah, shit... What do we have here?

Well... reading these words. writing these words... are we present in this now, now.

Maybe yes.

Maybe no.

It's a trick, it's a veil, it's a huge dilemma: how to be using words, which are never in the present, to describe anything, first of all, and then to be present while we are in word land.

There is a reason why most meditation retreats are silent.

Talking almost always equals going back to sleep.

There is a way out of this, specific to talking and being present, but for now, let me just introduce a game, and you can try it, if you want, while you are talking.

And walking.

And riding a car, driving a car, riding a bike, eating, or even reading and writing.

AND,
while you are talking to someone.
And listening to someone.

On the phone.
In person.

It's "hard," but its a way out of the ongoing sleep of most of humanity, most of the time.

So, maybe it's worth a try.

Goes like this;;

Ten fingers

Ten toes

Belly

Eyes

Ears

Nose

And that's the attention game. The being present game. While eating or reading or talking or walking or dancing or making love, or writing, or working:'

Put attention on all ten fingers, and both arms. Sense their entirety, from shoulders to fingers tips.

Put attention on all ten toes, as a reminder to add in both legs, sensing all, the flesh, the bones, tendons, nerves, flesh, blood, all of it, from hip joint to the tippy tip of all ten toes.

That's a lot.

Belly and Nose are the two ends of breathing. The joy of this being alive thing. Now, now, now, we can feel the air that is keeping us alive, feel the air itself coming into our nose, feel the belly expanding as the diaphragm pushes down to make more room in our lungs.

Feel it all.
Breathing in.
Breathing out.

And the belly is near the tan tien, the center of our body, two inches in and one down, or something. Doesn't matter.

Just sense your middle and sense your spine along with the two arms and two legs.

Arms, legs, spine, breathing, fingers, toes, air in and out the nose.

And now,
eyes: what light is coming in?

What do you see?

Now.

Ears.
What sound is coming in?

Now


and that could keep you pretty damn present in case you want to be while yammering, or thinking about being present or talking about being present or talking about your deep wishes or talking about your trivial complaints.

Can you have all that now now nowness:

ten fingers

ten toes

belly

eyes

ears

Nose?


----try it.

You've nothing to lose but the misery of believing your thinking or someone else's.
Cheers

Chris

Transforming bitterness into love: Forgiveness as Realization

Once when it was cold, and I was all alone and bitter and in despair, I got myself a pen and a notebook.

Time to write my way out of this suffering.

Judge your neighbor.
Write it down.
Ask four Questions.
Turn it around.

The happiest person I'd ever met suggested that as a way out of suffering.

I was suffering. The girlfriend of 7 years had left me for Tom.

Not fair, poor me, sad bitter and so on.

Being bitter, thinking bitter thoughts, complaining, get others to agree with me, hadn't done the trick.

So, Judge my ex gal:

"She should not have left me."

Of course not. He was good looking and smart and charming and had an English accent to seem even more charming and smart and he drank coffee and she worked in a coffee shop.

We'd met, this gal an I, when she was in Berkeley, getting her degree in Landscape architecture. We talked design, gardens, roamed Berkeley together, feel in love, had the usual fun of that, drank coffee.

She finished her degree and we visualized the perfect cottage in Sonoma, after scoping out about six towns in the country. We wanted to grow. We wanted out of Berkeley. We found Sonoma, with it's 10,000 population, and nine acre plaza and only an hour from the bay area.

And we "manifested" the white cottage, on land, with oak trees on one side, a meadow in front, a creek on the side, only seasonal, but still, 4 months of gurgle gurgle is pretty grand. And not visualized, but cool, a quarter mile driveway lined with walnut trees and olive trees.

Heaven, and we gardened, heaven and a strange thing happened in paradise.

We fought.
Ah, what did we argue about?
Who knows?

And here, let me clue you in to the generic argument:

Person A:  "I'm right and you're wrong."

Person B:  "No. You have it backwards, I'm right and you're wrong."

Person A: "No. You have it backwards, I'm right and you're wrong."

forever and eve, louder and louder with the context hardly mattering and EVER so important.

Anyway, we argued, and then at the end I DO know what we argue about.

I was right and she was wrong to be spending so much time with Tom.

Here's a hint, on how to make jealousy a self-fulfilling prophecy: spend a lot of time hassling the person for liking someone else.

So we argue and the choice for her got clearer and clearer:
Stick around me and be argued with that she's wrong.

Hang around and be charmed by a man with an English accent who thinks she's the brightest rose in the morning dew.

And so she chose.

And I'm alone.

And I have my paper and pen, and it's time to write my way out of suffering.

MAYBE.

Let's see.

Judge the one you are blaming from your suffering: And write it down.

"She should love me more."

Ask four questions.

One:
IS IT TRUE?

Hell yeah. I'm suffering. She should love me more and stick around. ( Ha! Selfish malarky, but the answers have to be honest)

Two:
CAN I ABSOLUTELY KNOW THAT IT'S TRUE?
As, in the Universe needs this to function. As in, I can be absolutely certain that for her life and my life and blah blah blah, she should "love me more," whatever that means.

And the answer, sigh, is no.

Hell no.

Which means, darn, the statement, "She should love me more," is a thought, and opinion, and like most thoughts and opinions, is not true.

Dang.

Question Three:
HOW DO I REACT WHEN I BELIEVE THE THOUGHT/ STORY/ OPINION/ BELEIF?

Wow. Well, that's pretty clear. Miserable. Sad. Angry. Bitter. Betrayed. Poor me. Victim.
On and on.

And that's the kicker:  It's the thought setting me up for all this. Not her.

How do I know?

Question Four:
WHO AND HOW AM I WHEN I EITHER DON'T HAVE THE THOUGHT IN MY HEAD/ HEART, OR DON'T BELIEVE IT WHEN IT COMES AROUND?

And, I'm just me, here now. Or me, there then, in a garden, in a beautiful town, alive, seeing the skies and the trees and without the thought:  no suffering.

Can it be that easy?

Maybe.

But wait, there's more:
Judge your neighbor.
Write it down.
Ask four questions.
Turn it around.


The turn around is to eat your own medicine,
You should listen to me more becomes:
I should listen to YOU more.
I should listen to ME more.

You should appreciate me more, becomes
I should appreciate YOU more
I should appreciate ME more.

So, with Tom's new gal, my new X:

"She should love me more,"
Becomes
I should love HER more.
I should love ME more.

Yeah, okay. I write that, think that , and then ZAP.

I REALIZE THAT.

 I still do love her, and most of my suffering had been from stopping that love, and when I do the turn around and "love her more," what do I want:

I want her to be happy.

And she is happy.
With Tom.

Great. Loving her more means wanting her to have what she wants.

She wants Tom.
I can love her and be happy she has what she wants.

This isn't theory. This is almost teary,
teary eyed relief and how good the world has suddenly become: someone I love is getting what they want.

And loving me more?

Ah, it means doing the work, the writing down, the questions the turn around on the next thoughts that come up once I let her go, as if I had a choice:

"I won't ever find anyone as great as her."

I did that work.
What happened is another story, a sweet story, but let's just say this work, the work of judge your neighbor, write it down, ask for questions, turn it around, turned my life around.

You have any suffering?

Give it a try.

A pen. Some paper. Looking within. You might find freedom, too.

Good luck.
Bon adventure.

Pseudo Wisdom on a Wednesday: Love What Is..... or SUFFER

A young friend of mine was recently murdered.

My favorite moment with him, well second favorite to a bike ride we took together, was hearing him give a talk on how he'd used his time in prison to seek and find spiritual wisdom.

One of his key sharings was the "7 Page Project," wherein you took seven pieces of paper ( the number that could be mailed in an envelope with one stamp) and wrote your beliefs, and learnings down and send them to someone.

In honor of him, I'm going to journal for seven pages ( handwriting is the only way to really get close to your soul in writing) each Wednesday, and then type it into this blog.

I'll also print up this typed version and mail it off to his mother, who can might want to friend on facebook, Denise Roussell.

....
And here, in honor of Cory Roussell and today's gift to Denise and myself and all of life, and especially anyone reading this, is today's seven pages....


Here's the honey: Life is Good.

Yesterday I heard that my second grand daughter had been born just before midnight the day before, at the very tail end of November 3, 2014. I'd been hoping she would be born then, since that was the birthday of an amazing woman, Marlie Wesner, now Marlie Collins, who had been my girlfriend for 8 years in Sonoma, California.  ( Not Sedona, Arizona. Think grapes, not vortex).

Marlie was a wonder of simplicity and love of life and acute connection with simple physical pleasure. My son, who knew her fairly well, said she was the kind of person who should be riding a unicorn. She and I spend night after night sleeping under the stars, in town, but either at a garden we were creating or on our deck. We helped create one huge and beautiful garden, and one large and beautiful garden. I hear she's still gardening, and yoga-ing to life's great delight.

She was a gift, and I feel I contributed her way and then it was life to part paths.

Life is good. When the love is here, and we can share the same cottage and garden and bed, that is good.

When it is time for love to take another form, that is good.

Unless I want to suffer, then I could have begrudged the ending, but I didn't. She didn't. Life moved on.

Gardening teaches this: plants spring from little seeds, get huge, give great gifts, reach their end, die, become food for the compost.

We were both content, and even more in love in a certain way was we spent five months still together and knowing we were parting.

And I was happy that my grand daughter would probably have this birthday, for on the day of November 3 this was up in the air.

And during this up in the air time, I called my sister to tell her of the birth on the way. That part went well.

But when I told her I was excited that this girl ( they knew it was a girl) would be born on Marlie's birthday, my sister reverted to being my sister. When I told her I'd really loved Marlie, and hoped that child would share some of her amazing qualities, she pushed back with why wasn't I still with Marlie is it had been so good.

And when I began to explain the reasons that Marlie and I found for an agreeable and loving separation, she told me they were stupid.

Ah, here's when I lost my understanding of how to be happy.

Instead of listening to her ideas and reasons and feelings about this, I took this as an insult and hung up.

Poor Sis. People hang up on her all the time, since she has a firm habit of telling people they are stupid and wrong and expecting them to be grateful for the insight.

And I could have been present to my sting, and not taken it personally, and it would just have been her being the way she can't help being

But I blew it.

I hung up.

I believed in my story, that she shouldn't call my reasons stupid, instead of the reality that she had.

And so, I hung up and closed things down.

Now, sticking around, I might have found out what was going well and what was not going well in her 35 year marriage, but I didn't.

I chose to disagree with a disagreeable sister, and hence, fighting fire with fire, closed off a chance for something new and interesting to happen.

My loss.

The price I failed to pay to stay in happiness and "life is good," is this price:  Wake up to NOW and when in pain, look within and discover where I am fighting with "What Is," which is another name for Reality.

The secret to ongoing contentment:  "Loving What Is."

My favorite spiritual teacher, Adyashanti, defines enlightenment as "Loving What Is."

My favorite enlightened being calls herself Byron Katie, and does not call herself enlightened, that's a story, nor a teacher, since it's about un-learning rather than learning ( at least in the spiritual realm.... in movement, about which maybe I'll write next Wednesday, learning is real, but not book learning, the kind of learning that a child discovers when going from not being able to crawl, to being able to crawl)

She called her first book, "Loving What Is."

Not as a belief of hers, but as the purest statement of how she found life had to be lived for her to end, completely the immense amount of suffering she was undergoing as a chain smoking obese ranting-at-her-family alcoholic.

Like all of us, she was
In rage and suffering.... when she believed her thoughts.

At Peace,
when she gave up trying to demand that Reality be what her thoughts wanted it to be.

And that's the easy/ hard/ obscure/ obvious route for us all: Let go of our argument with Reality.
Then life is good and we are happy.

And so it was with me, on November 3.
My suffering on top of my sister's suffering. She told me I was wrong for ending a relationship. I told her... by hanging up... that she was wrong for telling me that I was wrong.

And so it goes.

And sometimes we are lucky.
I have another sister who pointed out to me that I seemed to be caught up in a story that the critical sister should have been other wise.

That was it!

I woke up.

I'd been trapped in my thinking.

And this seems to be one of the main reasons to be present:

In the present we can wake up to
Am I happy?
Am I suffering?

And then, we can be present to the thoughts that are fueling our unhappiness.

And being present we can feel our bodies, our arms out to the fingertips, and our legs out to the toes, and our spine with the pelvis and our head.

Our breathing.

We are alive.

We can be present.

And sounds, sights, color, light:  we can feel and notice all that, in the present.

So, that's the way we can live: present to our idiocy when we decide to believe our thoughts and suffer.

Present to the aliveness of ourselves now.

Present to the beauty of the world.


And present to this:  what do we want our life to be headed toward.

That's "not the present," but it's the way we want to move, and that's part of the game to: we get to chose, from happiness, from the present of love of life, from the present of knowing what our life feels like right now, what now, do we want our life to become.

And right now, this is happy.

Why?

Because life is good.

The truth is free, and yet...

how is your breathing
right now?

what are you seeing,
besides this
right now?

where are your arms and legs and
spine?

what are you hearing?

that's truth:
our experience right now

free
freely available

and then the cost:

awareness of when we put a story
on our experience and demand that it be different
than it is


that's a cost

the cost of waking up
is a dilly:

realizing when we have
fallen back asleep

not beating ourselves up about it
then getting back
into the glide

of

now



....

all this inspired by someone texting me this:

"I know the truth will set me free,
but
how much will it set me back?


the truth is free

most change has a price

seeing that as being
"set back"

is like putting a price on your
child's smile

not really a way to live

cheers,
chris

Two legged chairs

Look around you at all the two legged chairs...

Not many?

How come?

Lots of four legged ones.
A few three legged stools, and approximately zero
two legged chairs.

What's that about?

Lots of twos in the world,
two eyes, two ears, two hands, two feet
two legs.

We can pull it off.
Why not the chair?

Are they picky or something, or
have the chair designers of the world been holding out on us?

You tell me.

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

Don't be too nice

Don't be too nice

And

If you can stay happy and present

Be

Nice enough

Care about the other person

And be amused

They are alive

Most of their problems are nonsense

And

So what?

So are ours.

In fact, sharing a smile and a laugh about

our so called problems

Might be one of the nicer ways of being nice?

What's another?

Smiling and saying what you like about

Them

The moment

Your life

All three

Okay,

Being lazy is good too

Just listen for awhile

Don't talk

That's a rest for you

And

Something like nice

for them

And it might indeed 

be quite a treat

and that 

is always nice

okay

okay

enough of that word!

How about this?

FRIENDLINESS IS NEXT TO GODLINESS.

ha.

That's pretty good.

Cheers

Chris

I wish this for you, I wish this for me, I wish this for us

Your partner comes up to you and says,
"Let me tell you what's wrong with you."

You're all ears, right?

( In some ways of living, actually, you might be,
that might be a chance to be happy with ALL feedback,
and
we'll wait on that one for a bit)


Your partner comes up and says:

"This is what I'd really like:
I'd like us to spend more quality time together
and
I'd like to take a walk after dinner
and
have a make out right now"

Now you might be listening, eh?


Even if we can't go along with a partner's request,
hearing what they want helps us understand who they are.

This is good news in a relationship,
because we can often drift into assuming we know who the other is,
and then it's two strangers
and then it's lonely really,
though we can keep busy enough to ignore it

So:

Here's today's game

Find someone and for 3-5 turns say this to each other:

I want this for you.......

I want this for me......


I want this for us......


See what happens.

It's a three way requesting. You don't get left out.

Your partner doesn't get left out.

The WE of the two of you doesn't get left out.

Find out what happens.
Cheers
Crhis

May You Be Happy, 2

When they measure various heavy duty meditators, yes yes
their brains are calmer, happier and more coherent

All that sitting in silence
and the present
and "letting" it be,
when the chatter comes through,
that's gotta pay off,
right?

And...
They discover that the "loving kindness" meditation,
Brings the biggest and deepest and happiest changes
to the  brain

w
hich is nice

The "heart brain"
we all know that somehow that's THE important thing in life

And this loving kindness mediation is saying:

May you be safe
May you be happy
May you be healthy
May you live with ease


About people you like, don't like,
hate, don't know, know,
Yourself

Just the good vibe of wishing well

It's kind of soothing when I do it

How about for you?


Tomorrow:
A couple's game:

I wish this for me
I wish this for you
I wish this for us

You may try it ahead of time
if you wish
Cheers
Chris

Life, Love & Learning

Just brain, body.

It's so easy this work:

One day a child doesn't crawl

The next she/ he does.

No new muscles, no new energy, no new "thinking"

except hugely new thinking of the organic sort,

the non verbal sort,

the inner relationship and connection and "knowing" sort:

a brain organized to be a whole new child.

It's so hard because everyone wants to fix, relax, stretch, release, repattern, adjust, blah blah blah

None of which help the brain / real person.

That's what my Anat Baniel Method work is about.

That's what my Feldenkrais® work is about.

My opinion is that Anat takes the Feldie method to a whole new level.
( 4 years training with her, after 5 in the Feldenkrais Method®)

Come find out if you'd like.

Cheers

Chris

360-317-4773

And today, day three of
waking up
and
awakened relationship,
what's a game you might want to play?

Let's take all the digits and the eyes and the breath as our game today.

Sensing ten toes and ten fingers.

Now

And light

Now

and Breathing

is it in, out

or

in

between

When can we play that game and it seems absurd:

talk to people

reading

on the computer

cell phone nonsense

ten finger

ten toes

breathing

light

( and if you want, this will bring joy:

it's no extra cost, and actually, lots of

extra

credit

to feel the joy

as

you

stay

present

ha

yes

wonderful

now)

The Full Life Now: Day 2

Today's a day to smile

It's good for us.
We know it.
People around us know it.

So: when to smile.
When you see another person.
When you see a cloud, or a leaves or the sky.

That's one game to play today:
See people, see reflected light: smile.

Another is this:
Sit quietly and sense your entire right leg, from toes,
all the toes
to the hip joint
Eyes closed
Then, keep the leg in awareness and start with your right fingers
and move up through your right arm to the right
shoulder socket.

Enjoy the whole right arm and the whole left leg

Breathe

Add on sounds.
Add on awareness of breathing , your breathing as you hear sounds.

Open your eyes.

Now the main game of the day:
Sense your right arm and right leg all day,
as much and
as fully as you can.

Talking
walking
reading this
sending emails
doing the text/ phone thing
driving
eating

right arm
right leg

they aren't going any where

where is your attention?

bring it on home, for the fun
and grounding
and freeing of it



This will be lopsided, yes,
and being mindless is
more lopsided, don't you think.


You can smile and eat light while you do
this,
if you wish.

Being "Now," vs yammering about now

Anat Baniel, working with a high performing harpist, 

whose tone improved dramatically 

with just 30 minutes of "work," which wasn't work, 

it was brain rewiring, 

to upgrade the whole nervous system.

 The harpist had no "issues." 

She just was curious about what "better" could be. 

She found out. 

See Become More Amazing dot com, if you are curious

what "better"

could be

If I had ten dollars for every person who waxed enthusiastic about The Power of Now,  while being lost from the Now, I'd be fairly close to rich.

It's so easy to yammer about.

And then:
How do we wake up to the Now?

Ah, yes.

Well, I'm going to try a game: which is to play for 108 days with this central dilemma of human life.

In a separate journal, there will be daily longer essays which will become a book.

But for my friends, and my own accountability, I'll put something up here each day.

A sort of ahead of time New Year's Resolution.

A September 8,, my sister's birthday, resolution. Why not have that be the beginning of a new adventure and a new book?

So today, let's play with this stark reality.

These words you see on the screen, are not "real," not "here and now," except as black squiggles of certain shapes you've been taught to decode.

Look at the screen: it's mainly background, white for most people.

Do we "see" the white?

Do we see the shapes between the letter shapes?

And how to stay present when we are in word land, reading, writing, or -- hardest of all-- talking?

Lot's of ways.

And today's game is this, if you want to play:  sense your right leg as a full time back up of attention.

All the right toes.

All the rest of the bones, the muscles, the tendons, the knee, the blood.
The thigh.

The sense of that leg and where it is in relation to the other leg, to your body, to gravity.

All the toes up to the hip socket.

Just sense it while you read these words, while you think and feel whatever you think and feel as this game is presented to you, as you mull:  "Really? One more thing to do?"

Well, it's your here and now.

Sensing the body was recommended by the Buddha as the most effective way to be present, and he's a pretty good recommender, if that's a word.

And even if it is a word, it's just squiggles on a background, and then you have your right leg, real as can be, with you all day and night, Buddha or no Buddha, Facebook or no Facebook. Internet, indoors, outdoors, at job or not at job, with people or alone.

You.
Are
The center of your experience.

Experiencing a big simple chunk of you,,, your right leg, is a fun was to experience / realize that reality.

Play that game, if you wish.

Tomorrow, another.

May you be happy

May you be safe
May you be happy
May you be healthy
May you live is ease

May I be safe
May I be happy
May I be healthy
May I live is ease

May someone I really like be safe
May this person be happy
May this person be healthy
May this person live in ease

May someone I don't really know be safe
May this person be happy
May this person be healthy
May this person live in ease

May someone who bothers me be safe
May this person be happy
May this person be healthy
May this person live in ease

May my enemy be safe
May this person be happy
May this person be healthy
May this person live is ease

May I be safe
May I be happy

May you be safe
May you be happy


This is the lovingkindness meditation

Someone has said that another translation of lovingkindness
is friendliness feeling

How can we have friendliness feeling toward everyone we meet?

What would our life be like if we did?


Seems worth a try, don't you think/ feel/ intuit?

Become More Amazing

Being alive is amazing, right?

And then, within that, we all have our amazing talents, quirks, and inclinations. We are all amazing.

And just as perfect as we are, we can get even better. If we want.

Sometimes riding the contentment of exactly who we are is just what we need to do.

Sometimes these words ring true:  Life is Yes, and can get Better and Better and Better.

I work with high performance musicians who don't mind going to higher and higher levels of ease, learning and performance.

I also work with children who have either cerebral palsy, or autism. They are amazing. They can become more amazing.

This is what is amazing about them, and why they can make so much progress with the Anat Baniel Method. They can learn.

Many other systems teach them, but those systems unfortunately often teach them that they are failures, by over and over giving them tasks they can fail at.

However,  a sensitive Anat Baniel practitioner, by moving in ways that are slow and clear, and creating small differences that the child can feel and notice, creates actual rewiring of the brain.

Learning is the noticing of differences that make a difference.
A slight new movement of the hand, in awareness, in learning, is vastly more important than being sat up because that's what the child is "supposed" to be doing at a certain age.

A child that can feel the difference between a little finger and a thumb, between a shoulder moving this way, and moving that, between the arm moving with connection to their back, or moving without connection, is a child on the way to learning the vast array of distinctions that allow functioning to happen.

Training and learning.
Training vs learning.

This is a big subject.

Even "regular" kids are so much better off if the parents and the teachers are setting up conditions about learning.

And relationships, ah. how much time to we waste trying to train our partners, when what we really want is love and connection.

And how does that happen?
Learning what that other person is really like, how they are different from every other person in the world.

Including us.

What a thought?
What a joy.

Alright. Have a good evening.
Chris

Shoulders

What is a shoulder?

That stuff up at the edge of the torso, right?

But, what is that stuff?

Take one hand and feel around on the other shoulder. See if you can find the ribs below your armpit, and then if you go around to the back, there's something over the ribs.

That's your shoulder blade.  See if you can feel where the ribs start being covered by the shoulder blade. Wiggle the shoulder a little to help.

See if you can feel the shape of the shoulder blade. It's kind of like an upside down triangle, a bit far fetched to become an angel's ( or bird's) wing, but hints of that.

It just floats, on the ribs, this shoulder blade, and comes up over the top, and has a part of it that we call the collar bone, and that attaches to the sternum.

Gad. Is that too much anatomy?

Well, wiggle it around some more. That attachment at the collar bone and sternum is the only place it's not free, so the shoulder theoretically has a lot, a lot, a lot of possibility for movement.

If you play tennis, golf, a musical instrument, dance with a partner, hug, this move-ability comes in handy.

And shoulders are extremely easy to improve via the work I do. 

The left shoulder above, was that of a quite lovely lady carpenter, who was bed ridden in back and shoulder pain, and after a series of lessons, got up and build herself and her daughter a house, while working other jobs. 

Do you have shoulders, or another part of you, that would like to be better in ease and action?

Forgiveness, Friendship, Kinship, Family ---- Fun

This is just a start

Let's say you got divorced

You
"moved on"

You
"got closure"


Which means, usually, you left behind the other,
the problems, the connection

You might still
"be friends"

but it's not really a friendship, because all the stuff that bothered
you
still bothers you,
and you don't have to deal with it

so you are friends with benefits,
but not THAT way,
the way, of friends with the benefit of having judgment about

WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU,
AND
IT'S SO GREAT NOT TO BE WITH YOU,
WHEW

And this goes both ways,
they think you kinda suck,
and are glad to be free

And there you go

This is pale friendship

And here's where forgiveness comes in
and I'm going to just start the conversation about forgiveness
because there are many layers

All the way from
forgiving someone for not returning a phone call
to
forgiving someone for murdering one's child

And there is an inner freedom,
always
in any forgiving

You are giving up
that clinching to the story
that reality
in some past moment
"should"
( the famous SHOULD)
have been different

And there are layers of how you can feel
about the other person's behavior

You can relax about certain types of "sins"
and actually be charmed by them in retrospect

Someone murdering your child
will never be charming
But you can let go of hatred
You can let go of anger
You can let go of wanting to punish

And you can
become the friend of the one you have given up
on holding the invisible hammer
in your hand,
always available to whack them upside the head
for their crime

And what does friendship mean?

And kinship?

And Family?

And can you have fun, with someone you divorced because they
were awful in their language toward you ,
or their behavior?

Well, if you've got children,
you not only can figure this out--
it behooves you to,

because then your children grow up
to be free
to see
that real alive and mindful
and
happy
adults

can take quarrels and judgments
and let them go
and see the best in each other
see it so well,
that they can set up a situation
so
Sally and Ben,
the new couple,

And Joe and Betty the other new couple
(it was Joe and Sally to start with)
can get together and enjoy each other
and all the merged kids can feel
loved
and can
have
fun


This isn't going to be easy.

And it's going to be worth it,
don't you think?

Much more on this in days and weeks to come
Cheers
Chris

High Performers to Higher

Let's say you are really, really good at something
and you wouldn't mind getting better.

What could you do?

1. Think of, invent, play with
play with
play with
ten new ways to do something, your sport or music

2. Dew something wrong

3. Do it with the other hand:
In violin, say, this might take a few days
In piano, having each hand play the other's music might be a gas
In golf, switch the hand on top, or get clubs for the whole other swrng
Tennis: hmmm. Could get interesting

Ping pong on the other hand, a piece of cake

4. Doooooo it veeeeeeeeeeeery sloooooooooowly

5. Doittoodramedfast

6. Do order it out of

7. Eyes closed/ looking the wrong way/ crossed

8. Breath held, Oh wait, many do that any way.
Well: gradate the breathing: all held, part held, half held, mainly free. all free

(Read the above those five ways)

9 Link up the toe of one foot with the finger of the opposite hand
As in right ring toe and left ring finger.
For a certain period, then the pinkies, big toe/ thumbs and so on

10. Add in some spice .

11. Due it wrong another way

12. And dew it rong still a nother way

13 Dew due it rong enuff so that one of there wrung ways turns out better

14 Furget how to count to ten

From Special Needs Kids Blog: Limitation, vs Possibilities, the power of the Anat Baniel Method

This is from my Special Needs Children Blog

.....

The Anat Baniel method uses Brain Plasticity,
and the incredibly
wise
kind
and effective
philosophy of only working with a child, exactly where that child is at

And always working for a small
but real change
in the brain

Which means a new perception
of
a
new difference


And when children are shown small differences,
that they can feel,
they learn

And when they learn,
small step
by small step

miracles happen

One step at a time

And this all adds
up

Into huge breakthroughs.

Here's a six minute video, with various parents and their special needs children,
telling the benefits that they found for their children.

As Anat explains an overview.

The most potent remark is that of a mother who says, essentially:
"Going to the neurologist, is going to the office of limitation.
Coming to the Anat Baniel method, is coming to the home of possibilities."

Come to the home of possibilities,
for
you
and your children