Month: January 2016

Which is the focus? Your Flesh, Breath, or Mind?

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marcus-aurelius

(1 minute to read)

“Whatever this is that I am, it is a little flesh, and breath, and the ruling part. Throw away your books; no longer distract yourself: it is not allowed; Instead, as if you were dying right now, despise your flesh. It is blood and bones and a network of nerves, veins, and arteries.

See the breath also, what kind of a thing it is, air, and not always the same air, but every moment sent out and again sucked in.

Finally, there is the ruling part: consider this: You are an old man; no longer let the mind be a slave, no longer be pulled by the strings like a puppet to selfish impulses, no longer either be dissatisfied with your present lot, or shrink from the future.”

-Marcus Aurelius (from Meditations)

Follow me and I will take you away from the everyday.

If this is something you care about, then SHARE it. Less observation. More participation.

The safety of observing from afar

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first row of coaster

 

(Less than 2 minutes to read)

I met people in my life who were full of fear. Fear that keeps them far away, up on their mountain top, earthbound. They stayed up there, like a baby bird who never jumped, but walked around in the branches of the tree, growing into an adult, never trying to leave, never trying to risk itself. And I was no better, so my trying to help these people was pretty futile.

But I’ve left the mountaintop refugee finally. I stopped telling myself stories, and although I haven’t jumped to experience the total experience of being liberated, I’m taking small leaps, restraining myself, finding outcroppings to rest on.  I couldn’t stand the suffocating thin air of that flat-topped prison any longer, complaining about things, but not willing, or courageous enough, to change them.

It’s so helpful to surround yourself with the people doing things you want to, but aren’t. The strong influence of your friends on you is shown in scientific research. But the catch-22 is, you need to be self-aware enough to find these people, or allow them into your life.

One of the most heartbreaking things to see are those with so much potential, but so little  heart, unwilling to step up to the edge and look down to see what they’re missing. So they stay in their refugee, with enough air to survive, but not to thrive.

It’s a lesson to those of us who have decided to leave our nest on that mountaintop: The lesson of letting people go who aren’t ready for change.  The lesson of the futility of trying to pry open a person who has closed themselves off, like a clam. And finally a lesson that helps you face sadness: the sadness of seeing love wasted, missing from the world, from those who are too overwhelmed to open themselves up and share it.

Follow me and I will take you away from the everyday.

If this is something you care about, then SHARE it. Less observation. More participation.

We can do better, if we choose the people who will do better by us.

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plato

“States will never be happy until rulers become philosophers or philosophers become rulers.”

Why are we voting for leaders who are career politicians? Why are we voting for leaders who want to rule us, with their rules, instead of guide us, and empower us?

Actually, we’re not voting for leaders. We are voting for managers, accountants, and technicians. Let’s vote for leaders, instead. Leaders who want to inspire us to do better in our life, not give us a life where the best deal becomes the paternal controls of a corporate employer driven by profits, or putting our retirement money in irresponsible investment bank 401k’s.

We can do better, if we choose the people who will do better by us.

It’s always been up to us. Despite all the money in politics, the biggest factor still comes down to your vote.

Follow me and I will take you away from the everyday.

If this is something you care about, then SHARE it. Let’s get out of the stands and into the game. Let’s interact.

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

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Shakespeare

Realize that there is a world out there where things have evolved under circumstances so different than our world, where there is a nature that is not our nature.

Because the universe is so so vast, the odds are that these other worlds must exist. Being created as we speak right now. Many worlds, containing so many things, like, ecosystems, life, technologies…

But these other worlds are so alien from our own, I wonder if we could even recognize them? Would they exist in a place which requires a perspective our minds have not learned yet?

Would they exist in different states, flitting between quantum worlds so we can only see them momentarily in the world we are tuned to? Does Mars, or even closer, the moon, contain these worlds, and we simply don’t have the tools and mindset to see them yet?

The frontier of the universe is more than going places, physically moving through space in some vessel or looking through the viewfinder of a telescope or microscope. Travelling this frontier is about realizing what may be, and creating new tools to see them. It’s about discovering new states of existing that we cannot even dream about. Yet.

Layered states, working independently but existing at once: Worlds set into worlds set into other worlds, like nesting Russian dolls, where we go from one set of laws, to another set of another laws, each inconsistent with the next, but working in some cooperation so that all the world co-exist, each in plain sight, or completely invisible until someone breaks the barrier our minds have maintained, and then humanity can stream into this new place, as if we knew it was there all along, and how silly for our ancestors to not have realized these things are existing right there in front of us, or more radically, existing inside of us all along, like bacteria in our gut. Or an ability to travel without leaving our physical shells.

Now that is a lesson in humility. And human potential.

 

Follow me and I will take you away from the everyday.

 

In which state do you spend the most time?

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Care by the Lorax

 

There are three states: love, fear/anxiety, and apathy.

The proportion between the states should favor love.

Love requires passion and a curiosity of  life. Love also requires confidence that whatever happens, it’s going  to be alright.

Let go, and gain that confidence to love.

And when you reach a love at a high enough level, that love will power you into action. And that kind of action is unstoppable, inspiring, and evangelical. It changes lives, and people, and society.

The alternative proportions are not wrong. They’re simply less fulfilling.

Follow me and I will take you away from the everyday.

If this is something you care about, then SHARE it. Let’s get out of the stands and into the game. Let’s interact.

 

Why having a new year is more than a new number

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Kiss of Death

The change, based on the grouping of days spent in one trip around the sun.  So we leave the time period called 2015 and enter the time period called 2016. And our ride of 2015 has been done. Forever. And we begin the 2016 part, but that will end, too. And each of these parts of our life end, the ticket for each ride extinguishes in our hands. It’s still in our memory, but we’re never getting it back.

So the “new year” is a good time to take stock, if only for a moment, even if it’s just for a couple weeks, until another revolution around the sun, to see what we’ve done, and not done, and decide what matters to us.

The mindfulness around this time period is valuable. I’ve made it my practice throughout the year, not just when the numbers flip forward, because I have reached a point in my life that I feel the need to pay attention, even if it is sometimes too much, to make up for not being responsible enough in my earlier life.

So what does the new year matter? Nothing, really. It’s just a reminder that we are all on borrowed time. And the sands of time relentlessly drain from our glass, until one day they won’t, and then we’ll be gone, and whatever wishes we had will be irrelevant because we won’t exist to even realise them.

Follow me and I will take you away from the everyday.

If this is something you care about, then SHARE it. Let’s get out of the stands and into the game. Let’s interact.