Peace… or how to quiet the 50 voices chattering in my head?
Tomorrow is our meditation/chanting gathering at 2nd April. I’ve been pondering something I might be able to share with the group… something that’s been basic/essential to me. And I stumbled across this…
“The essence of Eckhart Tolle’s message is easy to grasp: If we connect to the stillness within, we move beyond our active minds and emotions and discover great depths of lasting peace, contentment, and serenity.”
Now if you don’t know who Tolle is… he’s a contemporary teacher trying to help people connect with their deeper /higher selves.
One thing that reading Tolle has clarified for me is the idea that my active mind, that continuous flow of babble that blasts through my head is NOT ME. That’s my mind. Now, this might be a new concept to you… it is to most Westerners. But spiritual paths in the East have followed this concept for centuries. Many techniques have been developed to quiet the active, babbling mind… and why? So we can sleep, relax, get other things done. Well, yes… but more importantly to explore who is there when the babble ceases.
I’ve learned that the active mind isn’t a bad thing… it’s a tool. For example, I need to travel from my studio to my home. I have to get my coat, find my keys, start the car, back up without crushing anyone, turn left, stop, turn right etc. Without my active mind, I’d still be sitting at my desk. But the active mind can juggle watching speed limit, minding other travelers, listening to the radio, while contemplating what to make for dinner. So the active mind is a good thing, an essential tool. But it isn’t needed all the time. once I’m home, fed and relaxing… the active mind is a tool that can be set aside. And when it is set aside, what is left?
And that, my friends, is the fun. If you can begin to view your babbling mind as a tool… something that can be put on the shelf when not needed… then you have a whole new universe to explore. When the “monkey mind” isn’t chattering, there is more. And the more is really me and really you. Once the handy-dandy do-50-things-at-once mind is set aside, you might be surprised what you find. A good friend described this experience to me as watching the surface of a pond on a breezy day. You can’t see past the ripply surface when a wind is blowing, but when the breeze calms and the surface of the water stills, then you can see a whole world under the water that you might never have known existed… if you hadn’t waited for the stillness.
I have to run, so I’ll let my over active mind get my day moving, but think about exploring the other side… the still side sometime soon.
have fun!
su
looking for answers
“If it’s true that the unexamined life is not worth living, instead of waiting for a lecture on the subject, why not examine it in the moment? After all, the everyday is 99 percent of our lives; if we don’t think about it while we live it, there’s not going to be much time left over for reflection.” excerpt from the book Breakfast with Socrates by Robert Rowland Smith.
Just back from vacation… ahhh, time to ponder. One of my favorite topics to ponder is happiness… mostly mine. ;) Am I happy, do I feel fulfilled, what should change? Some people might think I do this too much and others, when they hear of my ponderings say, “why do you do that?” I believe I ponder happiness as I know that I’m in charge of the happiness dept. in my life. And my life is very happy, I love my work and I like to think part of this reality is that I try to watch what’s going on and “tweak” things on a regular basis.
One of my vacation “reads” was an article by Hillari Dowdle in Yoga Journal discussing yoga’s four aims of life. I love yoga, while I don’t practice as much as I want to (and yes, I’m tweaking that) as the perspective is so different from our typical Westerner point of view. In yoga tradition, the four aims of life are dharma (duty, ethics), artha (prosperity, wealth), kama (pleasure, sensual gratification) and moksha (the pursuit of liberation.) Self- examination by exploring these for areas of our life is yoga’s “blueprint for self-fulfillment, signposts that point us to a successful, satisfying, balanced existence in the world” in the words of Ms. Dowdle.
As I read, and pondered, I couldn’t help but realize that as each new year dawns (yes, I’m still loving that it’s a new year), so many of us do examine ourselves and we make resolutions. Our resolutions are often based on the physical… I need to lose weight, I need to work out…organization, relaxation… things we need to “fix.” Yet I am seeing in my life that these sorts of resolutions might be superficial fixes and the real issues might be a bit deeper. And I wonder that if I spend a bit more time exploring these four yogic aims of life- duty, prosperity, pleasure and “the pursuit of liberation”- then would my more obvious physical issues resolve themselves? I sense that changes in these issues might have more far reaching results in many areas of my life and in the process, I imagine that the more “normal” resolution issues might just fade away. So I resolve to try a “bigger picture” focus this year and see if more of the little stumbling blocks fall away. We’ll see.
As always…
have fun!!! su
To eat or not to eat?
Here we are in a new year and I’ve heard more than several people talking about changing their eating habits. Some want to lose weight, some want to improve health. Here are some simple ideas which can make changes in our health, and weight, over the course of the coming months.
1. Plan your meals. If you have no plan for dinner as you leave work hungry after a long day, the fast food drive-thru starts looking like a good idea. Knowing that dinner is waiting at home in a crock pot… or packing an apple to munch on the way home makes impulse eating less of a temptation.
2. Make healthier food choices. Most all of us could eat more vegetables and fruit. Try doing that by getting a little color in your diet… dark greens, oranges and reds, yellows. If you look at your dinner plate and everything is tan or white… think again about food choices.
3. Eat less meat. Let me just suggest that Americans eat a lot more meat than their bodies really need. And in doing so, we consume more saturated fats, more cholesterol and often more preservatives, hormones and other nasties. Try eating meat once a day, rather than 3 times a day. Perhaps you might go so far as to schedule several meat-free days to your diet. Whatever your decision on meat consumption, at least eliminate ground meats and processed meats.
4. Just say no to fast food. While some fast food companies are offering a few healthier choices, on a whole fast food is higher in fat, sodium and preservatives. And portion control is tough when everyone wants to super-size our meal.
5. Analyze empty calories in your diet… nah, I’m going to save that one for its own blog. More on this soon.
Here’s to a healthier, leaner 2010!
New Year, new beginnings 2010
Welcome to 2010! I’m always excited by the prospect of new beginnings that the New Year’s celebration has come to represent. And this New Year coincided with a beautiful Blue Moon… so the energies were even higher, I think.
I hope to use this space to explore wellness and art… my 2 passions. Like most things I do, likely I’ll learn a lot here but it would be really fun if some of you enjoyed it too. Comments are welcome. Suggestions for topics are too.
For today, let’s keep it short and sweet with a Swedish proverb which I learned from “Escape from the Cubicle Nation” author, Pamela Slim. I think this covers my intentions for 2010. And you?
“Fear less, hope more; Eat less, chew more;
Whine less, breathe more; Talk less, say more;
Love more, and all good things will be yours.”
Have fun!
05/26/08- from old blog- Why am I here?
All the info about Journey Studios is at journeystudios.com… so what do I do with this new space? Hopefully it’s going to be a resource for information on some of my favorite topics; art, music, health, happiness. And I want to make this first blog entry worth your while, so let me tell you about one of the most effective tools I know of to make your dreams come true.
“Thoughts become things… so choose good ones!”
And if you’re thinking, “well, su, pretty catchy phrase you’ve come up with” let me tell you that those aren’t my words but a mantra of sorts taught to me by Mike Dooley. Mike is a teacher, a philosopher, and a catcher of dreams. His website, tut.com, is a great place to start if you want to learn more first hand. TUT.com stands for Totally Unique Thoughts and let me tell you, Mike’s thoughts are not only unique, but very effective. Mike teaches his version of the Law of Attraction which is so popular today. His approach is simple, easy and really works for me. I won’t presume to be able to explain the concept like Mike does, but let me try to lay a bit of groundwork.
Mike sees each of us as powerful beings… collectively we are The Universe. He believes we’ve “forgotten” how powerful we are and sometimes just flow along, never attaining our dreams. He teaches that if we focus our thoughts and expectations on seeing our dreams as if they have already come true, then the Universe “hears” that direction from us, and comes through by obeying our thoughts and fulfilling our expectations. And we don’t even have to figure out how to make it all happen… we just believe that it will. And I’m here to tell you, those dreams do come true.
So… do you have any dreams you haven’t seen come true for you yet? Maybe Mike’s approach will work for you as well as it’s been working for me. Visit tut.com to learn more and while you’re there, consider signing up for his daily email. Reading my daily “notes from the universe” is often the high point of my morning. One of my favorite notes follows:
Probably, not necessarily, but probably,
the shortest distance between here and there -
between today and the life of your wildest dreams -
runs through joy,
as much of it as you can possibly stir up.
But, that’s only if you’re in a hurry.
- The Universe
Playing for Change
As I was transferring posts from the old blog to this new one… I was reminded of how much music affects me. I am continually amazed at the power music has as an equalizer… meaning music is a language unto itself. Music has the power to pull people together. And in pondering this thought, I am reminded of Playing for Change playingforchange.com.
My friend Jeff first introduced me to this people by sharing this video,
http://www.playingforchange.com/episodes/2/Stand_by_Me
The concept is wonderful, the actual production is astounding and the results are quite memorable. Enjoy!
have fun
su
6/23/08- from old blog- How long?
You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it true. -Richard Bach
To accomplish great things, we must not only act but also dream, not only dream but also believe. -Anatole France
Hi
To those who know me, you may know I just got back from a 3 week vacation. Now, 3 consecutive weeks of vacation may sound excessive to some of you, but to me, it sounded exciting. I had scheduled 3 weeks to do some work in Italy but the Italy part of the trip didn’t work out. So since I already had scheduled to be out of the studio for 3 weeks, I opted for a tour out West, visiting favorite friends and locations.
After the 1st week, I felt ready to go home, as my usual vacation lasts about a week. But I had important plans for those second and third weeks so I persisted. What I discovered was that as I pushed beyond the norm, beyond my comfort zone… things began to happen.
I got comfortable with the idea that when I woke up in the morning, not only did I not immediately know where I was but I also didn’t know where I was going. I got the chance to ponder my day over a cup of tea, then set out. I drove approximately 5000 miles in those 3 weeks. Once you get over the cost of gas per day, the wandering gets fun. I didn’t have to plan too carefully, just consider the options and then go. I saw friends and family, then I visited places I was drawn to, or places they loved. I hiked, biked, rode horses, napped, climbed, made music and drove… a lot. I stopped the car on a whim to wander or take pictures. And in all this… my mind relaxed.
I think I had gotten my dreams mixed up with tasks… like I HAVE to do this, then that will happen. But when dreams start feeling like work, then I think they shrink, appearing more like duties and part of survival. But with my 3 week quest… my dreams were freed from “reality” and grew again to their amazing proportions that I love. Big dreams are exciting because they hold so much power. I know they can come true because they’re sparkling with excitement and energy. They take on a power of their own and I start remembering that all things are possible.
3 weeks is a long time to be gone… leaving friends and clients to leave messages on the phone and wait and wait for that return message. But those 3 weeks that I checked out of my routine were priceless… as I can come back to friends and clients with a sense of newness and energy that I think will benefit all.
Will I take a 3 week vacation again? No… I think next year I’ll go for 4!!
make time to have fun
hugz,s
7/24/08- from old blog archive- Stuff
Current mood:lighter
I’m thinking about downsizing and this is why I started looking at my stuff with a new eye. “Where did all this stuff come from?” or even “whose stuff is this?” I’ve passed the more thought oriented statement, “Do I really need all this stuff?” to the decisive, “I’ve got to get rid of this stuff!” But once facing the reality that the stuff has got to go… a small, nervous voice inside says, ” but it’s good stuff” and then “I like this stuff.”
What piles up in your house? One of my problems is books… I love books. Most of my books aren’t favorite stories but basic, non-fiction “how do I do this new thing I’m interested in” kind of book. A browse through my library shelves tell you a lot about me– an artist, a geek, a do-it-yourselfer, a spiritual voyager. You might wonder if I’ve read all the books and I can honestly say, yes, I’ve probably read or used all of them. Do I remember what’s in all of them… no. But they stay around as a comfort that so I can look things up when needed. Do I do that? Rarely. We’ve got the internet!! So many books can go… as can lots of other stuff that I use little or never.
What do I get for being brave and getting rid of my stuff? I get space. My home begins feeling clean and organized. I know that the stuff I wasn’t using much is now in someone else’s hands and they really needed that stuff. They really appreciate having my stuff. And sometimes they were so glad to get my stuff, they paid me for my stuff. (it was GOOD stuff after all.) I also get lightness… that feeling that can come when I’m not feeling quite so weighed down. I didn’t realize my stuff weighed me down until I started watching it walk out my front door. That little empty space that was left behind was only a tiny bit sad… more it felt more like relief.
So I believe the feng shui people are very right… having too much stuff around can take your energy. And getting rid of stuff you don’t really need brings different sorts of freedom. So… how much does your stuff weigh? 
2/12/2009- from old blog archive- It’s Time!
Category: Life
Hi
Most of you don’t know I lived in the west for a long time. And while there I had a wonderful, life changing connection with the Native American community. Like all things in our lives… each piece of the puzzle flavors the person we become and my heart and I’m sure some past lives have been spent in more “native” communities.
I stumbled across a video tonight that moved me and I wanted to share… but didn’t want to bombard all my friends’ in boxes… as today most of you aren’t interested… or informed about this part of our country’s history. So, in hopes of not stepping on my soap box and filling your mind with real stories of real people… (as space and time is limited) I wanted to share with you a website I discovered tonight. http://dipdive.com/
Initially, the song that I was so moved by was Apology/ It’s time.
http://nomad.dipdive.com/media/13590
That’s the song that plays when you initially arrive at the site today. But things change and tomorrow another song might be featured. But this song made me stand and pay attention. I dream of a time when this country might choose to look to its indigenous cultures and say , “i’m sorry.” I don’t know that this will ever happen. But with the new hope of new leadership… I want to believe that anything is possible.
As I took the time to email friends out west who I knew would love the concept… the website, dipdive.com kept playing on my computer. And in time I realized, there are a tremendous number of wonderful, beautiful supportive musical performances on this site.
Try the “America’s song” http://itsanewday.dipdive.com/media/9496
… then go to the “Yes We Can” song http://yeswecan.dipdive.com/media/2207
I want to be hopeful as an American. I’ve never felt that way. I want to encourage people to chase their dreams. But have always felt like I was a small piece of a silent minority. The songs I heard on this site reminded me… there are many of us who want to soar. Let us join, support, love, share and not look on divisive issues in this exciting time of hope.
Think about your dreams… they’re beautiful to me.
love
s