The Heart Works Best in Mime
Drawing from The Principles of Light and Color by Edwin D Babbitt, 1878
The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have
Words get in the way when we try to speak from the heart. How are we to know that the mere mention of the color purple conjures up childhood horrors for one person when it is one of our favorite colors?
We use our eyes to communicate emotions and feelings. They are less likely to lie, or unintentionally deceive.
Our brains think they know everything about sickness of the heart, as though it were just another machine pumping blood for us at our brains’ commands. But there is a mystery to the heart that can never be known by the mind. The heart works best by showing what it wants.
The Illusion of Invincibility
Last weekend we rode our motorcycles over to Wisconsin. Due to schedule differences, it worked out easier to drive separately. The weather was beautiful. I left after my Saturday morning meditation class at the Twin Cities T’ai Chi Ch’uan Studio.
The shortest route was to take freeways to the studio in Saint Paul and from there to Wisconsin. Generally, I avoid freeways on my motorcycle because I don’t like being sandwiched on concrete between big trucks and people on cell phones who aren’t paying attention to the road. I kept thinking about those lines from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig:
You see things vacationing on a motorcycle in a way that is completely different from any other. In a car you’re always in a compartment, and because you’re used to it you don’t realize that through that car window everything you see is just more TV. You’re a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame.
On a cycle the frame is gone. You’re completely in contact with it all. You’re in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming. That concrete whizzing by five inches below your foot is the real thing, the same stuff you walk on, it’s right there, so blurred you can’t focus on it, yet you can put your foot down and touch it anytime, and the whole thing, the whole experience, is never removed from immediate consciousness.
Then I realized that it is always real concrete whizzing by, and the metal surrounding you in a car only gives you the perception of safety. When I was young, I went through a phase where I tried to eat healthfully. The world didn’t end when I ate a french fry, and before I knew it I was adding the occasional glass of beer or wine to the meal. Being in a car basking in the sounds of my music made me feel insulated from all the other people “out there.” Gradually, pound by pound, I added extra weight which was interfering with my body’s ability to make and utilize vitamin D. My head had taken over my body, and unhealthy anger raised my blood pressure. My endocrine system was telling my body to deposit calcium in my arterial veins instead of my bones. I was a mess.
I’m trying to do better now. My body has been pretty patient with me, but I’ve lost my cape and no one is holding me. It’s time for my mind to be present and make it easier for my body to cope with the vampires.
Triple Numbers in the Reality: Mystery School – Day 4(44)
Today while driving, I nearly got a DWD. Daydreaming While Driving.
Stuck in traffic on the way to work, I was robotically following the surge and slow of the traffic, thinking about what to do about my job. (which is OK, you know… helps to pay the bills without breaking my back. But, you know, couldn’t there be so much more?.?.?..)
And as I glanced down at the license plate of the SUV in front of me, I noticed the triple numbers: 333. Cool.
The first we heard that triple numbers have meaning was from Drunvalo Melchizedek (Droon-vallo Mell-CHEESE-a-dek) in his 2007 book, Serpent of Light – Beyond 2012. He said:
When you see a triple number in the Reality, it has significance relative to what you are thinking or the environment around you. It has to do with music and the fact that all notes in an octave separate themselves by eleven cycles per second. Therefore, the separations of each note to each other are 11, 22, 33, 44, 55, 66, 77, 88, and 99 cycles per second, or multiples of these numbers, which presents a perfectly harmonic tuning or moment in time, since the entire Reality was created through the harmonics of music.
Therefore, when triple numbers or more appear in any manner, it physically represents a mathematical moment in time that contains the harmonics of the value of that number…
Quickly, these are the meanings of the triple numbers.
111 = Energy Flow: Any energy flow, such as electricity, money, water, sexual energy, etc.
222 = New Cycle: The beginning of a new cycle, the nature of which depends on the NEXT triple number you see.
333 = Decision: You have a decision to make. The decision will lead to either a 666, which means you must repeat the lesson again in some other way, or it will lead to 999, which is Completion and you have learned the lesson.
444 = The Mystery School: What is occurring in life is a lesson around the learning about the Reality. This school is learning, such as reading books or studying a subject, but not actual doing. [He says that Alice Bailey was the first to write about this number having that meaning.]
555 = Unity Consciousness: This is the number when someone has attained Unity Consciousness. They have mastered all levels of the Mystery School. It is the highest number. It is the number of Christ.
666 = Earth Consciousness: This is the number of the Beast in the Bible, so it can represent pure evil, but it is also the number of mankind and life. Carbon is the basis of life, and carbon has six protons, six neutrons, and six electrons. Generally when you see this number, it means to watch out for physical events that are presenting themselves at that moment, and you must be careful.
777 = The Mystery School: This is the part of the school where you are not just reading books about life, but are also practicing (what you are learning).
888 = Completion of a particular lesson within the Mystery School.
999 = Completion of a particular cycle of events.
000 = Has no value.
Takeaways:
- Triple Numbers are not only cool, but might be helpful to you somehow.
- Pay Attention. There are no coincidences, and everything that happens to you is all for YOU! (Even sharing it with others is for you, but of course it’s for them, too.)
- Do you have a decision to make, too??
The Soul of a Carrot
This carrot was grown for me by Pat Nudd at Will Heal Farm. When I took it out of the bag, I thought someone had accidentally dropped in the bottom half of a Barbie doll. It was almost too beautiful to eat. Almost. We’ve been learning more about nutrition the past 18 months, which makes us appreciate our CSA share even more. Michael Pollan wrote in his book In Defense of Food that
You don’t need to fathom a carrot’s complexity to reap its benefits.
Chunyi Lin told us that in China they eat all parts of the food. They believe that there is special energy in the roots that reach down into the ground, as well as the green parts that reach up towards the sky.
We started eating all of the strawberry, including the green leaves on top. They tasted fine. Now that we’re doing more juicing, we juice leaves that I never would’ve considered eating before. Who knew that kohlrabi leaves have the same zing as mustard leaves, in slightly muted taste?
If we believe that there is a microcosmic orbit inside of our bodies that mirrors the movement of energy in the universe, why wouldn’t there be a similar cosmic reflection in a carrot? Isn’t it wonderful to know the name of the farmer who planted the seed that came alive with exactly the nutrients our body needs for this day?
Tagged with: nutrition
Ask a Tree to Help You
Standing Meditation
Standing meditation is mostly the same as sitting meditation – you only need to add a few mechanics.
Legs affect/determine Pelvic Alignment & Balance
Your feet should be shoulder width apart. If your lower back hurts, bend your knees a little (but the more you bend your knees the less time you’ll be able to stand). The goal is to have your legs as straight as possible while keeping your pelvis tucked under. The most important thing is having your heels shoulder width apart. If your feet are too close together, your shape becomes an inverted triangle that wobbles easily. If your feet are too far apart, your lower torso gets tired easily.
Arms can change relaxation, gravity, energy flow
- Hands down, at your sides, palms facing your hips. Position #1 on chart
- Palms facing backwards, elbows slightly bent.
- Palms facing front. Position #6 on chart.
- Arms raised horizontally to heart level, palms facing your chest. Position #3 on chart. This one is called Embracing the Moon and bringing it to your chest. This is considered a good pose to prevent cancer, because it stimulates your body to make more white blood cells. Three arm elevation options (above your heart, at your heart, slightly below your heart), move your fingers closer together or farther apart, bring your hands in closer to your chest or farther away. If your shoulders start to get too tense, bring your hands in closer (do not raise your arms or that will increase the tension).
Our bodies are designed to move, and then the energy moves inside us.
Standing meditation is a Safer Practice than sitting meditation if you have lots of head energy, since it takes energy to stand. If you’re sitting, then there is more energy for thoughts to bounce around inside your head.
Eyes – keep them open with a soft gaze if you are outside, closed if you are inside.
Homework: do this meditation every day, outside if possible. Look at something green every day. Ask a tree to help you.
Tagged with: StandingMeditation
Having an Existential Tantrum?
In Letting Go, Harriet Brown writes about the meaning of forgiveness. Most people know that forgiving is good for you, but most people don’t know how to do it. Fred Luskin, who wrote Forgive for Good and has been studying forgiveness for 20 years, says there are only two steps in the process: grieving and letting go. Grieving is necessary if you have been wrongfully hurt by another. Luskin says that the process of forgiveness is to let go of anger and hurt by being mindful and focusing on gratitude and kindness. He says
Forgiveness concepts are simple. It’s the execution that’s hard.
Luskin provides 9 Steps to Forgiveness as a starting point.
Kathleen Lawler-Row, a psychology professor at East Carolina University, thinks that the benefits of forgiveness go beyond lowering blood pressure and improving sleep. She says that
once you forgive someone for something very painful, you never experience life the same way again. You’re more flexible, less black-and-white in your expectations of how life or other people will be. If there’s one thing that characterizes people who have experienced forgiveness, it’s that kind of larger perspective: I can’t predict what life will hand me, but I’m going to respond to it in this way.
The experts quoted in the article believe that forgiveness is a choice any of us can make at any time, no matter the content we’re wrestling with. Harriet is dealing with anger towards her mother, which is an ongoing situation rather than something that happened in the past and is over and done with. She asks Luskin “What if the person who hurt you in the past keeps hurting you over and over, in the present?” He interrupts her before she gets the last words out, saying that it’s not happening now, this second, and tells her to try again. So then she asks
How can you keep yourself safe with a difficult person?
He tells her that is the right question, because it gets rid of the blame and the enemy. He asks if she can follow through on her own suggestion with an open heart.
Forgiveness requires a conscious decision and you have to invite it in with an open heart.
Forgiveness as a Soup Question
In the wonderful movie Finding Forrester, Jamal asks the recluse William Forrester why his tomato soup gets thick but the soup his mother made at home was always watery. The answer was
Probably because your mother was brought up in a house…
…that never wasted milk in soup.
Forrester then tells Jamal that
The object of a question is to obtain information that matters only to us.
August is Forgiveness month. Every day we practice an act of forgiving. August first I had something huge to work with, but by the second I was already out of ideas so I watched a documentary called The Power of Forgiveness. Afterwards, I checked out the website references they had listed in the film to get specific guidelines for forgiveness. The links were not very helpful, so that day I forgave them for having such lame links on forgiveness. It seemed like a cop out. I found the most helpful information on Zenhabits: How to Let Go and Forgive.
Yesterday I treated myself to watching Healing From Within, which is volume 3 of the Bill Moyers special on Healing and the Mind. That volume covers Eastern Meditation and Western Group Psychotherapy. The eastern meditation class taught people who couldn’t be helped by traditional medicine how to live with their condition in the present moment and the group psychotherapy involved women whose breast cancer had metastasized. The breast cancer patients who participated in the study lived twice as long as other women who received the exact same medical care but did not have the same support group. The doctor who led the support group made the observation that the women got the most out of it if they were willing to open up and share their emotions and feelings honestly with each other.
So now my criteria for forgiveness is letting go and forgiving something that matters to me.
Today I saw this wonderful quote from Marianne Williamson
The past doesn’t determine your future unless you carry it with you into the present. Forgiving yourself and others, you free the universe to begin again at any moment.
That is the real power of forgiveness.
The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have
This little book is one of those daily inspirational message books. One of the things that I really like about it is that the author puts so much of himself in it. It makes the messages more personal than a random here-is-a-quote-that-I-like-now-what-else-can-I-say-about-it-x(365). The author has faced death from cancer and now knows how important it is to experience life.
The Essence of Place
One of the things I used to love about going to San Francisco on business was flying out Saturday night and buying a Sunday Chronicle newspaper. The Datebook pink section advertised special events. I could open up the paper, drink coffee, and plan out the day. It was totally spontaneous – what did I want to do today? No kids or anyone else to consult.
One Sunday morning there was going to be a talk given by an expert on virtual reality, which was a relatively new concept at the time. I went to the lecture, expecting to hear the latest technical details. The guy talked briefly about how they had experimented with taking movie cameras in cars and airplanes to record visual data. Then he spent the rest of the two hours talking about why that would never work.
He said that he had found it was impossible to capture the essence of a place digitally. Sure, you can capture snapshots of the visual and auditory environment. But that doesn’t tell you about what is important about that place or everything that is happening there, including smells and textures. Or the people. Or the sense of change that happens when the same place is different next time you go there.
Ever since that lecture, I have changed the way I visit places. Now I seek out what is special about that particular place at that particular time. The picture at the top of this post was taken in Portland at the Chinese Garden, Over 500 tons of rock was shipped from China for the garden, and 50 chinese workers spent 10 months putting every rock in place. I had worn my vibram shoes that day, so it was wonderful to feel the rocks beneath my feet. When I looked down and saw my toes on the rocks, it made me laugh because I felt my toes were in perfect harmony with the rocks.
Tagged with: wds
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