August 2012
32 posts
2 tags
Effortless Effort
The things that you like to do, you do without effort. You can accomplish a lot with no effort at all. In this Western world, we have cultivated such a work ethic that we work for the sake of work. We believe in our bones that hard work pays off. This belief can cause us to spend our lives being miserable and working hard to show what hard workers we are. We can get where we want without all...
July 2012
30 posts
5 tags
Jellybeans
Imagine that you were made of jellybeans. Imagine that dogs, cats, llamas, plants, the ocean, the sky, the moon and the stars were all made of jellybeans. Imagine that these jellybeans were the source of pure happiness.
Imagine that because everything was made of these jellybeans, that you didn’t even know that you were made of jellybeans. Because you didn’t know that you and the...
6 tags
Here and Now
This is it. Everything you need is right here in this moment. You have all the conditions of happiness available to you now. From where you are sitting, you can look around you and see beauty. If you listen, you can hear beauty.
It’s all right here.
It’s all right now.
You’re alright now.
5 tags
Thinking
Think, think, think, think, think. Think think think think. Think, thought, thought, think think think. Insight. Thought, thought, thought, think think.
That is our life. Our regular thoughts tend to have a bit more variety, but our thoughts dominate our days. We have so many, and such a variety of thoughts, that we usually don’t even see an insight when it sneaks into our thoughts. Of...
6 tags
Heartbreak
Heartbreak is a special kind of suffering. It can be physically painful and emotionally devastating. Your exquisitely imagined path to happiness has hit a dead end. What are you supposed to do?
I liked how Jason Segal’s character dealt with it in the movie Forgetting Sarhah Marshall. He just cried and cried and cried, and then miserably accepted invitations to do things, until he was able...
5 tags
The Idea of Ego.
People think about Ego as a greedy, hungry force, that compels us to outdo each other, causing pain and misery. Ego wasn’t always so sinister. Freud talked about the ego as a middle man of the mind, who was trying to make peace, between our base urges (id) and our conscience, or the internalized voice of our parents (superego). In that model, Ego was a peace maker. Our ego was a part of...
4 tags
Youth
If I knew then, what I know now, I would have missed all the fun.
3 tags
...Like Me
This is a simple exercise to help you become less judgmental towards others and yourself.
Whenever you notice yourself passing judgment on somebody, add ‘like me’ to the end of your judgmental thought (or statement).
Example:
That person is so ignorant, like me.
Feel free to change the phrase to make the judgmental thought flow.
Example:
Those are ugly shoes, like my shoes.
It...
6 tags
LovEvolvEgo
With love, you can evolve your ego.
In order to actually use love’s force to help your ego evolve, it would it would be helpful to know what all this nonsense means. To understand this, and to put it into practice, you have to look for your ego. Upon recognizing your ego, you have to decide if it needs to evolve, or if it is just fine as it is. If you decide that it needs to evolve, then...
5 tags
Becoming Beauty
Becoming beauty, is deeper than putting on makeup, but it is the same thing. Beauty is more than our appearance, so just decorating the surface is not enough. Your daily ritual of preparing your face for the world, making yourself beautiful, or presentable, can be part of your practice of becoming beauty. If you are preparing to go out, you may try on a few outfits, look critically at yourself in...
4 tags
Lovesickness
Lovesickness is grasping too hard at love. Love is not a magic elixir that will make everything alright. Even if you found that perfect somebody who gets you, and digs you, and loves you, you would still suffer. You would just move onto the next reason. If you suffer because a specific somebody is not in love with you, or doesn’t love you in the right way, is that love?. Lovesickness, to...
5 tags
Happy Pappy
Happy Pappy was a man.
Happy Pappy had no plan.
Happy Pappy liked to sit,
He also liked to walk a bit.
When he got hungry, Pappy ate.
When he got horny, he would mate.
Pappy lived his happy life,
With his kids and horny wife.
When he grew tired, Pappy slept.
When Pappy died, his children wept.
His wife, however, carried on
And she shacked up with Randy Ron.
4 tags
My Bad Mood
The problem with negative feelings, is feeling them. I happened to find myself in a bad mood this afternoon. I feel the bad mood in my stomach and up into my solar plexus, generalized around that area. Needless to say, I don’t enjoy the feeling. I do appreciate the feeling though, it keeps me honest.
When I feel the pain of the bad mood, the worry about the future, the hurt of a perceived...
4 tags
The Universe, Dogs, and Feelings
The universe feels itself through us. It feels itself through everything, but we humans have a special awareness of these feelings. We think about thinking and feel about feeling. Dogs just feel and do.
Dogs have an incredible sense of smell compared to us. They don’t spend their time sniffing roses though. They sniff shit. Poop has such a strong smell that dogs love it. It is intense....
4 tags
Creating a Future
Sometimes, I think we have it backwards. We spend our efforts trying to create a better future for ourselves. I don’t know that I’ve ever actually created a future. I know for certain that I have created a past. Everything I have ever done is right there behind me.
Time is like the wind. You can’t see it, but you can see its effects. Things change. As we create a past we...
4 tags
Why Seek Happiness?
Don’t get stuck looking for happiness. Its really a great waste of your time and energy. You might as well seek Bigfoot. Seriously. If you went looking for Bigfoot, you would find happiness. Happiness is like that. If you are looking for happiness, you are mostly running from sadness, angst, and loneliness. The trouble is, you’re running in the wrong direction. Also, you’ll...
4 tags
Are You What You What You Think?
Of course not. What you feel is much closer to what you think. What you are, you can only know when your thinking stops. You are what you think in the same way that you are the bird singing in the tree. Your thoughts are a part of your observable universe.
It is amazing to me that we are this fantastic experience, which we can perceive with focused attention, yet we are absolutely blind to it...
6 tags
Transform Your Pain Into Compassion
Many of you expertly use tumblr to transform your pain into compassion by blogging about what hurts you and getting support from the community around you. If you are not comfortable blogging about your pain, but have pain that you would liked transformed, you can go to my ‘?’ page and I will transform your pain into compassion. No problem.
4 tags
Worry, Be Happy
You’re bound to both worry and be happy. Don’t try to hard to be at one end or the other, just be where you are. If you are worrying, worry. If you are happy, be happy. You won’t likely feel both together, but will surely feel each in its time. The more you feel what you are feeling, the faster each feeling will make way for the next. Happiness tends to linger longer if you...
4 tags
Does Life Get Better?
In a word, no. It also doesn’t get worse. Circumstances change, but life neither gets better nor worse. There are certainly rough periods where you feel like life better get better or else what’s the point? The point lies beyond the circumstance, in the whole of your life.
Life is experience. We experience good times and trying times. Experience is experience. We habitually try to...
6 tags
Thoughts on Wisdom
Thoughts and wisdom are different. Wisdom lurks beneath the surface, thoughts just dance around on top. We tend to value deep thinking. Deep thinking is still only superficial, just like the atmosphere around the Earth. Thoughts don’t lead us to wisdom. Wisdom leads us to wisdom.
Thoughts are a part of life. They are like water. Water stays around the surface of the Earth. It seeps into...
4 tags
Waking Up
What’s the big deal about waking up? We do it every day. Is this not miracle enough? Each night we go to sleep and, if things are going generally well for us, we look forward to that moment. We surrender ourselves to our unconscious world. We dream. Then, if we are still alive, we wake up.
If we are thinking about awakening to a greater consciousness, then going to sleep is a far better...
6 tags
Way To Go!!!
I love to check in and see that all of you people struggling with serious mental health issues are still here struggling with these issues. Way to go!!
It’s nice to think about an enlightenment where your consciousness pops and you are no longer concerned with the problems that bother you now. That moment cannot happen without these moments to lead you there.
Sanity is not everlasting...
5 tags
Is Life a Dream?
Life is a dream just as dreams are life. In our dreams, thoughts and feelings drift through our minds and we create context, stories, to go with the feelings. In our sleeping minds there is no limit to our ability to create contexts. That is why we can fly and visit with dead relatives without it seeming strange.
We do the same in our waking lives, only the stories we tell ourselves have...
5 tags
Imagining Reality
Blogging has demonstrated to me an analogy for how I imagine reality. I experience reality everyday and sometimes find it boring. Television and movies can be exciting and I imagine that they are more real than reality. When I see a local landmark in a movie, I am more excited than when I see that landmark in real life. The movie is another layer of imagined reality.
The same seems to be true...
3 tags
What Do I Know?
How is it that I think I know things? I have always thought that I know what I’m talking about. I have often been wrong. When I was twelve years old I thought I knew how the world worked. I didn’t. When I was eighteen, I really knew how things were then. I didn’t, really. When I was twenty seven years old, I had some doubts. That was quite uncomfortable. It was so...
5 tags
Self Help
The two most effective self help practices I know of are meditation and masturbation.
Fortunately, you cannot meditate too much.
6 tags
Self Destruction
The most Self destructive thing you can do is to love. Love something. Love somebody. If you love without reservation, your Self disappears into that thing. It disappears into that moment. Gone, destroyed.
To destroy your Self through violence is far less effective. Nothing good comes of violence. You can torture yourself with violence, but if you want to destroy your Self, you should go with...
6 tags
Do You Think You Might Be Depressed?
If you think you might be depressed, you probably are. Too bad. Being depressed stinks. Being sad is part of life, it comes and goes in its time. Being depressed doesn’t make as much sense, it just lingers. There’s no sense in ignoring your mood, it will be there regardless of what you do. If you are feeling depressed and looking for hope, I’m sorry for this bit of news,...
5 tags
Behavior Modification
What are you other than your behavior? If you want to change yourself, you can only change your behavior. You cannot change your thoughts. They just come. If you think that your thoughts are causing you problems, then change your behavior in relating to your thoughts. Watch your thoughts. Pay attention to your thoughts. If you pay attention to your thoughts, they will change.
The major...
