Moments

Discovered a hole in my sock. I think this somehow makes the toe look cute.


Throwing out old toiletries the fun way: squeezing them out of their tubes into the garbage. 5-year-old Sunscreen, 7-year-old-sunscreen, and aloe vera gel.



I do a meditation in the mornings where I focus on the flame of a candle, so I've been working my way through my supply. I recently found some candles from my early childhood while cleaning up at my parent's house, so I thought I'd use them. The one I'm currently using is a wizard. He started off with a tall pointy hat, but that burned down quickly. Once it got to the point where the flame was where his head had been, I thought it was nicely symbolic, so I took some pictures.

This one is cool because there is a part of the meditation where I move the candle flame to the center of my head. To fill my mind with light, and empty it of thoughts. Wouldn't it be nice our minds were like a candle flame in a windless place: still and undisturbed, yet illuminating all around it. No wonder he's a wizard.




Sometimes from the depths of that silence, inspiration strikes!



And with enough practice of this Jyoti (light) meditation, one's mind becomes as subtle as the emptiness from which all things are born. The hollow center of the mustard seed. The nothingness of the zero-point field. The emptiness within Krishna's flute. The silence from which the entire universe emanates.



The hole in the donut that makes it so tasty.

Hoping for this outcome, as well as wizard powers, I continue to practice the Jyoti meditation every day, early in the morning, while it is still dark and the rest of the world is sleeping comfortably in their beds.

Flowers are blooming all around my parent's house. And even around my apartment in Queens. When was the last time you've really looked at a flower? Really looked at it, up close and personal. It is a sculpture of incredible beauty, sensuality, and subtlety, combining visual aesthetics, pleasing kinesthetics, and subtle, intoxicating smells.




Rarely have I seen a manmade creation begin to approach the luxuriant subtlety, complexity, and detail of these naturally occurring multi-sensory ever-changing art installations.





So I suppose this is just a tribute to the freely given riches of nature we are surrounded by, every day. The only cost of admission is the willingness to look with the eyes of wonder.

And no, I'm not on drugs. Just the natural high of appreciation.

Much love to you all. I'm still focusing on productivity hard-core, but I don't want to bore you, so I thought I'd mix it up a little bit. And my own inner voice of wisdom is telling me I'm getting a bit too rigid and intellectual with all that. Too much cold mind, not enough warm heart. So, today, pretty pictures.

Only a few of many stories. Creeping Cloud of Doom Evaporation

There are so many stories I want to share.

I was sitting in the living room, staring absently out the window, and my daydreams suddenly shifted towards the sexual. Suddenly, two small, mating birds slammed into the window with a disquieting mixture of soft thunk and hard twang and then fell down out of site. Not ceasing their activities, apparently uncaring about the collision. A few seconds later I saw them hopping away from each other, unruffling their wings and carrying on with the rest of their day. I'd put that under, "God see's your thoughts, but he has a great sense of humor."


I was outside in the forest before sunrise, offering all I was to the Great Mystery, and in the stillness afterward, a herd of deer walked right around me. Maybe as close as 30 or 40 feet to either side of me. It wasn't till most of them were well past that one of them smelled something was off, and started huffing a bit nervously. But not nervous enough to run. Just to be cautious. I think I was sitting among them for about thirty minutes as they slowly moved past me, grazing. I take that as a thumbs up for doing that particular spiritual practice.


There are more. Some connected to pictures. Some from weeks ago, or even more than a month. I wish I had time to write all of them down. There are so many things I want to do. If I only had a fourth of them to do, with only one big thing at a time, I could devote the appropriate amount of time to each. Writing my current book. Finding and applying to a good grad school. Writing any of the many other stories in my "to write" files. Working on improving my teaching/life coaching skills. Finishing my website searching for new clients re-writing the play memorizing the lines honing primitive skills improving my drawing digitizing my visual memoir improving my herbalism-

and most of all learning how to be super efficient and productive. Because that is an incomplete to-do list.

So learning how to be hyper-productive while staying playful and happy is the main thing I'm working on now. I apologize for all the stories being left untold. I dream of the day when I have time for all of them. I dream, but I make plans too. Make plans and take actions.

Here's one thing I've learned: the Cloud of Creeping Doom? (an earlier series of posts) I figured out how to solve it.

Turns out it comes from procrastinating on doing something. The doom is the feeling of, "man, I should really be doing this other thing right now. I'm just screwing myself deeper and deeper into a hole (to mix metaphors) by continuing to do other stuff. Each second that ticks by makes the eventual outcome worse and worse."

The solution to this--now bear with me, this was quite a jump for me, it took me years to finally figure it out, so you may need to go back and re-read this--the solution was:
I needed to stop doing other stuff, and do the thing that I was avoiding doing.

I recall my ex-girlfriend saying something along the lines of exactly the same thing, to which I replied something like, "It's not that easy! I need to feel my feelings and process my guilt or figure out the root of where this fear is coming from--"

But nope. No, it totally is that easy.

If she ever hears this I hope she gets to bask in the delicious "I TOLD YOU SO!"-ness of the moment. It's rare that we get to be so distinctly right and someone else so distinctly wrong, and even rarer for them to realize and admit it, so it must be utilized to the fullest by smashing their face into their inaccuracy like an abusive mad dog owner pushing his dog's face at its own ill-placed poop while saying, "look at what you have doooone! Seeeee! See your mistake!!! REPEEEEEENT! BUUUUUUURRRRN!"

That way they (in your imagination) will never have the temerity to take your advice as less than gospel, and will writhe in wretchedness on the ground, begging for forgiveness for their foolish lapse of trust in your sagacity.

This is actually the secret dance that goes on in my own head whenever people don't listen to me about something I'm sure about and then they are proved obviously wrong. To my knowledge my ex does not have this same obsession or any desire to do such a thing. But being a good sport, I figure I should let other people enjoy doing this to me, since I (used to) secretly crave doing it to others.

So I now hereby do it to myself. In the hopes that other people who suffer under the same misconception learn this lesson faster than I did.

In a nutshell (God I love that phrase. And nutshells. And nuts.):
If you are feeling the Creeping Doom of niggling worry, anxiety, or fear, about something coming up, or something left undone, the solution is to do that thing, or do the prep work for that thing. Start right away unless your hair is on fire. Maybe even then, if you can do it on your way to the sink.

In a smaller nut: If you are feeling anxious about something left undone, then do it.

This may seem overly obvious to those of you not cursed with expert-level procrastination. For you 'proactive since they were in diapers' types, I can only say, it's more of an issue for some of us than you might imagine.


OK friends, goodbye for another week.

I O(ut)