I titled my next project I’m working on for you – Flying Dragons and Owl Eyes. Fun, huh?
In researching this book and video project, I taped a conversation with the playfully inspiring Kim Ivy of http://www.embracethemoon.com/ about the magic of standing meditation.
We discovered in our 35-minute conversation some surprisingly powerful secrets emerged. These gems were secrets for us, too. That’s the value of these freeform conversations inspired by presence. You discover what you didn’t know that you knew.
You can get listen to this freebie here => www.BodyAndSoulMentor.net/getstandingmeditation.html
Why would you want to listen?
Because –
· You’ll get to listen to a great example of playful wisdom.
· You’ll find out why standing is so good.
· You will learn to transform waiting in lines into an opportunity for enlightenment.
· You’ll discover one potent secret that can make each moment of your life magical. True!
· You’ll hear a few words from the Mysterious Madam Ling.
Again, you can get this freebie here => www.BodyAndSoulMentor.net/getstandingmeditation.html
Blessings,
William
P.S. Pass this blog on to anyone who you think would
enjoy these wonderful insights.
Friday, November 30, 2007
Friday, November 09, 2007
Evening
Evening
It’s one o’clock in the morning and my brother, John, and I are sitting on either side of my father’s hospital bed in the quiet, dimly lit care unit in lovely costal southern California.
Our father is dying.
For several hours he has been disappearing into some realm where we could not follow. He stops breathing. Minutes pass. Then with a huge effort he takes another breath and returns.
He talks with us, making sure things are good between us, stays as long as he can, then some wind sweeps him away on his journeys. He repeats his coming and going all night.
John and I peacefully observe this profound mystery unfold.
My brother and I each have 30 year meditation practices. We’re comfortable just sitting. Just breathing. Even while our father dies.
It was intense, and it was sweet.
It was one of the richest times of my life and continues to inform my work and inspire my life.
The film, Evening, parallels John’s and my journey with our father.
I recommend you watch it. Here’s why. You can upgrade your right brain, (one of my four alluring paradigms) with this film.
This film will present you with beautiful design (one of the six skills for upgrading your right brain). It takes place by the sea in Newport, RI in a beautiful mansion.
I mostly want you to see it for its ability to fortify your empathy. Empathy is another of the six right brained skills you need to navigate the 21st C. Strengthening your empathy enhances your ability, as well as everyone else’s, to thrive.
Vanessa Redgrave plays Ann who is dying and drifting into and out of this and other realms like my father who thought he was in France. Claire Danes plays Ann as a young woman in the flashbacks.
The two sisters are played by Toni Collette and Natasha Richardson, who is the real life daughter of Vanessa Redgrave. Their bedside scenes will move you.
Some of the most fun, yes fun, and deepest wisdom come from the interactions between Ann and Ilene Atkins, the night nurse, while she is wearing a ball gown.
Even with all this death, my fathers and Ann’s, you will be richer for the journey.
Rent the DVD Evening. http://tinyurl.com/y6dmfn
It’s one o’clock in the morning and my brother, John, and I are sitting on either side of my father’s hospital bed in the quiet, dimly lit care unit in lovely costal southern California.
Our father is dying.
For several hours he has been disappearing into some realm where we could not follow. He stops breathing. Minutes pass. Then with a huge effort he takes another breath and returns.
He talks with us, making sure things are good between us, stays as long as he can, then some wind sweeps him away on his journeys. He repeats his coming and going all night.
John and I peacefully observe this profound mystery unfold.
My brother and I each have 30 year meditation practices. We’re comfortable just sitting. Just breathing. Even while our father dies.
It was intense, and it was sweet.
It was one of the richest times of my life and continues to inform my work and inspire my life.
The film, Evening, parallels John’s and my journey with our father.
I recommend you watch it. Here’s why. You can upgrade your right brain, (one of my four alluring paradigms) with this film.
This film will present you with beautiful design (one of the six skills for upgrading your right brain). It takes place by the sea in Newport, RI in a beautiful mansion.
I mostly want you to see it for its ability to fortify your empathy. Empathy is another of the six right brained skills you need to navigate the 21st C. Strengthening your empathy enhances your ability, as well as everyone else’s, to thrive.
Vanessa Redgrave plays Ann who is dying and drifting into and out of this and other realms like my father who thought he was in France. Claire Danes plays Ann as a young woman in the flashbacks.
The two sisters are played by Toni Collette and Natasha Richardson, who is the real life daughter of Vanessa Redgrave. Their bedside scenes will move you.
Some of the most fun, yes fun, and deepest wisdom come from the interactions between Ann and Ilene Atkins, the night nurse, while she is wearing a ball gown.
Even with all this death, my fathers and Ann’s, you will be richer for the journey.
Rent the DVD Evening. http://tinyurl.com/y6dmfn
Friday, October 26, 2007
Sacred Intervention
You’re riding your bike at a good clip through the early fall grayness and suddenly, you glance a swath of glorious green, sun light illuminating the ridge, just there…
“Wow…”
For a moment, you’re speechless, everything stops and you’re in heaven. You feel deep serenity. You experience the peace which passeth understanding.
“Oh this is cool, I should tell people about this…” your mind is back and chattering again.
But even with the renewed chatter that inevitably comes, everything has changed by this intervention of the Sacred upon the mundane.
Your ego mind can’t let this peace stand too long. It will reassert itself with its familiar chatter. But for this brief moment, the veil between you and Heaven drops and you see clearly.
You look upon everything with a renewed eye, perhaps, for the rest of your life. Maybe just for this morning.
Do you know what I’m talking about?
How often does this happen to you? Daily?
Want more? I aim at experiencing this Heaven multiple times a day. It is part of why I do the work I do.
Want to know how to have these experiences on demand?
You can touch Heaven any time by utilizing spiritual practices that bring you into the present.
Painting, Taiji, drawing, making love, and meditation are all ways to get there. Cooking and gardening work for clients of mine. Drinking a cup of tea in silence will do it.
SIMPLY SERENE has four beautiful and easy ways you can do it.
Get some Heaven => http://tinyurl.com/mbd4x
Blessings,
William
P.S. Pass this blog on to anyone who you think would enjoy
these wonderful insights.
“Wow…”
For a moment, you’re speechless, everything stops and you’re in heaven. You feel deep serenity. You experience the peace which passeth understanding.
“Oh this is cool, I should tell people about this…” your mind is back and chattering again.
But even with the renewed chatter that inevitably comes, everything has changed by this intervention of the Sacred upon the mundane.
Your ego mind can’t let this peace stand too long. It will reassert itself with its familiar chatter. But for this brief moment, the veil between you and Heaven drops and you see clearly.
You look upon everything with a renewed eye, perhaps, for the rest of your life. Maybe just for this morning.
Do you know what I’m talking about?
How often does this happen to you? Daily?
Want more? I aim at experiencing this Heaven multiple times a day. It is part of why I do the work I do.
Want to know how to have these experiences on demand?
You can touch Heaven any time by utilizing spiritual practices that bring you into the present.
Painting, Taiji, drawing, making love, and meditation are all ways to get there. Cooking and gardening work for clients of mine. Drinking a cup of tea in silence will do it.
SIMPLY SERENE has four beautiful and easy ways you can do it.
Get some Heaven => http://tinyurl.com/mbd4x
Blessings,
William
P.S. Pass this blog on to anyone who you think would enjoy
these wonderful insights.
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Three Iguanas
True.
Imagine standing in a huge noisy, florescent-lighted hall after an exhausting cross Pacific flight. You creep forward slowly in line at U.S. customs.
You’re getting closer to the head of the line.
Slow.
Maybe you’re sweating a bit. After all you have three live, endangered iguanas hidden in your prosthetic leg.
What!
Yes! Three iguanas. Alive!
You get to hear about this because the heinous Jerome Jameson was caught smuggling them.
No one asked him what his goals were, of course. Anyhow, he might have limply replied, “The money, of course.”
And they would have left it at that. But what did he want the money for?
Although I deplore his actions, I applaud his willingness to go the extra mile to achieve his goals.
What do you want money for? Hint – you want stuff because of the way you think the stuff will make you feel. Right?
Get clear on what you want.
Then take action.
What action steps are you willing to take to get what you want?
Obviously, you can get great help uncovering what you really want in The Magic Formula - How to Magically Attract the Life You Most Want
Go for it => http://tinyurl.com/28gmm2
And the iguanas? Happily, the iguanas are making iguana love in a breeding program.
Blessings,
William
P.S. Pass this newsletter on to anyone who you think would enjoy
these wonderful insights.
Imagine standing in a huge noisy, florescent-lighted hall after an exhausting cross Pacific flight. You creep forward slowly in line at U.S. customs.
You’re getting closer to the head of the line.
Slow.
Maybe you’re sweating a bit. After all you have three live, endangered iguanas hidden in your prosthetic leg.
What!
Yes! Three iguanas. Alive!
You get to hear about this because the heinous Jerome Jameson was caught smuggling them.
No one asked him what his goals were, of course. Anyhow, he might have limply replied, “The money, of course.”
And they would have left it at that. But what did he want the money for?
Although I deplore his actions, I applaud his willingness to go the extra mile to achieve his goals.
What do you want money for? Hint – you want stuff because of the way you think the stuff will make you feel. Right?
Get clear on what you want.
Then take action.
What action steps are you willing to take to get what you want?
Obviously, you can get great help uncovering what you really want in The Magic Formula - How to Magically Attract the Life You Most Want
Go for it => http://tinyurl.com/28gmm2
And the iguanas? Happily, the iguanas are making iguana love in a breeding program.
Blessings,
William
P.S. Pass this newsletter on to anyone who you think would enjoy
these wonderful insights.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Romantic Arias and Mozart
Here’s an Exactly-50-Word Mini-Saga –
Romantic arias and Mozart’s sacred choral music replace the Beatles and Bossa Novas at home. Golden Baroque trumpet music replaces the omnipresent sounds of pacific surf at my office. Yellow and red leaves skitter across our driveway as I walk up from the beach. I become more interior in autumn.
I wonder what changes for you, dear reader, as your seasons change?
Blessings,
William
P.S. Feel free to let people know about these insights.
P.P.S. Members can find out more about 50-word mini-sagas in the members section of Body & Soul Mentor.
Romantic arias and Mozart’s sacred choral music replace the Beatles and Bossa Novas at home. Golden Baroque trumpet music replaces the omnipresent sounds of pacific surf at my office. Yellow and red leaves skitter across our driveway as I walk up from the beach. I become more interior in autumn.
I wonder what changes for you, dear reader, as your seasons change?
Blessings,
William
P.S. Feel free to let people know about these insights.
P.P.S. Members can find out more about 50-word mini-sagas in the members section of Body & Soul Mentor.
Monday, September 24, 2007
“The Spiders Are On My Tomatoes!”
“The spiders are on my tomatoes!” she cried, “and my husband is in front of the TV watching football... ”
The seasons change. Here in the northern hemisphere my patient laments the coming of winter, the loss of her garden signaled by the spiders, and the loss of her husband to televised sports until spring. He does emerge in the spring along with her flowers.
What is your lament about the season change?
How can you ritualize the loss of the last season?
What can you get excited about in the season to come?
You can make your seasonal transitions beautiful when you look with an artist’s eye or a poet’s heart.
And remember Ecclesiastes’ wisdom text.
To every thing there is a season and a time to every purpose under the heaven.
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
The rest goes on in this fashion. I am fascinated by the pairings. (You can read it all here.)
Dive into the seasonal changes.
My goal is to enjoy the loss of each season, and celebrate the new season.
Farewell summer,
William
The seasons change. Here in the northern hemisphere my patient laments the coming of winter, the loss of her garden signaled by the spiders, and the loss of her husband to televised sports until spring. He does emerge in the spring along with her flowers.
What is your lament about the season change?
How can you ritualize the loss of the last season?
What can you get excited about in the season to come?
You can make your seasonal transitions beautiful when you look with an artist’s eye or a poet’s heart.
And remember Ecclesiastes’ wisdom text.
To every thing there is a season and a time to every purpose under the heaven.
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
The rest goes on in this fashion. I am fascinated by the pairings. (You can read it all here.)
Dive into the seasonal changes.
My goal is to enjoy the loss of each season, and celebrate the new season.
Farewell summer,
William
Monday, September 17, 2007
Do You Keep A Nature Log?
Do You Keep A Nature Log?
Do you keep a nature log?
I recommend it. It is part of your Simple Is Sophisticatedplan and part of your deliberate living program.
Here’s What You Do
Just make notes in log weekly or daily. It tunes you intothe seasons. I am just completing my first year in the newhome.
I am keeping my log in MS Word so I can keep enteringthings in the rhythm of the year. What I mean is, as theseasons repeat, I can insert the new information inside themonth of January cyclically and not sequentially. All theJanuary notes will go together. All the September entrieslikewise go together.
Are you with me?
I am not just tracking events and cool sightings butwanting to feel into the rhythms of place.
Then I can say things like, “The purple martins will beback any day now.”
Or with a sigh, “The ospreys will be leaving soon.”
I want to feel the presence of these events and rhythms inmy marrow.
Notice the ordinary and the glamorous. Admittedly,fledgling Bald Eagles impress, but all of nature ispotentially as amazing if you only see rightly. • The spider webs dripping with dew on cool sunny Septembermornings catching the light in ways that make you say,“Wow!”
• The osprey flying with his prey back to the nest.• The last leaf blowing away in the winter storm.
• Unidentified scat on the rocks below the seawallfascinated me for months.
• The first crocus.
Keep your entries simple enough so you’ll be inclined to doit regularly, and detailed enough to be useful. I stillhave the nature log I kept in 1980 in our underground solarhome on the edge of a forested ravine in Ohio. Theone-line notes still bring back the smells and the light ofthose woods.
I make entries on Sundays trying to recall the week. Some seasons stay fairly stable for weeks so I skip some weeks.
I challenge myself by seeing if I can tell when theswallows or the ospreys leave. I find it hard to noticewhen something is gone. Much easier to notice the arrivalof the swallows in May.
Watching nature this clearly trumps the old suggestion tostop and smell the roses wouldn’t you say. Stopping andsmelling the spiders doesn’t sound as good though, does it.
Keep a log. Dive into presence. Feel the rhythms. Fallin love with it all – that’s the promise.
If you want to see my Duwamish Head Nature Log, let me know.
***Paradigms engaged in this article:
• Simple Is Sophisticated• Presencing• Spaceship Earth• Upgrade Your Right Brain
http://www.bodyandsoulmentor.com/
August 14th, 2007 – An black eagle landed on a branch 20feet below an adult in our “eagle” tree.
It fell off while still holding on with its talons. Yikes!
It flapped and screeched to get back up on top of thebranch, barely succeeded. Woof!
Because of her clumsiness and her complete blackness, Isuspect she is a newly fledged bald eagle that I heardbegging for food at the nest last week. – fancy version of my entry in my Duwamish Head Nature Log.
Do you keep a nature log?
I recommend it. It is part of your Simple Is Sophisticatedplan and part of your deliberate living program.
When you pay attention to the rhythms of nature, invariablyyou engage in life more completely, with more presence. Your engagement will immerse you into your heart-felt life. I promise.
To pray is to pay attention to something or someone otherthan oneself. Whenever a man so concentrates hisattention— on a landscape, a poem, a geometrical problem,an idol, or the True God— that he completely forgets hisown ego and desires, he is praying. – W. H. Auden
Here’s What You Do
Just make notes in log weekly or daily. It tunes you intothe seasons. I am just completing my first year in the newhome.
I am keeping my log in MS Word so I can keep enteringthings in the rhythm of the year. What I mean is, as theseasons repeat, I can insert the new information inside themonth of January cyclically and not sequentially. All theJanuary notes will go together. All the September entrieslikewise go together.
Are you with me?
I am not just tracking events and cool sightings butwanting to feel into the rhythms of place.
Then I can say things like, “The purple martins will beback any day now.”
Or with a sigh, “The ospreys will be leaving soon.”
I want to feel the presence of these events and rhythms inmy marrow.
Notice the ordinary and the glamorous. Admittedly,fledgling Bald Eagles impress, but all of nature ispotentially as amazing if you only see rightly. • The spider webs dripping with dew on cool sunny Septembermornings catching the light in ways that make you say,“Wow!”
• The osprey flying with his prey back to the nest.• The last leaf blowing away in the winter storm.
• Unidentified scat on the rocks below the seawallfascinated me for months.
• The first crocus.
Keep your entries simple enough so you’ll be inclined to doit regularly, and detailed enough to be useful. I stillhave the nature log I kept in 1980 in our underground solarhome on the edge of a forested ravine in Ohio. Theone-line notes still bring back the smells and the light ofthose woods.
I make entries on Sundays trying to recall the week. Some seasons stay fairly stable for weeks so I skip some weeks.
I challenge myself by seeing if I can tell when theswallows or the ospreys leave. I find it hard to noticewhen something is gone. Much easier to notice the arrivalof the swallows in May.
Watching nature this clearly trumps the old suggestion tostop and smell the roses wouldn’t you say. Stopping andsmelling the spiders doesn’t sound as good though, does it.
Keep a log. Dive into presence. Feel the rhythms. Fallin love with it all – that’s the promise.
If you want to see my Duwamish Head Nature Log, let me know.
***Paradigms engaged in this article:
• Simple Is Sophisticated• Presencing• Spaceship Earth• Upgrade Your Right Brain
http://www.bodyandsoulmentor.com/
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