I believe everything in our lives presents opportunities to grow, to evolve into a place of greater love. Sometimes an illness is what it takes to consider our thoughts and attitudes. With that consideration comes the opportunity to change.
If you are fortunate you see the sun streaming through firs in a magic morning mist, give thanks for you are in the midst of good fortune.
Memorial Day Weekend 2012
Time for massive maintenance here at home. The rain falls the sun shines, and suddenly there is hay in the orchard, hay four foot tall. My neighbor, from years ago, farmed hay, and farming hay takes special tools. Over the weekend I have used eight gallons of gas in the mower. I have weed wacked, blown, lopered, and chain sawed all in an effort to keep nature from making all but the tallest structures disappear. I wonder how long it would take for nature to reclaim where I live? It seems like they are all the time digging up lost cities covered in dirt, covered deeply in dirt. I wonder, how did that happen?
The garden beds got weeded and mostly planted on Memorial Day. I thought about my dad and how I learned the idea of gardening from him. He enjoyed a good harvest, you could see it in his energy and posture. I was a kid who preferred playing and don’t remember how much gardening I learned from my dad. I know I learned to bury fish guts in the ground below the tomato plant. I know I learned to love gardening.
The state of the vegetable garden this spring, seems like procrastination on my part. The good weather alters my perception of time. Some part of my brain reasons that so much good weather has come our way in Olympia recently, that we must be well into summer. Of course we’re not and there is time to do everything that must be done.
Written May 2012
Birthday Presence (pres·ence / prezəns Noun: The state or fact of existing, occurring, or being present in a place a thought or thing on your birthday.)
It is so interesting contemplating my birthday this year in terms of trips around the sun. I have now been around the sun 62 times. That is 22,630 times around on the earth. It seems like a carnaval ride. There are times when the ride seems very serious and times when it is very light hearted. So much happens in a trip around the sun. In the material world everything is part of a cycle.
BEING
There are so many wonderful things about life. At this age I like to think about new experiences and learnings, and mostly, I enjoy thinking about states of being. What state of being can I aspire to, and what state of being can I attain?
For the last year I have focused much of my attention on the question of my purpose for being. Why am I here? What am I to be? The glimpses thus far are very simple, being kind is the one I am contemplating now. It is interesting that many say finding your purpose is really the easy part. Living your purpose presents the greater challenges.
As Maslow says “One is in harmony when that which one absolutely must do becomes identical to that which one most desires to do”. Wouldn’t this world be delightful if we all were in this state of mind? I find listening to people’s issues a timeless experience. I feel honored to hear their stories and to offer aid.
SHARING
I do not easily share myself. I grew up in Minnesota. My parents trained to be parents by watching their parents. We all have a family of origin with unique characteristics. So, grow up where I grew up and and you don’t “brag” about yourself. At minimum you must fake humility by not talking about yourself.
My life journey has had five perpetual activities; entrepreneurship, music (especially composing), photography, tai chi, and metaphysics. Each have waxed and waned at times, but have always been central to me. My traveling partner is my wife. We have been 16 times around the sun together.
I split my time between many activities. Most of my days are about hypnotherapy, website design,and property maintainence. I have been a founding partner in a Graphic and Web design company for 14 years. All the programming is mentally engaging and there is always something new to learn. We have rental houses where we live and they need the maintainence. I like having different tasks that use my right and left brain separately and in concert during different activities.
We have many acres of land and buildings that require maintenance. Sometimes when mowing the lawn I am very peaceful.
I play and write music as often as I can. I find it brings me into a wonderful trance like state of harmony and joy. Finally, another overriding aspect of my life is metaphysics. Metaphysics is a search for truth and understanding about the universe that is beyond current scientific verification. When I was 10 years old I believed I might be dying. This concern lasted for a couple of years. It made me very aware and interested in understanding the universe.
I have been back in Minnesota to visit my mom, family, and friends. In the six months that have passed my mom’s cognitive abilities have slipped and two friends are dealing with cancer. There are so many stresses people are dealing with in their lives. I feel blessed to be able to be supportive and help with beneficial information. I talked with my mom today and she said while I was back “everything was good”. I wish I could leave that energy behind permanently for her. While I was there I bought a book by Dr. Masaru Emoto. I was familiar with his work and just wanted the book to support his ongoing efforts to research and elucidate the relationship between thought and material objects as exemplified in water. My simplistic summary of his research is this: Thoughts are things with tangible affects in our physical world. His research specifically shows the relationship between thoughts and the molecular structure of water. Here is a video you might enjoy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_dmYT83ZKY Emoto’s research indicates that there are two words/thoughts that have the greatest power to affect matter in a wonderful way, those words are gratitude and love. I also got to meet my great nephew on this trip.
As I have mentioned before, I have mentors living and dead. My favorite therapist, Milton Erickson, has been dead for quite some time. Fortunately there are so many books analyzing his life work. Recently I have been having synchronicities all around me helping me.
I was reading last night “Conversations With Milton Erickson Volume One” and found that Milton too expressed being disturbed at times. He said there were times “when I know a patient is going to go and deliberately give up”.
People sometimes say they want change and do whatever they can to avoid it. They prefer the comfort, predictability, and the perceived benefits of being a victim over the discomfort, change, forgiveness and personal responsibility of change.
A mentor and friend of mine here in town reminded me that sometimes a visit to me will be a seed that will begin to grow in its own time, perhaps months or years from now. I know this is true.
I don’t know how this works for you, but sometimes I find myself rereading a book and discovering something I didn’t understand the first time through. A day ago there was just such a discovery. As I read there was this concept of living a “nominal” life. A person could be having a very good life, feeling healthy, enjoying their work, and more. However, it could still be a nominal life, and a nominal life is one without a great purpose, and a great purpose is one known to the essence of the person, and a great purpose could be many physical manifestations that are in accord with that great purpose.
Now if you are thinking Gandhi, Moses, Martin Luther King or a host of similar people your are correct in assuming they were not living nominal lives. And it is important to know that living a great purpose can be an obscure life out of the public view also. I have had the joy of knowing some people living a great purpose and all were living rather normal lives. So what is it that defines the difference between a nominal life and one in harmony with a great inner purpose? Does such a purpose just befall some people and ignore others?
There are stories of people surviving accidents and having a massive shift in their conscious engagement with life. There was a story on 60 Minutes last year about a man hit by lightning and finding himself drawn to learn to play the piano, to compose fine works and share those with the world. Of course there is no necessity to have a near death experience to begin a journey into finding the latent great purpose of our lives. No, it is a bit more mundane than that. It begins with a desire to be more than the nominal life, caught in habits, sleepwalking through the days, weeks and years.
Does it matter being more than nominal? No, not when you figure there is an eternity in this space time continuum. Every moment is an opportunity to choose and a person can choose an inward search for purpose or veg out on meaningless numbing pop culture. The essence of life is the opportunity for using our will to make choices, choices leading to greater unity and love or choices leading toward chaos and aloneness. I believe finding and living our great purpose, our soul purpose, is the reason we all are alive. Fortunate are those who just know that purpose and move inexorably toward it. For the rest of us it takes study, meditation, prayer, and desire.
I recently pulled a weathered legal pad from a box in the basement, a pad full of notes and quotes from my youth. On the first page I found this quote: “Contemplation of Deity in all manifestations is the true work of the soul”.
Thanks to google I could easily find where I had read this originated, it was from a book titled, Prayer: a history By Philip Zaleski, Carol Zaleski
Our New Year celebration is a quiet one with a few friends. We meet at Marion’s house to eat and share. One tradition is to draw a card from a deck of Osho Zen Tarot cards. This year we drew a card representing 2011 and one for 2012.
Here is the commentary written about the card I drew for 2012 called Maturity (needless to say this card does excite me about this year). “This figure stands alone, silent and yet alert. The inner being is filled with flowers–that carry the quality of springtime and regenerate wherever he goes. This inner flowering and the wholeness that he feels affords the possibility of unlimited movement. He can move in any direction–within and without it makes no difference as his joy and and maturity cannot be diminished by externals. He has come to a time of centeredness and expansiveness–the white glow around the figure is his protection and his light. All of life’s experiences have brought him to this time of perfection. When you draw this card, know well this moment carries a gift–for hard work well done. Your base is solid now and success and good fortune are yours for they are the outcome of what has already been experienced within.”
The group wanted me to draw another card and I did. Before I drew I decided to draw for the benefit of the group; that is, what the group as a whole might contemplate. There are 79 cards in this deck and my card had been shuffled back into the cards lying face down on the table. I picked the same card again.
The card for 2011 was very accurate titled “Go With The Flow”. That certainly represented last year very well.
Someone once wrote a very simple answer for the big question: The meaning of life, existence. He said peace and harmony is the purpose for existence, and peace and harmony come from understanding that life and death states are one.
Now that is about as simple as you can get.
A picture from my childhood. My peers from the neighborhood gathered together for my birthday party at Minnehaha Falls in Minneapolis Minnesota