A few words from Gangaji

This morning I saw this message in my inbox and decided to read it carefully. It speaks to me so well these days..


"Whenever you are feeling an extreme emotion, whether it is anger, hurt, despair, or even bliss and you act on that feeling, there can be no clarity.

The feelings are here to be felt. True action or inaction has to come from what lies beneath all feelings.

Ultimately, each of us has a responsibility to ask ourselves, “What do I want?” If you want peace, it is here regardless of what you have done or what you are feeling. If you want war, you know how to go to war. We all do.

What do you want for yourself, for all victims and all victimizers? What do you want for all?

What a challenge.
What an opportunity, right now.

I send you my love and support."

---Gangaji
 

How to learn handstand...

My lovely wife just sent me this video which is a pleasant surprise. I've been doing headstand pose for years and it is very easy for me. When I was younger, handstand pose is also quite easy for me. Now, it is a bit challenge. I didn't realize that one can actually transition headstand practice to the handstand practice. This video summarizes it. All kudos to the instruction and wifi who discovered it.

How to learn handstand...

THIS IS YOUR LIFE

THE DUST BROTHERS

and you open the door
and you step inside
we're inside our hearts
now imagine your pain
is a white ball of healing light
that's right, feel your pain,
the pain itself,
is a white ball of healing light
i don't think so

this is your life
good to the last drop,
doesn't get any better than this
this is your life, and it's ending
one minute at a time
this isn't a seminar
and this isn't a weekend retreat
where you are now
you can't even imagine
what the bottom will be like

only after disaster
can we be resurrected
it's only after you've lost
everything that you're
free to do anything

nothing is static,
everything is appalling (evolving),
everything is
falling apart

you are not a beautiful and unique snowflake
you are the same decaying
organic matter as everything else
we are all a part of the same compost heap
we are the all-singing,
all-dancing crap of the world
you are not your bank account,
you are not the clothes you wear
you are not the contents of your wallet
you are not your bowel cancer
you are not your grande latte
you are not the car you drive
you are not your fucking khakis

you have to give up

you have to realise that someday you will die,
until you know that you are useless
i say let me never be complete
i say may i never be content
i say deliver me from swedish furniture
i say deliver me from clever art
i say deliver me from clear skin and perfect teeth
i say you have to give up
i say evolve, and let the chips
fall where they may

i want you to hit me as hard as you can

welcome to fight club
if this is your first night
you have to fight

Turning 2 dimension to 3 dimension

I always feel that it is really amazing to turn a two dimensional object into a three dimensional one. Here is really a useful one for all those printed paper that hang around in the house.

http://www.netflixorigami.com/tray.htm

There are tons of other origami examples out on the web. It is so easy to learn new stuff these days thanks to the web...

The triune brain model

The triune brain model was proposed by Dr. Paul MacLean in the 1950s. It states
that humans don't just have one brain, but rather a layer of 3 brains that have
each evolved on top of the other over the course of years: reptilian brain,
mammalian brain, and primate brain.

The Reptilian Brain

This brain is the first to be developed. It is responsible for autonomic bodily
functions such as heartbeat, breathing, and temperature control. It is also
responsible for the most important human needs, such as survival, feeding
and mating.

This brain is part of your subconscious mind. It has a set of pre-programmed
instructions that it will always execute. This brain cannot change or learn from
past experiences. It only understands images, and does not understand language.

Some of the traits associated with the reptilian brain are: aggression, dominance,
obsessiveness, compulsiveness, fear, worship, submission, greed, sex, and
seeking a mate.

The Mammalian Brain

This is the type of brain developed by most mammals on top of their reptilian
brain. It is your emotional brain – this is the brain that is responsible for making
you feel the way that you do. This brain creates chemical messages that allow you
to store information in memory. The more emotionally charged the message is,
the stronger effect on the brain it is going to have.

This part of the brain is able to learn from past experiences. It ensures that you
feel pleasure from the activities intended for your survival, such as eating
and sex. This function helps to ensure that you will continue to repeat the
favorable behaviors. The emotional brain is also able to learn to associate pain
with activities that may threaten your existence, such as getting burned or getting
hit by a car.

We like to think that we make most of our decisions based on what we think is
right. In actuality, however, we make most of our decisions, on what we feel is
right. And this "feeling" is the response that we get from our emotional brain.

The Primate Brain

This is the thinking brain. It controls such things as thinking, language, and
creative thinking. This brain is responsible for telling us who we think we are.

Unfortunately, this brain does not have a priority over its two predecessors. For
example, in an emergency situation, your brain can cause you to automatically
react in a certain way, without you ever having to think about it. This function is
crucial to our survival, but it can also present some real problems if our

subconscious mind decides to take over, as it often does, in non-emergency
situations.

In the next chapter, we are going to take a closer look at some of the possible
triggers (external events) that can cause our reptilian and emotional brains to
take over.

Addition Cycle

It is a good chart to illustrate the stage of addictive mind.
May I be aware of this chain.
May the clarity shine spot light on this.
May I be free from it.

True Happiness

This is one of my favorite five mindfulness trainings in the tradition of Thay.

"Aware of the suffering caused by exploitation, social injustice, stealing, and oppression, I am committed to practicing generosity in my thinking, speaking, and acting. I am determined not to steal and not to possess anything that should belong to others; and I will share my time, energy, and material resources with those who are in need. I will practice looking deeply to see that the happiness and suffering of others are not separate from my own happiness and suffering; that true happiness is not possible without understanding and compassion; and that seeking wealth, fame, power and sensual pleasures can bring much suffering and despair. I am aware that happiness depends on my mental attitude and not on external conditions, and that I can live happily in the present moment simply by remembering that I already have more than enough conditions to be happy. I am committed to working in a way that I can help reduce the suffering of living beings on Earth and reverse the process of global warming."

Death is always on the way

"Death is always on the way, but the fact that you don't know when it will arrive seems to take away from the finiteness of life. It's that terrible precision that we hate so much. But because we don't know, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless."
-- Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky
Narrated by Brandon Lee

Attributes of a Personal Myth.

Attributes of a Personal Myth.
Dennis Patrick Slattery, Ph.D.

A Personal Myth (PM) is

 A loom on which I weave the raw materials of daily experience into a coherent story (Feinstein and Krippner)
 What organizes my experiences of the world and determines or influences by what categories I will engage the world’s matters.
 What draws me to what I imagine to be true.
 What frames the “als ob” or “as if” quality of my life. The
“as if” quality of my days comprises the mythic principles I live by.
 Always evolving and continually assessing what is working and no longer working for me in my self-definition.
 What can harden or calcify from an organic living quality into a rigid dogmatism that is closer to a cadaver than to a vital life principle.
 What reveals what I believe about myself and the world; it will influence what I believe to be true.
 Related intimately to my organic bodily being and emanates in part from my incarnated presence in the world.
 An inner guide, an inner guru that can open me to larger forces in my interior life and the exterior world.
 What embodies a quest and every quest harbors a question or is motivated by a central question. Each of us must find that question on our own journey, not on someone else’s travels.
 What carries a vitality that is measured in large part by its capacity to and for change.
 Actively engaged in the formation, de-formation and re-formation of my personal identity, which may be the central task of our adult years.
 What carries psychic energies that become concentrated along the plot lines of particular guiding narratives.

A Few Examples of Writing Meditations
Dennis Patrick Slattery, Ph.D.

1. We live our lives in large measure through assumptions we make about ourselves and others, including the otherness of the world. Describe an assumption that gets you out of bed in the morning, that you begin your life with each day. In what ways does this assumption serve you?

2. Describe an assumption that no longer serves you, that is an albatross around your neck, but which you have not succeeded in stripping from your way of thinking and seeing.

3. Our PM reveals itself in what we dedicate ourselves to. What is the compass, what is it set to, and in what direction do I want to give my life purpose? Describe one or two compass setting that I adhere to in order that my life have meaning and purpose. Do I detect within what I serve a whisper or a cry for change, such that my life story would need to bend or torque in a new direction? Describe such an impulse with as much detail as possible.

4. Where and by what means do I seek joy in my life? What do I gravitate towards in order to rekindle a sense of joy and wholeness in what I do and in who I am? Describe small or big ways in which I discover joy and with it, an identity with myself and the world.

5. Transitions are on-going in our lives. We are constantly shifting purposes, beliefs, attitudes, knowledge, relationships both personal and professional What transition seems to be asking for more attention right now in my life? Describe its origin and what relation you are developing with it.