Everyday Bliss

I am so blessed in my friends. They are a constant reminder of Bliss in so very many ways. Suzanne Falter-Barns, besides being a good friend, personal platform coach and author, is also accomplished at the art of Joy Cultivation. Suzanne lives on a huge lake and is the picture of vibrant health as she regularly recreates on or around it. I admire her sheer verve and the beautiful lifestyle she’s created. Suzanne recently wrote a blog post I felt compelled to comment on and wanted to share a wise nugget of here:

I’ve come to understand not only how restorative quiet is, but how necessary it is. In order to connect with our creative projects, we really need that stillness. Our tender, fragile creative voices are hard enough to hear. Once you add the static of these crazy, complicated, overly busy lives we’ve cooked up, it becomes downright impossible. There is a reason writers have always headed to the hills to write their opus magnus — they already know the magic of quiet.

She follows this with a great selection of coaching questions around whether you are getting enough silent time in your life. A must-read.

Read the whole thing at Suzanne’s Joy Blog.

I rarely make political statements, but this is one I happen to think is important, and it’s not about people, it’s about the environment. It’s a good point they’re making along the lines of  an untutored person thinking "if one pill is good, five must be better" and killing themselves through ignorance.  Biofuels are great, but the authors of this newsletter Avaaz (see below) have a good point about green technology caveats. Vote your conscience…

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Biofuels are billed as a way to slow down climate change. But in reality, because so much land is being cleared to grow them, most biofuels today are causing more global warming emissions than they prevent⁵, even as they push the price of corn, wheat, and other foods out of reach for millions of people⁶.

Not all biofuels are bad–but without tough global standards, the biofuels boom will further undermine food security and worsen global warming. Click here to use our simple tool to send a message to your head of state before this weekend’s global summit on climate change in Chiba, Japan, and help build a global call for biofuels regulation:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/biofuel_standards_now/9.php?cl=60989106

Sometimes the trade-off is stark: filling the tank of an SUV with ethanol requires enough corn to feed a person for a year. But not all biofuels are bad; making ethanol from Brazilian sugar cane is vastly more efficient than US-grown corn, for example, and green technology for making fuel from waste is improving rapidly.

The problem is that the EU and the US have set targets for increasing the use of biofuels without sorting the good from the bad. As a result, rainforests are being cleared in Indonesia to grow palm oil for European biodiesel refineries, and global grain reserves are running dangerously low. Meanwhile, rich-country politicians can look "green" without asking their citizens to conserve energy, and agribusiness giants are cashing in. And if nothing changes, the situation will only get worse.

What’s needed are strong global standards that encourage better biofuels and shut down the trade in bad ones. Such standards are under development by a number of coalitions⁸, but they will only become mandatory if there’s a big enough public outcry. It’s time to move: this Friday through Saturday, the twenty countries with the biggest economies, responsible for more than 75% of the world’s carbon emissions⁹, will meet in Chiba, Japan to begin the G8’s climate change discussions. Before the summit, let’s raise a global cry for change on biofuels:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/biofuel_standards_now/9.php?cl=60989106

ABOUT AVAAZ
Avaaz.org is an independent, not-for-profit global campaigning organization that works to ensure that the views and values of the world’s people inform global decision-making. (Avaaz means "voice" in many languages.) Avaaz receives no money from governments or corporations, and is staffed by a global team based in London, Rio de Janeiro, New York, Paris, Washington DC, and Geneva.

It’s a beautiful and longer clip of Tolle teaching the basic premise that your perception of Reality™ is not in fact Reality™ itself.  Luxuriate in Presence as you watch….

…Or, "Pain-bodies On Parade"…

Here is the first of several report posts on Eckhart Tolle’s teachings in San Rafael, CA. This first one concerns environment.

I am not a fully enlightened being. Let me preface the below by saying this, and that I regard what appear to be other people as parts of myself and myself as part of them. Everything around me is a constant and consistent teaching in surrendering to life as it arises, letting forms come and go as they will and being in Bliss with what is. Last week was a powerful, deep teaching in this, and a poignant part of it was my environment. 

That said…

Part of my spiritual teachings were in a genre known as Feri, taught by a man who considered himself a Hawai’ian huna priest. (here’s a link to a great mind-map of the Huna way) Hawai’ian locals, he taught, call while people "ha’ole" meaning "without the breath of God" due to the caucasian lack of skin color…at least as the indigenous Hawai’ians saw it.  Imagine, a whole race of ghost-like people come to your bright and sunny shores where all around you have a nice healthy tan – you’d think they didn’t have any God inside them too. And when the visitors acted like untutored children and desecrated sacred sites without thought or apology, well, call that corroborating evidence.

In the Hawai’i of today as in the California spiritual community, the word ha’ole has come to mean "those who don’t get it and are acting like imbeciles". It was unfortunate that more than a fair sprinkling of these met Eckhart Tolle in San Rafael this past week.

Tolle’s teachings were as always, inspiring, as always, relevant to a wide bandwidth of people. But since the Oprahfication of his message, the tourist element has been brought into play. Mind you, I’m as big a fan of Oprah bringing A New Earth to the world as anyone else. I think it’s a beautiful undertaking and may well be the best thing she has done yet to further the cause of peace and enlightenment in the world. Brava Oprah, for what you’re doing. You go, girl.

However, association with "Oprah, the brand" is known to produce a predictable array of side-effects. Mass runs on products Oprah endorses. Sudden over-subscription to the trainings and workshops of those she favors. Instant celebrity status conferred upon those fortunate enough to be interviewed by her. These are all to be expected. …

In a few minutes, I’ll be heading over to the Marin Center for the second day of Eckhart Tolle’s teachings on Life Purpose. Last night is still being processed, one more day or two and I should have a synthesis t o report. I can say that Tolle and The Dalai Lama have something in common: a puckish sense of good humor about humanity’s failings and delight in the world around them. I also noticed that Eckhart used a lot of sleight of mouth for the NLP’ers out there, with sentances to the effect of  "…this stream of consciousness is arising in you…NOW…" Excellent pacing and leading. More later. Words are truly ineffectual to convey the real meaning of the teachings which is found, as Tolle himself suggests, in the spaces between the words. In Stillness…

Hey there fellow Stillness fans. It’s not like Words can really capture an occasion like hearing Eckhart Tolle lecture, but I’ll try. I’m leaving in a few minutes for San Rafael, where we’ll hear Eckhart tonight from 8 – 9:30pm and Saturday from 1:30 – 4:30pm at the Marin Veterans Memorial Auditorium. If you’re there and find me, we’ll meditate together.

At right is a picture I found on Tolle’s website of him looking even more puckish than usual with a calico mittie. He often speaks of animals, cats in particular, as being more aware than we are. He once said the most accomplished Zen master he ever knew was a cat, so it’s not suprising to see him with one. What mutual delight on the faces of these two friends.

Here’s what the event says about itself: "…Now you are invited to experience this visionary teacher in a live, face-to-face encounter. Here is a rare opportunity to be drawn into the "spaciousness that words can only point to" by the vibrant, conscious presence of Eckhart Tolle himself."

I’ve heard about the effects of an evolved spiritual teacher conferring shaktipat, spontaneous awakening and initiation, by merely sitting in the teacher’s presence. Where I have seen most reference to this is in what is said about the spiritual teacher Amma – the Hugging Saint as she is called. I have heard this said of Tolle as we. Without anticipation, am looking forward to feeling what a room full of people being in presence together will feel like.

It’s extraordinary how I’ve come to this feeling of not looking forward, yet taking all the actions I need to take to be there. An immense clearing occured this week that lasted four days. Before the clearing the mind was busybusybusy with monkey brained chatterings. As I reach today and am marvelling at how resilient the pain-body can be, yet also how easy to take out, once you know what it’s doing, a flushing of inattentiveness seems to have happened.

Presence is one of many states that I move in and out of as I continue coming to awareness of my own pain-body. To be constantly in that state must be truly miraculous. I will get back to you later on being in the presence of one who is there most of the time is like. 

CHICAGO – The first follow-up of a landmark study of hormone use after menopause shows heart problems linked with the pills seem to fade after women stop taking them, while surprising new cancer risks appear.

That heart trouble associated with hormones may not be permanent is good news for millions of women who quit taking them after the government study was halted six years ago because of heart risks and breast cancer.

But the new risks for other cancers, particularly lung tumors, in women who’d taken estrogen-progestin pills for about five years puzzled the researchers and outside experts….

….Dr. Nieca Goldberg, a New York University women’s heart specialist, said the study underscores that in addition to cancer screening, women who stop taking hormones need to find other ways to keep their bones strong, including getting more calcium and exercise.

Well we knew that ingested hormones were bad for you, but here’s even more proof. Get a bone density test if you’re over 35, don’t smoke or quit if you already do, exercise like a rabid rottweiler and drink your milk or oyster shell calcium with an acidic chaser like a shot glass of orange juice or a teaspoon of lemon juice, to help it absorb. Don’t forget if you’re taking a calcium supplement to make sure it has Vitamin D in it to aid assimilation of the calcium inside the body – milk in America already has Vitamin D added. And please do go read the whole article here