I have a new favorite practical book: Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff–and it’s all small stuff (Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff Series)

Mom got that for me for Christmas. It’s a nice summary of how to put spiritual precepts into action.

I’m feeling grateful to have such a nice family & nice friends at Christmas. Love you all and have a great new year.

I got stuck in a rut of not eating very well, so I came up with a diet plan for myself that I started following today. It has worked pretty well, and I will report on it again later.

See the link to the right under More Stuff, or click here to go to the description. It is very simple and I hope it will keep my energy up throughout the day. Let me know what you think!

Japanese Tea Gardens, November 2007

You've evolved beyond your old energy patterns. You can't go back to that world now, only forward.

To Infinity, and Beyond!

On another note, it IS possible to sit in half lotus or pelvic pose during conferences and at restaurants. I've been doing it the past 2 days on regular old chairs. My back feels great and I'm digesting well. People don't even give me weird looks, they just sit up a little straighter.

'As long as you're looking for the end of truth, your life will be complicated.'

~Some Olympic Medalist in the 100 m sprint

“A cluttered room is a cluttered mind.”

Everyone knows that to be true. And judging from the state of my bedroom, it’s a miracle I can even organize a sentence right now.

I’m not even sure what New Age thinking is, all I know is it had a bad connotation in the religious circles I grew up in. So if I start to sound too New-Agey, hopefully someone will let me know.

I’m starting to understand some things about chaos & order. I’m chewing on some ancient theories, actually, that state that reality is what you think it to be. In the simplest form, chaos in your mind leads to chaos in your life, like my cluttered room. The Ancient Egyptians believed that humans were supposed to create order in the world. I think this means to keep a healthy, ordered, and optimistic perspective on life, and life will appear to you more healthy, ordered, and optimistic. I can certainly validate this in my own life, so I’m testing it out in my observations of others who view life as more chaotic.

On to not proselytizing. The most valuable lesson I took away from my yoga training was to share thoughts & ideas with others for the purpose of enlightenment, rather than persuasion. Maybe it’s my evangelical roots that keep me down. I recall being a mere 5 years old and carrying a mini bible around to my friends’ houses, trying to convince them (in all sincerity) that they should accept Jesus as their Savior because I didn’t want them to go to hell.

But I realize now that nobody wants a lecture from someone who is “right.” Nobody wants to be persuaded. Nobody wants to be wrong, or wants to change their mind. So I’m learning how to walk that line between sharing things I’m passionate about for the sake of love and connecting, versus for the sake of “look what I know,” or “you should think the same way I think.” So little of what we have to share is original. Truth is always truth, and it shines most brightly through those that are pure and clear of alterior motives. No need for pride, convincing, or persuading. Just share.

We all want to change the world. Walking into an engineering company and expressing my enthusiasm for working on environmental remediation projects as opposed to building new oil platforms was met with a somewhat expected response: “You’re not going to change the world here.” I loved the honesty of these people though. They basically said, we are still employed by, and therefore are controlled by industry. You do the amount of remediation that makes economic sense for the companies, not what’s always perfect by the planet. “I want to be part of the solution, rather than part of the problem.” I know, I’m green in more ways than one.

So I felt a twinge of naivete come upon me, and the need to agree that, yes, I realize I’m not joining this company to save the world. But I still think it’s a step up. We are ALL hypocrites to our ideals in life. We say we want one thing, but over and over we fail to exemplify that in our lives. We all want to be perfectly loving, caring, compassionate, helpful, and do the right thing by everyone all the time. But we are not. To err is human. BUT, I still feel like I am making small steps in the right direction. I KNOW that my automobile spews toxins into the air, but I still drive one. We all make these decisions everyday. But I chose to trade in my beloved SUV for a hybrid, so that’s a small step toward my ideal. I KNOW that my choice to use birth control is harming the ecosystem, but I do it anyway. I’m still working my way out of that trap. I became a vegetarian in small part because I don’t NEED to kill animals to live, so why not eliminate that additional pain & suffering in the world?

So we all want to change the world, and that can make others nervous. It can make others feel judged or convicted of their hypocrisies. All we can do is lead by our own example, and continue to look for little ways to be true, and to merge ever closer our ideals with our reality.

I’m picking up all sorts of books here and there that let me know I’m on the right path. It’s like as soon as I’ve developed a theory in my mind, I will read something from someone who has already thought about that and confirms it. From Maslow, to Jung, to now Marianne Williamson and Mary Oliver, I feel like we are all on the same page. Spooky.

“A human being is a part of the whole called the “universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of…consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in all its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.”

~Albert Einstein, as quoted by Marianne Williamson in Everyday Grace

Inner security = inner peace?

The Hindu religion encourages you to embrace and understand God in whatever form suits your personality and temperment, whether that be Father, Son, Mother, Friend, Lover, etc.

“I can believe in the inbetween
What can’t be said and only seen
When you close your eyes and open your heart
And everything you know just falls apart
And i can believe what can’t be known for sure
The things that might be
The things that never were
And still not know a thing in the end
And still believe that God is my friend”

~Bob Schneider, God is My Friend