Day 16. Thought, word, deed.

Thoughts are raw creative potential put into form.  Words are thoughts expressed, that is, pushed out.  Actions are words animated.

This cycle feeds itself as words and actions then generate new thoughts.  But realize that if you are unhappy with your actions, you may need to adjust your thoughts, assumptions and opinions.

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If you want to find your way to the middle, first you need to find the ends, the edges.

 Imagine that your trying to locate the middle of a room. What would you do first? Locate the walls, the ends, and find your way halfway between them. Now, what if one of the walls falls down and reveals an even larger space, a bigger room? You will have a new middle, and it might even be where one of the walls, one of the edges used to be. With the discovery of new space, you will also find a new middle.

 Judge not, therefore, those who you perceive to be extreme. They are seeking middle, balance, like everyone and everything else. They are simply locating the edges, the extremes, in order to determine middle, balance. Or, perhaps they have simply found more space than you, and what you perceive to be extreme is merely the middle of a larger space than you can currently observe.

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Brought Marley to sunrise this morning!!

Day 15. Before birth, birth, death. Stillness, movement, stillness.

Stillness is our source and our destination.  From stillness we rose, and to it we will return.  Our life is the living out of a cycle -- from nothing, to something, then back to nothing.  Stillness/nothingness, then, is as much a part of us as movement/somethingness.  Let's remember to honor that fact in our daily lives.  When was the last time that you were awake for a bit of nothingness?

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Interesting that we say, "I was born", implying that something else bore us, but we say, "we die", as if we're on our own for that one.  What really happens, of course, is that we are born, and we are died, of our own choosing (which is in collaboration with all of Life) and for our own purpose (again, collab).  We enter and leave this world in the same way: by the grace and wonder of all of Life.

Day 14. Willpower is the realization that you are the only one standing in your way.

I borrowed a Kundalini yoga DVD recently from a friend and wonderful yoga teacher, Martha McAlpine, and used it this morning for practice.  Kundalini yoga uses mantra, rapid breath and repetitive movements to raise dormant energy from the base of the spine to the crown of the head and create energy flow in the body.

I have practiced Kundalini yoga before and have always felt that one of the most amazing benefits of the practice is the cultivation of will.  The movements may seem simple enough, but when you are flapping your arms for 3 minutes as fast as you can, about half way through you want to quit, it's that simple.  It's tough.  Muscles start to burn.  Tension increases.  We ask ourselves, "why the hell am I doing this again?"

This morning during practice I felt one of those familiar moments...in one of the pose sets my shoulders started to burn from the work and I wanted to quit.  I also noticed that I got hungry, exhausted, and bored all at once -- my body was coming up with any excuse to stop.  I understood what was happening and I kept going, the discomfort became louder and still I pushed on.  A few more flaps and I was there, I broke through.  No longer was I just flapping, but flying.  Still I felt sensation in my shoulders and rumbling in my belly, still I felt the quit, but I felt something stronger urging me onward.  My whole being, longing for evolution, growth and change, said, "c'mon, we can do this, let's just keep going."

When we meet that wall, that quit, that boundary that we dare not cross we also meet our greatest opportunity for growth and our greatest chance to step from our familiar comforts to venture off in exploration.  Do you think it's easy for a germinating flower seed to push through the cold, wet, dark soil day after day, wondering when it will end?  Well that flower thinks nothing of it, because it feels the glow of the sun above, and it knows if it can just push a little further...ahhhh, sunlight.

Each time you cross a boundary you remove it from your experience in the world.  That boundary will no longer exist and you will assimilate that new territory into your current experience of life.  Do this often enough and you will realize that boundaries exist only in your mind.  Life is whole, complete, unbroken, and you can experience it that way if you choose to.  This reminds me of a quote I read a few years ago, "Hint: the cage is not locked."

Willpower is the realization that you are the only one standing in your way.

Day 13. Healthy choices will always flow from truthful observations.

Think of someone in your life that you do not like.  Maybe a co-worker or neighbor that bothers you, a grocery store cashier that rubs you the wrong way, a relative that is annoying...

So this person is someone with whom you have a problem.  Cropping that last sentence a bit reveals that you have a problem.  Not them.  Realize that when you hold onto your "not liking" of someone, you are the one who suffers.  I read that the Buddha said, "Being angry is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die".  I think you can substitute a lot of emotions and feelings for anger and have the same result.

Of course, it is perfectly okay to feel angry, or to not like someone, or anything else.  It is always your choice and it always will be.  But realize how your choices are impacting your life and then decide if they serve you.  If your choice is not serving you, make a new choice.  Not liking someone is fine.  However, holding on to that "not liking" without realizing the effect it is having on you can be deadly.

Experiences, like those of not liking someone, are neither good or bad by definition.  All experiences serve the same purpose --  they show us to ourselves.  All of life serves as a grand mirror reflecting us back at ourselves so that we may meet ourselves in every situation and decide how best to declare who we are with respect to those situations.

So, I say again, not liking someone is perfectly fine because the experience of that feeling reveals yourself to yourself.  Once you have been revealed to yourself, then you can choose whether or not to continue expressing yourself in the same way.

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Healthy choices will always flow from truthful observations.

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Once you have come to clarity about a thing, take action.  The longer you wait to take action, the greater the likelihood of you doubting that clarity, and you will think "oh I just made it all up, maybe I shouldn't do such and such".  Nonsense!  Moments of clarity are moments of truth.  They are moments when you see the full picture, the whole fabric, and you understand without a doubt what you want.  The more that you act on your clear insights, the more you will realize why you had those insights in the first place.  Know that your insights are taking you to exactly where you say you want to go.  Don't be afraid to follow them, even after your clarity fades.  If a vision has come in a moment of clarity and you did not act on it, know that the vision is still available to you.  Moments of clarity bring eternal truths that will shine for you until you take action.  When you act upon clarity your visions will turn into experience.  Do this often enough and you will know in your own experience that you can trust yourself and your insights, and you will also begin to realize that what you can envision you can also create.

Day 12. Do not rely on others to tell you about yourself. Be your own expert.

Sunrise this morning.

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A doctor who uses microscopes and blood tests and saliva swabs and chemical analyses to determine your health is akin to you living in Baltimore, but then travelling to San Francisco and using a satellite telescope to look at your own house.  Aren't you able to discover so much more by simply being in your house, and paying attention to what you experience there?

Yes it can be helpful to consult others for guidance when we feel ill, or in dis-ease, but the guidance serves me best when it directs me and my focus back into myself to listen to what's really going on.  After all, I am the closest one to the signals of my own body, so I am able to hear them best.

It is true that sometimes we feel unable to hear our own signals.  We become busy, distracted, noisy internally, and so we cannot decipher our state of affairs.  In these situations it can be beneficial to recruit help.  However, what is most helpful is not to have another person study you and tell you what is going on with your body.  What is most helpful is to have someone help you quiet your noise, relinquish your distractions, settle your busy-ness and regain your clarity and sense about yourself.

You can know more about yourself than a microscope or blood test could ever tell you.  Realize that you have all the information you need, it is simply a matter of being attentive to it.

Day 11. Sometimes you have to experience what you don't want in order to realize how much you really want what you want.

Today it was a sunset yoga practice.  Perhaps 10 days of waking up at (or almost at) 5 am has caught up with me.  I slept until 7:30 this morning cuddling my beautiful 11-month-old daughter Marley (tho I did decide ahead of time to forgo my sunrise practice).  My wife Jen was planning on an early morning herself, and since I'd had 10 mornings in a row to myself I decided to simply sleep and be with Marley while Jen got herself out the door.  I think too I was curious what it would feel like to skip my morning practice...

The past 10 mornings that I greeted the sun caused me to feel vibrant all day.  Witnessing the arrival of light on our planet seems to imbue my being with cosmic rhythm -- a sort of cosmic slow groove.  The sun has such a "no hurry" attitude when it comes in the morning that I am reminded of the spaciousness that caresses and sustains all things.  Seeing the Sun's deliberate pace reminds me that I can begin my day with a "no hurry" attitude as well, and I can take my time to soak in the expanse that is life.  In this expanse, all of life breathes.

This morning I awoke and the sun was already up.  My morning carried a familiar feeling...like I was running a race but had missed the starting gun.  I had a gentle feeling all day like I was trying to catch up...trying to wake up but never quite getting there.  Today was by no means miserable or depressing or even unpleasant...but it did leave me yearning for more.  In the past 10 days I have experienced an evolving wakefulness, a bubbling connection with every part of my experience and I'm hungry for more.

I have the house to myself for the weekend...and I am excited for the sunrise tomorrow.

Day 10. When play becomes work.

I got out to the reservoir at 5:15 this morning, rode a lap on my bike—on my mat at 5:30.  I was planning to be home at 6 so that my wife Jen could head to work.  The clock was ticking.  I only had 30 minutes to get what I came here for.   I breathed, I moved, I danced, I shook, I relaxed, I breathed.  I did all the things I had done in previous mornings to induce the words of insight that I could then share with myself, and with you, the reader.  It wasn’t working this time.  No words, no insights, no wisdom.

Uh oh.

What was I going to write?  What was I going to say this morning in my blog?  Was this the beginning of the end?  Just a fun little experiment that is now over?  My thoughts began to swirl, “What can I do?  What can I do to generate the insights and capture the words?  There must be SOMETHING I can DO.”

That’s when I realized…I had lost sight of my true purpose for being out there this morning, the same purpose for being out there every morning.  I had forgotten my burning desire which had caused me to greet the sun each morning for the past 10 days.  Not blogging.  Being. 

It is the experience of slowing down, of relaxing, of greeting the sun as it gently caresses our world with its golden warmth, of watching the birds awake and tidy up the messes of gnats and flies that have begun to swarm that has drawn me to the reservoir each morning.  As I watch the world come alive I realize how alive the world is.  I realize how alive I am.  I realize that the world and I are part of the same aliveness.  We are alive together.  All of it, all of us.  Aliveness is our common thread, it is our shared experience.  By greeting the morning in this way I realize my kinship with all things.  None of it is off-limits, none of it is out of my reach.  It is all mine, it is all ours.  It is all me, it is all us.  There is only one us, there is only one of us.  There is only me.

I began this morning worrying.  My worrying caused me to turn something I really enjoy into “work” that I “had to do or else”.  This gave me a deadline, causing even more anxiety around the possibility that I might miss that deadline.  If didn’t have my words by 6, oh well, I’m finished.  The words were my primary objective.  This was the story I had created.  And in this story I had forgotten what it was that was generating my words in the first place: the amazing joy of greeting the morning, greeting myself as part of this morning, and wanting to share this joy with everyone.  Sure, the blogging is fun, but blogging is the happy after-effect, not the logical forethought to greeting the morning.  All things flow from choosing JOY first.

And would you look at that, WORDS!!   8)

Day 9. A tree grows its entire life. So do we.

A friend once said to me that he enjoyed practicing yoga but ultimately, it wasn't for him.  "I am not these shapes" he said, commenting on the asanas, or poses (postures, gestures, shapes), of a traditional yoga sequence.  I understood what he meant, and largely agreed with him.

I realize now that yoga practice is a practice of making each pose your own, making each shape your own.  In yoga we seek to create each pose in our own image, thus creating ourselves in every pose, and creating ourselves into every pose.

We seek to do this because our yoga postures represent the other shapes in our lives -- our situations and circumstances, our life events.  Often in life we experience situations that we feel do not represent us.  "I am not this situation" we might think.  The practice is to make each pose, each situation our own: a perfect reflection of the created image of ourselves, the pose-rs.

When I consider my friend's statement, his depiction of the felt experience of not being those shapes, I see that he indicated in that moment that he had not yet created those poses in his body in his own image.  Almost like they belong to someone else.  I get it.  And it's a wonderful awareness.  What strikes me is that as we continue to grow, we continue to create more and more of our world in our own image, we make more of it our own.  So the spoken truth of the poses not being him expired the moment the words left his mouth.

I'll have to ask him again if he still feels like same way...

Always the opportunity exists to make every situation, every pose your own.  Always the opportunity exists for you to expand yourself into the space around you, to create more of yourself in and into the space around you..  As a tree grows, more and more of the space around it becomes tree.  The branches and leaves extend further and further, the roots plunge onward.  Animals take up shelter in the trunk and branches, further expanding the trees influence into the world.  A tree grows its entire life.

So do we.

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We are not in the moment.  We ARE the moment.  We are the waves that we surf.

Day 8. Not sunrise, still yoga. It is only our stresses, anxieties, worries, and fears that prevent us from experiencing our true selves, our boundless potential. So practice relaxing.

If you don't remind yourself who you are and why you are here, you will forget.  Once you forget your activities and behaviors may lose their meaning and context.  You may not know why you are doing what you're doing.  Habits will form your main courses of action.

If, however, you remind yourself who you are and why you are here each morning, then everything you do will flow from that knowing.  Your choices and actions will no longer be the perpetuation of habits, but grand declarations of who you are in this moment.

A simple and powerful way to remind yourself is to practice relaxing as the first thing you do each morning.  It is only our stresses, anxieties, worries, and fears that prevent us from experiencing our true selves, our boundless potential.  So practice relaxing.  Feel the tension, the holding patterns in your body, release them.  This will cause the rest of your being to release.  The more relaxed you are the more energy will be able to flow through you and the beauty of your essence will vibrate forth freely from the center of your being.  Ease and grace will flood your experience and open your heart to whatever may come.

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Instead of reacting to something and feeling like you should be able to react differently, simply notice as much as you can about your reaction.  Allow the full experience of your reaction to inform you about your current chosen state of consciousness.  All things flow from our state of consciousness.  If you wish to react differently, realize that the reaction is only flowing from consciousness.  Change your state of consciousness, which is the way you experience yourself and the world, and everything else in your life experience will shift as well.

Day 7. Let's stop trying to control, let's get out of our own way and get on with it...

Let's imagine that fishing is illegal, a crime.  Law enforcement is cracking down on fishing gear production, distribution, and use everywhere, and fishing patrolmen swarm the waterways, making sure no one is participating in the sinful activity.. People still want to fish, because after all, it's silly that people shouldn't be allowed to do it, and so they do what it takes to get their fishing gear.

The market for fishing gear becomes increasingly lucrative as the demand continues to rise for the short supply of available gear.  "Black market" dealers are able to sell fishing rods for thousands, even hundreds of thousands of dollars.  Given the earning potential profiteers flock to this market and try to acquire as much as possible, even using violent means to achieve dominance.

There are daily shootouts between police personnel and fishing gear dealers, innocent bystanders are killed everyday in the crossfire.  Lives are ruined, destruction amasses to unbelievable levels.  Fishing very quickly becomes a "dirty word" as it is increasingly associated with death and violence.  As our government and law-enforcement officials struggle to maintain control, entire branches are created and dedicated to monitoring the fishing crimes.  The Fishing Enforcement Agency is created and is given the authority to stop fishing by means just as violent as those being used by the fishing dealers.  After all, violence can only be matched by violence, right?

It may seem like fishing is a problem, something that is dirty and destructive and needs to be removed.  This conclusion is only achieved by those who are misunderstanding what is really happening, which is that people are being told what they are allowed to do and what they are not.  We have created an enormous body of power in our world to come up with rules and then make sure everyone follows them.  When people don't follow the rules, we see the above scenario.  Some people might say, "well then everyone should just follow the rules and that won't happen."  I say why have the rules in the first place?  Sure, particular people agree on particular ways of living and being in the world, and that is wonderful.  This, however, does not mean that it should be enforced on the entire population.  The more that we aim to restrict our own freedoms, the more we will rebel against ourselves.  Isn't that silly anyway?  To try to restrict OUR OWN FREEDOMS?  Why are we restricting ourselves?   Instead, let's grow without bound.  Much, if not all, of our law-making policies and procedures are aimed at controlling a particular aspect of the flow of life, namely, the behavior of human beings, and we're having about as much success as we would if we tried to stop the Amazon River by sticking canoe paddles in it.  Let's stop trying to control, let's get out of our own way and get on with it, shall we?

Day 6. Instead of experiencing ourselves in the same way but with a new plan, let's plan to experience ourselves in a new way.

Passed two hawks by the reservoir while I was biking. At the closest point we were 10 ft. apart. Cool.

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Instead of experiencing ourselves in the same way but with a new plan, let's plan to experience ourselves in a new way.

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Danced around like an idiot, found amazing opening through my whole spine. I think I'm an inch taller.

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If you want to live without stress, take time each morning to remind yourself how to let go of it. The more time you take to remind yourself, the more stress you will remember to release. keep at it, eventually your whole day be a remembrance of releasing stress, every moment. Simultaneously, while you're doing whatever else it is you're doing -- also remember to be relaxed about it -- stress-free. Don't worry...be happy.

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The game is rigged. The rules and strategies are already decided; the hosts of the game have given themselves a huge advantage. Know that whomever you imagine to be oppressing you -- gov't, banks, lawmakers, neighbors, etc. -- they have simply stacked a particular deck of playing cards and said, "Hey, wanna play?" If you agree they'll tell you, "Alright then. Here are the rules, and this is the object of the game." If you like that game, great. If you don't like that game, don't play. Never forget that you're the one who is choosing to play.

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You're walking along a straight path. We call it "time". One moment passes, and the next. As you step toward your next moment, the ground opens up beneath you, like a universal man-hole-cover that someone has just moved out from underneath your feet. You fall, deeper into the moment. As you fall deeper and deeper, time simply stands still, waiting for you to continue on your journey. Time...waits for you.... As you fall you realize that you can guide this vertical travel. Falling becomes flying. You can climb out of that moment whenever you'd like, or you can soar as deeply as you choose.

Day 5. Love, fishing, never stop being a kid.

A lot of folks can hook a fish. The master knows how to reel it in.

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The above phrase came from the realization that thoughts are creative.  When I think of something, I am literally creating the possibility of experiencing that something.  To turn the possibility into actuality I simply need to draw that something close to me and experience it.  In my mind I visualized thoughts popping up like bubbles in space--the possibilities.  And then if I want to experience that possibility, I lasso it, and draw it near, thus experiencing it.

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I (we) are getting a dog.

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You've probably heard that if you want to see the way the human body was designed to run or walk--watch a child run or walk.  Or maybe you've heard that if you want to hear liberated laughter, watch children play.  And if you want to feel perfectly relaxed sleep, hold a napping baby.  So how come we progressively demand of children that they no longer be perfect demonstrations of designed functionality?  Somewhere along the way from childhood to adulthood we rob children of their inherent balance, ease, relaxation and grace.  We teach them the way of adults, leading them down the path of becoming increasingly stiff, tense, apprehensive, and limited.  Why do we teach them to be small?  To "fit into" the world?  Let's teach them instead to expand, without bound.  Let's teach them that they can shape the world in their own image.  Imagine a world shaped by children.  Our world is run by adults.  No wonder it's a mess.  We need some more children in charge.

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The fly who wasn't afraid

Day 4. Sunrise and Einstein the yogi. Also, the more often you live your truth, the quicker you will decide whether or not you still agree with it.

The more often you live your truth, the quicker you will decide whether or not you still agree with it.

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How come we cast our teachers and idols aside the minute we find out that they're human?

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The sunrise.  16x Speed.


I recorded for about 8 and a half minutes, and then I realized, that's about how long it takes light to get from the Sun to Earth.  This got me thinking...the end of the video was the actual state of universal affairs when I started recording.  In other words, the position of the sun in the sky at the end of the video is "actually where the Sun was relative to me" when I began the video...I just didn't know it yet.  It took 8 and a half minutes for the information from the Sun to reach me.  There is a lag time, a delay.  By the time the Sun's light reached Earth and reached my eyes, the state of Earth had changed.  In fact each moment during the light's journey the state of Earth and everything else was changing.  This phenomenon is true of any objects in motion with relation to one another.  (Einstein worked a lot with this concept...you may have heard of it..."relativity" ring any bells?).

This led me to the realization that the slower you travel, the more things will have changed by the time you arrive, and the faster you travel the less things will have changed by the time you get there.  So moving with infinite speed would mean that the Earth would literally appear to be standing still, nothing will have changed by the time you got anywhere.  Which means that you will have been completely present with everything going on in the entire Universe as it happens.  So really, when moving at infinite speed, you aren't
"moving" at all.  Instead you simply will BE the space that you previously experienced yourself moving in.

Whoa.

The flip side is true too...if you  move infinitely slowly, you will experience everything else to be moving infinitely fast.  Worlds will be born and die in less than the blink of an eye.  Think about that...the entire Universe will erupt and dissolve a million times over and then some and you will have barely noticed.  So if you move infinitely slowly, everything moves infinitely quickly, and that is pretty  much the same as it not happening at all, at least not in your experience.  You will BE, in your experience, the only thing in existence.

So moving infinitely quickly and infinitely slowly produce the same result: a singular experience of existence, you will BE the only ONE here.

It's that middle ground in between the infinites that gives rise to the experience of life.  Therefore bless those infinites, those extremes, for they produce the reference points needed to explore the space in between them, what most of us call Life.

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If you can't explain a particular thing to anyone and everyone, then you really don't understand that thing at all.  Instead what you've done is memorized a story about that particular thing.  So when someone asks you to explain, you tell them the story.  If they still don't understand, maybe you have another memorized story to tell.  If that doesn't work then you'll tell them it's their fault they don't understand.  True understanding is revealed by the ability to use commonplace language to bring anyone else to an understanding about that thing.

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When you fear losing something, you miss out on the opportunity to enjoy that something in the first place.  This is because while you're fearing losing that something, you'll worry, "how much longer will I have this something?" or "when will it be taken away from me?"  So while you're with this thing, you're fearing losing it, and fearing losing it creates a worried, scared, nervous experience of "when is it going to be gone? when am I not going to have it anymore?"  So interestingly enough when you fear losing something, you don't ever fully enjoy it.  And if you're not going to enjoy it while you have it, then why have it at all?  You might as well not have it......and not having it is what you fear in the first place...

Day 3. Now we're live. It is through giving that we receive what is most valuable -- the experience of our own loving kindness, generosity and abundance.

Marley slept just long enough for me to hear this:

It is through giving that we receive what is most valuable -- the experience of our own loving kindness, generosity and abundance.

Day 2. Not quite sunrise yoga - such is life. How would you behave if you knew the whole world was watching?

How would you behave if you knew the whole world was watching?

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It may not be unwise to fall in love with your own image.  What if you started seeing your own image everywhere you look?  Surely it is not unwise to fall in love with everyone and everything...

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We are only as good as our ability to call on our best selves.

Day 1. Right now, while you're doing whatever it is you're doing, someone, somewhere is creating something beautiful and sharing it with the world.

Everything you encounter internally and externally--molding clay.  You are the sculptor, the grand artist.  Show us what you got...

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Right now, while you're doing whatever it is you're doing, someone, somewhere is creating something beautiful and sharing it with the world.

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Don't do what you have to do, don't go where you have to go.  Instead go where you want to go, because that is where you will come alive.  You need not struggle to create a life, you need not sacrifice and toil unhappily to make ends meet.  There is nothing that you have to do to make Life work.  Realize that Life is already working.  Relax, smile, attend to your burning desires, you will not be led astray.

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In your moment of doubt, when you feel alone, remember I am always with you.  Embrace your power to call me forth.  See my face, hear my words, feel my touch.  You think my physicality is my only essence?  My body the only tool and gift I offer?  Know that my presence is without end, and so, by the way, is yours.  Let us dance in infinity, together, always.