On the weekend I did a deceptively simple exercise that was in fact so powerful - very profound and meaningful. It has given me such a deeper understanding of my true nature, of what I live for and how I can live my life truthfully. So I thought I would share the exercise here.
It only takes about 10-15 minutes and is quite effortless. At the same time it has the possibility of revealing an inner guidance that you can use as a measuring stick in your life.
On a sheet of paper, write the heading:
I FEEL THE JUICE OF LIFE IN THESE MOMENTS:
Then make a list, point by point, of all the times in life, past and present, where you have felt totally in the stream of life - joyous, free, at one, in the moment, really getting the most out of life.
It can be the simplest things also. Don't judge what comes up as meaningless, trivial or 'wrong'. If playing poker gives you 'juice' then write that. If it is having sex in public - write that! If it's going to church, chanting mantras, playing music or reading a book in a sunny spot - write that. I wrote lots of different things, some big, some small. For instance, one of mine was swinging on a swing. Most of the time when my kids want to go to the park I think "I could be doing something else". Yet when we get there, if I get on the swing (rather than just pushing them) I feel such a sense of fun and elation. I also wrote 'Giving birth'.
So make a list of 10-30 things. Don't force it. Once the ideas stop flowing, leave it.
Then, on another piece of paper put the heading:
THE ESSENCE OF JUICY MOMENTS: Then, for each point you wrote on the other page, write the essence of the feeling you gained from that moment. For instance, for 'Giving birth' I wrote 'Purpose/Love' (someone else might write 'empowered' or 'fulfilment'). For 'Swinging on a swing' I wrote 'sense of being alive' (for me it is that rush of wind in the air, the falling feeling in my stomach).
So write one or two words which really capture the essence of that moment for you personally .
Then, in an adjacent column, make another list - chunking down again those moments of essence. You may have already noticed that you have used the same word more than once eg 'connection' or 'peacefulness' etc etc.
And then do that again until you eventually come up with one word or a statement that captures exactly what it happening when you feel fully in the flow of life.
Write it down, starting with "I know I am on track in life when ...".
Sit with that statement or word, really feel how true it is for you.
Start using it in your daily life. If your statement is "I know I am on track in life when I am celebrating life" then use it when you are not sure what to do, feel negative or are full of doubts. If you make a mistake and start berating yourself - ask yourself "Am I celebrating life?" If you are doing something because you have been told you 'should' or believe you 'should' - check internally "Am I celebrating life [or insert your own stament/word] when I do this?" It is of great assistance when procrastinating, trying to prioritise or choosing how to go about doing something. Got to cook dinner/do errands but feel bad you haven't spent quality time with your kids/partner? Then find a way to combine the activities so you are being true to your essence.
Use it. Use it in your life consciously until you start to live effortlessly from your own unique essence - living your own truth - not the truth of others' preferences/perceptions.
zensim
JoinedPosts by zensim
-
2
I know I am on track in life when:
by zensim inon the weekend i did a deceptively simple exercise that was in fact so powerful - very profound and meaningful.
it has given me such a deeper understanding of my true nature, of what i live for and how i can live my life truthfully.
so i thought i would share the exercise here.. .
-
-
zensim
-
30
If someone offerred you one wish to change your life ...
by zagor ina lady friend living at my condo asked me the same question today and i had to really think hard.
what would be the one thing that would definitively change everything?!
one thing that would pull all other strings together?
-
-
zensim
I have pondered this question a couple of times in my life (and in retrospect I see that this question tends to pop up at turning points in life - it can be a real indicator of the direction the deeper part of us wishes to go).
Even when I was younger I had a positive attitude and a policy of 'not crying over spilt milk'. In actual fact there is nothing I would really change as everything, even all the painful parts, have led me to where I am today. And I feel so whole, so 'okay' and truly no longer feel that I "wasn't given a guide book to life when I was born'.
Funnily enough though, my mind's first answer to Zagor's question was wanting to change something in someone else's life. I wish I could go back in time and tell someone very close to me that she should just marry the love of her life (He wasn't a witness. And not to worry what everyone else thought). By the time, many years later, she finally decided to, he died shortly after - before they wed.
Hmmm. Even though my first wish was for somone else, I guess that is just as telling about what I want in my life now. I know my fear can still hold me back from following my heart. The silly thing is, I know I will go ahead and do what I need to do, I always find the courage in the end. It is more the realisation of how easy it is to waste time - waiting to find the courage (reminds me of the Dr Suess book Oh, The Places You'll Go).
The only regret is not what happened or didn't happen, what we had or didn't have - it is really just the fact that when we had wisdom, when we did 'know better' and then didn't act for such a long time. My only wish in life is not to waste time when I do know something with my whole body, heart and mind. I can live with the times I, or those around me, didn't know better.
-
28
Percentage of JW's that are undercover?
by flipper inwhat do you think?
it seems like a lot are there so they won't lose family and friends - are in good standing but don't actually believe.
-
-
zensim
Doubting Bro - that's a really good break down. However I would suggest that it looks more like 10%, 65%, 15% and 10%. There are a huge number who don't believe or agree with everything but go along with most of it (and openly or covertly bend the rules to their liking, all in subconscious justification) because they believe in just one general rule "This is god's organisation".
I think 'undercover' is subjective. Are we talking about those who REALLY believe it is false and still attend (I agree that I would find that impossible to do, I did find that impossible to do) or about the larger group who, if they really were brave enough to examine their doubts, would find that they don't really believe - but have convinced themselves they do believe?
-
7
How Not to Talk to Your Kids - The Inverse Power of Praise
by zensim inby po bronson .
thomas didnt just score in the top one percent.
they were told, you must be smart at this.
-
-
zensim
- By Po Bronson
(Photo: Phillip Toledano; styling by Marie Blomquist for I Group; prop styling by Anne Koch; hair by Kristan Serafino for L'Oreal Professionnel; makeup by Viktorija Bowers for City Artists; clothing by Petit Bateau [shirt and pants]) W hat do we make of a boy like Thomas?
Thomas (his middle name) is a fifth-grader at the highly competitive P.S. 334, the Anderson School on West 84th. Slim as they get, Thomas recently had his long sandy-blond hair cut short to look like the new James Bond (he took a photo of Daniel Craig to the barber). Unlike Bond, he prefers a uniform of cargo pants and a T-shirt emblazoned with a photo of one of his heroes: Frank Zappa. Thomas hangs out with five friends from the Anderson School. They are “the smart kids.” Thomas’s one of them, and he likes belonging.
Since Thomas could walk, he has heard constantly that he’s smart. Not just from his parents but from any adult who has come in contact with this precocious child. When he applied to Anderson for kindergarten, his intelligence was statistically confirmed. The school is reserved for the top one percent of all applicants, and an IQ test is required. Thomas didn’t just score in the top one percent. He scored in the top one percent of the top one percent.
But as Thomas has progressed through school, this self-awareness that he’s smart hasn’t always translated into fearless confidence when attacking his schoolwork. In fact, Thomas’s father noticed just the opposite. “Thomas didn’t want to try things he wouldn’t be successful at,” his father says. “Some things came very quickly to him, but when they didn’t, he gave up almost immediately, concluding, ‘I’m not good at this.’?” With no more than a glance, Thomas was dividing the world into two—things he was naturally good at and things he wasn’t.
For instance, in the early grades, Thomas wasn’t very good at spelling, so he simply demurred from spelling out loud. When Thomas took his first look at fractions, he balked. The biggest hurdle came in third grade. He was supposed to learn cursive penmanship, but he wouldn’t even try for weeks. By then, his teacher was demanding homework be completed in cursive. Rather than play catch-up on his penmanship, Thomas refused outright. Thomas’s father tried to reason with him. “Look, just because you’re smart doesn’t mean you don’t have to put out some effort.” (Eventually, he mastered cursive, but not without a lot of cajoling from his father.)
Why does this child, who is measurably at the very top of the charts, lack confidence about his ability to tackle routine school challenges?
Thomas is not alone. For a few decades, it’s been noted that a large percentage of all gifted students (those who score in the top 10 percent on aptitude tests) severely underestimate their own abilities. Those afflicted with this lack of perceived competence adopt lower standards for success and expect less of themselves. They underrate the importance of effort, and they overrate how much help they need from a parent.
When parents praise their children’s intelligence, they believe they are providing the solution to this problem. According to a survey conducted by Columbia University, 85 percent of American parents think it’s important to tell their kids that they’re smart. In and around the New York area, according to my own (admittedly nonscientific) poll, the number is more like 100 percent. Everyone does it, habitually. The constant praise is meant to be an angel on the shoulder, ensuring that children do not sell their talents short.
But a growing body of research—and a new study from the trenches of the New York public-school system—strongly suggests it might be the other way around. Giving kids the label of “smart” does not prevent them from underperforming. It might actually be causing it.
For the past ten years, psychologist Carol Dweck and her team at Columbia (she’s now at Stanford) studied the effect of praise on students in a dozen New York schools. Her seminal work—a series of experiments on 400 fifth-graders—paints the picture most clearly.
Dweck sent four female research assistants into New York fifth-grade classrooms. The researchers would take a single child out of the classroom for a nonverbal IQ test consisting of a series of puzzles—puzzles easy enough that all the children would do fairly well. Once the child finished the test, the researchers told each student his score, then gave him a single line of praise. Randomly divided into groups, some were praised for their intelligence. They were told, “You must be smart at this.” Other students were praised for their effort: “You must have worked really hard.”
Why just a single line of praise? “We wanted to see how sensitive children were,” Dweck explained. “We had a hunch that one line might be enough to see an effect.”
Then the students were given a choice of test for the second round. One choice was a test that would be more difficult than the first, but the researchers told the kids that they’d learn a lot from attempting the puzzles. The other choice, Dweck’s team explained, was an easy test, just like the first. Of those praised for their effort, 90 percent chose the harder set of puzzles. Of those praised for their intelligence, a majority chose the easy test. The “smart” kids took the cop-out.
Why did this happen? “When we praise children for their intelligence,” Dweck wrote in her study summary, “we tell them that this is the name of the game: Look smart, don’t risk making mistakes.” And that’s what the fifth-graders had done: They’d chosen to look smart and avoid the risk of being embarrassed.
For the full article follow this link:http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/index.html
-
2
Regrowth Progress
by metatron inhttp://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070219/sc_nm/teeth_mice_dc;_ylt=ahnpx.erlj2bejkpsimuukoplbif.
science is moving to regrow limbs and teeth.
little by little, making the watchtower irrelevant - i love it.. .
-
-
zensim
The only thing that really prevents humans from naturally regrowing limbs is the limited belief we can't. This is why I love science as it begins to explore, in baby steps, making something possible. But from the consciousness point of view, all they are doing is breaking through a limited belief system that says something is not realistic.
They used primitive cells, not quite as early as stem cells, and injected them into a framework of collagen, the material that holds the body together.
After growing them, they found their structures had matured into the components that make teeth, including dentin, enamel, dental pulp, blood vessels, and periodontal ligaments.
They were "arranged appropriately when compared with a natural tooth," the researchers reported in the journal Nature Methods.
The fact that they used only primitive cells - but the new teeth were 'arranged appropriately' display the body's innate wisdom for all the cells to communicate effectively with the primitive cells.
The powder is mostly collagen and a variety of substances, without any pig cells, said Badylak, who's a scientific adviser to ACell. It forms microscopic scaffolding for incoming human cells to occupy, and it emits chemical signals to encourage those cells to regenerate tissue, he said.
Those signals don't specifically say "make a finger," but cells pick up that message from their surroundings, he said.
"We're not smart enough to figure out how to regrow a finger," Badylak said. "Maybe what we can do is bring all the pieces of the puzzle to the right place and then let Mother Nature take its course."
But "we are very uninformed about how all of this works," Badylak said. "There's a lot more that we don't know than we do know."
Again, the body's innate wisdom knows exactly what it needs to do. At the moment, all humans can ever do is try and tap into this - which is what they are beginning to do. Like everything though, one answer only opens up the door to a million more questions.
The amazing thing about all this is that as more people grow even the smallest of fingertips, the consciousness of humans begins to change until it becames 'normal and expected' that this is possible, and everyone will be able to do it.
Cells are fascinating!
Thanks for the articles Metatron.
-
167
Songs to make an '80's Guy (or girl) cry.....
by avishai inanother thread inspired this one, and i'm making myself a lil' compilation.... i'll start.
"just like heaven" the cure.
"please, please let me get what i want" the smiths....
-
-
zensim
Foreigner - I Want To Know What Love Is. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77CWChmH6Gc
-
56
what's your sign baby? ;)
by freedomloverr inwhere we live is a very *new agey*, *earthy* area.
when i was a witness i never thought twice about my astrological sign or how it relates to anyone else.
here, people are always asking what my sign is and i've really been entertained by how i see patterns with people in my life and how i've noticed i'm actually attracted to certain *signs* .
-
-
zensim
For what it's worth - Aquarian. I didn't really put much credence in it until one day browsing in bookshop and found a large book on the particular year you were born in relation to your star sign. That was scarily accurate.
-
25
Myers Briggs Personality Indicator
by Outaservice ini don't know how many have taken the myers briggs personality test?
my wife told me i was a esfj, whatever that means!.
do you think people not getting along, poster's differences, or war, or values, etc.
-
-
zensim
I have found the Enneagram much more expansive than Myer Briggs and less about labelling. That is, it tells you who you are not ('your ego') and goes a long way towards answering your 'God' question (imo). Not to mention it also helps bring us all back to the common denominators that transcend the outward 'personality' which causes so much angst among us humans: http://www.enneagraminstitute.com/
-
28
What is Gnosticism and why do Christians dislike it ?
by 5go inaside from the fact that gnosis is greek for knowledge.
two things christians seem to dislike greeks(think animal house) and knowledge (other than knowledge of the christ of course).
seeing as they practice a form of it anyway.. gnostics believe that they have secret knowledge about god, humanity and the rest of the universe of which the general population was unaware.
-
-
zensim
Zagor:
Still to have any grasp of those and other concepts we still need scientific method because for now that is the only rational and dispassionate method we've got. Moment we start introducing religious interpretations we open the door to "my god is better than your god" line of thinking, which leads nowhere and is mainly reflection of someone's heart not head. Am I wrong there? ;)
This is just again another version of the science vs religion debate and another "my god is better than your god" except that in this case there is science as 'god' and on the other there is 'religious ideology' as 'god'.
In an effort to avoid the whole religious paradigm of "my god is better than your god" man hasn't necessarily settled it by science - all they have done is introduced another, different 'god' into the equation.
Imo, 'religious interpretation' has just as much value and should always be introduced as a player in any enquiring methodology. I believe it is insulting to many spiritually minded people (who always get lumped into religion because all people want to know are the labels) to say their thinking is only of the heart and not head. Which also completely belies why we are all here on JWD. To me the JW's and most other religions are not really appealing to the heart's wisdom, but rather to the limited mind, with all their rules and regulations.
I agree with LT that the heart has a knowing that goes beyond the intellectual. And it is true that we will only see wholeness and harmony externally when we each are whole in ourselves. I like to bring all aspects of my being to everything before me - my intellect, my heart, my reason, my intution, my physicality etc. No one methodology is superior. However, we will be a superior species when we can recognise the assets and truth in ALL reflections of our natures - whether they be science, christianity, gnosticism, religion, spirituality, sexuality, etc etc.
We need to see the whole and be inclusive - rather than exlusive and separate. This comes from a knowing born from the heart and mind.
-
38
Name 3 reasons for your exit or near exit from the WTS.....................
by RULES & REGULATIONS inmy main 3 reasons for my near exit from the wts are:.
1. armageddon is always around the corner.lies and false promises.
( i'm still waiting ).
-
-
zensim
Lack of unconditional love
Having kids - somehow a lot of the teachings just didn't sound right coming out of my mouth anymore (this coming from a pioneer) or correlate with other principles I believed in and were teaching them. Actually, main reason was my children - exploring emotional health which led me to No 3 reason ...
Became prepared to take self-education up a notch.
