Ok,  so I haven’t been plugged into the Zaadzsphere for the last week  as the last few blogs I’ve been working on have been a little time consuming. Seems that this latest blog needed some research that, well, just had to be done. LOL

 
The last two blogs were a definite shift into the world of the testosterone driven male with the Worlds fastest Car and The Movie 300. So I thought jokingly that maybe the next blog should probably be about sex to help balance or better understand the principal male sex hormone and the anabolic steroid, testosterone. A hormone the adult male produces twenty to thirty times more of then that an adult female. I couldn’t help but be reminded of the famous quote by Ken Wilbur when speaking of testosterone when he wrote in “A Brief History of Everything.”

 

 

 “I don't mean to be crude, but it appears that testosterone
basically has two, and only two major drives: fuck it or kill it.”

 

I wasn’t taking the thought seriously on writing on sex till soon after the thought I was given the April 23^rd issue of Forbes magazine with the title “Video Prophet."

 

The story is how the company Akamai is building the Infinite Internet to deliver anything digital by making some computers smarter and more equal to than others. There chief scientist, MIT professor Tom Leighton formulated this would allow the net to grow infinitely large without breaking down. Pretty cool right…?....and your asking “what does that have to do with sex?

 I hear ya… so when I am reading Forbes, a magazine I rarely (Once every 6 months in a dentist office.) read and I looking inside the first page I see is a page entitled THOUGHTS On the Business Life.  Loving quotes I stopped to read only to find that all but one of the 20 quotes listed is about sex. So I basically kept reading ….. lol

 
My favorite quote was Marlene Dietrich’s,

“Sex in America is an obsession.
In other parts of the world it is a fact.”

 

 

 

So I determined right then and there that sure, why not write a blog about sex?   I guess that just means I’ll have to invest a little time and energy and do a little research on sexual energy, passion, obsession, lust, envy and love.... Damn it! I hate it when that happens!

 As we all know, sexual energy can be said to be the single most potent force within us that triggers and affects just about every part of our psyche and drives us to many of our decisions. No one knows this better than the corporate world. Lets face it, sex sells with triggers that tap into the sexual psyche as we unconsciously identify the desire with the product being offered. Who knew that Adidas sport shoes would get me laid? I mean even Nike says, “Just Do it!

 Getting back to Ken’s quote,

 Fuck it or kill is now known by the acronym FIKI as Sean O’Reilly cites Wilber in his book How to Manage Your Dick. "Dick" is actually an acronym that stands for Dimensionally Interactive Cyber Kinetics. In the book he attempts to explain why men tend to be more impulsive than women and writes,

 

 

I think that succinctly sums up it and clarifies that sexual energy in mutual harmony with a partner is not only healthy, but damn fun too!

 Woody Allen gives us his hilarious summation,

“Love is the answer, but while you are waiting for
the answer, sex raises some pretty good questions.”

 

 

 

                                                                                    
 

 The power of sexual energy in our arousal that we sometimes refer to as being “Turned On” when you sense the chemistry in another’s “Vibe” is just basic to our human nature. Some try to rationalize this hard wiring as some dark force within as if to place horns on the “horny” feeling. With men, the story of testosterone and it’s effects gets a humorous look as told by Lev Yilmaz in his “Tales of mere Existence” series titled, Horny. Give it a look for a laugh on men’s thoughts.

 

 

 Misrepresenting the essence of sex by placing “rules” on it when its very function drives us to be fruitful to enjoy a dynamic life with passion and love takes away the essence of its meaning.  It reminds me of what a co-worker displaced from New Orleans by Katrina told me tonight, “In Texas there are so many rules, hell in New Orleans we just jump around and do shit.” Sex is like that, you just let go and do what feels good.
 

FEEL
Robbie Williams

 According to Taoist belief, energy and momentum are the sources of all life as seen in the Yin and Yang (male and female energy). In Taoism the idea is to “integrate the two most powerful healing forces in the world: real love and sexual energy,” as Taoists understand sexuality to be “the primary source of power behind love.”

 

 

 The Tao teaches that happiness has nothing to do with material wealth, but with inner peace as a result of universal love. Ever notice happy people are those who are most loved and the unhappy are almost always the loneliest? Recent studies suggest that up to 40 percent of people who are rejected in love slip into clinical depression.

 In the Taoist culture, jing chi is desire, passion, sexual energy or life energy. The world’s religious cultures all have this concept of  “chi” in one form or another. We have  Prana (Sanskrit),  Ki (Japanese), Lung (Tibetan), Neyatoneyah (Lakota Sioux), Num (Kalahari Kung), and Ruach (Hebrew) and so forth.

  It’s this “Chi” or energy that seems to drive us to taking action about those things we care about most. Whether it’s friends, family, work, a social cause or sex, we’re all driven by the pain/pleasure principal to seek out that which is fulfilling and gives us joy and peace in our lives.

 

 

“Sex is more than an act of pleasure, its' the ability to be able to feel so close to a person, so connected, so comfortable that it's almost breathtaking to the point you feel you can’t take it. And at this moment you're a part of them.”

“What is passion? It is surely the becoming of a person. Are we not, for most of our lives, marking time? Most of our being is at rest, unlived. In passion, the body and the spirit seek expression outside of self. Passion is all that is other from self. Sex is only interesting when it releases passion. The more extreme and the more expressed that passion is, the more unbearable does life seem without it. It reminds us that if passion dies or is denied, we are partly dead and that soon, come what may, we will be wholly so.” - John Boorman

  The void one feels in their life can be temporarily satisfied with sex, but more completely in the union of two who find the emptiness of their being in the fulfillment of the other. And that’s really what Tantic Sex is all about in finding the VIRtue in VIRilty.

 Tantric is derived from a Sanskrit word meaning to "weave" or "extend," and was originally practiced by Tibetan, Chinese, and Indian Buddhists as a sacred act in uniting the spirit with the flesh to attain enlightenment.

 

To do this, Tantric teaches that you must learn how to purify the body and create a "sacred space" for lovemaking, breathe correctly, heal inhibitions, and harmonize the "inner man and inner woman."

  According to Tantric philosophy, like the Taoist, energy flows throughout the body and it is this energy that connects the body's "chakras," or energy centers at the base of the spine, the genitals, the stomach, the throat, the forehead, and the crown of the head.

 

 
 These spiraling energy centers or vortexes can be opened, closed, spin clockwise or counterclockwise, As Sean O’Reilly says in his book,

"As a human being has only a certain amount of spiritual energy, or Chi, it is very important that his energy go towards activities that raise the level of non-locality in one's thoughts. The Seven Chakras of the Hindu religion serve as a useful tool to observe the flow of Chi. Dick Management encourages activities like meditation, prayer, or abstinence from masturbation because they reduce the amount of energy that is wasted at lower Chakras. Energy not used in the lower Chakras is thus made available for the higher Chakras."

 

 

By reaching high sexual arousal, those who practice tantric sex, "open up the chakras," or move the energy up through these physical channels to create a sensation of oneness and ecstasy. Ken Wilbur explains a little of this in the following clip.

 

 

I hope to write more on this because we haven’t even begun to scratch the surface, but maybe I just find the topic fun to write about. But I do know that given all the drama and intensity surrounding the whole experience of romantic fulfillment; it still is a desire that leads to suffering as Buddha declares in the Four Noble Truths. It is the hard wiring of the FIKI impulses that are triggered so easily that lead us to the idea that as Anne Cumming said.

  But I do feel that the infinite is possible in creating a sensation of oneness and ecstasy as Ken says so well of his wife who was soon diagnosed with cancer after their marriage in Grace and Grit,

 

 

 
 

 

 

 P.S.

For those who were wondering what the only quote
was of the sex quotes in the Forbes issue,

          
“Be still and know that I am God.”

DEO 

The Greatest Battle Lies Within

 

 The other day I had the chance to go and see the Movie Spiderman 3. As always, the action and adventure of a superhero with the latest special effects is a calling card for some weekend entertainment. I went without having seen the trailers or of even knowing the theme or story behind the movie. The action was typical with no earth shattering new special effects or jaw dropping suspense but the theme was a universal one worthy of a blog.

"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?
The Shadow knows!"

In the first Spiderman we learn with Peter Parker as he discovers his extraordinary powers and that with great power comes great responsibility. In the second we see how these special powers interfere with Peter trying to establish a normal life. But in the third installment we follow Peter coming face to face with his darker side having to deal with his emotional issues without the guiding voice of his uncle, Ben Parker. It is in fact the emotional trauma of his Uncles death that sets him on the path to the dark side. A theme that we find in many of the rich trilogies of our time, from Star Wars, the Matrix and now Spiderman.









The Shadow is what is known by many as the alter ego, the id, or the lower self. The term "Shadow" was introduced by the  Swiss psychiatrist, Dr. Carl G. Jung and is  everything within us that is "unconscious, repressed, undeveloped and denied." The shadow is the darker  aspects of our being as well as the  positive undeveloped potential that were not aware of  for the very fact that it resides in the unconscious.



Jung  called it "the negative side of the personality; all those unpleasant qualities we like to hide" and "the Other in us" before simply naming it "the shadow", and defining it in 1945 as "the thing a person has no wish to be."








It is in these moments that we need to no longer deny our true selves but take responsibility for our lives and realize that what has happened in our lives though difficult and painful can be outgrown through understanding, forgiveness and love. It is when we accept that we have a shadow self and  learn to better understand it we can shed ourselves of our demons.

Like a house full of many rooms, within us are experiences and events that have caused shame or guilt that we lock up like so many bones in a closet. These demons of our shadow self we deny and keep hidden away from others including ourselves until they erupt from within or it is convienent for satisfaction of some kind.

For many, this denial leads to the inability to asociate with others, a life lived in fear, like so many bars placed upon the windows of your soul. You can see this in people's eyes, fear resides in them, eyes haunted by the ghosts of their past. A body whose spirit is held captive and in bondage to fear itself that leads to suffering. Whether the demons in the closets are wrongs done unto you or acts committed by you, the secret to release them is to confront them and expose them to the light of your awareness and forgive yourself and others. As Jesus said, he that is not guilty, let him cast the first stone. And to the woman he says, rise and sin no more.  There is great power in those words and this is the beginning of the  personal work, the difficult work of the hero's journey, confronting and slaying the dragons within and pushing on to the Holy Grail of peace, joy and happiness.

“Where there is much light, the shadow is deep.”

Or as I like to say

“The brighter the light the darker the shadow.”

 

The sound stayed with me the whole day, or rather the emotion behind the sound. It was the intense child like joy that radiated throughout the room and permeated my very being to its core. Laughter for this family was the antidote to stress and the elixir to life’s woes and was a universal language and healing agent as my stress melted away. To give you an idea of how fun and healing a childs laugh can be, take a look at this little guy and see if it doesn’t make you smile.

 

 

 

As soon as I got home I went to doing my thing and I found that the physiological study of laughter has its own name…"gelotology". According to research, laughing

 

   1. increases blood pressure as a form of exercise.

   2. increases heart rate

   3. changes breathing

   4. reduces levels of certain neurochemicals (catecholamines, hormones).

   5. provides a boost to the immune system.

 World Laughter Day

 Then I was amazed at the synchronicity to read that this last week, Sunday May 6^th was World Laughter Day. I had never heard of such a thing and at first though is was a kind of internet hoax like Havidol. The little happy pill that makes you feel like you Have it all! But I soon discovered that this was not some kind of You Tube parody but an event created in 1998 by Dr Madan Kataria known worldwide as the giggling guru and founder of the Worldwide Laughter Yoga movement.

 

"Science has proven beyond the shadow of
a doubt that laughter is indeed the best medicine ."

Dr. Kataria is the author of the book "Laugh For No Reason" and the story behind the incredible Laughter Club phenomenon that started in India and is now circling the globe.

BEST MEDICINE

Laughter session with deaf and mute children in
India at Dr Kataria School Of Laughter Yoga

The Laughter Yoga movement now has over 5000 Laughter Clubs in 53 countries with about 60 U.S. instructors who trained in India with the man. These Social Laughter Clubs  worldwide are found in public parks, offices, factories, schools, nursing homes, libraries and people’s homes and is fast becoming a  new trend in Yoga.  It has been seen on Oprah, on her show on Happiness. It's also been on NBC, CNN, CBC, CTV, City TV, CTS and CHCH.

 

Here are a couple clips of the movement that at first from
Dr. Kataria explaining how it started and what it's all bout.

Here is short a piece with a little more insight as they
follow a new group of Londoners through a first time session.

 

 

And here is the American CNN version which at first sight look
like something out of "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest."

 

 

 

 

"Laughter gives us distance. It allows us to step
back from an event, deal with it and then move on."
Bob Newhart

That's where I feel the real connection lies, in the inner child that helps us connect to the now as Sebastian Gendry, World Operations Director of Laughter Yoga  and founder and manager of the American School of Laughter Yoga, says,

In his inroduction to his self portrait he tells us,

Ok, this video is very ego, sorry about that! My dad suggested to upload it,
 and I thought, what the hell. The language is Norwegian, but I did my best
 to subtitle it in English. If you hear the word "tits-machine," don't worry, it
means "time machine" in Norwegian, lol!

This video was my interpretation of the admission assignment for an
 animation  school in  Norway, which was to make a "self portrait in any
technique." I was studying in England  at the  time (Spring 2005) but
wasn't satisfied with that school and wanted to try another place. I got in!

 

Self Portrait - Who Am I?

 His big video hit "Amateur" with 4,614,260 views was his second project after a popular beat box editing piece called Hyperactive.  His "Amateur" is a editing cut and paste montage that may have had inspiration from Michel Gondry - Drumb and Drumber, either way, it sures plays better to me. To make the sounds, he says he  "hit each drum and piano chord separately and edited them together." Check it out...

 

Lasse actually explains how he created "Daydream" telling us,

 

 

 

 

“The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit.
 The  second  is to  look  things in  the  face,
and know  them for what  they really  are.”
Marcus Aurelius

 

 The Looking Glass

We get defensive and this is what is called resistance. But when we see ourselves as we really are, we run from the truth and seek to avoid confronting what we fear most, ourselves. Instead we seek to Razzle Dazzle those around us with our personality that experience has shown may ease us through the transitory experience of social interaction with others. But in self inquiry we face the real, we face ourselves and in so doing we face our fears.

There are three things that can happen when we look into the personal mirror of our interior realization of what we really are. We can look in that mirror and convince ourselves that it’s really not that bad, and then surround ourselves with those who will act as our advocate and attempt to Razzle Dazzel those around us with a wink and a smile.

 

 

Looking as modest as we can, we SAY NOTHING and hide the truth within us. We bury it like so many bones in a closet.

But the shadow self assures you that everything,

“the whole world is just a three ring circus and all that’s needed is to Razzle Dazzle em!”

“How can they see with sequins in their eyes!”

“What does it matter if you are in fact just disgusting inside, just razzle dazzle em’ and they’ll never catch wise.”

So when you’re in trouble, just go into your dance of personality that acts as our advocate to ease the pain of dealing with others. Wow, that’s a scary thought!

“What if I don’t fool them, what if they see right through me?”

 Ever meet these people, always laughing and smiling taking the offensive in the engagement of others to obscufiate and hide the fears inside as they come across as about authentic as a $3 bill?

 

Of course the other way of dealing with ourselves when engaged in social situations or relationships is to disengage and hide from ourselves and the world. We can choose to become invisible, the wallflower in the dance of life who is afraid to confront not only themselves, but others. Fear grabs hold and they know that they’ll never fool anyone with a made up personality, to put on the mask of the hypocrite and walk through life in a lie. It’s easier for them to just keep to themselves and live with in fear and loneliness. They in effect become the Cellophane to the world.

Of course the third and hardest way to deal with our true nature is to confront our fears head on and become the warrior of our own personal journey and deal with our Shadow World as a bushido warrior would and follow our bliss.

This idea of shadow self and fighting off your demons is what got Bruce Lee to train with his master Sifu Yip Man to be able to engage and conquer the demons that his father could not fight. It was his father who realized he had lost his own battle and was committed to having his son equipped mind, body and soul to take on those demons that had become generational from father to son. You can watch this battle of his demon throughout his life in the move of his life called, Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story.

 

 Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story

 

Here you can watch and see that it was when he realized he was about to pass these demons on to his own son, that he fought his inner demon and won through the power of his spirit.

 

 Bruce Lee Fighting his Demon

 

“As long as I can remember I feel I have had this great
creative and spiritual force within me that is greater than
faith, greater than ambition, greater than confidence,
greater than determination, greater than vision. It is all
these combined. My brain becomes magnetized with
this dominating force which I hold in my hand.”
Bruce Lee

 

 Luke Skywalker learning to confront his
fears with Yoda on the planet Dagobah

 

We see this as a main theme in the movie Star Wars when Luke Skywalker goes to the planet Dagobah and complete his training under Yoda. Once there he is told to go into the cave and face his fears, which of course was Darth Vadar, the man in black, only to find that it was himself he was fighting.

 

To truly liberate yourself from your SELF one can Engage in smrti (sati) or mindfulness. Sati is developing a full consciousness of all about you and within you. This is the kind of meditation that Buddha himself engaged in under the bodhi tree, and is referred to in the seventh step of the eightfold path.

 

THE ACT OF
BECOMING
IS  A
HUMAN
ENDEAVOUR
 IF ONE
EARNESTLY
DESIRES
to
SEEK
INSIGHT
of
THEM’SELVES’

 

 The essence of the Buddha's teaching can be summed up in two principles: the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path. The first is concerned with doctrine, the essence of which is right understanding, the second is concerned with discipline, or what that which entails practice and not mere theoretical conceptualizations.

It is these two principles that form the structure of an indivisible unity called the dhamma-vinaya, the doctrine-and-discipline, or the doctrine and the path which is the Dhamma. Though the two are an integral part of the whole, it is the path that translates the Dhamma from a “collection of abstract formulas into a continually unfolding disclosure of truth.”

 

"There is nothing merely theoretical here."

 

The Noble Eightfold Path is not a matter of conceptualizations or intellectual knowledge but of practice in everyday experience. Yet to apply the path it must first be understood as a guide to the ‘right view,’ or what might be better said as “perfect Vision”. The intellectualization or comprehension is the first step as you cannot walk a path if you don’t know where to go, thus making it essential to ‘grasp’ the understanding of the way before one can walk the way.  In Proverbs we read, “Where there is no vision, the people perish. In the movie The Matrix, Morpheus tells Neo of the oracle,

 

 "I can only show you the door."

Morpheus : I told you, I can only show you the door. You're the one
who has to walk through it.

 

In other words, like the eightfold path, you must first be shown the door (Doctrine), but in the end you must walk (Practice) through it to apply the path correctly as it has to be properly understood.

The path is a difficult one, one of prudent choices and mindfulness to what is right and what we know intuitively to be wrong.

When I had the full realization of what this means a few years back I was asked by my father, is there no way to do this without pain and suffering?

And my answer was NO! It’s just not possible for to instantly evolve and achieve enlightenment without resistance.    First, there is the recognition of our own defilements, which when encounter we resist until we can fight through this and free ourselves. A key here is to understand that resistance is not repression. When we pass through daily life we pick up and keep those negative experiences and  push them aside to deal with them later. Sometimes never at all. Like a man wading through a river, we take these negative experiences and sling them over our backs like stones on a tether. With each  addition that is undelt with we find that we no longer flow with the stream of life but begin to sink and become stuck, yearning to breath above the weight of our accumulation of negative experiences. We must make the decision in the NOW to deal with them as they come to unburden ourselves of the Karma.

Experience will tell you if it hasn’t already, that fear keeps us from expressing and transcending ourselves to allow for the emergence of the light within.

 

So what is Right Understanding? It is explained as having the knowledge of the Four Noble Truths. In other words, it is the understanding of things as they really are.

The search for a spiritual path is born out of suffering. It does not start with lights and ecstasy, but with the hard tacks of pain, disappointment, and confusion. However, for suffering to give birth to a genuine spiritual search, it must amount to more than something passively received from without. It has to trigger an inner realization, a perception which pierces through the facile complacency of our usual encounter with the world to glimpse the insecurity perpetually gaping underfoot. When this insight dawns, even if only momentarily, it can precipitate a profound personal crisis. It overturns accustomed goals and values, mocks our routine preoccupations, leaves old enjoyments stubbornly unsatisfying.

 
The Noble Eightfold Path

 
The fourth of Buddha's Four Noble Truths, prescribing the way to enlightenment. The Path involves right understanding, right aspiration, right speech, right conduct, right means of livelihood, right endeavour, right mindfulness, and right contemplation.

 

The Noble Eightfold Path describes the way to the end of suffering, as it was laid out by Siddhartha Gautama. It is a practical guideline to ethical and mental development with the goal of freeing the individual from attachments and delusions; and it finally leads to understanding the truth about all things. Together with the Four Noble Truths it constitutes the gist of Buddhism. Great emphasis is put on the practical aspect, because it is only through practice that one can attain a higher level of existence and finally reach Nirvana. The eight aspects of the path are not to be understood as a sequence of single steps, instead they are highly interdependent principles that have to be seen in relationship with each other.

 

1. Right View or Right Vision

 
Right view is the beginning and the end of the path, it simply means to see and to understand things as they really are and to realise the Four Noble Truth. As such, right view is the cognitive aspect of wisdom. It means to see things through, to grasp the impermanent and imperfect nature of worldly objects and ideas, and to understand the law of karma and karmic conditioning. Right view is not necessarily an intellectual capacity, just as wisdom is not just a matter of intelligence. Instead, right view is attained, sustained, and enhanced through all capacities of mind. It begins with the intuitive insight that all beings are subject to suffering and it ends with complete understanding of the true nature of all things. Since our view of the world forms our thoughts and our actions, right view yields right thoughts and right actions.

 

2. Right Intention

 
While right view refers to the cognitive aspect of wisdom, right intention refers to the volitional aspect, i.e. the kind of mental energy that controls our actions. Right intention can be described best as commitment to ethical and mental self-improvement. Buddha distinguishes three types of right intentions: 1. the intention of renunciation, which means resistance to the pull of desire, 2. the intention of good will, meaning resistance to feelings of anger and aversion, and 3. the intention of harmlessness, meaning not to think or act cruelly, violently, or aggressively, and to develop compassion.

 

3. Right Speech

 
Right speech is the first principle of ethical conduct in the eightfold path. Ethical conduct is viewed as a guideline to moral discipline, which supports the other principles of the path. This aspect is not self-sufficient, however, essential, because mental purification can only be achieved through the cultivation of ethical conduct. The importance of speech in the context of Buddhist ethics is obvious: words can break or save lives, make enemies or friends, start war or create peace. Buddha explained right speech as follows: 1. to abstain from false speech, especially not to tell deliberate lies and not to speak deceitfully, 2. to abstain from slanderous speech and not to use words maliciously against others, 3. to abstain from harsh words that offend or hurt others, and 4. to abstain from idle chatter that lacks purpose or depth. Positively phrased, this means to tell the truth, to speak friendly, warm, and gently and to talk only when necessary.

 

4. Right Action

 
The second ethical principle, right action, involves the body as natural means of expression, as it refers to deeds that involve bodily actions. Unwholesome actions lead to unsound states of mind, while wholesome actions lead to sound states of mind. Again, the principle is explained in terms of abstinence: right action means 1. to abstain from harming sentient beings, especially to abstain from taking life (including suicide) and doing harm intentionally or delinquently, 2. to abstain from taking what is not given, which includes stealing, robbery, fraud, deceitfulness, and dishonesty, and 3. to abstain from sexual misconduct. Positively formulated, right action means to act kindly and compassionately, to be honest, to respect the belongings of others, and to keep sexual relationships harmless to others. Further details regarding the concrete meaning of right action can be found in the Precepts.

 

5. Right Livelihood

 
Right livelihood means that one should earn one's living in a righteous way and that wealth should be gained legally and peacefully. The Buddha mentions four specific activities that harm other beings and that one should avoid for this reason: 1. dealing in weapons, 2. dealing in living beings (including raising animals for slaughter as well as slave trade and prostitution), 3. working in meat production and butchery, and 4. selling intoxicants and poisons, such as alcohol and drugs. Furthermore any other occupation that would violate the principles of right speech and right action should be avoided.

 

6. Right Effort

 
Right effort can be seen as a prerequisite for the other principles of the path. Without effort, which is in itself an act of will, nothing can be achieved, whereas misguided effort distracts the mind from its task, and confusion will be the consequence. Mental energy is the force behind right effort; it can occur in either wholesome or unwholesome states. The same type of energy that fuels desire, envy, aggression, and violence can on the other side fuel self-discipline, honesty, benevolence, and kindness. Right effort is detailed in four types of endeavours that rank in ascending order of perfection: 1. to prevent the arising of unarisen unwholesome states, 2. to abandon unwholesome states that have already arisen, 3. to arouse wholesome states that have not yet arisen, and 4. to maintain and perfect wholesome states already arisen.

 

7. Right Mindfulness

Right mindfulness is the controlled and perfected faculty of cognition. It is the mental ability to see things as they are, with clear consciousness. Usually, the cognitive process begins with an impression induced by perception, or by a thought, but then it does not stay with the mere impression. Instead, we almost always conceptualise sense impressions and thoughts immediately. We interpret them and set them in relation to other thoughts and experiences, which naturally go beyond the facticity of the original impression. The mind then posits concepts, joins concepts into constructs, and weaves those constructs into complex interpretative schemes. All this happens only half consciously, and as a result we often see things obscured. Right mindfulness is anchored in clear perception and it penetrates impressions without getting carried away. Right mindfulness enables us to be aware of the process of conceptualisation in a way that we actively observe and control the way our thoughts go. Buddha accounted for this as the four foundations of mindfulness: 1. contemplation of the body, 2. contemplation of feeling (repulsive, attractive, or neutral), 3. contemplation of the state of mind, and 4. contemplation of the phenomena.

 

8. Right Concentration

The eighth principle of the path, right concentration, refers to the development of a mental force that occurs in natural consciousness, although at a relatively low level of intensity, namely concentration. Concentration in this context is described as one-pointedness of mind, meaning a state where all mental faculties are unified and directed onto one particular object. Right concentration for the purpose of the eightfold path means wholesome concentration, i.e. concentration on wholesome thoughts and actions. The Buddhist method of choice to develop right concentration is through the practice of meditation. The meditating mind focuses on a selected object. It first directs itself onto it, then sustains concentration, and finally intensifies concentration step by step. Through this practice it becomes natural to apply elevated levels concentration also in everyday situations.

 

Floating in Bliss

When we exercise these truths we no longer have to run from our demons but can take the leap and jump into our bliss. It is then that we can realize for the first time what it’s like to flow in the waters of time, lean against the wind and pretend that you’re weightless…

 

 And in this moment say
I am happy, happy
And I wish you were here!

 

Incubus - I Wish You were Here

 

 
DEO

 

 


For the next week I'll be out of town heading to Denver with my boy to go and see and old friend that was like an older brother to me years back. His name is Allen Fisher,  the 26 time World Arm Wrestling Champion. He has another tournament in Denver this week and I wanted my son to meet him and watch one of his crazy competitions. Allen gets CRAZY right before he goes into his pulls as he psyches his opponents out. It's all in good fun and he's now become like the Rocky of the sport to Kids. ESPN will be there and I plan on making a little documentary for myself and Dakota but here is a link to a couple of Videos that you can watch him smoke these younger guys.

In the meantime while i'm gone i thought I would leave you with some really cool videos having to do with art and music. The first is a morphed montage of  500 Years of Female Portraits in Western Art. take a look.