Life is difficult.

Life can be challenging.

Life can wear you down.

Live is a breeze.

Life is a joy.

Life is a journey of discovery.

How did you feel after you read the introduction those 3 statements?

How did the next 3 make you feel?

Even sitting here writing them, as I wrote the first 3, I believed them. I became solemn and sober and thought about the challenges in my life. I became so sober that I realized that I needed to go in a different direction. My goal here as a writer is not to bring you down, but to lift you up. To remind you, it’s going to be okay.

So I embarked on the follow on statements. And as I wrote them, I personally became uplifted. I remembered the good things in my life. I thought about all the fun I have each day. My joy of discovery came to mind and how I love to connect ideas that seem unrelated. Just by writing something upbeat I became more positive.

And that leads me to my subject. The rain in pain falls mainly on the brain. When you’re in pain or going through challenges it can be easy to dwell on those challenges. To build a little rain storm over your head and wallow in the winter of your misery. Like all things in life, there is a time and a place for this… However, there is a difference between the actual pain and our perception of the pain. There is a difference between how long the pain lasts and how long our mental news feed runs stories about the pain.

Once the actual pain is gone, the rest is all in your head. Once the actual event has ended you’re really just reading old news stories about things that occurred in the past. And while it is appropriate for a time for processing and a time for mourning. Don’t get caught up in a self generate rainstorm. At that point, it’s all in your head.

The Rain In Pain Falls Mainly On The Brain.

Go generate some sunshine. Make a rainbow. Do whatever you need to, to break out of your funk and into your fun. Laugh, get some exercise, get coffee with a friend, find a friend. Did I mention laugh?

Step outside your head and find where the sun is shining.

Namaste,

Kevin

When you look up into the night sky, you are seeing starlight… Well as long as you don’t live where there is too much light pollution… But work with me here.

So you’re looking into the night sky and you see the light from stars. For you, it’s now, it’s being in the moment. But is it really?

What you are in fact seeing, when you look up into the night sky, is the past. The light from stars, takes time to travel to your eyes. Specifically, light travels at, well, the speed of light. So if a star is 10 light years away, what you are seeing is light that left the star 10 years ago. You’re seeing the past. And for other stars that are thousands of light years away, you’re seeing the ancient past. So when you’re looking up into the night sky, you’re seeing the universe as it was, not as it is. In fact, some of those stars may already be gone. Burnt out from used up fuel or exploded from instability.

So now let’s translate this down to our daily world. Your mind is constantly processing the past. The only thing in the present moment is your body at your location. Everything around you, radiating out from you as distance increases, is farther and farther in the past. So your mind and your senses are all designed to take in things that just happened. We are constantly recording history. So what our mind perceives as the thing that is happening now, in fact happened then.

It reminds me a surreal scene from Spaceballs by Mel Brooks, where they’re trying to find where the hero has taken the princess and instead of looking for him directly, the discover that the movie they are filming, Spaceballs, has already been released to video. So they put in the tape and fast forward to find where the hero is. As they fast forward they accidentally end up at the exact moment in the movie that they are filming.

“We’re at now now.” – General

“What happened to then?” – Dark Helmet

“We missed it.”- General

“When?” – Dark Helmet

“Just now.” – General

“When will now be then?” – Dark Helmet

“Soon.” – General

And likewise the moment we are in, is in fact the moment that just passed. Our bodies are designed to process the recent past.

And this is our constant cycle. This is what we were designed to do. This is how we process the universe.

So you could argue, that in order to be in the moment, we have to actually step outside of the moment. Because what we perceive to be the moment, is in fact history.

Namaste,

Kevin

I’ve heard of a new book that I wanted to share with my readers. I have yet to read the book. The author was on a radio show I listen to and discussing the connection between our intuition and our ability to be creative. The Book is called “Quantum Creativity“. The intention behind the book is to enable people to tap into the creative abilities that are inherent in each of us.

I’ve talked a lot on this blog about our abilities to balance being a core component of our reality. The world at large asks us to “Go Go Go”. Go build something, go buy something, go watch something. Or in other terms “Do Do Do”. Do this. Do that. etc. While mindfulness based practices are always asking us to “Be Be Be”. Be mindful, Be meditative, Be in the moment. And I’ve come to believe that the truth is somewhere in the middle.

While we are a world that is out of balance on the “Do Do Do” side. The solution is not to be out of balance on the “Be Be Be” side. Our solutions should lead to balance and moderation.

So when I heard the author, Amit Goswami, Ph.D, cleverly suggesting we “Do Be Do Be Do” (giving credit to Frank Sinatra for the original phrasing), the concept clicked with me. His concept is that our creative energies available to us through mindfulness and intuition, cultivated in the act of “Be”ing. Can then be leveraged in our world of “Do”ing. I like that idea and I plan to do further research into it.

I hope you have a wonderful day as you seek balance between the “Do” and the “Be”.

Namaste,

Kevin

I heard an interesting prospective on life over the weekend. As a disclaimer, I don’t prescribe to everything he said. He attributes almost everything we’ve been told to be a falsehood and deception on someone’s part. But I’ve found value in listening to people I don’t agree with, because it helps me understand. That said, I found it interesting to listen to his ideas, and then he shared something profound, and my heart skipped a beat.

The host of the talk show was asking about how we can fix the problems of the world and how we can deal with all of these scary issues around the world. John Lear responded bluntly “You’re not here to change the world. You’re here to be changed by the world.”

I stopped and caught my breath as the idea sank in. “You are here to be changed by the world.”

I tend to get overwhelmed with the problems in the world. And as I processed the thought above I realized that I feel it’s my job to fix them… And while I can make a positive impact on the world, it’s not my job. Further it’s delusional to think that I can fix the world. It’s not my role and it’s a waste of my energy to worry about it.

I have often been afraid of the idea of being changed by the world. In my mind the implication is that you would become like the bad things in the world (AKA worldly). But there is also good in the world. And the interplay of these two forces mold us into the people we are becoming. It plays in very strongly to the idea of the world as a training grounds. We are here to experience this life and be shaped by the experience.

As with all profound truths, it is just one facet of the bigger picture. But this aspect helped as I process the action of letting go of the things I cannot control. So I invite you also to let go of the things you really don’t have a handle on to begin with.

Namaste,

Kevin