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November 21, 2006

Optimal Mindset vs. Bummer Days: FIGHT!

P8310065The one thing you got that money can't buy and the world can't rock,is your mindspace - fill it up with big visions of the feasts of love and life.

The hardest mantra to chant during times of conflict and famine:
"Focus on abundance, my life is abundant, full of love and joy."

The cynic within always tries to bat such thoughts away.

But even in hunger, bless the learning, bless the acute awareness of being alive, bless the resolve that builds inside you that ensures that this cycle is complete, and you have learned the lessons, and will apply them so that you can officially graduate to the next video game level.

Another point of reflection for the day:

"There is no loss, only the continuing movement and transformation of energy.  The Buddha's secret of detachment - the half-smile of contentment through every season, through every physical need."

What is the easy way?  Denial? Conflict? Anxiety? Depression?  A pattern of habitual phrases and words repeated in the mind and out loud to friends about how much everything sucks and how there's never enough money - until the neat little hole of self-pity sucks me all the way in? Those well-worn paths always lead to the same place, a place I don't want to be. The only reason these paths seem "easy" is because their neural grooves are well-worn, so they seem least resistant to energy flowing that way.

My Baptist mother would say, "Pray. Lift your worries up to God."
The Buddha would say, "Why are you so attached to these things that bring you suffering?"
Advaita would say, "You and everything are completely the same.  There is no wrong, right, fair or unfair - there is no duality. This is what is."

I sat in the garden and tried to syncretize, not forcing it, waiting for the wild feelings to settle. 

Deep breaths, full and measured.  Breathing in the full gratitude for my abundant blessings of love and sentience and compassion.  Holding the big, bright, clear visions of my desires as a trajectory reaching far into the future and back through today.  Breathing out, with intention, to offer my own life force as a commitment of my energy to this exercise of my will.

In the end, I have no answers - but what I have is such a firm sense of direction that despite all circumstances, my feet move me forward, one step after the other, guided by an inner compass, with my gaze pointed upward and onward. In the end, there is faith - invisible, untouchable, but real.

Posted at 11:09 AM in OM in Action |

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S. Alexander

Dear Carmen,

I just stumbled on your blog, and I have to say, I love it! I've been working on positiv-izing my own thoughts lately, and I find a lot of wisdom in your writing!! You seem totally amazing, you are into many things I am into too (NLP, Parkour, hypnosis...) and seem to be a guru of some of them! I will definitely be checking up on your blog from now on, and will browse all your archives (as time allows)!! THANK YOU!!!

Posted by: S. Alexander | November 26, 2006 at 05:46 PM

Jennifer Fader

Thank you for this post, Carmen. The art of un-complicating. Mutable reality. Calm on demand.

Posted by: Jennifer Fader | December 03, 2006 at 09:29 PM

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  • Flow with whatever is happening and let your mind be free. Stay centered by accepting whatever you are doing. This is the ultimate. - Chuang Tzu

  • There's no secret to balance. You just have to feel the waves. - Frank Herbert

  • As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  • The truth of the matter is that you always know the right thing to do. The hard part is doing it. - General Norman Schwarzkopf

  • Courage is the art of being the only one who knows you're scared to death. - Earl Wilson

  • The world steps aside to let any man pass if he knows where he is going. - David S. Jordan

  • Leap, and the net will appear.- Julia Cameron

  • Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers, but to be fearless in facing them. Let me not beg for stilling of my pain, but for the heart to conquer it. - Rabindranath Tagore

  • "We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other. To meet, to love, to share. It is a precious moment, but it is transient. It is a little parentheses in eternity. If we share with caring, lightheartedness, and love, we will create abundance and joy for each other, and this moment will have been worthwhile." - Deepak Chopra

  • "I don't take drugs: I am drugs." - Salvador Dali

  • "There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as if everything is." - Albert Einstein

  • "Enthusiasm is one of the most powerful engines of success. When you do a thing, do it with all your might. Put your whole soul into it. Stamp it with your own personality. Be active, be energetic, be enthusiastic and faithful, and you will accomplish your objective. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

  • "Even when change is elective, it will disorient you. You may go through anxiety. You will miss aspects of your former life. It doesn't matter. The trick is to know in advance of making any big change that you're going to be thrown off your feet by it. So you prepare for this inevitable disorientation and steady yourself to get through it. Then you take the challenge, make the change, and achieve your dream." - Harvey Mackay

  • "It takes courage to push yourself to places that you have never been before... to test your limits... to break through barriers. And the day came when the risk [it took] to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to bloom." - Anais Nin

  • "Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow. Don't walk behind me, I may not lead. Walk beside me and be my friend." - Albert Camus

  • "Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so." - Douglas Adams

  • "Will is the measure of power. To a great genius there must be a great will. If the thought is not a lamp to the will, does not proceed to an act, the wise are imbecile. He alone is strong and happy who has a will. The rest are herds. He uses; they are used. He is of the Maker; they are of the Made. Will is always miraculous, being the presence of God to men. When it appears in a man he is a hero, and all metaphysics are at fault." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

  • "When I had youth I had no money; now I have the money I have no time; and when I get the time, if I ever do, I shall have no health to enjoy life. I suppose it’s the discipline I need; but it’s rather hard to love the things I do, and see them go by because duty chains me to my galley. If I ever come into port with all sails set, that will be my reward perhaps." - Louisa May Alcott

  • "Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world." - Arthur Schopenhauer

  • "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." - Aristotle

  • "It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult." - Seneca

  • "And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music." - Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

  • "After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music." - Aldous Huxley

  • When you get to the place where you would worry, stop and pray. - Edgar Cayce

  • At the center of your being you have the answer; You know who you are and you know what you want. - Lao-tzu

  • If you don't change, reality in the end forces that change upon you." - Stuart Wilde

  • "Our life's journey of self-discovery is not a straight-line rise from one level of consciousness to another. Instead, it is a series of steep climbs and flat plateaus, then further climbs. Even though we all approach the journey from different directions, certain of the journey's characteristics are common to all of us." - Stuart Wilde

  • "To dream anything that you want to dream, that is the beauty of the human mind. To do anything that you want to do, that is the strength of the human will. To trust yourself, to test your limits, that is the courage to succeed." - Bernard Edmonds

  • "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." - Albert Einstein

  • "I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain." - Frank Herbert

  • "We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves." - Buddha

  • "To achieve, you need thought... You have to know what you are doing and that's real power." - Ayn Rand

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